The week following my "Strange Heartwarming"

Friday, May 26. My soul continued in peace, but yet in heaviness, because of manifold temptations. I asked Mr. Töltschig the Moravian what to do. He said, You must not fight with them as you did before, but flee from them the moment they appear, and take shelter in the wounds of Jesus. The same I learned also from the afternoon anthem, which was, ‘My soul truly waiteth still upon God; for of him cometh my salvation. He verily is my strength and my salvation; he is my defence, so that I shall not greatly fall. [. . .] O put your trust in him always, ye people; pour out your hearts before him, for God is our hope.’

Sat. 27. Believing one reason of my want of joy was want of time for prayer, I resolved to do no business till I went to church in the morning, but to continue pouring out my heart before him. And this day my spirit was enlarged; so that though I was now also assaulted by many temptations, I was more than conqueror, gaining more power thereby to trust and to rejoice in God my Saviour.

Sun. 28. I waked in peace, but not in joy. In the same even quiet state I was till the evening, when I was roughly attacked in a large company as an enthusiast, a seducer, and a setter-forth of new doctrines. By the blessing of God I was not moved to anger, but after a calm and short reply went away, though not with so tender a concern as was due to those who were seeking death in the error of their life.

This day I preached in the morning at St. George’s, Bloomsbury, on ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith’, and in the afternoon at the chapel in Long Acre, on God’s justifying the ungodly—the last time (I understand) I am to preach at either. ‘Not as I will, but as thou wilt’!

Mon. 29. I set out for Dummer with Mr. Wolf, one of the first-fruits of Peter Böhler’s ministry in England. I was much strengthened by the grace of God in him: yet was his state so far above mine that I was often tempted to doubt whether we had one faith. But, without much reasoning about it, I held here: ‘Though his be strong and mine weak, yet that God hath given some degree of faith even to me I know by its fruits. For I have constant peace, not one uneasy thought. And I have freedom from sin, not one unholy desire.’

Yet on Wednesday did I grieve the Spirit of God, not only by not ‘watching unto prayer’, but likewise by speaking with sharpness instead of tender love, of one that was not sound in the faith. Immediately God hid his face and I was troubled; and in this heaviness I continued till the next morning, June 1, when it pleased God, while I was exhorting another, to give comfort to my soul, and (after I had spent some time in prayer) to direct me to those gracious words, ‘Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, . . . let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.[. . .] Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering (for he is faithful that promised), and let us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works.’

The Days following my "Strange heartwarming" 1

Thursday, May 25. The moment I awaked, ‘Jesus, Master,’ was in my heart and in my mouth; and I found all my strength lay in keeping my eye fixed upon him, and my soul waiting on him continually. Being again in St. Paul’s in the afternoon, I could taste the good word of God in the anthem, which began, ‘My song shall be always of the loving-kindness of the Lord: with my mouth will I ever be showing forth thy truth from one generation to another.’ Yet the enemy injected a fear, ‘If thou dost believe, why is there not a more sensible change?’ I answered (yet not I), ‘That I know not. But this I know, I have now peace with God, and I sin not today, and Jesus my Master has forbid me to take thought for the morrow.’

‘But is not any sort of fear’, continued the tempter, ‘a proof that thou dost not believe?’ I desired my Master to answer for me, and opened his book upon those words of St. Paul, ‘Without were fightings, within were fears.’Then inferred I, well may fears be within me; but I must go on, and tread them under my feet.

Prayers for Synod

Let there be Light

We (Alberton Methodist Church) are hosting our District synod from Thursday to Saturday.

This is the before picture :-)

Here are some prayers I urge readers of my blog to pray over this period

Synod Prayers

Lord, we ask You to inspire all members of the Highveld and Swaziland District to participate in our Synod with passion, imagination and love.

Grant us the knowledge to identify the issues which will enliven our faith, the tolerance to hear and embrace different views, the wisdom to resolve issues and formulate actions in accordance with Your Holy Will and the courage to accept the changes which will enrich our lives.

Send Your Holy Spirit to guide us as we joyfully involve ourselves in this unique opportunity to lay the foundations of the future direction for our District.

May the sharing of the skills and experiences of our people inspire the creation of plans which will support our congregations, ignite our enthusiasm and strengthen our faith.

We ask this through Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

Gathered in Your Name, O God, we ask the guidance of the Holy Spirit on the Highveld and Swaziland District.

United by the death and resurrection of Your Son, You call us to be your people; to be a sign and witness to the world.

Bless our Synod.  May we be evangelisers of Word and Sacrament co-operating with Your Grace to fulfill the longings of the human heart.

Amen

Eternal Father, we gather as Your people, thankful that You have planted us in the Highveld and Swaziland District.  Please renew us all in Your Holy Spirit that we may become more diligent disciples of Your Son, Jesus and more zealous witnesses to Your love.

Make us aware of the gifts and talents You have given, and how You desire them to be used to build Your Kingdom.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen

These beautiful prayers were sourced from here and adapted by Cedric.

24 May 1738 (1)

THE DAY WESLEY'S HEART WAS STRANGELY WARMED

What occurred on Wednesday 24, I think best to relate at large, after premising what may make it the better understood. Let him that cannot receive it ask of the Father of lights that he would give more light both to him and me.

1. I believe, till I was about ten years old I had not sinned away that ‘washing of the Holy Ghost’ which was given me in baptism, having been strictly educated and carefully taught that I could only be saved by universal obedience, by keeping all the commandments of God, in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed. And those instructions, so far as they respected outward duties and sins, I gladly received and often thought of. But all that was said to me of inward obedience or holiness I neither understood nor remembered. So that I was indeed as ignorant of the true meaning of the law as I was of the gospel of Christ.

2. The next six or seven years were spent at school; where, outward restraints being removed, I was much more negligent than before even of outward duties, and almost continually guilty of outward sins, which I knew to be such, though they were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However, I still read the Scriptures, and said my prayers, morning and evening. And what I now hoped to be saved by, was, (1) not being so bad as other people; (2) having still a kindness for religion; and (3) reading the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers.

3. Being removed to the university for five years, I still said my prayers both in public and private, and read with the Scriptures several other books of religion, especially comments on the New Testament. Yet I had not all the while so much as a notion of inward holiness; nay, went on habitually and (for the most part) very contentedly, in some or other known sin: indeed with some intermissions and short struggles, especially before and after the Holy Communion, which I was obliged to receive thrice a year. I cannot well tell what I hoped to be saved by now, when I was continually sinning against the little light I had, unless by those transient fits of what many divines taught me to call ‘repentance’.

4. When I was about twenty-two my father pressed me to enter into holy orders. At the same time, the providence of God directing me to Kempis’s Christian Pattern, I began to see that true religion was seated in the heart and that God’s law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, very angry at Kempis for being too strict, though I read him only in Dean Stanhope’s translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him, such as I was an utter stranger to before. And meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I had never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation and to set in earnest upon a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched against all sins, whether in word or deed. I began to aim at and pray for inward holiness. So that now, doing so much and living so good a life, I doubted not but I was a good Christian.

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24 May 1738 (2)

THE DAY WESLEY'S HEART WAS STRANGELY WARMED

Read Wesley's earlier entry here

5. Removing soon after to another college, I executed a resolution which I was before convinced was of the utmost importance, shaking off at once all my trifling acquaintance. I began to see more and more the value of time. I applied myself closer to study. I watched more carefully against actual sins; I advised others to be religious, according to that scheme of religion by which I modelled my own life. But meeting now with Mr. Law’s Christian Perfection and Serious Call (although I was much offended at many parts of both, yet) they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height and breadth and depth of the law of God. The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that everything appeared in a new view. I cried to God for help and resolved not to prolong the time of obeying him as I had never done before. And by my continued endeavour to keep his whole law, inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be accepted of him, and that I was even then in a state of salvation.

6. In 1730 I began visiting the prisons, assisting the poor and sick in town, and doing what other good I could by my presence or my little fortune to the bodies and souls of all men. To this end I abridged myself of all superfluities, and many that are called necessaries of life. I soon became ‘a byword’ for so doing, and I rejoiced that ‘my name was cast out as evil.’ The next spring I began observing the Wednesday and Friday fasts, commonly observed in the ancient church, tasting no food till three in the afternoon. And now I knew not how to go any farther. I diligently strove against all sin. I omitted no sort of self-denial which I thought lawful. I carefully used, both in public and in private, all the means of grace at all opportunities. I omitted no occasion of doing good. I for that reason suffered evil. And all this I knew to be nothing unless as it was directed toward inward holiness. Accordingly this, the image of God, was what I aimed at in all, by doing his will, not my own. Yet when, after continuing some years in this course, I apprehended myself to be near death, I could not find that all this gave me any comfort, nor any assurance of acceptance with God. At this I was then not a little surprised, not imagining I had been all this time building on the sand,d nor considering that ‘other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid by God, even Christ Jesus.’

7. Soon after, a contemplative man convinced me still more than I was convinced before, that outward works are nothing, being alone; and in several conversations instructed me how to pursue inward holiness, or a union of the soul with God. But even of his instructions (though I then received them as the words of God) I cannot but now observe, (1) that he spoke so incautiously against trusting in outward works that he discouraged me from doing them at all; (2) that he recommended (as it were, to supply what was wanting in them) mental prayer, and the like exercises, as the most effectual means of purifying the soul and uniting it with God. Now these were, in truth, as much my own works as visiting the sick or clothing the naked, and the ‘union with God’ thus pursued was as really my own righteousness as any I had before pursued under another name.

8. In this refined way of trusting to my own works and my own righteousness (so zealously inculcated by the mystic writers), I dragged on heavily, finding no comfort or help therein, till the time of my leaving England. On shipboard, however, I was again active in outward works; where it pleased God of his free mercy to give me twenty-six of the Moravian brethren for companions, who endeavoured to show me a more excellent way. But I understood it not at first. I was too learned and too wise. So that it seemed foolishness unto me. And I continued preaching, and following after, and trusting in that righteousness whereby no flesh can be justified.

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24 May 1738 (3)

THE DAY WESLEY'S HEART WAS STRANGELY WARMED

Read Wesley's earlier entry here

9. All the time I was at Savannah I was thus ‘beating the air’. Being ignorant of the righteousness of Christ, which by a living faith in him bringeth salvation ‘to every one that believeth’, I sought to establish my own righteousness, and so laboured in the fire all my days. I was now properly ‘under the law’; I knew that ‘the law’ of God was ‘spiritual’; ‘I consented to it that it was good.’ Yea, ‘I delighted in it, after the inner man.’ Yet was I ‘carnal, sold under sin’. Every day was I constrained to cry out, ‘What I do, I allow not; for what I would I do not, but what I hate, that I do.’ ‘To will is indeed present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not.’ For ‘the good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.’ ‘I find a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me,’ even the ‘law in my members warring against the law of my mind’, and still ‘bringing me into captivity to the law of sin’.

10. In this vile, abject state of bondage to sin I was indeed fighting continually, but not conquering. Before, I had willingly served sin: now it was unwillingly, but still I served it. I fell and rose and fell again. Sometimes I was overcome and in heaviness. Sometimes I overcame and was in joy. For as in the former state I had some foretastes of the terrors of the law, so had I in this of the comforts of the gospel. During this whole struggle between nature and grace (which had now continued above ten years) I had many remarkable returns to prayer, especially when I was in trouble; I had many sensible comforts, which are indeed no other than short anticipations of the life of faith. But I was still ‘under the law’, not ‘under grace’ (the state most who are called Christians are content to live and die in); for I was only ‘striving with’, not ‘freed from sin’. Neither had I ‘the witness of the Spirit with my spirit’. And indeed could not; for I ‘sought it not by faith, but (as it were) by the works of the law’.

11. In my return to England, January 1738, being in imminent danger of death, and very uneasy on that account, I was strongly convinced that the cause of that uneasiness was unbelief, and that the gaining a true, living faith, was the ‘one thing needful’ for me. But still I fixed not this faith on its right object: I meant only faith in God, not faith in or through Christ. Again, I knew not that I was wholly void of this faith, but only thought I had not enough of it. So that when Peter Böhler, whom God prepared for me as soon as I came to London, affirmed of true faith in Christ (which is but one) that it had those two fruits inseparably attending it, ‘dominion over sin, and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness’, I was quite amazed, and looked upon it as a new gospel. If this was so, it was clear I had not faith. But I was not willing to be convinced of this. Therefore I disputed with all my might and laboured to prove that faith might be where these were not, especially where that sense of forgiveness was not. For all the Scriptures relating to this I had been long since taught to construe away, and to call all ‘Presbyterians’ who spoke otherwise. Besides, I well saw no one could (in the nature of things) have such a sense of forgiveness and not feel it. But I felt it not. If then there was no faith without this,e all my pretensions to faith dropped at once.

12. When I met Peter Böhler again, he readily consented to put the dispute upon the issue which I desired, viz., Scripture and experience. I first consulted the Scripture. But when I set aside the glosses of men, and simply considered the words of God, comparing them together and endeavouring to illustrate the obscure by the plainer passages, I found they all made against me, and was forced to retreat to my last hold, that experience would never agree with the literal interpretation of those Scriptures. Nor could I therefore allow it to be the true till I found some living witnesses of it. He replied, he could show me such at any time; if I desired it, the next day. And accordingly the next day he came again with three others, all of whom testified of their own personal experience that a true, living faith in Christ is inseparable from a sense of pardon for all past, and freedom from all present sins. They added with one mouth that this faith was the gift, the free gift of God, and that he would surely bestow it upon every soul who earnestly and perseveringly sought it. I was now thoroughly convinced. And, by the grace of God, I resolved to seek it unto the end, (1) by absolutely renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own works or righteousness, on which I had really grounded my hope of salvation, though I knew it not, from my youth up; (2) by adding to ‘the constant use of all the’ other ‘means of grace’, continual prayer for this very thing, justifying, saving faith, a full reliance on the blood of Christ shed for me; a trust in him as my Christ, as my sole justification, sanctification, and redemption.

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24 May 1738 (4)

THE DAY WESLEY'S HEART WAS STRANGELY WARMED

Read Wesley's earlier entry here

13. I continued thus to seek it (though with strange indifference, dullness, and coldness, and unusually frequent relapses into sin) till Wednesday, May 24. I think it was about five this morning that I opened my Testament on those words: ‘There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature.’ Just as I went out I opened it again on those words, ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’ In the afternoon I was asked to go to St. Paul’s. The anthem was, ‘Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? But there is mercy with thee; therefore thou shalt be feared. [. . .] O Israel, trust in the Lord: For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his sins.’

14. In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

15. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, ‘This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?’ Then was I taught that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation; but that as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth them, according to the counsels of his own will.

16. After my return home I was much buffeted with temptations; but cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and he ‘sent me help from his holy place’. And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea fighting with all my might under the law, as well as under grace. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now, I was always conqueror.