Almost Christmas: A Wesleyan Advent Experience Week 1
On the First Sunday of Advent, we lit the first candle in the Advent wreath and Pastor Michelle began her sermon series, Almost Christmas: A Wesleyan Advent Experience.
Read Isaiah 40: 1-5 and John 1: 1-8 and consider the questions below in preparation for the sermon ” Week 1: An Altogether Hope.”
On July 25, 1741 (at the age of 38), John Wesley preached a sermon to his fellow colleagues at St. Mary’s Church called, “The Almost Christian,” in which he described an individual who had all the outward appearances of Christianity. They did all things the basic things right, attended worship, practiced kindness to others and sincerely tried to do their best. But Wesley would go on to say that as commendable as this soul is, it would still be an “almost” Christian. In that same sermon, Wesley called followers of Jesus to do more than an “almost life.” He called them to live an “altogether” life, one that:
1. First, fully loves God, “a love that engrosses the whole heart, rakes up all the affections, fills the entire capacity of the soul and employs the utmost extent of all faculties.” All in!
2. Secondly, fully loves others, including and especially those who have who have wronged us and those whom we have wronged. A deep soul-searching.
3. And third, he calls them to have full trust and confidence in God, so that faith is not just an intellectual conviction, but a wholistic offering of mind, body, spirit.
An Altogether Christian is one who unreservedly and wholeheartedly trusts God and puts that trust in action. A blessed surrender. He concluded his sermon with this hope for his listeners:
“May we all experience what it is to be, not almost only; but altogether Christians; being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is Jesus; knowing we have peace with God through Jesus Christ; rejoicing in hope and the glory of God; and having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Spirit given to us!”
Although not an Advent sermon, this season we’ll leverage Wesley’s sermon to share the experience of what an altogether commitment might look like. How, in God’s grace and strength, we can experience deeper:
Hope
Peace
Love
Joy
Together, we will learn how these virtues need not be manufactured in our own strength, but given as gifts to us by the Holy Spirit who both increases and sustains such qualities within us, for all of life–through good times and times of challenge. ~MMY along with Almost Christian: A Wesleyan Advent Experience
