This is my 2nd reading of this book and it just gets better every time. this blog post is not meant to give you quotes from the book but rather to tell you some of the things that stuck with me.
John Wesley was a great man who loved God and sometimes he got it wrong. He had some of the same struggles that I along with most other people in the world struggle with.
In this book as others, his struggle with relationships and the desire for women is shared. Sophie Hopkey was the first that is memorable, this is the woman Wesley fell for while he was in Georgia and while she was waiting for Wesley to marry her, she married someone else. The second woman, Grace Murray was a woman he knew in England who his brother, Charles Wesley took to marry someone else to keep John from marrying her. The third was Molly of whom he did marry and it was a huge mistake. The marriage just wasn’t meant to be, he married too quick and didn’t really know Molly very well. Needless to say there was very little relationship in the marriage. As a matter of fact they separated and at times were back together. Molly was dead and buried before John even got word she had died.
John struggled with knowing that he truly was saved. His father Samuel Wesley told him the inner witness was what he needed and he just didn’t feel that inner witness. It was years before Wesley said his heart was strangely warmed and he understood that he was truly a believer in Christ, not just in his head but also in his heart.
Wesley was a leader and that is obvious in the Methodist movement. He was very methodical, sometimes writing hour by hour his thoughts and struggles. Wesley’s motto was Holiness of Heart and Life, in other words he believed that one should love God and that love would work its way out in everyday living.
He lived to be almost 90 years old, preached more than 40,000 sermons, traveled more than 200,000 miles either on horseback or by boat, led a movement that spread throughout the world but above all he loved and wanted to be close to God.
It was said that Wesley spoke the Bible fluently as a second language. I pray that will be said about me and I realize that I have work to do for that to even be a possibility but I am working on it.
John Wesley changed the world and he still speaks from the grave.
Ronnie