Brian's Sermons

On the Journey: Sanctification As we continue in week 3 of “The Journey” I want to share with you something that happens every year at Annual Conference. In the course of Ordination in the United Methodist Church, every candidate must go before the assembled Annual Conference and answer what are known as “The Historical Questions.” There’s always a nervous laugh at one of the questions: “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” But the first four questions we are asked are as follows: 1.       Have you faith in Christ? 2.       Are you going on to perfection? 3.       Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? 4.       Are you honestly striving after perfection in love? The first one is an obvious but unfortunately necessary question; faith in Christ is necessary for new birth; as we discussed last week, it’s the one condition of justification, which is when Go...

In college, some students came up with a fundraising concept: the “suitcase party.” The idea was that everyone paid a cover charge to get into the party, and once you were there, they gave out some prizes, the biggest of which was a fantastic trip. The only rub was that you had to come to the party with a packed suitcase, ready to leave immediately if you won. Preparation for a journey is sometimes harder than the trip itself. What do you bring? What do you leave at home? But before you can pack, you have to know where you’re going and where you’re coming from. Today we are starting a new series on United Methodist Theology. We will be looking at the Way of Salvation, and we’re calling this series: The Journey . To know where we’re coming from, we have to look back to the beginning. In Genesis 1, we read: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. ” (Genesis 1:26a) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he create...