Activating God's Grace for God's Mission - June 29. 2025

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

God's grace is enough for you today. I want you to take that to heart if you hear nothing else.

And the question I have for you is, what do you do with God's grace?

We've been talking about grace for, I think, about a month or over a month now.

And we talk about grace being God's undeserved favor toward us,

that gift of forgiveness, that gift of friendship that he offers us.

Those of us who the scripture says at once we're at odds with God,

we're an enmity or enemies of God, but yet he still loves us enough to have

that grace toward us, to be gracious toward us,

to see us as people that need grace.

And once you receive that grace of God, to be the people of grace.

And I kind of liken it to this illustration I want to share with you.

And kids, I'm going to need your help in just a minute, so stand by, okay?

Because I'm going to need your help with these little marbles.

Now, this isn't gumballs, so please do not eat them.

Adults, if you see these around the floor, it's not gum, so don't pick it up

and eat it, okay? I just want to make sure I have that disclaimer.

They could be a choking hazard, but we think about God's grace,

and we think about the ways in which we receive the grace of God.

Perhaps you've already this morning sensed the grace of God working in your life and in your heart.

And see, there's one right there. Now, don't come and eat it,

Emma, all right? It's not gum.

But if we could use these marbles to illustrate the grace of God that is given

to us, see, look, the grace of God is everywhere, and it's just flowing around.

I mean, when we think about the grace of God, everywhere we turn,

the grace of God is there, and we just can't help.

There's nowhere that we can go and not be surrounded by God's grace.

And if we're lucky enough to receive that grace of God, or I should not say

lucky, but if we're wise enough to receive the grace of God,

we know when God has his favor upon us.

As God's grace pours into our life, we think about God's grace coming into our

life through the good words that we hear.

Maybe God's been gracious enough to give you Christian parents that are raising

you up to know who Jesus is, and he continues to fill your life with that grace.

Maybe it was in a Sunday school class and you heard about Jesus.

You heard how you could accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, that Jesus died

on the cross to take your punishment for sin,

that everything you could do in your own power was like just filthy rags that

aren't good for anything except to be tossed or burned in a fire because they're just so filthy.

And that's all the good stuff that you could do. And you realize that God's

grace reached out to you in that way to where your life is just being filled up with the grace of God.

And maybe you went to a fellowship time. Maybe it was at the concert last Wednesday.

And I thank all of you who came out.

And I especially thank those of you who performed. Thank you, Gwen.

And thank you so much. It was awesome. And we had just a great time together

out there. A good first run for bigger things that we want to do.

And it was there that you received the grace of God and the kind conversation

you had with someone else.

Maybe you're encouraged by the artists and the songs that they sang.

Maybe you're like me and you just couldn't help it. You had to stand up and

raise your hands and close your eyes because the presence of God was there.

And you were just enveloped by

the grace of God. And God just kept pouring this grace in you and in you.

And, you know, pretty soon, if I were to continue and picked up these,

which I will in a minute, or someone will help me, your life will just become

so filled up with the grace of God. And then what do you do?

It's great to be filled with the grace of God in your life, but God didn't mean

just to give you his grace, the undeserved favor.

He wants you then to share that with somebody else. What he's put into you,

he wants you to share that grace with other people.

And so that's what we do. We share it with other people.

We see someone that needs a kind word, and so we share the grace.

Of God. It's not candy. Don't eat it.

Yeah, sometimes you block God's grace. Sometimes someone gets all the grace

of God that you have left to give.

Maybe sometimes they need it. It's that grace of God that just is abundant, that just pours out.

And so what I'm going to need today, we're going to use pool noodles.

They're not swords, okay? No sword fighting. Eldon, no sword fighting.

All right, just checking.

I'm going to need some help with sharing the grace of God. And so what I'm going

to do after I pick up my marbles is I'm going to ask all the children that would

like to help me out today, if you'll just come down and kind of just form a line down here,

because you're going to help me with an illustration for all the adults out

here on how we share God's grace.

And so would you come down? Emma, I'm going to ask you to help me.

I love it when my family's on the front row because I can call them to help

me with stuff All right, so if you'll line up all the way down so you don't

you can face everybody else. Thank you very much.

So Emma is going to distribute to each of you, and you can spread out this way too.

You guys can come down here. Emma's all alone, and she's got something for you,

so you want to make a line. There you go.

This marble, the marbles you'll receive, represent God's grace.

And so I want each of you to know that God loves you and that God has favor

towards you, that he wants to give you. And so, remember, this isn't gum.

Say it with me. This is not gum. Okay.

Looks like it, but it's not So Emma's going to give each of you A little marble

that represents the grace of God And so as she does that,

Watch for her as she comes I'm going to give you one of these Every other person

Because you're going to need to have a partner in this So I'm going to gather

a whole bunch of pool noodles But they're just not pool noodles I want you to

think about these as pipes.

A different word would be conduits Another word would be a means From something

to go from one end to the other end Alright,

So remember they're not swords Just like that's not gum Alright Some of you

already have gum But you're making me nervous Just making sure,

Make sure everything's okay Alright,

Boy they're colorful Alright So I'm going to give every other person one So

I'll start here If you don't get one don't worry Because you're going to partner

up Okay Grab it Thank you Alright right?

No, we're going to go every other person. Don't worry. I don't want you to feel

left out because you're going to have a chance to hold one too. Okay.

All right, West Scott. All right. You got it?

Okay. Here we go. Again, don't be offended if I skip you.

Okay. I'm going to go right here. All right. All right. One there and one there.

No, don't you eat that. Okay. Every other person should have a conduit. All right.

And so what I want you to do is to pair up with the person next to you that doesn't have one. Okay.

And what you're going to do is each hold one end, opposite ends of the pool noodle.

Okay. So you'll be like this. Pretend my imaginary friends right there.

All right. Oh, like these ladies right here. This is beautiful right here.

This is what you want to do.

So you might need to spread out. It's okay to spread out around,

Spread down the middle aisle Wherever you can find room Just spread out There

you go Okay, Emma, throw me a marble Just one Whoa, what color is it?

Oh, okay It blended into the scenery here So what I want you to do When I say go,

Is to put it in one end And send the marble down to your friend So whoever I

gave the pull little to You start first So you're just going to put it in the

end And send it down to your friend So let's try it One, two, three, go.

All right. All right. You're doing good.

Very good. All right. So once you get it on your end, send it down the other

way. Send it back. All right. Are you catching them?

All right. Awesome. Okay. So hang on to it for a second.

Now I want the one who did not receive a pool noodle at the beginning to just

hold the end tight to where nothing can get out.

Hold it real tight. I know it's kind of hard. Okay. The other person has the

marbles, put them in that end and send them down.

All right. Oh, don't break your glasses over there.

See, sometimes we don't want to receive God's grace, and so we're kind of pinched

at one end, and we're like, no, God, you could try to give it to me,

but I'm not going to share it with somebody else.

I need it all for myself, and we don't want to be like that. We want to share.

Okay, last thing we're going to do.

Are you ready for this? I don't think I'm ready for it.

Anytime you have a sermon that has duct tape in it, you got to be careful.

For this, I'm going to need the assistance of some skilled men,

men that know how to use duct tape. So, all right, here we go.

What we're going to do is to see how far we can send God's grace.

And so what I'm going to ask Brother Les to do, and if you did not get a pool

noodle before, please come and get one.

Let me go over here since there's fire right there.

Okay. What I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have Brother Les.

He's going to tape all these end to end.

So we're going to need to spread out through the sanctuary here.

All right. You got it? Whoop. Huh? Okay.

Awesome. That's Brenna. Yeah. As far as you want to go.

Who didn't get one? What do you want to be green with? All right.

I have two pieces to go. Yeah. They're not gum. Okay.

While these guys are working on this construction project, what I hope to accomplish

with you today, and I'm so grateful for these kids and all of their help, is this.

I want to answer the question, how do we activate God's grace for God's mission?

All these marbles, all the grace that God has poured into your life,

how do you do something with that?

How do you make something like that happen?

You don't use it up. That's right. All right, make sure everyone has a marble,

too. This is going to be awesome. I love this.

While the kids are doing that, adults, can I ask you to stand with me?

And let's read from Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

The scripture says this, just two verses.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence,

but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

And what I want you to know this morning, you can be seated,

by the way, what I want you to know this morning is that God's grace can be

activated in your life to share it with other people.

It does have an effect on you. It has a great effect on you,

but it also has an effect on all those around you.

And just like we've read in the scripture this morning, we need to understand

that the goal of God's grace is for all of us to be like Christ,

to have that Christ-likeness.

And you can hear in the passage that you can kind of see in the passage we just

read that God calls us to work out what God has worked into us.

Now, you see all these kids, they're working something out right now.

They're trying to figure out how to get this all together.

I've got the adults that are guiding them, leading them, helping them.

And what they're doing and what the scripture calls us to do is to work out our salvation.

Now, it's not a salvation by works. Please do not misunderstand me.

We are still justified only through faith and faith alone.

We're only saved through the faith of God or the faith that we have in God by the grace of God.

But what the apostle Paul called the church at Philippi to do was this.

He says to work out, work out your salvation.

Basically, God's put all this grace in you. Now, how are you going to work on

getting that out to others? How are you going to work on sharing that out?

And he meant in community, together, just like all these kids,

they shared the grace of God together.

Just like all of these kids have done to create this gigantic conduit,

this gigantic pipeline through which to pass God's grace. They've worked out.

Fear and trembling. Now, that's kind of a weird word, right? Fear and trembling.

When we think about what the scripture alludes to in here, it means that we're

supposed to bring to completion the faith that Jesus has put in our heart,

the grace that God's put in our heart, work that salvation out with others in

a spirit of vigilance, in a spirit of humility,

in a spirit of dependence upon God.

So God calls us to work that out.

God calls us to participate.

All these kids here today have participated. They're still participating beautifully,

and they're going to continue until I say what the next step is. All right.

Hebrews 6, verses 1 through 3 say this, Therefore, let us leave the elementary

Hebrews 6:1–3

teachings about Christ and go on to maturity,

not laying again the foundation of repentance from the acts that lead to death

and of faith in God, instructions about baptisms, the laying on of hands,

the resurrection of the dead, and the eternal judgment, and God permitting, we will do so.

The author of Hebrews says that it's a participatory faith.

We need to participate together in what God wants to do in us individually,

but also what he wants to do with us as the body of Christ.

And each one of these kids is representing, holding these pool noodles up high,

these conduits, these tubes, these pipes of God's grace,

that they've gone beyond the elementary teachings of just a one little pipe

going back and forth between two people, but they've joined together as the church.

They've left the elementary teachings of duct tape, of pool noodles,

of marbles that look like gum, and they're wanting to do something now greater

than what one person or two people alone could do.

And so they're waiting very patiently to see what that's going to be and how that's going to work.

All right, it's at this time that I'm going to ask Emma to go around to collect everybody's marble.

So if you put it in your mouth, spit it out because you shouldn't put it in your mouth.

She's got it. Okay. All right. Well, Emma's doing that, remembering that God's

goal for us, this Christ-likeness, is to be holy even as God is holy,

is to act like Christ, is to have the character of Christ, have the temperament of Christ.

We know that God works through time in order to mature our faith.

If we look at 2 Peter 1, 3 through 8, we could see this valuable scripture. Check this out.

God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through

our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Through these, he has given us his very great and precious promises so that

through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption

in the world caused by evil desires.

Very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness,

and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control

perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness,

and to brotherly kindness love.

For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will help you

from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of Christ.

Wow, it's a mouthful of a scripture. But did you catch what we're supposed to

do. We're supposed to participate with God.

And how we do that is that God works with us through time.

Just like all these kids work together and they did it pretty quick.

They had great guidance from godly men that would help them along to create this.

They added to their faith. They added to their goodness.

I mean, look at the list again. Let me read it one more time.

Make every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness knowledge and

to knowledge self-control and to self-control perseverance and to perseverance

godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love.

It's this idea of God's working this out in you through the same grace that he gave to you.

He's working this out in you through time to grow into the character of Christ

as you grow into the knowledge of Christ.

All right, God has given us his grace. Emma, do you have all those marbles?

All right, so what we're going to do now, before I go to my next point,

is Emma is going to start them over here, and then Emma's going to run.

No, she's not going to run.

She's going to come to the very end, over to my friend over here on the end,

and we're going to see if we can get God's grace going from way over there where

Emma is to reach the farthest distance back here.

And so I'm just going to have you dump all those in Actually,

you can give it to our friend on that end And she can begin to dump those in All right.

So everyone that is holding the pool noodle, you're going to have to help God's

grace get to the very end of the sanctuary over there.

And so you're going to maybe have to manipulate it again. You guys know how to do the wave, right?

So you're going to have to do that with the pool noodle, and we'll see if our

duct tape job work. And I'm going to move our candle in case anything happens here.

I don't need our insurance premiums going up. And so the grace of God is now moving.

It's moving all the way through. And you guys can watch this happen,

how God's grace moved from one to the other to the other.

That's the same thing that happens in our lives.

We're trying to be Christ-like. We're working out God's grace in our lives.

God's participating with us. We're participating with God, I guess is the more apt saying.

And in doing so, we're watching God mature our faith. It's like all this grace is moving down.

You might be able to feel God's grace going through these conduits.

I can hear him. I can hear him going. Emma's waiting to receive.

Emma's needing that grace of God down there on that end.

Let's see how successful we are. I love this.

God's grace is on the move. Aren't you excited about that? Don't you love it

when God's grace moves in your life and you get to share that with someone else,

man, it's exciting and it's still going.

Hey, it's not gonna be instant.

Sometimes God's grace gets to work

on us a little bit. It has to have its perfect work within our hearts.

We can be confident of what the scripture says that he who began a good work

in you will see it completed, will carry it on to completion.

And that's what these guys are doing. Look at them.

Boy, hope I'm not breaking any child labor laws doing this, but it's not really

labor. We're having fun.

Look at these. Emma, are you receiving any of God's grace?

Yeah, all right. Praise the Lord.

God's grace is on the move and it's moving. I want to tell you a little bit,

if we could change your illustration just a little bit, and you can see all

these different little pool noodles, which we said are conduits or piping or ways or means.

I want to talk about the ways and the means that you receive the grace of God.

In our theology as Nazarenes, we fall on the line of Wesleyan Arminian.

Some of the names of theologians that have put together different ways that you look at scripture.

And one of them was John Wesley, of course, and he talked about the means of

grace. How do we receive the grace of God?

And if I could define it this way, as God's grace is still moving and grooving

down the pipeline there, the means of grace are the many and varied ways that

God reaches out to us with this grace.

They are practices that help us encounter God and grow closer to him.

And there's several different categories of these means of grace, if you will.

The first means of grace, there's fivefold that I want to talk about on how

do we receive the grace of God.

Now, I'm talking not just about salvation, okay? I'm talking about how do we

grow in that grace? How do we grow in Jesus?

And it's like this. The first is the instituted grace of God.

These are the five ways that God, Jesus, instituted for us to receive his grace.

The first one in this instituted means of grace is prayer.

When we pray, we encounter the grace of God. When you prayed a little bit ago,

oh yeah, don't decapitate anyone with those conduits of grace.

That wouldn't really be grace working, would it?

When everyone was praying at the altar, when you were praying out there,

you are enveloped by the grace of God as you are communing with God as you are praying to him.

Doing on that reception of grace, Emma? Not all of them. God's grace is still

on the move. All right. There's one coming. I see it.

All right. When we think about each and every one of the means of grace,

it's the conduit through which we receive the grace of God to us.

It's the conduit through which we want more and more of God's favor,

where we want him to pour into us all of those blessings.

You know, pastors can plan things, but what am I going to do with all these when we're done.

If you see this float down the Snake River later, I don't know how that happened,

but it didn't happen from me.

All right. I think all the grace of God. Can we give the hand to our children here and thank them?

All right. If you guys will just kind of follow along that way and we'll kind

of go out into the foyer with it. There it goes.

Thank you, Miss Emma, for your impromptu volunteering.

And thank you, children, again. You can go back and sit with your parents now.

And if you want a pool neuter later, you can unduct tape it and take it home if you want.

We think about the means of grace that Jesus instituted, the pipelines,

if you will, by which we receive the grace of God. We definitely know it's salvation.

First and foremost, the grace of God that is given to us in salvation by which

we receive from the Lord.

When we kneel down in an altar of prayer, when we stand at an altar of our own

heart and we accepted Christ as our Savior, I mean, that's receiving the grace of God.

But the grace of God isn't just a one-time thing. We always need it.

Remember how I showed you earlier, we receive all the grace of God,

but then we kind of dump it out. The scripture says we're like cracked pots.

We're clay vessels. We're vessels that leak out God's grace.

So we always need to be filled with the grace of God.

And by the means of grace, that's how we fill back up.

So when we think about the ones that Christ instituted, we talked about prayer,

but we also talk about searching the scriptures, studying your Bible, getting into it.

That's how we receive the grace of God, is through the Word of God.

So we've got prayer, and just like those kids had them all going together,

boy, we've got studying the scripture.

When you come together on the first Sunday of the month or whenever you do it,

we partake together in the Lord's Supper that Christ instituted,

we receive grace through that.

Do you realize it's not just like a church snack before lunch?

But the Lord's Supper is a way in which that we receive the grace of God.

It's the way in which we remember what Christ did, but we also proclaim to a

lost world that salvation is available.

We proclaim that until Jesus comes again. We think about the other ones, there's fasting.

Decide to go without food for a certain amount of time, when you decide you're

going to give up something so you can have more time with the Lord and hear from the Lord.

Jesus instituted fasting. I mean, he gave us the example out in the wilderness

for 40 days to receive the grace of God that way, to understand that man does

not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Another thing that Jesus instituted for all of us and that we practice well,

I think, in this congregation is an old word.

It's called Christian conference, but it means getting together in small groups

to study the word, to pray for one another, and to share life with one another

so much that there's accountability involved.

These are the instituted means of grace by which God, he just pours his grace into us.

But we think next, how do we receive this grace of God?

It's in what we call the prudential means of grace. Now, prudential means prudent.

It means something that is worthwhile doing. Basically, these are rules and

practices which reason and experience over time has shown us that people grow

in Jesus. They grow in their faith when they do these things.

And so, there's two categories. Let me just break them down real quick.

And it all just breaks down into Christian living.

I know in the Church of the Nazarene, in our manual and in just its own thing,

we have the Christian code of conduct and character.

These are just things that are shown that if you do these or if you don't do

these, you grow up in Jesus.

It's not a rule book. It's not like pastor's walking around,

he's got his manual out, and he's checking, oh, did Dave, oh, Dave was late today.

Oh, he missed a verse on this song. Oh, I see Jack over there.

He missed Wednesday night Bible study.

It's not like I'm walking around and you guys didn't do that. I'm just kidding.

It's not those kind of rules, but it's these guidelines and these practices

that help us grow up into who Jesus wants us to be.

And so they break down into two categories.

And it's easier to remember the categories than all the ways,

but it's kind of self-explanatory.

First, prudential means that grace is doing no harm.

Don't do any harm. It means refraining from using foul language,

refraining from drunkenness, from extravagant dress, self-indulgence,

useless diversions, miserliness, means being stingy, and so on.

We don't want to do any harm to anyone else through the words that we say,

through the actions that we take.

We don't want to do any harm to ourself through what we consume,

whether it's media through our eyes, whether it's through our ears or through our mouth.

We don't want these things to defile us To put a roadblock up between us and

following Jesus So doing no harm is not just about not hurting the feelings

of others Or not infringing upon others But also yourself.

Means of grace is doing good, caring for people, especially the poor,

the sick, the distressed,

caring for people's souls by the instruction that they receive,

by the exhortation that you provide, by the reproof that you give when their ideas are false.

These are ways in which you do good. And it's by these exercises,

these things that you really take to heart, that you grow in God's grace.

Now, when I was doing youth ministry, I had some teenagers, they had some colorful language.

It was words I never even heard of that you could put in combination with one another.

And that would really hurt the feelings or cause them to get into fights with other people.

And so we prayed about this together. And I said, where'd you learn these words, first of all?

And not just that, how do you know the combination in which to put them together

to really diss somebody else?

And come to find out a lot of it was what they were feeding into their own soul.

Through some of the videos that they watched, through some of the songs that

they listened to, even from some of the magazines that they read,

it put all this into them.

And I know what the scripture says about the heart, not the beating organ,

but the heart, the center of your drive, your emotions, your will,

is that it's out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

And so we think we're just watching entertainment and just watching a show,

but we're receiving all these messages, just like you're receiving a message now from the Word.

Everything, even a song, a movie, a video, it's feeding these things,

and pretty soon what you've stored up in here is going to come out in the way

that you live, and what you say, and what you do.

And so when I say this is a conduit of grace, all these things,

refraining from certain things, it's not that God wants you to live by this

whole set of rules, and you're trying to be legalistic. Like,

it's just some things aren't good for you.

And some things you just need to excise, cut out of your life so that you can

truly receive the grace of God.

Now, if I had taken this and I had shoved some garbage down in here,

I mean, I put some wadded up paper or gum wrappers or, you know, a Twinkie wrapper,

my breakfast sandwich wrapper in here, and I just kept shoving garbage in here, banana peel.

And then I say, okay, God bless me. and he wants to bless you.

He wants to pass his grace down to you, but you've clogged the conduit up with all this garbage.

And so it doesn't get to your heart. It doesn't get to you because you've clogged

it up with other stuff that's not supposed to be there.

Again, I'm not trying to be legalistic. I'm not going to tell you what to do

or what not to do, but I'm going to say, do no harm. I'm going to say, do good.

Maybe not good according to our understanding, but good according to what God says is good.

And when we can do these things, we really experience the grace of God.

That's my goal for all of y'all, is that you receive the grace of God in abundance

so that you grow up into Jesus even more and more.

Because as you do that, your family grows up into Jesus.

As your family grows up into Jesus, guess what?

Our whole assembled congregation grows up into Jesus and who he wants us to be.

And not just that, if our church is doing that, the churches in Holmdale and

Wilder are doing that same thing, then our communities grow up into who Jesus wants us to be.

And if all of our areas doing that and all of our states doing that,

take it to a national level, if our nation is doing that, we grow up into who Jesus wants us to be.

But when we cut it off, when we place garbage between us and God,

we can't receive the grace that he wants to pipe our way. We stop it up.

A nation can do that. The state can do that.

Governments can do that. Our churches can do that.

We can do that. But we ought not to. We ought to clear the garbage out and let

God's grace flow, don't you think?

Let God freely give what He wants us to give, that undeserved favor,

that wonderful forgiveness and friendship that He has to offer us.

Well, there's other ordinances of the church that we celebrate in liturgy.

It just means the way we do church.

We come together and we sing the songs we sing. We fellowship the way we fellowship.

When we hear the scripture preached and we respond, those are other things,

ways in which are the means of grace.

But also, there's spiritual disciplines that we involve ourself in.

You can consider these works of piety, and I know piety is a weird word, right?

It has the name or the sound pie in it, but it's not about the pie that you eat.

It's about being pious. Now, pious a lot of times is seen as holier than thou.

That's not what I'm getting at.

I don't want you to be holier than anybody else. There's none of us holier than Jesus.

And that's the standard by which we measure our own holiness.

But these works that are holy works, works of discipline, how we discipline ourselves.

Hey, we might have freedom to be involved in everything, but we refrain from

that because we're disciplining ourselves to follow Jesus, to let nothing get

in the way. It's service. It's helping.

I really appreciate all you guys who came and helped these kids out today I

just gave the word and you were there ready to use the duct tape to help And you did an awesome job.

Well, I gotta tell you That's a work of holiness, of piety when you help out

Well, when we had the concert the other night People helped out, they just served.

At the prayer table waiting if anyone had a prayer need to come by or to converse with people.

We had people at the gate, so to speak, out there to help people come in and

know where they needed to go.

We had people that stayed after and helped take things down,

the same guys, I think, to help put things up.

These are holy works through service. Our ushers today, those are works of piety.

They wanted to help you receive the offering.

I mean, everything that goes on. These works of service are powerful.

There's other works of piety, suffering, simplicity.

All these works of piety, their goal in receiving this grace of God is that

it keeps us in a loving relationship with God.

So those things that you do that help you stay in that right relationship with

God, those are works of piety.

We talk about what works of mercy are, and this is meeting the spiritual and

the physical needs of other people, of your neighbor, if we could say it that way.

And these works of mercy, it helps to keep us in loving relationship with our

fellow man, our brother and our sister in Christ.

Now remember, we're not earning our salvation through these works that we do,

but these are outgrowths of the grace of God that pours into our life.

And so we can't help but do it.

Some of you couldn't help but get up and help these kids do the duct tape today.

Praise God. That's an outgrowth of what was in your heart.

About how God works and how God moves. These are the means through which He

wants you to experience His grace more and more.

And some of the greatest days that I have is after I've served real hard and

I've helped someone that could never help me back, that could never repay me for what I've done.

And I don't mean like major things, but just in the simple things.

You know, it's those times when you experience that grace of God in a tangible, in a real way.

When we think about this grace of God, I want you to know that when we participate

in these means, we grow up, we activate God's grace in our life to be used in

God's mission for other people.

And the third way this morning, as I close, is that we need to practice growth.

We need to practice. Now, I talked about at the beginning of the sermon today.

The goal of our life is to be like Christ, this Christ-likeness.

And one of the scriptures we read was Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

And in Philippians chapter 2, it talked about working out your faith.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Now, I admitted before, I've gained a little bit of weight since moving down

here because I hadn't had to shovel any snow. That was my workout, right?

Now, my workout right now is taking my shovel and trying to find the sprinkler

valve that I cannot find anywhere in my yard.

As a matter of fact, I have witnesses is in this congregation that saw me on

my knees last night, fixing a sprinkler, but also praying out to God,

Lord, deliver me from this.

The workout digging and shoveling and, you know, I didn't even go inside and

brag to Melanie that I was working out.

Outside, I should say. Not working out, working out.

But when we practice growth, when we practice growth, it's this Christ-likeness

that it is the working out.

Building that Christ-like character one decision at a time, choosing to do the

right thing, choosing to do

the honest thing, choosing to do the godly thing and that which is true.

2 Timothy 2.15, those of you who are ever in Awanas will know this verse.

Do your best to present yourself to God as a workman, or as the NIV says,

as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, who correctly handles

the word of truth, who rightly divides the word of truth.

It's this by we add together all this that God is doing in us.

Folks, the goal of being in church is not just to celebrate the salvation that

we have. We're not going to hell.

We're not going to burn in hellfire forever, but it's that God has saved us from that.

And now I want you to do something amazing with the grace that he's given to you. It's activated.

It's ready to be used even now.

As you receive it, we give it out because we know we're going to receive more.

Man, wouldn't that be awesome if you had an ATM card like that where you could

just go and you could swipe it or tap it and just other people help them out

no matter what their needs were?

Have you seen those videos online where some lady with 10 kids is buying groceries

and a guy comes up and says, excuse me, excuse me.

And he just goes and taps his card and then walks on and he just pays for their

groceries. Wouldn't that be awesome to do?

Hit every single grocery store in the area, just tapping, buying everyone's

groceries because you knew that it was an unlimited card. You could buy whatever you wanted.

That'd be great financially.

I know we're dreaming when it comes to those things, but when it comes to God's

grace, we've got an unlimited resource.

Did you hear the scripture that I read earlier? Let's see if I can find it again.

2 Peter 1.3, God's divine power, His divine power has given us everything we

need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His

own glory and righteousness.

That reservoir of grace. He keeps giving to us so that we can even give to others.

That's another sermon for another day.

But are you willing to let God activate that grace within you?

Are you willing to get everything out of the pipes, clean those pipes so you

can receive all that God has for you in his grace and his mercy and his love?

I hope so, because there is a world of people that need that,

that need to know about God's grace, that need to know of God's mercy,

that need to know that God loves them.

As we sing our final song here in just a few moments after I pray,

I just want to ask you this morning, have you received the grace of God?

Have you received a saving grace, that grace through which you know that your sins are forgiven?

You know that you and God, there's nothing between you now because that's been

cleared away by what Christ has done on the cross and through rising from the

grave, victorious over sin and death. Have you received that grace?

Man, if you haven't, I hope you'll come down while we sing the last song.

I'd love to show you how to receive that grace. God's grace is better than a

marvel that looks like a gumball.

God tell you that. Way better.

Probably tastes better too than chewing on one of them plastic things.

But if you haven't received Christ, I just invite you to this morning.

To clear out the pipe. Actually, what God does, he'll clean it out for you.

He'll clean out that sin. He'll clean out that unrighteousness.

All those deeds that you did that you're embarrassed even to think of now,

God will forgive you that. He'll clean it out so you can receive the fullness

of God's grace into your life.

If you haven't done that, I just welcome you to.

If maybe God's done that to you before or done that for you before,

but there's some stuff clogging it up again.

I love what 1 John says. 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins,

if we say, God, the pipe's clogged.

I can't receive any more of your grace because I've stuffed some stuff down

there. I see a dirty sock in there. I see an ear swab.

I mean, whatever it is that you've clogged in there.

Scripture says, if you confess your sin, God is faithful and just.

He'll forgive you of those sins and he'll cleanse you from all that unrighteousness.

Man, he'll clean out that conduit

again so you can begin to receive the fullness of the glory of God.

If you want during this time, I just pray you check your relationship with Jesus.

Don't let anything, anything get in the way of you and Him.

Let me pray for you. Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to worship

together today, and I thank you for the participation of our children. I love them.

I'm so grateful, God, for the families we have, for everyone that you've gathered in today.

And Lord, as we've gathered in here today. If there's someone that is just not

quite right with you, God, I pray that before they leave today,

they'll get all that nailed down, clean out the conduit so that they can receive

the fullness of who you are.

Lord, get sin out of their life and live in the holiness that you provide for us.

Lord, bless them today and bless us, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.