Grace Part Two: We Walk Through The Door by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

    When two people have had a disagreement, and they settle things, I’ve heard them say: “are we alright?”  We want to make things right when they have been wrong. To make things right, or justified, is the theological concept; and it has to do with grace.  When we are justified with God, it means we are right with God.

    Last week we talked about grace. I told you John Wesley, who is the founder of the Methodist movement, talked about three stages of grace, or three movements of grace in our relationship with God.

    And we use a house as a metaphor to talk about these stages of grace:
1st one is the porch – this is when God is inviting us into a relationship.  God is trying to get our attention. We might go years walking by God’s beautiful house with an inviting porch and we never stop to say hello, but God is still there inviting us in.
The 2nd stage is the front door – this is when we walk in the door. We decide that yes, we want to accept God’s offer of God’s grace. We want to live in God’s house.  We accept God’s offer of grace. 

    Now I did not tell you the theological words last week because the first one is in Latin and most people can never remember it. But I told it to the Confirmation students this week, so I will tell you today. It’s called “prevenient grace” which means the grace that comes before we even know God is present. This is the grace at work in a child’s life before a child even knows God, and the grace at work in an adult’s life who also does not know God’s love and grace, who is resisting God or has not developed a relationship with God yet.

     The second one is called “justifying grace.”  It’s where/when we decide to make things right with God.  Where we get  into a right relationship with God.  We want to line our lives up with God.  We recognize that as humans, left to our own device, we will sin, and so we need to line ourselves up with God.  Even when we walk through the door, and join others in this walk as Christians we still sometimes make wrong choices, but we do try to walk through the door and try to live in God’s way.

    How many of you know the song “Amazing Grace”?
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found,
was blind but now I see.
Despite being an old song, this is one that still resonates fresh with us now.  It was written by John Newton in 1779. He was a slave trader, that converted to Christianity, and stopped trading slaves. Sometimes it is just that simple! A person is doing something horrible like selling other human beings into slavery.

    We walk through that door, we say I’m going to line up the choices of my life with God.  I am going  to give my life to the way of Jesus, and  turn away from some action that is not lined up with God’s desires for us and for the world. And we have a new life.

    Some of us in this room may have had, (or may need to have) just such extreme a conversion experience. When you walked forward for the first time, and were baptized as an adult, or made a profession of faith and joined a church, or gave your life to Jesus, you may have been leaving behind a life that was clearly not lined up with God. For others, the shift may have been more subtle. Some of us are good people, raised in families where there was no extreme departure from God.  But there came a time when consciously chose to say: “I want to love God, and follow Jesus, starting today.”

    Now I want to be clear today, that at The Village we are respectful of people who practice other religions. There are other ways to connect to God besides Christianity. But here, we focus on Jesus. Jesus is the way we know best, and so if people want to grow deeper in a relationship with God, here are The Village we are going to invite people to know God through Jesus, because we can’t do everything.

    And what we want to do best here, is to invite people to move beyond more than just casually good people, or good citizens.  There is more to it than that.  We have a story to tell the world, and it’s a good one. It’s a story of life transformation. And there are people are there who want to know God. They want and need something deeper in their lives.  Do you hear the difference?  People want to be more than just good people.  They need a deep connection to God in their lives. They want more than just a set of good values.

    You know this and I know this.  We want to know that the One who made the world love us. We want to know that when we feel bad about ourselves, God still loves us. We want to know that God forgives us and that we can make things right with God because God is always ready to make things right with us.   To give us a new start.  That is justifying grace – the grace that is  ready to forgive us and make things right again. All we have to do is walk toward God and God is standing there at the door with open arms. But we do have to make the move.

    Until then, we are still out on the porch. God is waiting for us – trying to get our attention, calling for us to come into the house. But there comes a point where we have to do something.  We have to walk through the door.  Until then we are out on the porch.   A relationship takes two, right?

    Our scripture from Romans (Romans 5: 1-11 from The Message for those following along from afar) talks about what it means to us when we enter into this relationship with God. Let’s take another look at that passage:
 1-2By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that's not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
It sounds so freeing doesn’t it? When we decide to take a step of faith, and move toward God, we discover that God has moved toward us too. And then it’s like we are living in these wide open spaces. There is great freedom in knowing that we belong to God and that God loves us. It gives me freedom to stand up to people who try to make me feel like I am not worthy. Because I know that I am valuable to God.   You can try to tell me I’m not worthy, but you are not God. 
 3-5There's more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!

    I call this, the “trust God” part of the relationship. When we decide to live our lives, lined up with God, then we just have to trust God. Those two words have carried me through so many challenges.  I think about other Christians who have gone before me, those I have read about in scripture and more modern saints, and I know that God takes our challenging times and uses them to make us strong.

    So the question for today, from this scripture is this: have we fully walked through that door? Or are we still lingering on the porch?

      Maybe you said “yes” a long time ago, but today you just feel like you are going through the motions. Maybe you want to have your life lined up with God’s desire for your life, but if you really pause to look deeply at your actions, you know that they are really not consistent with what you know to be the way of Jesus? Or maybe there is just one area that is a problem. Some segment of your life that you are trying to keep separate from your Christian life? We have mostly all been there. We think, “I can just have this little area where I cheat a bit. After all, I’m mostly a good person.” But you know, it’s really not working.

    I believe we all want grace in our lives. We all want to experience God’s amazing love and forgiveness. But sometimes we hold ourselves back from God. Or sometimes we try to hide one part of ourselves or our lives back from God. When we do that, God suffers, But we suffer even more. God is always looking for us. God and God’s prevenient grace – the grace that goes before, the one that is always out there looking for us – to surprise us and sneak up on us, well, it will keep sneaking up on us and surprising us.

    But then, in the second place, it’s up to us, to take a step and make things right. The justifying grace, is ours to receive.  It’s our step toward God. We have to walk in the door of God’s house and say, “Here I am. I want to leave the old, yucky, broken stuff at the door. I want to live with you.”

    And then great thing is this – God is always ready to say – “Come on in. You are forgiven. You are my child and I love you.  No matter how many times we step back out on the porch or into the neighborhood.  This is your home too and I’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long?”

    So, what are we waiting for? Let’s walk in the door, into the house.  Do you need a place where you can find that door?  Well, one of many is at the corner of Conant Street and the Anthony Wayne Trail in Maumee, come join us.