Author Archives: Maxie Dunnam

Maxie Dunnam ~ God Outwits Us

These reflections were given in honor of Asbury Theological Seminary’s 90th anniversary celebration.

The whole of my ministry life has involved my being called to places and positions of ministry for which I was woefully inadequate. Who I am today, and whatever I have accomplished for the Kingdom, flow from those occasions when I have responded to God’s call with fear and trembling, knowing that unless I lived in his presence and received his power I would fail. Connected with my personal commitment has been Jerry’s journey, and her willingness to follow God’s call for us as partners in ministry…often discerning God’s call more specifically than I.

My coming to the presidency of Asbury is a perfect illustration. I was totally inadequate for this task, and I wrestled with the call of the Trustees for months. They were so sure; I was so uncertain. I don’t have time to recall the dynamics of the struggle, but I did become convinced that the Trustee’s call was  God’s call. And I came, though on the inside I was kicking and screaming because I was blissfully happy and fulfilled in ministry, and felt God was demanding too much.

In keeping with my ministry-long spiritual discipline, I turned to the “saints” for support and guidance. Brother Lawrence spoke the charging word. Most of you know that name, Brother Lawrence. If you have not read his book The Practice of the Presence of God you have probably heard a preacher or teacher speak of him. He served in the kitchen of his monastery and said he experienced the presence of God as clearly in washing pots and pans as in the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion.

I love that story, but it was another claim and story that got my attention. Like many others, Brother Lawrence entered a monastic order believing that he was giving up this world’s happiness to become a monk. He discovered a much deeper happiness than he had ever imagined. One day when he was praying and reflecting on the dramatic turn of events in his life, he shouted out to God: “God, You have outwitted me!”

Isn’t that a delightful phrase? “You have outwitted me.”

What a testimony to the providence of God, the working of God’s grace in our lives. I believe that’s the story line of my life, especially the storyline of my relationship to Asbury Theological Seminary.  In fact, I believe that is the story line of the history of Asbury.

God outwitted me. I came reluctantly, thinking God was being unfair, calling me out of such a fulfilling ministry; but our ten years here were laced with God’s grace and presence and the sense of knowing I was at the heart of one of God’s great Kingdom enterprises.

That’s my personal story and I believe it is the storyline of our history. Through 90 years, since Dr. Morrison walked across the street from Asbury College believing that what America needed at that time was a seminary that would offer the whole Bible for the whole world, God has outwitted us. When graduation takes place in a couple of weeks, there will be over 10,000 living alumni. God has outwitted us as thousands have gone from here to the ends of the earth, and are serving today in all 50 U.S. States, 65 countries, 22 time zones. And what started out as a rather narrow, focused school of Wesleyan/Holiness folks has served at least 144 denominations.

When much of the Methodist/Wesleyan establishment looked down their noses at a humble holiness education center in a Kentucky village, God outwitted us…that little school, often scorned, now provides more ordinands for the largest of the Methodist denominations, the United Methodist Church, than any of her 13 official seminaries.

God has outwitted us. Because of the University and Seminary, this little town has become the missional education crossroads of the Wesleyan movement.

God has outwitted us…the Seminary has become such a technology model that The Association for Theological Schools and The University Senate affirm it as the measure for excellence. And we have a campus in Orlando that is already larger than 90% of all seminaries.

Oh, how God outwits us! The large denomination that once did everything to discredit what Asbury was doing now sends recruiting teams to attract our graduates to their areas. Our professors are respected across the world as outstanding scholars who have not allowed scholarship to be disconnected from vital piety.

And on and on we could go. As God has outwitted us during the past 90 years, let’s claim it to be so in the future as we continue to be faithful in shaping and reshaping ourselves in a way that will most effectively equip persons to serve this present age. And that means, I believe, at least this.

One, we must recognize that too many ministers are well-educated, but are not equipped to make disciples or lead Christian communities. We must become more humble and lay aside the snobbish notion that if we study the Bible enough, read enough Christian books, learn enough doctrine, we can be good disciples and good ministers.

We need knowledge, but what we need most is Kingdom character and competence.

Therefore, we must connect study and knowledge to practice. Professors and others who train folks for ministry must “know God” and also be able to mentor people in knowing God.

Somewhere along the way we strayed from the core purpose of seminaries as servants of the church, equipping persons for ministry. Seminaries became almost entirely the same as secular graduate education institutions. This resulted in making theological education largely theoretical, and training for ministry was abstracted from the actual practice of ministry.

In light of this, I believe our biggest challenge is to find ways to train men and women “in” ministry, not “for” ministry. While we hallow places and community, places alone do not make community…community flows from mutual commitment and mutual sharing in ministry.

Secondly, to serve the population of our country, we must pay attention to the large urban centers. Might God be calling Asbury to find a way to establish a dozen urban training centers? Places where theological education and equipping for ministry takes place – with the trainees being involved in ministry – with mentor and professors not only providing the content of the faith, but using reflection as the primary pedagogical dynamic. A short-term ministry sojourn during a student’s three or four year MDiv journey is simply not doing the job. We must find ways to train people in ministry not for ministry.

If we dare entertain a challenge like this, I pray we will go to some of the most secular sections of our nation, where the notion of called, spirit-filled, sanctified, evangelistic ministry is almost non-existent, and the language of holiness is foreign.

During this next period of our history let’s be open to God outwitting us. Let’s prove to the world who we are, and what we believe, and provide ministry preparation fit for the Kingdom.

Maxie Dunnam ~ When Are We Most Like God?

There was a man who worked downtown in one of our large cities. Each day he rode the commuter train from his lovely suburban home to the inner-city. The train went through the impoverished areas of the city, past decaying tenements, dilapidated public housing, and dingy streets. When the train slowed down, the fellow could see into the bleak apartments, and when it was especially slow, he could look into the even bleaker faces of those who lived in those drab apartments. He could see the unemployed gathered around a fire on a vacant lot, waiting for someone to come by and pick them up for day labor. He could see the children playing on dusty basketball courts, laying out of school, and he wondered who cared about them.

At work, he would often catch himself staring into space, thinking about all those people in that desperate environment. It became increasingly difficult for him to fall asleep at night. When he would close his eyes all he could see were those depressing scenes and those desperate people. He determined that he had to do something about it. So he did. Now, when he rides the commuter train, he pulls down the blind so he doesn’t have to look at the depressing environment around him. He now is at peace … or is he? If he does have peace, what price has he paid for it? And how long will it last?

Keep that picture in your mind, as we return to our scripture lesson for today. The lesson climaxes with a description of God that defines God’s character and brings us to the heart of one of the world’s richest energy sources – compassion. Let that word about God become the soil in your mind in which we plant our thoughts today. Look at it again.

In the course of those many days the king of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition. (Exodus 2:23-25).

Is there a more descriptive word about the character of God in the whole of the Bible? Look at it. In four action words, we have a clear picture of God who loves and cares and intervenes in the lives of his people.

God hears – “God heard their groaning”.
God remembers – “God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”
God sees – “God saw the people of Israel.”
And God knows – “God knew their condition.”

Now that puts us squarely on the question which is the theme of our sermon today: When are we most like God?

Now the obvious answer to that is when we act as God acts. Doesn’t that make sense? We are most like God when we act as God acts. I could stop there. But it would make for a very short sermon. So let me do a bit more than that … Let’s move in our minds with the question, “When are we most like God?”

We will find our answer, at least the beginning of it, in our scripture lesson today. A powerful leading hint comes from looking at Moses. In the scripture, there is a giant gap in Moses’ biography – from the time he was about three years old when he went into the palace to live with Pharaoh’s daughter and that’s noted  in verse ten, until “one day when Moses had grown up” in verse 11. Now there’s our hint.

What does “grown up” mean, as a description of Moses here? It’s more than chronological and physical, I believe. Listen to verse 11: “When Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.” Had he not looked on their burdens before? Had his ease and comfort in the palace blinded him to the suffering of his people? Had he pulled the shade down in his mind in order that his heart would not be touched by their oppression?

It’s easy to do that, isn’t it? Easy to pull the shade of our mind so that we will not feel with our heart the oppression and suffering that’s going on around us. It is even easy to be a part of the oppressive system, and not let it get to us.

I’ve been reading a book that has pronounced its judgment upon me in a searing way. It’s a deeply moving and beautiful autobiography of a talented black woman, Maya Angelou. She calls her story, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She tells about growing up as a Black person in our country. One sentence captures the pathos and tragedy of it all. Listen to her: “If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.” Isn’t that descriptive and powerful?

Consciously for some; unconsciously for most of us, we have been part of a system that held a rusty razor to thousands of people like Maya Angelou. But, for so many years, we pulled the shade of our mind in order that our hearts would not sense and feel the pain of it.

But Moses was “grown up” now and when he looked upon the burdens of his people, he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Isn’t there a connection here with being like God? Listen to verse 23: “In the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God.”

Moses was “grown up now;” he looked upon his people’s burdens. That’s the beginning of being like God; to look and see the suffering of others. Now when he saw the Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian, he murdered the Egyptian.

That was a crazy thing to do – an act of undisciplined anger. We applaud Moses’ awareness of his peoples’ suffering, but there’s no justification for murder. Violence and killing, even for a good cause, is unjustifiable. The pages of history are stained with the blood of those killed in the name of “good causes,” and of religion, even the Christian religion. Minds capable of virtue produce vice also.

But that’s a sidetrack, and we can’t go down that path if we’re going to pursue our theme. Come back to Moses.

There’s an interesting twist of irony in the record of this incident. The day following the murder, which Moses thought was a secret, he intervened in a fight between two Hebrews. But he was impotent in the solution. He had no influence; but worse than that, he was scornfully challenged: “Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”

It was that response of his own kinsman that made Moses afraid, afraid that the Pharaoh was going to find out about his sin, so Moses fled from the Pharaoh. And that brings us to a second incident in Moses’ life, which pushes us toward an answer to the question, when are we most like God?

Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. When he arrived there, he sat down at a well and the daughters of the priest of Midian came to draw water. Shepherds in the vicinity came and drove the women away and used the water that they had drawn to water their own flocks.

Again, Moses looked and saw oppression. He came to the aid of the women, and delivered them out of the hands of the shepherds, then drew water for them. There was no killing here, but there was action on the part of Moses – he is becoming more “grown up” as he looks on the oppression of people.

When are we most like God? “God heard their groaning” – Moses looked on the burdens of his people. We are most like God when we look upon and see the suffering of others.

Let’s press our question further by looking at another person who plays a significant role in the drama – the daughter of Pharaoh. We’re moving backward in our Scripture. Look at verses 5 and 6.

“Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked beside the river; she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to fetch it. When she opened it she saw the child; and lo, the babe was crying. She took pity on him and said, ‘This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” (Exodus 2:5-6 RSV).

Focus on a very human dimension of the story that is captured in the sixth verse. When she opened the little ark, she saw the child. The baby was crying, and she had pity on him. That’s what I want to underscore. She had pity on him. Curiosity was changed to compassion and her compassion overrode pride of race and station. She recognized the child as a Hebrew, and she knew that her father wanted all Hebrew baby boys killed. But as soon as the infant cried, her heart was touched and she entered empathetically into the Hebrew experience.

That’s the point I want to make. Nothing is more needed in our day than empathy. To be able to identify with others to share their experience, to laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep.

So now I say it boldly: We are most like God when we have compassion. It is not enough to have pity. Our pity must become compassion. We are most like God when we have compassion. Pity is a feeling, an emotion; compassion is rooted in the same feelings, but goes deep and issues in action.

That’s what happened when we raised over $200,000 to dig 30 wells in Zambia. It’s not hard to make the point. Pity for prisoners and their families must issue in compassion as we follow through in a specific Prison Ministry that we have initiated. Pity for people living in hovels for houses must become compassion that gives money, and drives nails, and paints to secure a Habitat for Humanity house for a needy family. Pity for those who are poor and cold and don’t have the money to pay their light and gas bills must become compassion that allows Memphis Light Gas and Water to add a dollar per month to your own bill to pay heating bill in emergency situations.

You see, compassion comes from a deliberate identification with another person until we see things as he sees them, and feel things as she feels them. That’s the place to which God seeks to bring all of us, as he brought the Egyptian Princess.

But most of us want God – but not what God wants of us.

Look at one other action of God which we guide us to determine when we are most like God. God “heard their groaning.”

There are times when we cannot speak. Our pain and grief cannot be expressed in words. So in our anguished silence we lay our lives before God. Everything we are—the riveting pain that tears at our hearts; the foreboding anxiety that renders us impotent; the sorrow for our loved ones who are sick and dying, some of them lost and without God; the emptiness of death. God hears the voice of  groaning, even when the groaning that does not issue in a sound.

That’s good news for us … more than good news, it is life giving. But in this sermon conversation, it is a challenge. We are most like God when we pay attention to others the way God pays attention to us. F.B. Meyer suggested that tears have a voice and God interprets it.  If we look closely we will see the tears of a lot of folks. Will we interpret those the way God would, and respond?

When are we most like God? Rehearse and reflect on those four action words that give us a clear picture of a God who loves and cares and intervenes in the lives of God’s people. God hears. God remembers. God sees. God knows.

Go thou and do likewise!

Grow in the New Year: Sitting on the Bottom Rung on the Ladder of Sanctity

“Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32) What a great passage as we anticipate a new year! Another is one of the most tender words spoken by Jesus:

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! (Luke 12:22-24)

A teenager sent his girlfriend her first orchid with this note: “With all my love and most of my allowance.” This is Jesus’ word to us, “With all my love and with all my resources.” Knowing this, we Christians can make two bold assertions at the dawn of the new year. First, Christ knows me and loves me just as I am. But that isn’t all, nor is it enough. The second assertion is that Christ nurtures me; he changes me; I am to grow.

To stop with the first assertion – that Christ knows me and loves me just as I am – is to enter a static state that will become stale, boring, uncreative, unattractive. That isn’t the goal of Jesus for our lives. In To Pray and to Grow, Flora Wuellner affirms:

This living Jesus Christ not only sees me as I am, in loving forgiveness, but he also releases me from that which makes me unfree. He changes me. In him, we are not only reborn – we grow!

It is not enough to be made clean through Good Friday. We are to grow in power through Pentecost!

It was not enough for the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable to leave the pigs. The pigs have not yet left him! Safe now in his father’s house, he still has bad habits to master and new attitudes to culti­vate.

The disciples sitting expectantly in the upper room after Jesus had gone from their sight to the Father, knew they did not yet have what it took to change the world. They knew Jesus loved them, but they needed to grow in his power to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out the demonic, and reconcile the hostile.

“Beloved,” it was written many years later to the churches, “we are God’s children now [security and acceptance]; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him [expectancy and growth].” (1 John 3:2)

I like what Agnes Sanford said so gloriously. We Christians are to “sit down on the bottom rung of the ladder of sanctity and yell for Jesus Christ.”

He will come. He will come to nurture and change us.

The year 2014 will begin in just a few days time. As we close one year and begin the next, many of us will be in a mood to reflect, remember and reevaluate. In the midst of this season of resolutions it’s important to recall Jesus’ comparison: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10: 10)

Featured image courtesy Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

Maxie Dunnam ~ Be of Sin the Double Cure

Familiarity sometimes breeds dullness. It’s true in the whole of life; it is especially true in the way we hear things and reflect on what we hear. The hymns we sing are a great example of this. If we have sung them often, we are so familiar with the tunes that we sing the words by rote. Not only do we not reflect on the meaning of the words, the words don’t even register in our minds.

An example is one of our most familiar hymns, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me. In the very first stanza of the hymn, one of the great themes of the Christian faith is stated in such a unique way that it should lodge firmly in our minds.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.

The image is a powerful one: Rock of Ages. This was a favorite metaphor for the Psalmists.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
      my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
     He is my shield and the horn of mu salvation, my stronghold.
I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
     And I am saved from my enemies.” (Psalm 18:2-3 NIV)

Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.
From the ends of the earth I call on you,
    I call as my heart grows faint;
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
For you have been a refuge,
    a strong tower against the foe. (Psalm 61:1-3 NIV)

In the little country Baptist Church where I was converted, we sang a gospel song based on this Psalm/Prayer. Ray Steven made it popular later on.

Why don’t you lead me to the rock that is higher than I?
Oh lead me to the rock, yes lead me to the rock.
Why don’t you lead me to the rock that is higher than I?
Thou hast been a shelter for me.

Our minds are swirling around the notion of God as our rock, and finding the shelter of a mighty rock as we come to the petition, “be of sin the double cure.” If we stop to think about it, we may be so puzzled by the language that we don’t stay with it long enough to ponder what the poet is talking about. Yet, it is a clear expression of what salvation is all about.

Too many think of salvation in a limited way: the forgiveness of sin and nullifying guilt. It is far more than that, and this verse of the hymn expresses it so solidly: “Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.”

Salvation is pardon, yes; but it is also power … power over sin. We are saved from the guilt of sin by the forgiveness of Christ, but we are also saved from the ongoing power of continuing sin. Salvation is a double cure. Another hymn writer expressed it this way,

My sin—not in part but in whole,
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it not more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!    (H.G. Spafford, It Is Well With My Soul)

Not in part but in whole … nothing partial; “saved to the uttermost” as Wesley would say. Wesley believed that the Bible clearly taught that God had wedded holy living and salvation by faith alone into one inseparable whole. The dual emphasis on what God does “for us” through Christ, and what Christ does “in us” through the Holy Spirit is one of Wesley’s greatest contribution to the Christian Church.

Even before God revealed himself so clearly in Jesus Christ, the Psalmist knew there had to be a “double cure.”

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. (Psalm 103:2-5 NIV)

So the hymn writer is on target when he talks about the Rock of Ages providing a double cure. We can “hide” ourselves in him because he forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases; he saves from wrath and makes us pure. This is as it should be, and as it must be. Charles H. Spurgeon made the case in this fashion,

“To be washed, and yet to lie in the mire; to be pronounced clean, and yet to have the leprosy white on one’s brow, would be the veriest mockery of mercy. What is it to bring the man out of his sepulcher if you leave him dead? Why lead him into the light if he is still blind?” (All of Grace, p. 95)

So we pray, “Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure”

 

 

 

NOTE: We Methodist/Wesleyans like to say, “We sing our faith.” And we do. Ellsworth Kalas is a person who has reflected a great deal on the richness of our Wesleyan Accent in song. This week, we will begin a regular posting of Kalas’ reflections on a Wesleyan hymn. Don’t miss it.

Maxie Dunnam ~ Deliverance through Thanksgiving

One of our big failures as Christians is our continual refusal to discipline ourselves in living with the word of God. We need to study the Bible. It is the shaping  source of our Christian faith and way. In it we find the revelation of God which God provided through God’s Son, Jesus. It is food for our souls, direction and strength for our journey.

But not only do we need to study the Bible, we need to read the Bible devotionally, and there is a difference. The sermon today comes out of my devotional reading of the Bible a few weeks ago. But before I get into the sermon, let me share with you the way I read the Bible devotionally. Perhaps this might be helpful.

In a time of quietness, reflection and prayer, I simply begin reading a pre-selected passage of scripture. With an open mind and heart I read until some word grabs my attention. I stay with that word, allowing it to tumble around in my mind. I seek to taste the word by reflecting upon it in my mind and heart. I ask the word questions and I allow the word to ask me questions, and then out of that reflection, in that moment I form the prayer that I want to offer to God in response to his word.

I was doing this with the Psalms when I came to this 50th Psalm – a portion of which is our scripture lesson today. I came upon that 15th verse, “And call upon me in your time of trouble and I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.”  Now I don’t even know what was going on in my life at that particular time that caused that verse of scripture to be so significant, except that I am like most people… trouble is often my lot. Maybe I was concerned about one of our children; maybe I was wrestling with some problem; maybe I felt that someone or something was after me, and I was being tested. I know it wasn’t a huge earth-shaking thing or I would remember it. Nevertheless there it was, God’s word for me in that particular situation and I needed it. “And call upon me in your time of trouble and I will deliver you and you shall glorify my name.”

What a promise. Deliverance. None of us will pass through too much of our life without needing to lay hold upon that promise, because none of us will pass through too much of our life without being confronted with trouble. But as I reflected upon this staggering promise, I became aware of the fact that it was not a complete within itself. Though it’s a separate verse in the Bible, it begins with the word and. So I went back to read the entire sentence. If you have your Bible before you, look back at the 14th verse and you’ll find the beginning of the sentence. “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the most high.” Then comes the promise: “and call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.”  That set me to thinking all over again. And the word of the Lord came to me in a powerful way. There are conditions that we are to meet if we’re going to appropriate the promise of the Lord to deliver us.

Got that? There are conditions that we are to meet if we’re going to appropriate the promise if the Lord to deliver us. God is not making a wholesale promise here. You can’t lift this verse out of its context and use it as a kind of certified check in God’s bank. Well then, since this promise is so astounding and since none of us are going to pass through too much of life without needing to lay hold of it, what are the conditions that we need to meet in order to appropriate this promise of deliverance that God gives us?

The first condition is, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Another translation says, “make thanksgiving your offering.” Now that has a specially beautiful meaning if you see it in its entire context. If you go back to the tenth verse of that reading, you’ll see God talking about all that he is and all that he has, and then in that beautiful twelfth verse he says, “if I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.” What does a God like this, an omnipotent God who created and owns the whole universe – what does a God like this want? What does a God like this require of us? There it is. Offer to God a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Listen. God’s hunger; God’s deepest longing is satisfied by our love and gratitude. Does that make you stand at attention inside? I mean, does that make you feel tall inside? That the God of the universe, the one who created and owns the world is satisfied, God’s deepest longings are satisfied by your praise and thanksgiving?

What a way to think and live during this thanksgiving season, we need to learn that lesson. It’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy to lose touch with the source of life…how we got to where we are; all the blessing that have been poured out upon us. It’s easy to think that we are where we are today because of our own efforts. We’re like that man who was being honored at a banquet for things he had done. He stood to receive the award, but got his tongue twisted, and said, “I don’t appreciate this, but I certainly deserve it.” Well we put that sort of twist to the facts of our life. We interpret our success, our achievements and accomplishments, as the result of our own doing.

Now this came home to me in a powerful way, as I followed the devastating famine tragedy in Africa. I cut a picture off the front page of our local paper and kept it on my desk. It’s a picture of an old man, who looks to be about 100, but I have an idea he’s about 50. And on his back is the stereotypical emaciated little starving child, probably his grandchild. Three generations starving to death. Now I would feel better if I didn’t look at that picture, but I wouldn’t be better. One of the things I think about when I look at that picture is, I could have been born in anywhere in the world. Has that thought crossed your mind during the past two or three weeks? I could have been born in a place of famine, or a place ravaged by war. I could have been born in a place where people earn less than $2.00 a day. And when I think of that, it makes it easy for me to count my blessings – though I was born in rather severe poverty in Mississippi, in context of our world situation, that poverty in Mississippi would be considered rich.

Then I go from there. I did not earn – I simply received the gift of parents who loved me, who sacrificed for me, who encouraged me and supported me. I did not earn – I simply received the gift of a public school education. I didn’t earn – I simply received the right of citizenship in this great country, where I have the freedom to vote, and the freedom to speak out, and the freedom to enter into the political process that shapes the destiny of this nation. But I could have been born anywhere else. You see, it’s gift.

They say that Darwin kept a notebook to jot down the contradictions that he came across, contradictions against his theories, because he knew that if he didn’t jot those contradictions down, he was so committed to his theories that he would forget them. Maybe we need to keep a notebook and record those things that we have received, things that have been given to us, things that have been done for us, blessings that we had absolutely nothing to do with them coming to us. I have an idea that that would change our lives.

Now there’s a facet to this truth that we need to look at in a particular way; and it’s suggested in the particular reading from the Revised Standard Version: the word is offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Now those two words don’t seem to go together. Sacrifice and thanksgiving. I don’t know all that that means, but it means at least this – even when we are not in the mood for thanksgiving, even when we have not recorded in our notebooks that for which we need to be grateful, we need to express gratitude. I’m telling you that gratitude can transform your life. I don’t care in what condition you find yourself; I don’t care in what depression you might be; I don’t care what’s going on in your life at this moment, if you can get in touch with the God of the universe who says to you, “offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” and do that, your life will be transformed. A sacrifice of thanksgiving means that the surface circumstances of life don’t have to merit it. Still we do it. Whatever the circumstances – our lives are to be an offering of gratitude.

But there’s more here. Another condition that we are to meet if we are going to appropriate the deliverance of the Lord, and it’s there in our text. Pay your vows to the most-high God. Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. That’s the first condition to meet if we’re going to appropriate God’s deliverance. And the second is – pay your vows to the most-high God.

Not long ago, I sat with a man who was on the verge of death; cancer was ravaging his body, and he was anguishing in what seemed to be a hopeless situation. I spent about 30 minutes with him in the hospital room. His despair was punctuated with prayerful pleas that he might live a bit longer. In fact, he said, if he could make it just another year. He kept saying that he needed more time. There were things he wanted to do. Promises he wanted to keep. He wanted to pay back debts he owed; he wanted to make up for some failures that he had experienced. Here was a desperate man who wanted to pay his vows to the most-high God.

Alas, he was too late. But it isn’t too late for us. Are there commitments that you made which you haven’t kept? Are there vows to the Lord that you have not followed through on? This is what the Lord is saying to us today – listen – Do the things you promised when you received my love and forgiveness. Keep the vows you made when you accepted my salvation. That’s the word of the Lord for us today.

It’s one of the most fantastic promises in scripture: call upon me in your day of trouble, and I will deliver you. But that promise is based upon two conditions – One, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving; and two, pay your vows to the most-high God. We can keep both of those promises today. The question is, will we. It’s the only way we are going to know deliverance.

Maxie Dunnam ~ Welcome to a Wesleyan Accent!

I‘m a Wesleyan by choice, though I have a great legacy of Christian experience from other traditions. My grandfather, Lewis Dunnam, was a Freewill Baptist preacher – the closest to a “circuit rider” we have in our family. He “walked” his circuit in rural Mississippi. I grew up in Southern and Missionary Baptist churches, but experienced throughout my childhood and early adolescence the brush arbor revivals of independent evangelists and the itinerant preachers who more often than not preached on the front porches of homes as folks stood around in the yards.

I was converted through the powerful preaching of a fifth grade-educated preacher, Brother Wiley Grissom. My father made a profession of his faith during the same period and he and I were baptized together by immersion in a rather cold creek in early September.

I became a Methodist by choice about three years after my conversion.  Doctrine had a lot to do with it – style also. But I wouldn’t diminish the influence of a Methodist preacher, David McKeithen, an intelligent, warm, loving human being who cared deeply for people, took time with a teenage boy, and preached the gospel thoughtfully and with deep conviction. I began to feel the call to preach, and I felt that should I ever answer that call, I ought to be in the “right” church for me. I began to read and talk to people, and eventually I made the choice, surprising David and his congregation, when I walked down the aisle on a Sunday morning to offer myself as a member. Then a year later, I offered myself to that same congregation as a candidate for ministry.

So, I‘m a Wesleyan by choice.

I like to think of it as proclaiming the Gospel with a Wesleyan accent. We Wesleyans are united in belief with the great orthodox stream of Christian faith, in commitment to and guided by the historic creeds of the Church. Yet I believe we have a unique perspective (I call it an accent) that has integrity and wholeness. When we proclaim that perspective with passion and conviction, it is winsome and transforming.

I write with the hope that my part of the Wesleyan family – The United Methodist Church – will become a movement again. Movements begin at grass root levels. Thus the local congregation is where the movemental dynamic must begin.

Theology and doctrine matter. They provide our spiritual foundation. I believe, then, that we must focus on revitalizing doctrine, clarifying and enhancing the Methodist/Wesleyan accent for the strengthening of the local church.

We are launching this website with a commitment to clearly articulate the Christian faith with a Wesleyan accent. We will feature writers from across the Wesleyan world – pastors, leaders, scholars, laity. Our mission is to strengthen the discipleship of Christ followers, empower mission and evangelism, cultivate young leaders, and nurture the vocational lives of young pastors and scholars.

It is my prayer that this effort will make a contribution to revival in the Wesleyan community as we discover or rediscover the unique place we have in God’s family. We need to recover that uniqueness, not to set us apart from others, but to help us be the people God wants us to be. I believe God would be pleased if we would take up again the mission that was declared when the Wesleyan movement first put down its roots in North America: “to reform a continent, particularly the church, and spread scriptural holiness across the land.”