Sermons From the Pulpit

Before You Asked

Ephesians 2:1-10 (NRSVue)

Most of us were taught, in one way or another, that the spiritual life begins with us. That we search, seek, knock, and eventually find. Ephesians 2 tells a different story. It opens by saying we were dead in our sins, and dead people cannot reach for anything. Whatever happens next has to come from God’s side. In the third message of The People Called, we explore the Wesleyan conviction that grace always moves first. Prevenient grace is the name for what God is already doing in you before you turn around — the restlessness, the longing, the sense that something is missing. Justifying grace is the pardon itself, the moment of being made right with God, received by faith as a gift and never as something earned. And assurance is what Wesley felt at Aldersgate — the Spirit confirming in you that you really are God’s child. The bottom line of this message is simple, and it changes everything: God reached first.

Preached by Rev. Dylan Ward | June 21, 2026