Rev. Brent L. White

When we talk about our lives bearing the “fruit of the Spirit,” we’re really talking about a lifelong process of change called sanctification. The Holy Spirit changes us inwardly, so that we can become people whose lives are characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Becoming this kind of person is surely the key to happiness in life. But it’s hard! As I make clear in this sermon, however, the Holy Spirit does the heavy lifting.

Sermon Text: Galatians 5:1, 13-25

The following is my original sermon manuscript.

This week, on sports-talk radio, one unlikely athlete in an unlikely sport was the main topic of conversation. I’m referring to Lolo Jones. She’s one of the fastest hurdlers in the world, and she’s competing this summer at the Olympics in London. She made news last week not for her athletic prowess or because she was involved in an embarrassing scandal, but because of something she told an interviewer on HBO Sports: This 29-year-old single woman is a virgin. She’s a Christian who is waiting until marriage to have sex.

Olympic athlete Lolo Jones made news in a good way last week.

All the sports-talk radio hosts were amazed by this. They were like, “Google her, if you don’t know who she is. She’s hot!” Typical guy-talk. What they really meant was, “How could this bright, attractive young woman, who seems to be so normal in every way, still be a virgin? She isn’t weird at all!”

Lolo Jones wants the world to know that it’s not impossible—or weird—to wait. It’s what Christians are supposed to do. It’s a part of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus. Our sexually confused culture needs the witness of faithful Christians like her. Read the rest of this entry »

Believe it or not, in seminary, I did pay attention in my preaching class. It’s sad, given how central the ministry of the Word is to us Protestants, that we only had one required preaching class. Be that as it may, one thing our professor told us is that we should be able to summarize our sermon in one sentence. If we can’t do that, then the sermon is obviously too disjointed, too unfocused, too rambling.

I don’t entirely agree. What about the sermons I grew up with in my Baptist church—the three-point expository sermon?

There’s nothing at all wrong with them. They work like this: “Let me begin with a poem or funny story. Now here’s the first point I want to make about the scripture. Let me talk about it and illustrate it. Here’s the second point. Let me talk about it and illustrate it. Here’s the third point. Let me talk about it and illustrate it. Let me conclude with a poem or funny story. Let me invite you to do something. The end.”

My point is that if you’re going to summarize three-point sermons in one sentence, it stands to reason that it’s at least going to be long compound sentence, right? You might have to use semicolons to make it fit.

Three-point expository sermons are passé in mainline Protestant seminaries, which is a shame, because, as I said, there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re easy on the listener, because even if you doze off during one point, you can pick right up again with the next point without being hopelessly lost. I also enjoy verse-by-verse expository sermons, at least in the hands of preachers who can pull them off. Chuck Swindoll is a master at it. My concern is that in lesser hands, the verse-by-verse expository method can seem more like a Bible study than preaching.

What’s the difference? I’m not sure, but I know it when I hear it.

Something called “inductive sermons” are all the rage in seminary. Although I’ve never actually heard a Fred Craddock sermon (he was retired before I got to the Candler School of Theology), I think he’s primarily to blame for them. No, I’m kidding. I’m sure he’s great. It’s just that, based on his reputation, I worry that I would want to change careers if I heard him preach—like, what the heck am I doing trying to preach?

I’m not quite sure what an inductive sermon is. I think the idea is that instead of just stating your point up front, and then illustrating it and applying it to life, you slowly lead the listener to the main point at the end. I can see how these types of sermons lend themselves to one-sentence summaries.

I don’t know what kind of sermons I preach. I suspect they’re inductive. I don’t like to think about it too much. It’s like how, if you think about something that comes naturally, like breathing, breathing suddenly becomes difficult. I’m just happy and somewhat amazed that I have a new sermon each week—because I usually begin each week thinking, “What on earth am I possibly going to say about this scripture this week?” Or “What on earth am I going to say that I didn’t say last week—or last month?”

Anyway, the fact that I do somehow have a new sermon each week must be because of God’s faithfulness. (And for what it’s worth, I always enjoy my own sermons. I do! I hope that’s not conceited. It’s just that they always speak to me, if to no one else. If I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t preach them!)

P.S. In the future, I want to talk about another preaching cliché that’s currently fashionable: that preaching without notes or a manuscript is somehow better and more “authentic” than preaching with them.

Statue at Wesley Church, Melbourne, Australia

Today is Aldersgate Day (celebrated by Methodist churches and the Church of England), which commemorates an experience that John Wesley wrote about on this date 274 years ago:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Wesley scholars debate whether Aldersgate was a true conversion experience for Wesley. The consensus opinion seems to be that Aldersgate represents, not the beginning of salvation for Wesley, but an assurance of it—a peace of mind that eluded Wesley in his Christian life up to this event. Indeed, as he wrote to his mother, Susannah, in a letter from 1725, he didn’t think assurance was possible: “That we can never be so certain of the pardon of our sins as to be assured they will never rise up against us, I firmly believe.”^[1]

Wesley’s shift in thinking on the subject occurred under the influence of Moravian missionaries, whom he first encountered on his missionary journey to the Georgia colony in 1735. The Moravians taught that “proper faith will immediately bring with it an assurance of faith” and without such assurance, one is not a Christian.^[2] Eventually, Wesley would agree with them.

On his return trip to England in early 1738, he wrote in his journal that he had “no such faith in Christ as will prevent my heart from being troubled, which it could not be if I believed in God and right believed also in Christ.”^[3] In other words, without assurance, he did not possess proper faith. The faith he wanted, he said, was “a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven and I reconciled to the favour of God… I want that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it.”^[4] For Wesley, true justifying faith now implied the assurance of it.

Finally, at Aldersgate, Wesley found that assurance. If Wesley had a theme verse, post-Aldersgate, it would be Romans 8:15b-16: “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

In his later years, Wesley backed away from insisting that assurance was a necessary consequence of saving faith. He knew too many faithful Christians of tender conscience who struggled to possess it. But he did expect that most of us Christians should have it. And I wholeheartedly agree.

In fact, this emphasis on assurance is one thing that makes us distinctively Methodist. I wonder if we Methodist clergy preach it enough, discuss it enough, emphasize it enough? Do many people in our congregations struggle with private doubts about their own salvation? Are we doing enough to alleviate their fears?

We don’t alleviate their fears—please notice—by preaching cheap grace. Assurance doesn’t mean we have nothing to worry about regarding our sin, that we don’t need to repent, and that God is going to save us no matter what we do or believe. I’m aware that too many open-hearted, open-minded, open-doored Methodists have gotten this message over the years.

No, preaching assurance in our present context will sometimes mean instilling, first, a proper amount of fear.

To put it bluntly, in order to be assured of salvation, we must first know that we need to be saved.

Do you agree or disagree?

1.“Wesley on Faith and Assurance,” class handout, Emory University, 2007.

2. Richard P. Heitzenrater, “Great Expectations: Aldersgate and the Evidences of Genuine Christianity,” in Mirror and Memory: Reflections on Early Methodism (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1989), 146-149.

3. John Wesley, “An Early Self-Analysis,” in John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 41.

4. Ibid., 49-50.