Have you availed yourself to the means of grace this week? This is the question that has stirred my heart and mind for the past several weeks, in fact i cannot let go of it. It continues to be the focus of thought for me. In so much as i am unable to set it aside i have decided to embrace it and make it a part of who i am. The questions origin is from John Wesley who asked it of his house church leaders and congregants of those groups started by Wesley on his missionary journey’s.
i have broken it down like this; Have you made yourself available to God’s grace this week? In the hurry of life even if we find time to go to a gathering of the church as in Sunday or a small group, it doesn’t mean that we have made ourselves available to God. i do believe that at times in our lives there are stages or seasons in which we “go through the motions”. It can become a habit and one not easily broken, if we don’t slow down and take time to ask the question, “Have you made yourself available to God’s grace this week?”
Have you allowed yourself to enter into worship freely? Have you read the Word? Have you prayed? Have you gathered on purpose with the Body of Christ? Have you partaken in the Lord’s Supper? Have you given yourself to be baptized? Have you made yourself available to Christian Charity or Hospitality? These are not works, these are ways in which we make ourselves available to God’s grace for us…it flows freely from the thrown of grace, freely receive it, by making yourself available.
Let me encourage you, if you find yourself going through the motions in which you haven’t made yourself available to God’s grace this week, with this from Colossians 1:9-14. i will let this read us out.
9 Because of this, since the day we heard about you, we haven’t stopped praying for you and asking for you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with all wisdom and spiritual understanding. 10 We’re praying this so that you can live lives that are worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way: by producing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God; 11 by being strengthened through his glorious might so that you endure everything and have patience;12 and by giving thanks with joy to the Father. He made it so you could take part in the inheritance, in light granted to God’s holy people. 13 He rescued us from the control of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. 14 He set us free through the Son and forgave our sins.
You are Loved,
cj
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