Third, Stay in Love with God

In 1739 a double handful of people approached John Wesley for spiritual guidance. Would he advise them on how to live in ways pleasing to God? The first Methodist Societies were born out of that request. This post concludes my series on the General Rules created for these small groups, looking today at the third rule.*

Thirdly: By attending upon all the ordinances of God; such are: the public worship of God; the ministry of the Word, either read or expounded; the Supper of the Lord; family and private prayer; searching the Scriptures; fasting or abstinence.

I've had trouble with this Rule – partly because I couldn't understand what it was saying. Reuben Job's book Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living made Wesley's Rule much simpler. "Stay in love with God." Oh. I get it. I can do that!

Yet, Job's simplification creates new problems, as some friends discussed during the Wesley Pilgrimage this summer. If I read "Stay in love with God" and then proceed to say I love God while doing as I've always done, I'm missing the point. Before I continue, read the Rule again.

Thirdly: By attending upon all the ordinances of God; such are: the public worship of God; the ministry of the Word, either read or expounded; the Supper of the Lord; family and private prayer; searching the Scriptures; fasting or abstinence.

First off, Mr. Wesley isn't talking about loving God in an emotional sense. He's talking about drawing closer to God through our practices – things we do over and over in order to get better at them (or in this case, at something related to it). 

I used to practice piano every day. For more than ten years, I played scales and worked through assigned pieces. Weekly, my efforts were critiqued by my instructor. I grew proficient. This proficiency helped when I picked up other instruments.

Later, as a teacher, I worked with bands and choirs and generally loved it, but I didn't enjoy giving private lessons because few students practiced. And most of those few simply played through things.

Practice is work. It takes commitment and perseverance to do boring exercises, repeat a phrase thirty times, learn fingerings, keep tempi consistent... It takes practice and instruction just to learn how to practice. (Most youngsters "play" rather than "practice".)

A cello teacher once told my son that each time we play something right it's like putting a blue chip in a jar. Playing it wrong adds a white chip. We need to work on putting in enough blue chips that we can (eventually) pull out blue chips consistently. This is true for music, sports, and discipleship.

Okay. The second problem. Some people read "Stay in love with God" and assume they can do it on their own. How often have we heard, "my faith is between me and God"?

Some practices, like fasting, we can do alone; others must be done in community. Worship is a group activity. If you try to do it alone, it's study or devotions, not worship. Besides practicing our discipleship alone, we also need to practice with other people who are working on theirs.

On this cross, you can see personal practices on the left side while public ones are on the right. Look further and you see that worship and devotion are only on the bottom half. The top reminds us that faith needs to be lived out – personally and publicly. God compels us to work on all of this if we are to grow as Christian disciples.

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* You can find earlier posts from this series here, here, and here.