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Sunday, November 12, 2017

Revival: A Crisis of Faith Romans 4: 3-5, 5: 1-2

11/12/17 Revival: A Crisis of Faith Romans 4: 3-5, 5: 1-2

As Christians we often live between two tensions. On one hand, we want to live holy lives that are pleasing to God, we want to do what is right. But on the other hand, we have to know that our faith life is about a lot more than what we can do to honor and please God - its about trusting God’s goodness and grace in our lives. Rev. Adam Hamilton, author of Revival: Faith as Wesley Lived It puts it this way: [Our faith life is about] “Balancing the quest for holiness with the trust and confidence in God’s grace by which we are saved.” And perhaps we see no better example of that in the Apostle Paul.
Saul was known as being “zealous for the law”. It was his desire to keep the faith and keep it correctly/ well that lead him to persecute the Christians - holding folks coats as they stoned Stephen in the book of Acts and going as far as getting a letter signed to go into different provinces in order to round up the Christians - who he saw as breaking the Jewish faith and laws. But one day, along the road to Damasus, with that letter in hand, he had a profound experience with Jesus Christ, as he heard him crying out “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me” before striking him temporarily blind. Through that experience he was changed by God’s grace and love and the community of faith that was expressed through Anaias who took him in and prayed for him. 
Saul prior to becoming Paul often gets portrayed as a bad guy, because from our Christian perspective he was persecuting those who believe in Jesus - and that is very true. But it is equally true that Saul deeply felt that he was doing the right thing. He thought he was protecting the faith and living into God’s will, even if it was misguided. 
I think Saul was seeking to live a holy life by protecting the Jewish faith. But the thing about trying to live a holy life, is that at times we forget about God’s grace. Which leads us, even now today, to think that we have to keep doing more and more to please God instead of resting in what God has done for us. 
Welsey also knew what it was like to be singularly focused on pursing a holy life. Wesley did amazing things for God: he fasted one to two days a week. He didn’t cut his hair so he could give that money to the poor. He received communion at least once a week, if not once a day. He woke up early to pray. He read his Bible. And he was doing all of it in order to please God. 
But as the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans, using the example of Abraham, faith is about more than works. It is also about believing in God and trusting God fully. In fact, at the opening of Paul’s letter to the Romans he writes, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” 
I think we can only live by faith, if we know the one we believe in and trust in the grace of God. When we try to be holy for the sake of pleasing God, what it often can turn into, when grace is absence, is the belief that we need to earn our place in Heaven. Or prove to God that we are good enough. Or seek the acceptance of God. In other words we try to earn God’s love. 
But the truth is that we can never be good enough. Or earn God’s love and forgiveness. And we are accepted because God says that we are through the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. The truth is God’s grace is a gift to us, freely given, and not earned. It isn’t based off of our goodness at all, but instead is all about the generosity of God. 
It looks a long time and a series of personal trials and failures for Wesley to come to really, truly trust the grace of God. After his time with the holiness club, Wesley went on to be a missionary in America. On his way to the colonies, his ship hit a literal storm. As the waves were crashing in, many of the passengers were becoming scared. But Wesley noticed a group of Christians, German Moravians, who remained calm even in the midst of the storm, singing the Psalms together. Then when Wesley arrived in America things did not go well at all in his ministry. He forced people to follow very strict rules - like attending a 5am prayer meeting in order to be able to receive communion - that made him quite unpopular. He also experienced heartache. And as a result he returned to England with his tail between his legs and head down. 
Often it is the storms in life that humble us enough to receive God’s grace. God doesn’t always cause the storms in our lives, but God can certainly be working in the midst of them. When I think of my own life, it was often when things did not go as planned, or well at all, that lead to a place where my faith grew stronger in God, as I learned to more fully place my life and hope and trust in the hands of God. 
There was a woman who has went on to glory from Grace who had a favorite scripture verse from Romans -Romans 8:28 - which says this: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purposes.” Even the rocky moments in life. Even the storms. Even the raging seas can teach us to trust God, if only we humble ourselves to admit that we are not in control and have it all together on our own. 
Which is exactly what happened to Wesley during his Aldersgate Experience after returning from a failed missionary journey to America. It was during that moment, hearing the words of Martin Luther’s preface to Romans read, that Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed. In Wesley’s words: “I felt that I did trust Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Later on Wesley realized that he was a Christian before his experience at Aldersgate, but he grew in his faith that day as he took a step to trust God more fully. 
This past year at camp, after much prayer and discussion, the camp dean and I, along with the counselors, decided to take a step of faith. For the past several years, campers had been invited to share their testimonies on commitment night, but it had divulged more into a time of confessional about not so great things that had taken place in the campers lives, and sometimes they had a hard time connecting that part of their story to their faith in God. So instead, we invited three campers to share their testimony. The young man who shared from my group said something profound, that he didn’t feel like he had a testimony, because he didn’t have a big moment where he fell away from God, instead he just learned to follow God more every day. 
How many of us fear that we don’t have a testimony to share because we didn’t have an Aldersgate moment? A moment when our hearts are strangely warmed? The truth is we can have big and small encounters with Jesus over the course of our lives that change us little by little, helping us trust God more fully, that can be just as much on a revival for us as a big conversion moment. Neither is better than the other, because both draw us closer to God and change us. 
And sometimes the change that we need is from rules based faith to a personal relationship with Jesus. Sometimes the change is finding the balance in our lives between pursing holiness and trusting in God’s grace. Sometimes it is more fully coming to believe the truth of the Gospel that, according to Hamilton, “Out of his great love for us, God has taken the initiative to save and deliver us. Our lives are lived in grateful response.” Whatever it may be for us of us, let us pray, even here and now today, for a revival of our spirits that draws us closer to our loving God. Amen. 


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