Three Simple Rules-Stay in Love with God
Being intentional about being with God is a good start
Wesley’s third rule is not “stay in love with God.” Wesley’s actual rule is “Attend upon the ordinances of God.” The book Pastor Kristen read for this series “modernized” that rule because, as it and she say, “it makes it more accessible to the modern reader.”
I knew that coming into Sunday’s sermon. I will admit up front I expected a completely different sermon than I got. I even wrote my first note about how the “stay in love with God” part wasn’t really the third rule, expecting the sermon I did not get.
I was wrong.
Pastor Kristen Lee did not present the “modernized” rule as the way to do things as I expected. What she did do was keep Wesley’s rule in mind as she moved through her sermon to connect it with the idea we should stay in love with God. It was very well done.
I took a number of notes on the scripture. I’m not feeling as up to snuff today, so I may just summarize them. First, let’s see the passage from the sermon.
6Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
7having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
8See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
9For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,
10and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;
11and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;
12having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
Colossians 2:6–12 (NASB95)
Beginning with verse six, we are told to walk in Jesus, meaning Christ is our example. Not some book we found, self-help guru, or radio personality. Jesus is the way. Verse seven says “…as ye have been taught…” Learn from tradition. There is a reason things were done the way they were. We should trust our forebearers that they knew something of what they were doing.
Verse eight is the key verse that stood out to me. It highlights today’s “modern” thinking about scripture. Too often, we let some preacher with a “new twist” on the scripture guide us away from “…as ye have been taught…” We should not do that.
Verse twelve presented baptism in a way I haven’t seen before. I’ve always seen baptism as a new birth, but here, it breaks it down as being buried with Jesus to be raised with Him through God’s actions and not Man’s. “Buried with him in baptism” is a new phrase, but I think I like it.
That is the scripture for Sunday’s sermon.
Let me take a moment to say that I am not a musically oriented worshiper. I’d be fine without the singing and just go right to the message. However, this Sunday, we had some really, really wonderful music. A new singer joined the choir, and she was fantastic. Plus, the choir did an amazing song for the offering, too. So much so that I had to mention it to the choir director; it was great.
Pastor Lee started by summarizing the rules from the previous messages and then likened rule 3 to a “checklist” of things to do. She said that it felt more straightforward forward, and some of us might like it better that way with specifics to do, which I would like, yes, but that we might “lose sight of its power.” That power explanation is the personal touch, which she explained next. She likened it to a research paper rather than a To-do list.
If the “attend to the ordinances” piece was left to the individual, it then requires each of us to read scripture, consider the meaning, and apply it to our lives. I think that’s the “research paper” aspect of it. We have to do our homework, if you will, to figure out what ordinances to attend to for each of us as individuals. While some ordinances apply to everyone, the point is that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work here.
The sermon moved into the five W’s of journalism: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. I noted no “how” was listed there, but it’s not a W, so that’s fine.
What: What are these ordinances? Pastor Lee spoke very quickly, listing these off, and I missed some. The ones I got were worship, prayer, scripture reading, and mercy. The goal is to bring Christ into our lives through these “whats.”
Where and When: Everywhere and all the time. That answer, though, she said, is too general. The trouble with being that general is that we discount it and never do it. I agree with her. When things are too broad, we don’t have any specifics as examples or things to do. We need to bring back the To-do list aspect to this one so it doesn’t get lost. This is where we start to personalize Rule 3. The personalization on this one becomes what time we have available for these activities. When are we each personally more productive doing them? What translation of the Bible do we each comprehend best? How do we each study best? Finally, where in our homes is the most conducive to these types of activities and available when we want to perform them?
All of that is very personal. Those questions about Where and When fit the individual rather than the group, but the point is for each of us to explore it, answer the questions, and devise a time and place to take part in this portion of the exercise. Be intentional, engaged, and active in these practices. That’s the end result Wesley was after, that we engage with these things.
The Who got skipped over by me, but it wasn’t in the message. It was very quickly mentioned because it is very obvious. The Who is you and me. We are the “who.”
These rules dovetailed well with Wesley’s setup of “societies” or “classes,” which we would call small groups or accountability groups today. This idea was not new to Wesley or the church. Going all the way back to the first century of the new church immediately following Jesus’ crucifixion, we see small groups of people meeting in homes and other locations to hear and talk about the teachings of Jesus. One of the purposes of these groups then and now was and should be to ensure people are “attending to the ordinances of God.” Accountability, one to the other in these groups. It is one of the ways we worship and connect with God. It becomes a point of physical accountability if everyone knows we all will ask each other if we’ve done our homework this week.
Pastor Lee then headed into the last W, the Why.
The first thing that came to my mind is the answer many parents give to children who simply won’t understand the more complex explanation at this point in their young lives Because I said so. I wonder what it looks like from God when He answers us with “because I said so” when we won’t be able to understand. Kristen’s answer was not that answer. Her answer was to read scripture, which, at this point, she did read the scripture posted above in the sermon.
After she read the scripture, she asked a question. Here, she began to try and bridge the gap between Wesley’s Rule 3 and the book she read that proposed modernizing it to “Stay in love with God.” She asked: Why do we choose each day to stay in love with God? Why me? Why am I even involved in His plans?
She let that lead into life's big questions like, why am I hear at all? What is my purpose, and why was I made in the first place? Those questions were not answered in the sermon, but she did refer back to a scripture that was not quoted, mentioning that we are all made in His image. Let’s look at that now.
26Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:26–28 (NASB95)
We are created in His image, which firmly roots us in Jesus Christ, given He is God made flesh on earth.
5Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
8Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5–8 (NASB95)
EDIT: Someone connected to Pastor Kristen Lee read this and reached out. They spoke with her about my concern below and I have misunderstood her intentions with the statement “we are gods.” It was not a statement that we are dieties but rather a statement that we belong to God. I did not hear the apostrophe in her statement. She intended it to mean we belong to god as in “we are God’s.” My apologies there but I wanted to leave the original post intact.
Having made the statement that we are all rooted in Christ, Pastor Lee made a statement I do not agree with. It is a very dangerous statement from the pulpit and could easily be misunderstood by people who cherry-pick scripture to twist into meanings to justify their own behavior. Do not think I am accusing Pastor Kristen Lee of that. She did not imply that nor state that. What she did say is this, “We are gods.” That statement was made several times after she said that we are all made in God’s image and are rooted in Jesus.
The danger here is that we then become our own answer to the Why. We, our personal desires, and our understanding are not the Why John Wesley and Pastor Lee were driving at. We are not gods. There is one God. He is a jealous God, and we are to have no other gods before Him lest we bring about His jealousy and anger. Let me say it again: we are not gods.
So, why is it important to understand that we are made in His image and rooted in Jesus but not gods to answer the Why?
To better answer that, Pastor Lee quoted Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun. She said, “The secret to life is that it must be developed from the inside out.”
How does that answer the Why?
Let me post for you a piece of scripture that came to mind as this was unfolding in church yesterday. This scripture was not quoted in the sermon nor mentioned.
13“If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people,
14and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
15“Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.
2 Chronicles 7:13–15 (NASB95)
Humble, pray, seek, and turn. Then, God will hear, forgive, and heal. There’s a very simple To Do list for you on attending to the ordinances of God.
Pastor Lee gave another angle on the Why. She said, “The sacraments of Baptism and Communion are a place where we get to touch and taste the why.”
Our small group discussions over the last few weeks have repeatedly mentioned the differences between the flesh and the spirit, the world, and the kingdom of Heaven. If Jesus can heal the flesh miraculously, as we are told many times in scripture He did, then He is quite capable of doing all the things in the spiritual realm He said, too. The distinction between the worldly, fleshly world and the heavenly, spiritual realm is important. We cannot neglect the one over the other because we get an imbalance that affects the other. If we focus too much on the worldly side, we don’t have the true spiritual nature attended to. However, if we neglect to take care of worldly needs, we cannot see beyond them to see the deficiency of the spiritual. It is why we must clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and tend to the widowed and orphaned. They won’t be able to take time to listen to the Gospel if they can’t hear our words over the rumbling of their hungry bellies.
Pastor Lee closed out by focusing on the Why. Why love? Why God? Why me? Why us? That’s as good a place to stop as any, but I’ll add one more why to the list, which concerns beginning. Why not now? God bless and Godspeed.