May 13th sermon Prevenient Grace Acts 16:9-15

Acts 16: 9-15
Title: grace
May 13, 2007

I grew up in the small town of Sonora Texas, population 3000. My mom took me to a typical Methodist Church and when I was in Jr. High, I started in the Youth Group. It seemed like the right thing to do, being at church an extra time each week, and the popular kids were doing it, so I went.

A year later I was baptized at the same time as 5 other kids. It seemed like the popular thing to do so I did it. I couldn’t tell you what we did in youth group. I think I got some blessings from God by osmosis. You know, I was in church more than just on Sunday. I did all the right stuff. I was a good kid.

Then I got into High School and church was an after thought. I graduated and went to college. I thought about going to church sometimes, but after a Saturday of partying (or just sleeping late on Sunday morning), I had no interest in it.

Anyway, I saw the kids who were part of the Student Fellowship at my small college and didn’t think they were really holding up a good example of what a Christian was. Later I got married and had a baby (well not me but my wife), and we bought a house.

All this time, something was tugging at me. In the back of my mind I could hear a small voice saying “Sean, your journey needs to take you to Jesus. Look for him.”
Today I am talking about grace.
The root meaning of the word “grace” is gift. Christ Jesus, who is God, offers us a gift. It’s the gift of a relationship with him. It’s not any normal relationship, but one that includes salvation, reconciliation, and eternal life.

This grace, this gift from God, has many facets. John Wesley describes grace as prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying. Each of these relate to a particular time in our spiritual journey. The term prevenient means “to come before”.

For a Christian, it is the grace that comes before we make any decision for God. This is the grace that is at work before we are even aware of it. It is the love of God wooing us. It is the will of God drawing us. Maybe my mom taking me to church and praying with me was a form of prevenient grace.

Prevenient grace is present with us from the very beginning. It is at work in us from conception until the moment we accept the relationship God offers us through Christ. In the bible, God says “I knew you before you were born. I even knew you before you were conceived.”
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Now, picture in your mind a big block of black ice. You know what black ice is right. When it rains in the winter time, the water on the road mixed with a little oil and other nasty stuff and freezes. It looks like the regular road, but is actually ice.

Picture a big block of ice as completely black. You can’t see thru it at all. This ice is so hard and so cold it doesn’t melt. That is your life, and my life, and the life of everyone we know and don’t know. But God’s grace is at work. It’s a big ice pick. And it starts chipping away at the cold blackness in our lives. Each time God’s prevenient grace nudges us, another chip of ice comes off.

For all of us, the sizes of the chips are different. For Bob the chips might be small. For Billy they might be huge. But God’s grace is working every day to break thru that wall of ice around our soul.
PAUSE

In the beginning, God created the universe, the world, and everything in it and saw that it was good. God created humans in his own image and likeness. The relationship between humans and God was deep and meaningful. When he created us, God gave us some of his attributes. He gave us love, so each of us has the capacity to love and be loved.
He gave us a spirit, and it’s that spirit that makes us who we are. You could say we are ‘hard wired for God’ from the beginning.

Because we were created in the image and likeness of God, all of us long for a deeper and better relationship with Him. It’s that relationship some of us had with our mothers. The theologian Augustine said “Our hearts will not find rest until they find rest in Thee O God.” The good news is we are made in the image of God. The bad news is……human sin.

Adam and Eve made wrong choices that got them kicked out of the Garden, yet God still provided for them. Each of us has made wrong choices in our past that separates us from God and diminishes our spiritual lives. That is the black ice surrounding our soul. Yet God provides for us. God’s love and grace are greater than all our wrong choices.

The good news is God desires a relationship with us even more than we desire to have a relationship with Him. The relationship is that of covenant love. In the OT, the prophets continually called the Hebrew people back to a genuine relationship of love and obedience to God. They proclaimed God’s promise to make a new covenant with the people. And no matter how many times they turned away, God always called them back.

Jesus offers us a new covenant and a new relationship with God. It’s a relationship of love and grace. The love is that of divine love coming straight from the heart of God, a seeking love (that searches for us at all times), and an everlasting love that will never ever diminish. It is a gift (that grace we talked about earlier), a gift, that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God takes the initiative to seek us out. It’s not up to us to seek God (and in actuality, without his grace and him seeking us first, we would never find him). This prevenient grace helps us to overcome our brokenness and alienation from God.

You wonder now…how do we experience God’s prevenient grace?
That grace had been chipping at the black ice around my soul for years, and even after Brandy and I got married. And then I went on a spiritual retreat in Boerne, TX, called the Walk to Emmaus. Every chance I got, or better yet every chance He got, God sent me out into the “wilderness” outside the building to pray. Just like the Israelites in the OT, I was in a spiritual desert, searching for some nourishment, but not finding any.


I was not sure what I was praying for, what I was looking for, or exactly what God wanted from me, but I still prayed. And then on Sunday morning, God’s grace broke thru that black ice and his light was shining into my soul, blowing on that flicker of a flame to build it into a roaring fire.

I didn’t know what had gotten a hold of me. Instead of just believing, I accepted. No, I KNEW the truth, the truth of Jesus Christ and transformation. That roaring fire got so hot so fast, the black ice exploded and I was finally free from its grip.

Christianity…my life with Christ at the helm, was now a reality. It was only thru the Holy Spirit chipping away at the ice on my soul that I finally got free.
PAUSE

The Holy Spirit can speak to us in many ways throughout our lives. Looking back over that time before Grace broke thru, I can see events happening and people around me that God was using to touch my life. For example: God used my mom to guide me thru the waters of life.

The Holy Spirit can speak to our minds and hearts thru the struggles, frustrations, difficulties, and pain… of unemployment, divorce, tension in your house or church, or the loss of a loved one.

We can experience God’s grace thru the care and sacrifice of others who embody God’s love toward us, such as parents, relatives and friends.

Our church can help us to experience God’s grace and presence thru family worship, prayer, communion, and small groups. The Holy Spirit can awaken our conscience and convince us we can never reform ourselves or earn a place in God’s family without his grace and love in our lives. And God can work thru OUR words, attitudes, and actions to help others open their hearts and lives to the prevenient grace of God.

The critical question for you today is will you open your heart to God and accept the relationship God offers you in Jesus Christ?? Don’t wait another minute and miss the opportunity of a lifetime.


Acts 16:9-15
During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.

We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.