By Duke Taber
Most believers I have walked with over the years live somewhere between two exhausting extremes. On one side stands the Christian who keeps trying harder. More effort, more resolve, more white-knuckled determination to pray longer, sin less, and finally become the person they keep promising God they will be. On the other side stands the Christian who has quietly given up on effort altogether, convinced that since salvation is entirely of grace, anything they do must be wasted motion. Both of them are worn out. Both of them suspect, somewhere deep down, that they are doing the Christian life wrong.
There is an old answer to this tension. It is one of the most pastorally useful ideas in the entire Christian tradition, and it cuts straight through the false choice between trying harder and doing nothing. The old theologians called it the means of grace. The phrase is centuries old. If you have ever wondered why your walk with God feels dry no matter how sincere you are, this is worth slowing down for.
A Phrase Worth Understanding
The means of grace are the ordinary channels God has appointed to deliver His grace into the lives of His people. That is the whole idea in one sentence. The Latin phrase the older writers used was media gratia. One helpful image compares them to the pipes that carry water from a reservoir into your home. The water does not originate in the pipe. The pipe simply carries what the reservoir already holds. In the same way, grace does not originate in your prayer or your Bible reading or your time at the Lord’s Table. It originates in God. These practices are the channels He uses to bring it to you.
John Wesley defined the means of grace as “outward signs, words, or actions ordained of God, and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels whereby he might convey to men” His grace. The Reformed tradition said something very similar. The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches that the outward and ordinary means by which Christ communicates the benefits of redemption are His ordinances, especially the Word, the sacraments, and prayer. Different streams of the church have drawn the list a little differently. They agree on the heart of it. God has chosen to work through ordinary, repeatable, unglamorous practices. If you want to go deeper than this overview can, a fuller study of the means of grace walks through the same ideas at a slower pace.
This matters because of a question nearly every honest believer eventually asks. If God is sovereign and grace is free, why do anything at all? Why pray, if He already knows? Why read, if He could simply tell me? The answer is that God, in His wisdom, has decided to meet His people in particular places. He is free to act however He pleases, and sometimes He surprises us. As a general rule, though, He has promised to show up in specific, life-giving ways that are good for all Christians, in all places, in all seasons.
Not Earning, Not Drifting
Before we name the means, we have to clear away the two errors that ruin them. The first is the error of earning. Some believers approach the means of grace like a spiritual ATM. Read enough chapters, log enough prayer time, attend enough services, and surely God will owe them something. This is the slow poison of legalism, and it turns living practices into dead transactions. Paul confronted it head on with the Galatians.
“Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” — Galatians 3:3 (NKJV)
The means of grace never earn anything. You do not buy grace with Bible reading. You receive grace that was already purchased at Calvary. Understanding why grace changes everything is what keeps these practices from curdling into mere religious duty. This is the same truth that runs through all of biblical sanctification. We grow without earning, because the growing was always God’s work in us.
The second error runs in the opposite direction. It is the error of drifting. Some believers reason that since they cannot earn grace, there is nothing for them to do but wait. They become spiritually passive. Wesley fought this very mistake in his own day, where some taught a kind of holy stillness that left people idle. The teacher Dallas Willard gave us the line that dismantles both errors at once. Grace is not opposed to effort, he said. It is opposed to earning.
Sit with that. Effort is not the enemy of grace. Earning is. A farmer cannot make a seed grow. He cannot manufacture life from the soil by sheer willpower. Yet no farmer who understands this sits in his recliner waiting for a harvest. He plows. He plants. He waters. He puts himself in the place where growth happens, and then he trusts God to do what only God can do. The means of grace are how we plow and plant. The harvest belongs to the Lord.
This is the same logic Jesus gave us in the vineyard.
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” — John 15:4 (NKJV)
A branch does not strain to produce grapes. It simply stays connected to the vine, and fruit follows as a matter of course. The means of grace are not the fruit. They are the staying connected. They are how we abide.
The First and Chief Means: The Word
If the early church handed us a starting point, it is found in one verse describing how the first believers lived after Pentecost.
“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” — Acts 2:42 (NKJV)
Notice what they devoted themselves to. The apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. That is essentially the historic list of the means of grace, and it begins where the church has always said it begins, with the Word of God.
Scripture stands first among the means for a simple reason. Faith itself comes through it.
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” — Romans 10:17 (NKJV)
The Word does not only spark faith. It feeds and grows faith for the rest of your life. Paul told the Ephesian elders he was committing them to “the word of His grace, which is able to build you up” (Acts 20:32). The Bible is not merely information about God. When the Spirit carries it into a willing heart, it becomes the very instrument by which God shapes that heart.
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” — 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJV)
This is why a passing, distracted relationship with Scripture leaves so many believers starving. There is a real difference between casually skimming a verse and actually sitting under the Word, and casual reading is rarely enough to sustain a deep life with God. I have watched countless people over more than thirty years of ministry come back to life spiritually for one reason. They started taking the Word seriously again. Nothing fancy. They simply opened it, slowed down, and let it speak.
The Visible Word: The Lord’s Table
The breaking of bread mentioned in Acts 2:42 points us to the Lord’s Supper, which the older writers loved to call the visible Word. The same gospel that the Scriptures speak to our ears, the Table preaches to our eyes and hands and mouths. Bread broken. A cup poured. The body and blood of Christ, given for you, made tangible.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” — 1 Corinthians 11:26 (NKJV)
The Lord’s Table is not a magic ritual that works automatically apart from faith. That misunderstanding has caused real harm in church history. The Supper is a means of grace precisely because it visibly portrays the gospel and strengthens the faith of those who come believing. Every time you take the bread, you are reminded with your whole body that your salvation rests outside yourself, in a finished work. There is something steadying about that. When my own faith has felt thin, I have found that communion puts the gospel back in my hands when my head was too tired to argue myself into peace. Baptism functions in a related way, marking the believer once and for all as belonging to Christ.
The Means of Prayer
Acts 2:42 ends with prayer, and prayer is the means of grace where our communion with God becomes most personal. The Word is God speaking to us. Prayer is the appointed channel through which we answer back, casting our cares on Him and receiving fresh strength.
“Pray without ceasing.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (NKJV)
Jesus could not have made the invitation plainer.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” — Matthew 7:7 (NKJV)
There is something worth noticing here. Prayer leans on the Word. The Spirit takes the Scripture we have hidden in our hearts and teaches us how to pray in line with God’s will. The two means feed each other. A person who saturates their mind in Scripture will pray with more confidence and more accuracy, because they are praying God’s own promises back to Him. If your prayer life feels mechanical or dry, the issue is often less about technique and more about communion, and what the Bible says about prayer frees us from performance and points us back to relationship.
The Wider Channels
The Reformed tradition tends to keep the list short, naming Word, sacraments, and prayer. Wesley and the broader evangelical world have historically widened it to include several other practices the church has always treasured. These too are channels through which God reliably meets His people.
Fasting
Fasting is one of the oldest of these. Jesus assumed His followers would practice it, saying “when you fast” rather than “if.” Fasting is not a hunger strike to twist God’s arm. It is a deliberate emptying that creates room for God, a way of telling your own body that you hunger for Him more than for bread. For believers wanting to understand it rightly, biblical fasting is less about deprivation and more about hunger redirected toward the Lord.
Fellowship
The early believers devoted themselves to fellowship, and Scripture treats the gathered body of Christ as a means of grace in itself.
“And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” — Hebrews 10:24-25 (NKJV)
You cannot grow in isolation. God has appointed other believers to sharpen you, encourage you, correct you, and carry you when you cannot stand on your own. The pattern of fellowship throughout Scripture shows a God who grows His people in community, not in solitary confinement.
Worship
Gathered and private worship belongs here too. When we lift our hearts to God in praise, we are not informing Him of His worth. We are realigning our own souls with reality, and God uses that realignment to do deep work in us. Real worship is far more than music, and it draws us out of ourselves and into the presence of the One who changes us.
The Methodist tradition helpfully organized all of these into works of piety and works of mercy, reminding us that grace also flows as we love our neighbors and serve those in need. Inward holiness and outward love were never meant to be separated.
How to Actually Use Them
Here is the warning every honest pastor must give. You can do every one of these practices with a cold and distant heart. Wesley knew this. You can read the Scriptures and attend worship and even pray while your soul remains far from God. The means of grace are channels, not magic. Water flows through a pipe only when the pipe is open and connected to the source. The connection is faith. The posture is expectancy.
So come to these practices the way you would come to a person you love, not the way you would punch a time clock. Come expecting to meet God, because He has promised to be there. Show up to the Word looking for the Author, not just the information. Take the bread remembering the One whose body was broken. Pray as a child talking to a Father, not a beggar reciting a formula. The disciplines are simply the ordinary channels through which God works to nourish and sustain His people. The grace is the point. The practice is only the pipe.
And here is the freedom in all of it. You do not have to generate the grace. You only have to position yourself where God has promised to give it. That is the difference between exhausting yourself and being renewed. One tries to squeeze life out of dry practices by sheer will. The other simply abides, stays connected to the Vine, and lets the life of God flow.
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” — 2 Peter 3:18 (NKJV)
That verse is a command, but it is a strange kind of command. You cannot grow yourself any more than a child can will themselves taller. What you can do is eat, rest, and stay healthy, and growth will come. The means of grace are how a believer eats and rests and stays healthy in the soul. They are not the secret to impressing God. They are the unhurried, faithful, ordinary ways of staying close to Him until you look up one day and realize you have changed.
If your walk has felt stuck, you do not need a new technique or a more intense burst of willpower. You need to return to the channels God has already promised to bless. Open the Word this week. Come to the Table. Talk to your Father. Gather with His people. Then watch what God does with a heart that simply shows up.
A simple place to begin:
- Open your Bible daily and read slowly, asking God to meet you in it rather than just finishing a chapter
- Set a regular, unhurried time for prayer, even ten honest minutes, and bring your real life to God
- Commit to your church family, sharing the Table and worship with other believers rather than going it alone
- Add one practice you have neglected, whether fasting, deeper study, or serving someone in need
You will not find a shortcut in any of this. You will find something better. You will find the God who has been waiting in the ordinary places all along.
Grace and peace to you as you draw near to Him. He is far more eager to meet you than you are to seek Him. — Duke
Resources
- What Is a Means of Grace? — Tabletalk Magazine
- The Means of Grace: Prayer — Ligonier Ministries
- The Wesleyan Means of Grace — The United Methodist Church
- Means of Grace — The Wesley Works Digitization Project
- Spiritual Disciplines and Means of Grace — Dallas Willard
- The Importance of the Word, Sacraments, and Prayer — Reformed Theological Seminary
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