A Heart Strangely Warmed
By the age of 35 John Wesley was a disappointed and disillusioned man. He had led Oxford University’s ‘Holy Club’ and completed a time in the new colony of America as a missionary, but knew in his heart there was no reality to his spiritual life. He was attending a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate, when something completely unexpected happened. The leader of the meeting was reading Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans. In Wesley’s own words, “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 … an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine.” Three days earlier, John’s brother, Charles Wesley, had also experienced a sudden conversion.
Within a few months, John Wesley met up again with George Whitfield who was not only a former member of Oxford’s Holy Club, but who had also been converted, some three years earlier. Whitfield had started a ministry in Bristol, and wanted John to look after the work while he returned to America. This created a dilemma because Whitfield’s success had come from open-air preaching. John could not reconcile himself to “this strange way of preaching in the fields.” He thought “the saving of souls almost a sin if it was not done in church.” After some days he took the step of faith. His first audience was numbered at three thousand, and the meeting went surprisingly well. In a short time Wesley would preach wherever he could find an audience. The largest gatherings now numbered eight thousand, and as more churches closed their doors to him, the poorer section of society embraced Wesley. Miners, iron workers, spinners and weavers, all too poor for the established church to care about, became his constant audience.
God’s desire for humanity to be restored to Himself is overwhelming, but He wants us to be His mouthpiece. Will you share the gospel with others? Will you?
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