Three Meals a Day and Wesley's Three Kinds of Grace

 

 This Sunday we will gather for a stone soup type potluck:

Bring a favorite recipe and the ingredients. We will all work on each other's recipes. You will be the master chef for your recipe and can help instruct your sous-chefs.

 Arrive at the Fellowship Hall at 430. We will have a short discussion on grace and cooking before we start learning about our group's recipes and food. 

If you're childhood was like mine, you were taught to pray --say grace -- at least three times a day: before breakfast, lunch and dinner. Receiving food is like Wesley's idea of receiving grace: it ultimately comes completely from God.

Wesley suggested three kinds of grace, that are in sequence:

1. Prevenient
2. Justifying
3. Sanctifying

I will use our three meals to illustrate his point:

1. Breakfast: For some, it is made while you are still asleep. When you wake it is presented to you: gift! Prevenient grace comes before knowledge of God. God is working in the kitchen before you awake.

2. Lunch: Sometimes we choose to eat lunch and sometimes people get busy, putting work ahead of accepting food. Justifying grace is where our sins are forgiven. Think about it like this: God offers us lunch daily, in the midst of everything and in full knowledge of our failures, and we should turn ourselves to God and make sure we do not put other things before this offering.

3. Dinner: Dinner is commonly the largest meal of the day. It is where the table is full and brings together the fruition of our day. Sanctifying grace is expressed in bearing fruit in our lives from what we have been given. Cooking is an art in which we grow in skill and perfection, much like our lives through God's sanctifying grace.

Going to The Lost 40

This picture has nothing to do with our planned outing for Sunday but I just liked it and hope that it is not in any way misleading

Stone Soup for 7/20
Worship on the Lost 40 Trail
Picnic Potluck
Dress to hike and if you want there are streams to explore (so wear river walking shoes and a bathing suit).
Where we will worship and eat is easy access not too strenuous.
Meet at the church at 4 pm.
In the event of rain, we will do game night.
We'll be working on what happens in baptism and how the Spirit of God works even before and after that moment.
See you then,
Rob

Harmon Field Ultimate

Late Renaissance Frisbee

We'll gather at the Wesley Cottage at 4 p.m. to carpool down to Harmon Field for Ultimate Frisbee at 4:30.  This game can be played by young and old. If you think you're too young or too old, it will be a beautiful place to hang out by the Pacolet River for spiritual adventure and refreshing. Everyone can bring sandwiches and drinks to share. Bring a towel if you want to cool off in the river after play.
We will also have communion and talk about what it means, what happens in communion and why we take it. It is not so much our thoughts rising to Christ in heaven, as it is the Spirit brining Christ to us
One of John Wesley's colleagues wrote: "Now if it be demanded how so small a piece of bread, or a spoon fool of wine, can produce this effect [the presence of Christ]? …it proceeds not from the elements, but from the will and power of Christ, who ordained theses to be means and instruments for that end. They remain in substance what they were; but in relation to Him are more. It is spiritual bread and spiritual wine, …not so much because spiritually received, but because being so received, it causes us to receive the Spirit, and by the power of the Spirit…be enabled to do all things."

Mark 14:22-25

The Institution of the Lord’s Supper

 While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 

Peace,
Rob