Holy Habits: Making Diligent Use of the Means of Grace
Level 3
Sundays from 11:30am - 12:30pm
Room 100
For a full description of what each level is, please visit our website at
https://www.mymvpc.com/discipleship
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2: 8-10)
In 1989, Stephen Covey, an American businessman and educator, wrote a best-selling book entitled, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It has sold over 40 million copies and was named the #1 Most Influential Business Book of the 20th Century. Covey's theory is that the path to success in business begins with individual behaviors, and that these can be learned and practiced.”
What is true about the habits of successful businesspeople is also true about mature Christians. There are beneficial devotional habits that as individuals we can learn and practice.
During the Reformation of the 16th Century, Protestants and Catholics argued over the Ordo Salutis, the order of salvation. It was a chicken-and-egg argument. An imprecise and rough description of the argument goes this way: the Catholics taught that good works precede justification (salvation), and the Protestants argued that good works are the product of salvation. However, both Catholics and Protestants believed, and still believe, that God’s intention for us is not only salvation (justification) but also transformation (sanctification) – a changed life empowered by the Holy Spirit.
But for many of us, that is not our experience. We undergo a new birth in Christ, but we remain, in Paul’s words, spiritual infants who survive on the milk of the gospel never learning to chew solid food. We never grow up spiritually.
So, the question is this: what can we do (inspired and empowered by the Spirit) to become a transformed and transformational people? The answer is similar to Covey’s answer to frustrated businesspeople – as individuals we must choose to learn and practice certain beneficial habits. In church, we call these habits the media gratiae, the means of grace.
Join us this Fall as we explore the means of grace and learn to practice them diligently and regularly.
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