MONDAY Galatians 2:16-21
John Wesley tried hard to be holy—and outwardly did quite well. Yet sailing back to England after two hard years in the colony of Georgia, he wrote in his journal, “I went to America, to convert the Indians; but oh! Who shall convert me? … I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well … But in a storm I think, ‘What if the gospel be not true? … I left my native country to teach the Georgian Indians … But what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why (what I the least of all suspected), that I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God.” He’d found, as the apostle Paul did, that “trying harder” to earn God’s love doesn’t work.
- In Galatians, Paul answered people who said Gentile Christians must follow the Hebrew ritual of circumcision (cf. Galatians 5:2-6). The principle was the same for Wesley, though the outward rituals of holiness were different. What are some external signs of holiness on which you might be tempted to rely today? How can you practice holiness as an outgrowth of your love relationship with God, not as an effort to earn that love?
TUESDAY Romans 3:9-28
Wesley’s inner struggle opened his spirit to hear and trust the good news that God accepts us by grace, not based on our work. Here’s how he described the moment in his journal: “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.”
- As in so many movie scenes, in this passage the protagonist’s situation is hopeless, with no way out (verse 20). Then, suddenly, we see or hear a signal that rescue (salvation), which seemed impossible, is in fact on the scene (“But now”–verse 21). “All have sinned … but all are treated as righteous freely by his grace,” Paul wrote triumphantly. When did this great truth first warm your heart? Does it still?
WEDNESDAY John 5:10-13
As John Wesley accepted that God saves us solely by grace, he was able to quit “hoping” or “wishing” to be saved. He recorded the change in these words: “An assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. 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.”
- Christian faith certainly looks to the future with hope. But the writings associated with John regularly did something different with the idea of “eternal life”: they put it in the present tense (cf. John 3:36, 5:24, 6:47, 54, 10:28, as well as today’s reading). What different light does it cast on whatever you face today to realize that this day is already a part of the “eternal life” God gives you?
THURSDAY 1 Timothy 2:2-6, Luke 24:44-49
The gospel of God’s grace, planted in John Wesley’s heart, fueled him to lead an explosive revival of Christian faith in Britain, and then America. Despite having grown up in a restrained church that seldom touched ordinary people’s lives, Wesley couldn’t imagine not sharing the good news that had changed his life. Of preaching outdoors to those who wouldn’t darken the door of a church, he wrote, “Field-preaching is a cross to me. But I know my commission and see no other way of ‘preaching the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15).’”
- Wesley echoed Paul’s words to Timothy when he said he believed his commission was to preach the gospel to “every creature.” In John 3, Jesus said he could save everyone who believed in him. Do you know people with whom you wish you could share what Jesus means to you? Are you ever tempted to “write off” any of those people because “they’d never respond”? Ask God to help you see every person you know, even the “unlikely” ones, as a potential citizen of the kingdom of heaven.
FRIDAY Titus 2:11-15
In Wesley’s class-conscious England, many people thought the Christian faith was only for the “proper” people. But Wesley knew, like Paul before him, that the good news was for all people. More than that, they both knew that God’s people were encouraged to share their Christian hope with others. Wesley once wrote in his journal about a group he’d preached to, “I am apt to think many of the hearers scarcely ever heard a Methodist before, or perhaps any other preacher … Are not their souls also precious in the sight of God?”
- Verse 11 sums up an essential Christian truth: God’s salvation is for all people. Author Jerry Bridges writes about the danger of “respectable” sins such as pride, impatience, anger and judgmentalism because they are often harder to recognize than “obvious” sins like murder, theft, adultery, etc. Open yourself to God today. In what ways do you need God’s grace? Thank God for grace and ask him to help you grow in those areas.
SATURDAY Luke 14:12-24
Jesus lived among many religious people who recoiled at the idea of sharing God’s kingdom with “sinners” (a term they defined roughly as “not as good as I am”). To some of them, Jesus told a shocking story about a king who invited even the town’s street people to a royal banquet. In that spirit, John Wesley and the early Methodists preached faith to people of all social classes. In 1739, Wesley wrote ironically in his journal about his own inner struggle with his “upright” background: “At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people.”
- Recently deceased priest and writer Brennan Manning loved to quote the college student who, after reading the gospels, said, “Wow—God sure has a thing for ragamuffins.” Learning about John Wesley’s conversion experience and the powerful preaching that followed poses two very personal questions. First, can you see the degree to which you are a ragamuffin before God, one more person who desperately and gratefully needs God’s grace and mercy? Second, are you open to inviting and welcoming into God’s kingdom the ragamuffins of all kinds who live around you, even if at first you might feel a bit uncomfortable in their company?