Healing Hope

Introduction

Well Core, here we are three weeks into our time together. I feel like I have been doing all the talking and I am ready to get to know your story…but I know this is where we are for now. I am praying that the day is soon when we can be in person and for the day that it is easier for us to meet up and share a cup of coffee.

It has been so good to get to know staff and mission and heart of this wonderful church. I am also grateful to be preaching about hope…that means I am forced to concentrate on the hope we have in Christ for our time together.

I hope you will catch up on the last two weeks if you have missed as these are the best way for me to introduce the McManns and to share my heart and my prayer for our future together.

Week 1 I told you a little about my personal story and journey into faith. The living hope, Jesus Christ

Last week, I shared our journey with our son with a scary experience around his diagnosis with Type 1 Diabetes....and the hope of Christ that helps us endure

This week, I want to introduce you to my passion and deep conviction over a part of the Christian journey that I think is not always sufficiently represented and thus not described or taught. I want to talk to you about the Hope of Jesus to restore and heal. I want to talk to you about the power of God that sanctifies us through the Spirit. Sanctify or sanctification is $100 seminary word, to describe the work of God in us.

See we believe, as Methodists, as a product or the reformation, biblically, that we are saved by grace through faith....

God’s grace allows us to see the brokenness in our heart, giving us the grace to respond and follow Jesus with our lives with obedience and fidelity, and then God’s grace begins a work in us.

John Wesley described it this way:

“Expressed in the most general terms, sanctification addresses the entire work of transformation in human lives by the Holy Spirit from the moment individuals are born again until they are given glorification in death. The ultimate end of the Spirit’s work is to restore the full image of God in humanity, making humanity like Christ.” 

I believe that is what Paul is saying in Philippians 2:12-13, our beginning text for today

Philippians 2:12–13 NIV

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Let us pray.

Barna Research

Discuss.

Front half of the journey 89% and the second half only 11%

(Show picture.)

This is what Philippians says is the work of God in you. This is sanctifying grace.

RIPE Branches

Ok, so what does Sanctifying grace do? Why is this important? Well I am glad you asked...And with any preacher speaking they usually have a bad joke or a bad acronym...I chose to use this because it covers everything but you can remember it. R.I.P.E.Restoring, Imparting, Perfecting, EquippingThe best way to think about this is in reference to John 15

I am the true Vine and you are the branches. Remain in me and I remain in you. Vine, RIPE

Sanctifying grace makes us RIPE, ensures that we are growing.

Restoring

Sanctifying grace is restoring our relationship with God and others. Friends, when we come to know Christ and he calls us son and daughter there is some work to be done in our hearts. There is healing to be done, there is correcting to be done. Sanctifying grace is like the Prodigal son coming home to find a father ready to take care of his wounds and short comings, so that he might be restored. The restoration process is by which we begin to believe we are children of God

Galatians 4:6 NIV

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”

“To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God.” 

― John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You

My own marriage....Lauren helps me sometimes by pointing me to my blind spots or to encourage me in my gifts. To walk away from things that need to be. God is restoring the broken, helping to heal, etc.

Imparting

Sanctifying grace is imparting new life, new light, new strength, and a new heart

Remember earlier I said that God has not just done a work for you....but he wants to do a work in you. Transforming you from the inside out. Paul puts it this way....

Romans 12:1–2 NIV

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I was meeting and discipling with a person before the move, let’s call him Billy. Who gave his life to Christ after 20 years of attending church…hallelujah. And he was telling me, almost a little freaked out, dude I was in a meeting the other day. Now, Billy works with important people all over the world, in a meeting the other day with these scientists and business people and someone went on this tirade and they were cussing like a sailor, and I butted in and said, excuse me, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. And everyone stared at me....and then laughed, John Wayne help me.

He is transforming you Billy. He is giving you a new heart.

Ezekiel 36:26 NIV

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Perfecting

Sanctifying Grace is perfecting us in the image of God and the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Now, I know people get lost on this one all the time. The word perfect throws people off....but I needed it for my sweet acronym. Just kidding. Perfect is the right word but let me put some context on it. Perfect means mature or complete. Sanctifying means holy....this journey is about bringing you back to who you were always created to be. This is about loving God with your whole heart and loving people with your whole heart. Free from sin, death, self, all to him.

This idea of grace is declaring that being saved is not an arrival point, it is a launching point to a life of more.

Friends, it is important to believe that God is not done with you. If you believe in the radical love of Christ to forgive you of your sin, do you believe that he can also set you free from that sin, that brokenness, that selfishness, do you believe that he can give you peace, and love, and confidence, and hope?

This process can hurt as God chisels away parts that do not belong

CS Lewis described it this way....CS Lewis on having a toothache. (Mere Christianity) 

Let me explain. When I was a child I often had toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother she would give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep. But I did not go to my mother—at least, not till the pain became very bad. And the reason I did not go was this. I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin; but I knew she would also do something else. I knew she would take me to the dentist next morning. I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want. I wanted immediate relief from pain: but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And I knew those dentists: I knew they started fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun to ache. They would not let sleeping dogs lie, if you gave them an inch they took an ell.    

Now, if I may put it that way, Our Lord is like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell. Dozens of people go to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are ashamed of or which is obviously spoiling daily life (like bad temper or drunkenness). Well, He will cure it all right: but He will not stop there. That may be all you asked; but if once you call Him in, He will give you the full treatment. 

We have friends that have adopted a child....Williams family. When they adopted this child his last name became Williams, but not he is growing and learning what it means to be a Williams

Equipping

Sanctifying grace is equipping us to do the work of Christ in the world—to be the hands and feet of ChristFriends, you have not be called just to be saved for your own sake. I think that’s why I have always had a hard time with the word saved. It is done and complete. Like it is only a reversal of the lostness....We have to understand that God by some crazy ludicrous idea wants to seek the lost and redeem the world through you. He is sending you out.

Imagine with me for a second you are a disciple....all that you had been through. Given up everything to follow him. Died. Rose.

Acts 1:4 NIV

On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.

Acts 1:8 NIV

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

He is sending you out to be Christ for the world. How much you stay connected to the Vine, how much you participate in the work of this grace, how far in the house of God will determine if people will see Christ when they look at the church.

Heard Carolyn Moore, a Methodist pastor, one time say this… that we have been satisfied with an eye-dropper of the Holy Spirit. Jesus a little bit of Jesus. What if we asked for more?

Closing

Church, let me close when a few thoughts....

How?

Means of grace:

Scripture

Prayer

Fasting

Corporate worship when the time comes

Holy Communion

Community. Right now we need to fight hard to be in community. There is going to come a time when we call on you to make sure you are in place. There must be people that know you fully.

Challenge:

what if we, with Paul and the church in Philippi, “worked out our salvation according the grace of God that is in us.

Salvation given but then salvation lived.

What if COVID was a chance to stop just trying to fill our calendars ith church stuff and to be followers of Christ in the world, being Restored, allowing God to shape us, perfecting us, and equipping us.

Later in the same later Paul says… “Not that I have already obtained this or arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that which for Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

Friends, what a sight that would be....if we pressed on, and allowed God to do some denistry so that we might be those that have profound love of God and profound love of people.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.