Ask a room full of Christians how God makes people holy, and you will get a hundred earnest, complicated answers.
Scripture's answer is almost embarrassingly plain: he uses ordinary things. Not strategies. Not programs. Word, sacrament, and prayer.
Theologians call these the ordinary means of grace — "ordinary" not because they are unimportant, but because they are the normal, appointed way God has always chosen to grow his people. No secret bonus track. Just these, over a lifetime.
Three Unglamorous Gifts
- The Word read and preached. Not a motivational talk loosely inspired by a verse, but Scripture itself, opened up and applied — because faith comes by hearing, as Paul tells the Romans in Romans 10:17.
- The sacraments. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are not bare symbols; they are promises from God you can see, touch, and taste.
- Prayer, public and private — the family of God talking to their Father, together and alone.
None of these will trend online. All three were enough to take a handful of frightened disciples and, in a few generations, turn the Roman world upside down.
Why "Ordinary" Is the Point
We live in a culture that prizes novelty — the new program, the new method, the next big thing that will finally fix the church. The ordinary means of grace ask for something harder than novelty: patience. They work slowly, the way roots work, the way seasons work.
Come see what that looks like lived out, not just explained. Word, water, bread, wine, and prayer — it's simpler than you'd expect, and it's enough.
