What is the method whereby God wants us to use to bring about His Grace? What are the means?

June 13, 2016

Means of Grace: An action or system by which a result is brought about, a method: a way, a manner, a mode, a mesure, a technique, the purpose, the intention, the intent to compliment you on your work.

 

Denote those duties we perform for the purpose of improving our minds, affecting our hearts, and of obtaining spiritual blessings; such as, hearing the Gospel, reading the Scriptures, self-examination, meditation, prayer, praise, Christian conversation, etc.

Growing in Grace, that is growing more in our spiritual duties, by an increase of spiritual light and knowledge, by our renouncing self, and depending more upon Christ, by groiwng more spiritual in duties, by being more humble, submissive, and thankful, by rising superiour to the corruptions of our nature, and finding the power of sin more weakened in us, by being less attached to the world, and possessing more of a heavenly disposition.

 

The means are to be used without any reference to merit, but solely with a dependence on God, Christ and the Holy Spirit.

 

We can not ever expect happiness in ourselves, nor be good examples to others, living in the neglect of them.

 

It is vain to argue that the divine decree supercedes the necessity of them, since God has as certainly appointed the means as the end.

 

Besides, He Himself generally works by them, and the more means He thinks proper to use, the more He displays His glorious perfections.

 

Jesus Christ, when on earth used means: He prayed, he exhorted, and did good, by going from place to place.

 

Indeed, the systems of nature, providence and grace, are all carried on by means.

 

The Scriptures abound with exhortations to them, Matthew 5:1-48; romans 12:1-21 (21 ways we are to live) and none but enthusiasts or immoral charcters ever refuse to use them. I taught Matthew 5 to 7 with over 68 sermons. I used Romans 12 for over a year. I taught the 21 ways in which the Lord tells us to live to be able to be the kind of person He wants us to be. He does give His grace to all of His creation, the air we breath, for sure, etc. But special grace to His people He gives by means He has established in order to receive them.

 

From the Theological app on the phone I was giving this start in this paper.

 

God wants us to use the means which he has established for us to receive the grace needed to be the person He wants us to be.

 

We are not the example that others should be looking at for spiritual growth, its not the means whereby we grow in grace. Most of our experience is negative, self is usually the last thing you would want to use as an example. Why we spend so much talking about our self in life is what we do best that is for sure. So just how do we think that is going to bring glory to the Lord? It doesn't, it only gives reflection on us I guess.

 

When giving the history of our experience in ministry, we often refect on the negative, rather than express how the Lord has guided us, directed us, and protected us. We have only been the means whereby God has designed. The seed that we plant is God's Word, which is powerful and has growing power. The means is the "seed of the Word of God." God uses "means" to accomplish His purposes.

 

God's divine decree does not supercedes the necessity of the means whereby He as established to use to produce His desired will in our lives. In other words, the means whereby one is born again, for example, comes through the means of one hearing the Gospel. God could saved someone just by His action alone, which in a sense He does, but He uses the Gospel to give the understanding of what it means to be born again.

 

God could just give us what we need when we need it, simply by doing it, but He as designed the 'means" whereby we receive this "grace" from Him. He as designed the means of "prayer", He has designed that we "read and study the Word of God." He has called preachers and teachers to teach and give understanding where by we can grow in the knowledge and wisdom of God." He has designed "fellowship" with other believers so that we can grow thereby. He has given "spiritual gifts" to each believers in other that they might share those with each other.

 

God has establlished the means whereby we can grow in His Grace, and in Sanctification.

 

I am sure we can reflect on our ministry, we certalnly are not the role model for how to live life, we are such poor example. I am a poor example of a pastor, as the result will show. I don't want anyone to follow my example at all.

 

When I say that I follow the pattern of John MacArthur, for example, as I reflect upon this, its his ablity of preaching and teaching the Word. its not his personal life, for I don't have a clue really about his home life. What I have followed is his teaching the Word of God. Learning the means whereby he learns the Word of God. Its not the man we are to follow, its the Lord that he follows.

How is the best way to expess to others, how you follow Christ as Lord in your life is the role what we should desire to live. When we get finish with our talk, others should see that its all about Christ, we are only the means to give that to others.

Charles E. Whisnant

SO AM I TEACHING OR PREACHING OR BOTH?

Wednesday Night Bible Study Augut 19, 2009

People sometimes characterize a meticulous preacher as a better teacher than a preacher. While different people will mean different things in describing someone as a preacher or teacher, many people today in general think of preaching as speaking forcefully, pounding on the pulpit, speaking loudly, demanding a "amen", having a prepared command of scripture, making application and using illustrations, and then exhorting people to follow biblical concepts.
By teaching, many people think teaching is presenting a passage of scripture, commenting upon it, and making explanations to make the meaning of the biblical passage clear. And of course, some overlapping of preaching and teaching is normally accredited.

PROBLEMS BETWEEN THE PREACHER AND CONGREGATION

THE TASK OF THE PREACHER

IS TO COMMUNICATE THE TRUTH OF GOD'S WORD. THE TASK OF PEOPLE IS TO LISTEN

Biblical preaching is a divinely-ordained way of calling people to repentance and for edifying the people of God.

• It is more than speaking in worship services, and it is deeper than offering life-learned principles. It is communicating God's Word to His people - standing between the world of Scripture and the world of people and speaking the truth of God. Unfortunately, today, many pastors are careless in this task and allow preaching to become a secondary priority, which has produced poor preaching and minimal growth in the Church. Some wonder whether preaching is an out-of-date form of communication and not of value to current church needs. However, it is in the preaching ministry of the Church where God's Word is proclaimed and His people are called to respond. Therefore, pastors and church leaders alike must gain a firm grasp of the importance and power of preaching and an awareness of what is and is not true biblical preaching.

Expositional Doctrinal biblical preaching does the following nine things that individual Bible reading, memorization, and meditation does not:

Craig Brian Larson of PreachingToday.com has written an insightful and helpful article on the Spiritual Disciplines and preaching. He notes that most programs on Spiritual patterns either ignore preaching or relegate it to a mere mention.

1. Good preaching rescues us from our self-deceptions and blind spots, for left to ourselves we tend to ignore the very things in God's Word that we most need to see.
2. Preaching brings us before God's Word in the special presence of the Holy Spirit, who indwells the gathered church.


3. Good preaching challenges us to do things we otherwise would not and gives us the will to do them.


4. Good preaching brings us into the place of corporate obedience rather than merely individual obedience.


5. Good preaching contributes to spiritual humility by disciplining us to sit under the teaching, correction, and exhortation of another human. Relying on ourselves alone for food from the Word can lead to a spirit of arrogance and spiritual independence.



6. Good preaching gives a place for a spiritually qualified person to protect believers from dangerous error.


7. Preaching and listening is a uniquely embodied, physical act. It literally puts us into the habit of having "ears that hear." There is something to be said for this physical act of listening and heeding.


8. Good preaching does what most Christians are not gifted, trained, or time-endowed to do: interpret a text in context, distill the theological truths that are universally true, and apply those truths in a particular time and place to particular people in a particular church—all this with the help of resources informed by 2,000 years of the Church's study that average Christians do not own.


9. Listening to preaching has a much lower threshold of difficulty for almost all people.

The question is , "If preaching is so important, how can some “Christians” listen to it for decades and not be transformed?"

• My reason for this is because many people do not know how to listen and apply what they are hearing. They hear with their mind, I guess, but do not listen to what is said, for various reasons. Their understanding abilities seem to be in proportion to their spiritual development and discipline in learning how to translate what is being preached.

THE PROBLEM BETWEEN THE PULPIT AND THE PEW

THE PREACHER PREACHING AND THE PEOPLE LISTENING

• Part of the problem is in the method itself. Most truths are better conveyed when people can see or create images, touch, read, and hear in music those truths, and when those present can in some way take part and maybe even discover some of this for themselves rather than just being told.


• Part of the problem is today's people. Unless they come in already interested, most of them shut their minds off after a few minutes, deciding that what they're hearing does not matter or is the same old blah blah blah. It's a way of passing quick judgment on someone, a reflex action in people who think they have no time or mental energy to 'waste'. But no one can listen, learn or experience when in a shut-down mode. (Really, many of us don't even know how to listen anymore, much less bother to actually do it.) There's no personal growth or saved time when just sitting there numb.


• Part of the problem is with the presenter. Very few have real skills and gifts for effective preaching or speaking, and, to be honest, many preachers don't really believe most of what they're saying, it's just a part of their job. This is made worse by reliance on past sermons and sermons that are mostly swiped from other preachers.

The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying, not, 'What a lovely sermon!' but 'I will do something.'”
-St. Francis de Sales(1567-1622)

THE WEST WING - BIBLE and Theololgican

THE WEST WING BIBLE

(since I do not yet know how to upload a video I will ask you to click on to the clip)

I watched the West Wing from start to finished, and was disappointed when the TV show was ended. Ready. Yep. How is that for a fundamentalist! I didn't say I agreed with the positions that they took on issues. Of course not. But the issues were ways of knowing how they were viewed by a large group of people in our culture.

In this clip, the president address a TV preacher ( of course she is a woman) who has an invitation to the White House, and the president notices her and finally he will address her with a series of biblical questions. Of course he doesn't have a clue that he is taking the scriptures out of context.

There are ways to respond to his questions, but it certainly is a little jolt and makes you uncomfortable listening to them. So my point at the end was to hopefully leave everyone with a sense of "How would I answer those questions?"

In order to answer his question, one should have a understanding of the Bible. Its a skill. Well its a term: THEOLOGIAN.

There are true professional academic theologians, which we are very glad to have, but then because there are "professionals" it should not cause us to not strive to think theologically, and strive to be a theologian.

So the definition from the dictionary of "theologian" an expert in or student of theology. So we can all be a student of theology. The study of God, and all the ologies of study.

There is the well known Chinese quote (below) and then rewrote it with the twist for the church.

• "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
  

On the other hand, a Church quote could read like this:

• "Give a man (or woman) a sermon and you feed them for a day. Teach a man (or woman) to study Scripture on their own and you feed them for a lifetime."
  

I want to address this issue of

• "Less successful teachers see students as tanks ready to be filled. Good teachers see students as model constructors who need help in reconstructing the model that is already at work in their head. Learners undergo deep-seated transformations and affect heart and mind and lead to continued growth. So, good teachers see the classroom as a place for intellectual development instead of just absorbing information from the teacher/ master/ scholar. "


• In other words we as preachers and teachers, there is need to be training and encouraging people to learn the skills to learn the Scriptures .


• My goal has always had the idea of training young Christians, old Christians, to know how to study and learn the Word of God.


• Some one said to me the other day, "Charles you taught us in our Adult Bible Fellowship Class" and she mention the point. That is the point to train Christan's to be theologian, so that they can answer the questions Martin Sheen (the president) raised.

I look at the class room as a whole, but also I look at each student as one.