So What's Keeping You?

June 24, 2008

Dear St. Paul’s Family,

You may not recognize the name Freeborn Garrettson, unless you were a Methodist living in 18th century America.  Born in Maryland, Garretson became an itinerant Methodist preacher in 1775 at the age of 23.  As conflict brewed in the American colonies with Mother England during the early days of the Revolutionary War, Garrettson developed both a strong pacifist and anti-slavery stance, for which he would ultimately be persecuted.  Serving primarily in the New York state area, Garretson would eventually become one of the most important presiding elders of the early Methodist Episcopal Church.

But his story almost didn’t unfold that way.  Garrettson did his best to avoid Methodist church meetings early in his life, as he was fiercely loyal to his roots in the Church of England.  But eventually he tired of worship services in which “we had a smooth, moral sermon read, which did not disturb the consciences of any.”  His experiences in a few Methodist church meetings were quite different, in which he noted how “the law was thundered down on the hearers and the plan of salvation pointed out.”  Nevertheless, Garretson continued to prefer a comfortable faith, which was neither threatened or threatening.    

This would eventually change.  On one occasion, he met a man he described as a “zealous Methodist exhorter” who asked Garretson if he was born again.  He told him that he hoped that he was.  
    
    “Do you know that your sins are forgiven?” the man asked Garretson.
    “I do not,” he responded, “neither do I believe that there is such a knowledge to be had in this world.”

This conversation would continue to haunt Garretson until a moment when he experienced an internally audible voice from God, saying to him, “I have come once more to make you an offer of salvation and it is the last time.  Choose or refuse.”

Garretson describes his response:

I verily did believe that, if I rejected that offer, mercy would be clean gone forever.  Heaven and hell were disclosed to my interior eye, and life and death were set before me.  I was surrounded as it were by a divine power and shaken over hell.  I saw clearly that pride and unbelief had kept me from God.  It was like giving up the ghost.  I was perfectly reconciled with the justice of God for I never could before now be reconciled to that attribute.  I threw down my bridle on my horse's neck and lifted my hands and eyes to heaven and cried out, "Lord, I submit, make me as thou wouldest have me to be."  I know the moment when every false prop was taken away, and I reconciled to be the plan of salvation by Jesus Christ.  I could look up and see by an eye of faith the great Jehovah reconciled through Jesus Christ to my poor soul.  This power was attended with peace and joy in so much that I seemed to be all taken up with Jesus, and although all alone in a solitary mood, in the dead time of night, I could but lift up my voice and praise God aloud so that I might have been heard a far off.  Now it was that I saw the way of salvation and knew that my sins were forgiven.  
                (from a piece by Freeborn Garrettson titled, “A Short Account of my Life till I was Justified by Faith.”)

Freeborn Garretson had become a changed man.  After many years of growing up with a version of the Christian faith that was lax and neutral,  he came to realize that a deeply radical commitment of Christ demanded a full confession of his sins and an ongoing desire to follow Jesus with his whole being.  As soon as he came to that realization, he lifted his life in praise to God.  And as a result, the Methodist renewal movement gained a powerful voice.

Such conversion experiences are not uncommon in the Bible or in the history of the church.  Sadly, and strangely, they seem to be rare today.  What seems to prevent people from opening themselves with this kind of humility to a God who yearns to love and forgive them?

And to put it more personally, what is preventing you from acknowledging those barriers that are preventing the free flow of God’s grace and love from flowing through you?


A LESSON FROM DAVID

Maybe we need a lesson from the life of King David.   He was the shepherd boy who enjoyed a meteoric rise to power, leading the nation of Israel to its greatest levels of political, economic, and military achievement.  He was a man who had it all, including a passionate desire to pursue the will and interest of God in his life.   

But he was still human, and he was prone to sinful mistakes.  After a dalliance with a woman that would ultimately lead to adultery, deception, murder, and cover-up, David’s sin was found out.  Like Freeborn Garretson, he needed a new heart.  A clean heart.  

Psalm 51 is David’s confession to God, and contains some of the most emotionally raw and soul-wrenching words in the entire Bible.  By the end, David was a changed man.  He had come clean before God and was ready to experience the life-transforming power of God’s grace and forgiveness in his life.

This Sunday we continue our “Songs for the Soul” sermon series on the Psalms with an example from the greatest psalmist who ever lived.  We invite you to come this Sunday as we explore his “Song of Confession” and come to experience for yourself what it means to be “perfectly reconciled with the justice of God.”

See you Sunday!

Grace,

Magrey   


Psalm 51:1-12
1  Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
2  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
4  Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgement.
5  Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6  You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8  Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9  Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
10  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
11  Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.