THERE ARE A COUPLE OF THINGS I HOPE YOU HAVE gained from reading this book. The first is that the Wesleyan vision for the means of grace offers a comprehensive framework for the spiritual life. People who have written on the means of grace in the past have recognized this fact very well. Hal Knight called it the “pattern of the Christian life.”1 Dean Blevins referred to the scope of the means of grace as an “ecology of holistic practices.”2 Ole Borgen referred to the total framework of the means of grace as the “environmental context” for Christian discipleship.3 With each of those images, what is most dominant is the idea that the means of grace provide an entire model for living the Christian life in a way that leads to true spiritual growth. But note also what is required for that spiritual growth to happen: the means of grace must be embraced fully, with discipline, and within a community of fellow disciples.
The Wesleyan vision for the means of grace offers a comprehensive framework for the spiritual life.
Remember what I said back in the introduction about the three components essential for real discipleship? Those components are community, discipline, and transformation. We need a supportive and committed community of fellow disciples—a congregation, in other words—so that we can join together in the practice of our faith. We also need discipline, something a community is going to help out with quite a bit, but something which requires a deep personal commitment as well. (After all, no amount of encouragement from others will suffice if you aren’t willing to embrace a disciplined faith yourself.) Beyond these two key elements of discipleship, the only “program” required is the means of grace themselves. They cover the range of practices that followers of Jesus are called to embrace.
The third component needed for authentic disciple-ship is the component of transformation. Transformation is God’s work, rather than ours. But we will find God truly transforming our hearts and our lives when we engage in the means of grace with discipline and with a community of fellow Christians. Our use of the means of grace must be done with a searching and heartfelt faith, of course. No amount of mechanical going through the motions will do. All that faith requires, though, is the belief that we will find God in the means of grace. There is power in these practices, and the power is none other than that of the Holy Spirit.
The other thing I hope that reading this book has given you is a grasp of just how powerful the Wesleyan teaching on grace really is. John Wesley was a complicated and gifted person. He was a man of deep insight into the dynamics of the way of salvation—that journey from unbelief, to awakening, repentance, new birth, and growth in grace leading even unto perfection in love. Wesley was also a compelling writer of “practical divinity,” the term he used for theology that was aimed at the practices of everyday Christians. He had remarkable gifts in organizing a complex movement of laity across both the British Isles and the North American colonies. And he had a profound desire throughout his entire adult life to engage in the work of renewal both for the national church to which he belonged and locally in countless villages, towns, and cities contained within the scope of his peripatetic work. Ultimately, Wesley’s own personal spiritual journey is inseparable from all the other things he did. I think he understood both how difficult it is to “walk in the ways of God” in every way and how rewarding that calling can be when followed with perseverance.
“Stir up the spark of grace which is now in you, and he will give you more grace.”
—John Wesley
At the heart of Wesley’s spiritual teaching is, of course, the presence and power of God’s grace. He believed that God’s love for us is such that grace is always available to us, if we will but respond to it in faith. We all have a measure of that grace already, through Jesus Christ’s willingness to come to us first when we know him not. It is that prevenient grace that allows Wesley to say with confidence, “Stir up the spark of grace which is now in you, and he will give you more grace.”4 The nature of grace is such that it never runs out. Unlike the finite resources of the world, the wonderful truth about grace is that the more we use it well, the more it will multiply and continue its redeeming work. “I do not give to you as the world gives,” Jesus says in John 14:27 (NIV). No indeed, and the gift of love that Christ offers us is a gift both to transform us and to be shared with others in his name.
The means of grace can seem like such ordinary practices of discipleship, and indeed they are meant to be used in everyday, ordinary life. The promise that they hold for us is that they will show us the way from an ordinary to an extraordinary kind of life. How that happens is dependent upon God. It is true that we are called to be patient so that God’s transforming work can happen in God’s own good time. The counsel of Wesley for those impatient to see spiritual maturity take root in their own lives is simple. Transformation comes through the work of God’s grace within us. Wesley teaches that all those who want to receive God’s grace are called to “wait for it in the means which he hath ordained.”5 Those means are the means of grace, and together they provide us with all that we need for a life of true discipleship to Jesus Christ.