My wife and I added bubble parties to our small business venture. We love spreading joy, and there's something about bubbles that makes everyone happy. At a bubble party this weekend, I noticed something you've probably seen, too. Every time a child showed up to the party and saw all the soapy, floating spheres, the first thing they would say was, "Bubbles!"
I started thinking, What makes a child feel like they have to say it out loud every time? My guess is they can’t keep the joy to themselves. It’s like their hearts recognize something wonderful and their mouths just respond. They don’t analyze the situation. They don’t hold back. It's almost like they can't. They just say it: Bubbles!
Don't you think that's what praise should be? Real joy that we experience in God overflows from our hearts. When we pay attention to something beautiful that God has done, it’s natural to speak it, to sing it, and to let it rise like bubbles into the air.
A 19th-century Baptist minister wrote these words as part of an American folksong:
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, A fountain ever springing; All things are mine since I am his— How can I keep from singing?
But don't we sometimes keep ourselves from singing? The psalmist said, “Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have ordained praise” (Psalm 8:2). It's a gift that children see something we forget, that joy deserves a voice.
I wonder if our faith would feel lighter if we let praise come as easily as children do. When you notice God’s goodness today, say it out loud. Whisper it, sing it, or share it. Let your heart speak the joy it has found in God. You might find your praise rising just like those bubbles.
John Wesley understood holiness to be God's ultimate goal, calling it "the end of all ordinances of God." Holiness begins and ends as God's purpose and is the love-centered renewal of God's Spirit within us. Like grace, love is the divine initiative towards holiness, restoring humanity to perfect love. Holiness also becomes humanity’s participation in that redemptive process.
Wesleyan holiness moves toward Christian perfection. That is a term John Wesley spent considerable time explaining. Many people in Wesley's day, as do today, misunderstood what he meant by his use of perfection. In his sermon "Plain Account of Christian Perfection," Wesley explains how he came to understand this idea and how much it guided his work as a minister.
Plainly, Christian perfection is the fulfillment of God's desire for humanity. It is "a renewal of the heart in the whole image of God, the full likeness of Him that created it." That renewal is God's work, which leads us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Further, Christian perfection is the fullness of Christ living within us.
After unpacking his distinguishing doctrine, Wesley asks who would oppose loving God in such a way. Who would speak against God's renewal of heart and mind? Why would any Christian stand against God's intention for every believer? Shall anyone limit what God is willing and able to do? Wesley certainly would not. At another time, Wesley would say, "If Christ be risen, ye ought then to die unto the world, and to live wholly unto God." That is to say, Christian perfection is the desire of God and the hopeful anticipation of those who have chosen to follow Christ.
Our Wesleyan understanding doesn't mean our life will be free from sin or mistakes. But, by God's grace, it will be marked by holiness that frees us from sin's enslavement and leads us to God's perfect love.
In his sermon "The Causes of Inefficacy of Christianity," John Wesley wrestled with the question, Why has Christianity done so little good in the world? For many of us today who have been shaped by the vitality of the Methodist movement, that is an odd question for Wesley to ask. We see Methodists as making significant contributions in the realms of spiritual and social renewal. So, what did Wesley see during his time that led him to question the Church's witness to the world? He was not questioning the church's accomplishments. He was making a judgment on its spiritual condition.
Wesley offers three responses. He observed an ignorance of correct doctrine, the neglect of Christian discipline, and a loss of discipleship rooted in self-denial. We could spend time on all three of his answers and relate them to our modern context. Today, though, let's focus on Wesley's third observation. He writes of the church's discipleship: "Plainly, because we have forgot, or at least not duly attended to, those solemn words of our Lord, 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.'" Wesley saw that the call to discipleship, to follow Jesus, had waned. It was either forgotten as a mandate or not given the attention it rightly requires. In either case, the result was a failure to answer the “intention" God set for the church.
This forgetting was not just a moral decline. It was a letting go of God's "gracious dispensation," something Wesley would describe in another sermon. The call to follow Jesus, which we understand as discipleship, is not sustained by our own resolve or actions. Instead, God's power works within us. When we forget this, discipleship becomes optional, and we become less of what God desires us to be. The world doesn't need a church full of itself. It needs the witness of a church that has surrendered itself to the call to follow Christ.
My wife and I have seen every episode of Call the Midwife. It's one of our favorite shows. The midwives of Nonnatus House have ministered to people in meaningful, Christ-like ways. Over fourteen seasons, there are several scenes that have really resonated with me. In this most recent season, an older nun asks a new postulant what God asked her to surrender in order to take on this new life. The younger devotee answers confidently, "Everything."
Of course, that is the right answer. But the older, wiser nun gently replies, "'Everything' is merely a word." She knows "everything" sounds noble and true. But it can also be a generality too broad to shape a faithful life. She follows up by asking, "What did your everything consist of?"
I've been thinking of the best way to answer that question since I first heard it. Everything's too easy an answer. And it may not be an honest one. How many of us live surrounded by junk drawers, storage buildings, garages and full closets of everything? We often hold on to more than we let go.
Everything is a good Sunday School answer. That's where we begin. But our faith and calling do not stop there. Part of our walk with Jesus is naming what God is actually asking us to leave behind. If we never identify everything, we won't actually leave anything. We'll become more attached to everything. Everything and more.
If we don't consider what our everything is, we'll keep collecting what doesn't connect us to God's love.
My encouragement to you today is to take some time to reflect on that question: "What did your everything consist of?" Be honest about what you haven't left. Write down three things that might be keeping you from fully following Jesus. Think of habits, attachments, or fears. Pray over each one, and ask the Lord for the courage to make room for something better from God.
The apostle Paul was the persecutor turned preacher. After his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, his life underwent a transformation. Whatever you might say about him, you can't ignore his passion. Once he started sharing the gospel, he never turned back. His life was marked by an unrelenting desire for the world to know Jesus. Nothing kept him from that mission. Not hardship or ridicule, not persecution or imprisonment.
In Acts 26, he had a chance to make his defense before King Agrippa. He explained his conversion and what his ministry has entailed since then. Festus, the Roman governor, thought Paul had gone over the deep end. But the apostle didn't let that stop him from addressing the king.
King Agrippa responds to Paul with his famous question: Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian? Paul's reply offers a guide for how we might approach evangelism and outreach.
Paul says, "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am." Paul could not put pressure on a king to persuade him to convert, and he didn't try to. All he could do was share his story of faith and let God do the rest. He didn't try to pressure the king or anyone else. His testimony was heartfelt and free of manipulation.
None of us can force someone else to believe. Trying to isn't a worthy goal. Instead, like Paul, we live with the passion God gives us and become faithful witnesses to God's love. Couple that with prayer and let God do the rest. Our role is not to win arguments, but to love people. Passion without pressure means that we trust all our conversations, every act of kindness, and every prayer become a part of someone else's journey to Christ.
