Are there other means of grace?
Yes. Among them are prayer and searching the Scriptures.
Catechism for the Global Methodist Church, question 45
7Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
11:13If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. 18:1Then he told them a parable about the necessity of always praying and not losing heart. 18:2He said, In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected any human. 18:3And a widow in that city kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' 18:4For a time he refused, but afterward he said to himself, 'Even though I neither fear God nor respect any human, 18:5yet because this widow keeps troubling me, I will grant her justice, so that she will not finally wear me out by her coming.'
39You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and they are the ones that testify about me.
11These men were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the writings every day to see whether these things were so. 12Many of them therefore believed, and not a few of the prominent Greek women and men.
15and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus 16All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness 17so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work
1:5If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask from God, who gives to all without reserve and without reviling, and it will be given to him. 5:13Is anyone among you enduring hardship? Let that one pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let that one sing praise. 5:14Is anyone among you weak? Let that one summon the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, having anointed him with olive oil in the name of the Lord. 5:15And the prayer of faith will save the one who is weak, and the Lord will raise him; and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. 5:16Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective petition of a righteous person is powerful. 5:17Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. 5:18Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
God gives his grace through more than the two sacraments. Prayer and searching the scriptures are means of grace too, and this teaching comes from John Wesley more than from any single article of the Confession. In his sermon "The Means of Grace" Wesley taught that prayer, searching the scriptures, and the Lord's Supper are the chief means God has appointed. The General Rules of the Methodist societies, which Methodism has kept from the beginning, list among the ordinances of God public worship, the ministry of the Word, the Supper, family and private prayer, searching the scriptures, and fasting. Article V of the Confession of Faith on the Holy Scriptures and Article XIII on public worship teach the same.
God has promised to answer prayer. "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7). The greatest gift he promises is the Spirit: "how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him" (Luke 11:13). Jesus told the parable of the widow and the judge "about the necessity of always praying and not losing heart" (Luke 18:1). James writes that anyone who "lacks wisdom" should "ask from God, who gives to all without reserve" (James 1:5), that "the effective petition of a righteous person is powerful" (James 5:16), and that Elijah, "a human being like us," proved it (James 5:17).
The scriptures give the reader Christ. Jesus told his opponents that the scriptures "are the ones that testify about me" (John 5:39). The Bereans "received the word with all eagerness, examining the writings every day to see whether these things were so," and "many of them therefore believed" (Acts 17:11-12). Paul reminded Timothy that the sacred writings "are able to make you wise for salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus," because "all Scripture is breathed out by God" (2 Timothy 3:15-16).
Grace fills the week between Sundays. It is given at the table and the font, and it is given in a morning prayer, a family Bible reading, a class meeting, or a fast. Wesley expected the people called Methodists to use every one of these means steadily, and the General Rules make that use a condition of membership in the society, because through them God quickens, strengthens, and confirms faith just as he does in the sacraments.