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Welcome, attendance pad, prayer
I am continuing this series today on Christianity and world religions. But today I am taking a different twist. I am going to talk about John Wesley. If it were not for this man I doubt that we would be meeting here in this place or form today. This church is celebrating 50 years of mission and ministry this year. We are United Methodists and our spiritual forefather is John Wesley.
But before I talk about Wesley I do want to give you a pop quiz on the world religions I’ve been discussing the past few Sundays. So I have this question for you:
Q: Why is a vacuum cleaner a bad gift for a Buddhist?
A: Because it comes with attachments.
Remember I said that Buddhists try to rid themselves of all attachments in life?
OK, back to Wesley. First I want to consider:
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I. THE MAN
Why is this man important to us?
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A. John Wesley is important to us because he started the Methodist movement
Now our anniversary celebrations this year will be meaningless if all we do is look back to our accomplishments of the past. The challenge for us is to serve the present age, this 21st Century we find ourselves living in. Likewise a pure autobiography of Wesley is meaningless without understanding his importance to us in the 21st Century
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John Wesley was an Anglican clergyman who became one of the most influential people of eighteenth century England. He lived from 1703-1791. Last year was the 300th anniversary of his birth.
His parents were remarkable. His father Samuel, was an Anglican clergymen and his mother Susanna, a woman of spiritual depth. They had nineteen babies, ten surviving.
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His childhood was marked with the mother’s strong influence and a traumatic boyhood experience. He was saved from their burning house in Epworth when aged six, in a way that gave him the belief he was "a brand plucked from the burning" for a reason.
After school at Charterhouse he completed his Master of Arts at Oxford. For 13 years he tried hard to serve God through brief ministries helping his father, and in two years of overseas missionary service in the colony of Georgia in America..
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His missionary service was frustrated by failure. On his way home from USA, he wrote in His Journal: "I went to America to convert the Indians, but Oh, who shall convert me?"
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B. In his younger years, John thought the way of salvation was through human effort.
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C. That changed on May 24, 1738 when he felt his “heart strangely warmed” at Aldersgate St . I visited this location several years while in London and there is a plaque there commemorating his experience.
As a result of his failed missionary effort, it is commonly believed that in December of 1737 and throughout that winter, John Wesley suffered from severe depression which brought him to the brink of death.
Even though he had been a priest in the Anglican church for a decade,
Even though he thought himself to be a learned and scholarly person,
Even though he should have been the person with all the answers….
He found himself struggling with even the basic beliefs of his faith…including his salvation…
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That is, until May 24, 1738 –
His warm heart experience was the dividing point of his life. May 24th 1738, while aged 35, he felt his heart "strangely warmed" while listening to Martin Luther’s introduction to Paul’s Letter to the Romans, while at a devotional meeting of a group of Moravian Brethren.
He wrote: "About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart by faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my 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." From that came a great evangelical movement.
John Wesley, for the first time, came to a true understanding of the freedom his faith offered. And 18 days after his experience, he found himself preaching again at Oxford. This time with a new zeal for being saved by grace through faith.
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It brought into being a new kind of Protestantism combining evangelism and social reform. His travels after conversion were prodigious. The second stage of his life saw him become England’s most influential preacher. He rode over 225,000 miles on horseback, preaching 44,000 sermons and establishing societies all over the English speaking world. He personally won 140,000 converts to Christ. His death in 1791, saw the establishment of two hundred thousand followers in Britain, Europe and America.
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He died surrounded by supporters. His last words were: "The best of all is, God is with us!" He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Within ten years of his death, one in every thirty Englishman was a Methodist. He fought to the end, and six days before his death wrote to William Wilberforce to urge him to abolish slavery. He lived and died an Anglican Clergyman concerned for that church.
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At the heart of Wesley’s faith was his profound discovery and experience of grace. Grace is God’s free, unearned, undeserved love, forgiveness and acceptance of us through Jesus Christ. Wesley was not creating something new, something out of thin air. He was building on biblical foundations laid long ago, like Ephesians 2:8 :
God saved you by his special favor (grace) when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.
However, what he taught about grace, how he expounded and explained its meaning and how it works in our lives is distinctive and still at the heart of who we are and what we believe as United Methodists today. This is what I want to try to share with you this morning.
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II. John Wesley’s faith was focused on important expressions of God’s grace:
I struggled with this. I thought, prayed, read - trying to find some image, some metaphor that would help me better understand Wesley’s views on grace so that I could share them with you.
But, nothing came to mind…until I found this metaphor developed by Bass Mitchell, a United Methodist pastor in Hot Springs, VA. He is also an author who has written many things about Wesley and Methodism.
http://www.homiliesbyemail.com/
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· Problem - A Very Weedy Field
Mitchell uses what he learned from Mr. Harold a sweet potato farmer he knew to parallel Wesley’s understanding of grace.
Rev. Mitchell begins his analogy in this way:
I remember so well going out with him one day and looking at one of his fields. Well, I guess it was a field. It didn’t look like much of a field to me. You name the weed - ragweed, cocklebur, lambsquarters, Pennsylvania smartweed, and it was in that field. He pointed them out to me. "We got problems," he said, and I wondered what he meant by "we"?
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Then he pointed to another which outnumbered all the rest. "That’s nut grass," he said. "Called nut grass for two reasons. One, because it has a nut or bulb on the root. Two, because any farmer who tries to raise a crop in it is a nut!"
He went on to explain that nut grass had a lot of roots and that you could pull up the green leaves all you wanted, but unless you got those roots up with the bulbs on them it would grow right back and very fast. Nothing, I thought then, could grow in this weedy field.
So I figured he had given up on that field as we rode back to the barn in his pickup truck…
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For John Wesley, based on the Bible, his observations of people and the world about him, and his honest peering into his own soul, realized that humanity, the whole world, really, was like that weedy field.
Humanity has a big problem - sin. Like nut grass, it is pervasive with deep roots. Sin is loving self more than God and neighbor. It is offending God, breaking the loving relationship with God for which we were created by turning our backs on God or ignoring God altogether.
But it is also offending our neighbor, selfishness that creates anger, hatred, envy, murder, greed, indifference and neglect. Nothing would ever become of these human fields until something was done about the weed that had infested the human heart and all of human society.
But what in the world could ever be done with such weed infested fields?
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A. Prevenient (Preparing) Grace
Rev. Mitchell continues his analogy: Yes, I thought Mr. Harold had given up on that field that day. But when we got back to the barn, he showed me several special plows he had. He told me how they would break up that field, would dig deep into even the nut grass roots, uproot those weeds and leave them laying on the surface for the sun to wither and die. I had my doubts, but he was confident.
For the next few days we used those plows to slowly but surely cut right into that field so that you would not recognize it. Those weeds had to give way to the power of the plow and his persistence. That soil, that once grew only weeds, looked so good, so rich now. It even had a smell to it, the scent of life to it. We then hilled the land, that is, made rows so that it was ready to be planted. How foolish it would have been to try to just go out in that field and try to plant seed without first taking care of those weeds, of preparing the land.
For John Wesley, the answer to the weedy problem of sin infesting the human field, the human heart was the plow of God’s grace. Only God’s grace - the undeserved, free acceptance and love of God in Christ could bust up the hardened soil of the human heart and uproot sin.
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Now Wesley believed and preached that this all started with what he called "prevenient" or "preparing grace." Just like Mr. Harold went to great lengths to get that field ready for planting, so God’s prevenient or preparing grace was at work in every human field, in every person. The Holy Spirit, that great cultivator, was actively working in each field, each life to prepare it for the planting of God’s love, for the seed of the Gospel, to accept this awesome, free love of God.
You see, prevenient or preparing grace surrounds us, nurtures us from the moment of our births. This grace is God’s love wooing us, blessing us, plowing through our senses to begin to help us see that we were meant to be much more than weedy fields. Prevenient grace helps to awaken us to the fact that we are truly loved by God and begins stirring in us a love of God in return.
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I like to think of prevenient or preparing grace as "God tuggings," that is, those times in your life when you feel God tugging on your heart, when you sense there’s something greater out there, even a discomfort with who you are and a growing sense of who you can become.
Maybe you can’t describe or explain it, but you sense something, Someone with you, helping, guiding, and blessing you. Prevenient, preparing grace is God tugging on those weeds, turning them over, plowing the spiritual soil of our lives to get us ready for the planting.
I look back over my life and see this preparing or prevenient love of God - in the love of my parents who gave me life and brought me to church; in the Sunday school teachers and ministers I had who taught we those wonderful stories in the Bible and said over and over that God loved me; in the words of the many who encouraged me - all of this and so much more happened before I really knew God or acknowledged God and God’s love. God was, you see, preparing my heart, like a field, for planting, for the acceptance of God’s love and purpose for my life.
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B. Justifying (Saving) Grace
Rev. Mitchell’s story continues: After we had prepared the field, we went to the sweet potato plant beds and pulled the young plants, placing them in bushel baskets. We then went back to the field and sat on a transplanter, a special kind of plow with seats, that dug a small trench in the crest of each row in which you placed a plant every 6 inches or so. The field that we had worked so hard to prepare now had sweet potato plants in it.
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The second kind of or working of grace Wesley spoke of was like this - planting grace, I’d call it. But he called it "justifying grace."—ie saving grace.
It’s when the Gospel, the Good News of Gods free forgiveness and love in Christ is transplanted into our hearts, like fields, that had been prepared for this by prevenient or preparing grace.
Justifying grace is being made right with God. Our sin had broken our relationship with God. Justifying grace mends it, restores it. It is responding to, accepting God’s love and forgiveness. It is, by faith, knowing, believing, receiving, and affirming God’s grace. It is giving into those God tuggings, acknowledging them for what they are, and God for who God is for us in Christ. It is then the repenting of our weediness and receiving God’s forgiveness. And we receive then "assurance," another favorite word and teaching of Wesley, that we truly are the forgiven children of God.
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I remember so well when I experienced this justifying grace. After all the preparing grace God had given me, getting my field, my heart ready, there came a time, during worship service at Tazewell Baptist Church, when it all came together for me, when the seed of the Gospel was planted in my heart. I was only 9 years old. But I knew at that young age, I knew and acknowledged God’s grace and love for me in Christ. I knew I was God’s forgiven and beloved child. I felt like a new person or, as Paul would say it, a "new creation." For me is was much like Wesley’s heart "being strangely warmed" at Aldersgate.
C. Sanctifying (Perfecting) Grace
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Back out in the field with Bass Mitchell: But after we had planted the sweet potato plants in that field, I thought that might be the end of the matter, that nothing else would need to be done. Wrong! It was only the beginning. That whole process of preparing the field, of planting was for what purpose? Right. So that those plants would grow, mature and produce a harvest of sweet potatoes. Much more needed to be done then.
So we had to fertilize that field a couple of times. We had to throw some more dirt up by the plants, called "hilling," I think. We also had to chop, that is, walk down the seemingly endless rows and chop out any new weeds that might try to grow, for weeds are very persistent. Once, because things were getting dry, we had to lay down aluminum irrigation pipes throughout the field to get water to them. We even had to use some pesticides to kill off the pests and other diseases that would destroy the plants. This lasted much of the summer and into the fall.
And then that day came when we took the sweet potato harvester to that field and began to dig up the most beautiful, sweetest sweet potatoes you have ever seen - all of it starting in a weedy field that looked like it was good for nothing.
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For Wesley, God’s prevenient or preparing grace gets the field of our heart ready. God’s justifying grace plants the seed of God’s loving forgiveness in Christ. Then God’s "sanctifying grace"—the perfecting grace-- comes to fertilize us, to help us grow and mature, producing an abundant crop of love for God and neighbor.
If through preparing and justifying grace we are given new birth, made babes in Christ, then God’s sanctifying grace helps us grow up, to become more and more like Christ himself - persons who are perfected in love, whose thoughts, minds, and actions are motivated by love of God and neighbor.
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III. What we can learn from John Wesley for our 21st Century world today:
A. Be innovative
John Wesley really was a revolutionary if you think about it.
Wesley was truly grabbed by a sense of a prodigal hugging God. That God seemed to be against John Wesley’s basic nature in so many ways. Wesley was very conservative, very happy with the Church of England and all of its doctrines and worship — but he got mixed up with a God who would not let him be.
In response to fellow preacher George Whitefield’s invitation,
John Wesley had arrived in Bristol, England. Although Whitefield was an
open-air preacher of great eloquence, who had built up a large following in
the area, he wanted to return to America and was keen for Wesley to continue
the style of work he had begun.
The next day, having observed Whitefield preaching to the Kingswood tin
miners, Wesley became persuaded of the necessity of "field preaching" as the
means most likely to reach the great mass of people who had become virtual
outcasts from the elitism of much of the established church - untouched and
seemingly untouchable.
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I love the entry in his diary where he says, "And today I submitted to be even more vile: I descended to the level of field preaching."
In essence, what Wesley did was take the church beyond the walls. To do that he preach out in the open—something was seen as heresy by the church leaders of his day. And so it goes still today as we try contemporary approaches to field preaching.
On his travels throughout Britain and Ireland, Wesley preached to thousands
of ordinary people in market squares, under trees, on hills, in fields, on
the streets, from tombstones (including his father’s in Epworth churchyard),
in yards, gardens, village greens, beaches or any open place where he could
draw a crowd. And if he was not in the open air, he could be found preaching
in houses, public buildings, military barracks, prisons - and in parish
churches, when he was allowed. One of the best times for drawing a crowd was
apparently at 5 a.m. That was prime time back the.
So the challenge for us today is to fine the places and the prime times to reach people outside the church. Here are some current examples.
The café venue at Westside Family Church—one of the churches I visited last summer—(share excerpts from latest news letter).
The church at CHAMPPS—a sports bar---I visited there last summer in the Minneapolis area.
This is the very challenge I sense God calling Bethany to. I have a brainstorm on this matter that I will share with the BELT team this evening.
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There was a church in Florida — a declining inner-city Methodist church — they had had problems with break-ins in their church. They had a lot of homeless people in that part of the city. They bought new locks and a new security system and people had just gone right through them. So they had gotten bids on a new security system. This old lady on the administrative board said, "You know, this church has been begging for members for the last 20 years and here we have people trying to get in here. It’s just sad to lock the doors. If they are that determined to get in I think we ought to let them in."
So that night they just unlocked the doors and about 20 homeless men showed up. And the pastor said, "We have got to get organized!" The stuff that had to be done to welcome those people adequately in their building — and still keep a building — she said, "That made us a church."
John Wesley would smile at that. He would have loved that kind of innovation.
http://www.flumc.org/bishop_whitaker/WillWillimonInterviewMay2003Advocate.htm
http://www.wfn.org/2003/03/msg00364.html
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B. Thus, The message is the same, but the method should change.
Scholar and Asbury Seminary Theological seminary professor Dr. George Hunter III says, "Both of the Wesleys were pragmatists and would do whatever it took to reach people for Jesus Christ.
You see John had a brother Charles who worked with him in these innovative methods. Charles was a cultured poet and musician with high church aesthetic taste, but he shelved his preferences . . ." and wrote hymns to musical tunes that communicated to the common people of the day. Wesley scholar Dean B. McIntyre wrote that, "these new tunes were adapted from folk, secular, and sacred tunes."
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Wesley was in the people business and not the church politics business. Hunter says, "Wesley believed that all church policies and structures should be judged by whether they facilitate or frustrate ‘the work of God’ and ‘spread of the true religion.’ He saw the parish system as frustrating the great commission and, therefore, declared that, as one called into apostolic ministry, ‘I look upon all the world as my parish’" (Journal, June 11, 1739).
The new approach to preaching was a tremendous novelty in the 18th century. Some people - usually those in authority - were shocked and considered field
preaching to be vulgar and dangerous (for those who listened). Some even
stirred up violent persecution of the early Methodists, but many - especially
among the poorer sections of society - flocked to hear Wesley and Whitefield
preach and heard them gladly.
Another one of his innovations in addition to field preaching was that Wesley believed in the principle of multiplying units in order to reach people and to disciple them. He said: "Preach in as many places as you can. Start as many classes as you can. Do not preach without starting new classes." He developed strong lay leaders by giving them the responsibility to be class leaders. Wesley was really the first to introduce the concept of small groups.
Hey, this is another challenge for us at Bethany---we need to be more innovative in the ways that we get people connected in smaller settings to support and encourage one another.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=wes-sun.portland.georgefox.edu/wesley/PreachingOnFathersTomb.jpg&imgrefurl=http://wes-sun.portland.georgefox.edu/wesley/&hl=en&h=365&w=495&start=4&prev=/images%3Fq%3DJohn%2Bwesley%2Bpreaching%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN
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Wesley’s followers first met in private home "societies." When these societies became too large for members to care for one another, Wesley organized "classes," each with 11 members and a leader. Classes met weekly to pray, read the Bible, discuss their spiritual lives, and to collect money for charity. Men and women met separately, but anyone could become a class leader.
The moral and spiritual fervor of the meetings is expressed in one of Wesley’s most famous aphorisms: "Do all the good you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."
The movement grew rapidly. Although Wesley was using new methods—going outside the walls of the church, he never changed the message of the good news of Jesus Christ.
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And as his movement grew rapidly, so did his critics, who sarcastically called Wesley and his followers "Methodists," a label they wore proudly. So that’s where the name Methodist came from. It was a label of ridicule.
But it got worse than name calling at times: Methodists were frequently met with violence as paid ruffians broke up meetings and threatened Wesley’s life.
And I think I have it bad when the children of Bethany just complain!
By going outside the walls, Wesley’s goals was to
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C. Look for people on the edge
Of course, Wesley sometimes "looked a mob in the face" and ministered to other resistant populations. He knew that people are "softened by degrees," so by design he intentionally planted seeds that would later flower into an openness to the gospel.
He also knew that, like flowers, people do not remain open forever. If he sensed a group of people were not open to the gospel he would move on and find another group who were more receptive to his message.
Wesley learned quickly that people who had been marginalized by the industrial revolution were eager to hear his message. These were miners and other factory workers, including children, who put in long hours in the mines and the new factories but received very cheap pay. These were people who had no time for organized religion nor were they readily accepted by the people of the church of that day.
But he not only preached and taught them—he cared for their needs.
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wesley/action.stm
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One of the early Methodist bases for works of piety and mercy was the Foundery in London . The main room of the building was large enough to seat 1500 people.
At one time, the Foundery had been a place for casting cannon. After a serious explosion in 1716, the weapons operation moved to Woolwich. The Foundery remained damaged and unused until 1738 when John Wesley either rented or purchased it. He organized the Methodist Society there.
In addition to religious services, other ministries occurred on the premises such as a school for children and the dispensing of money from a loan fund for poor people to help prevent them from paying exhorbitant interest to others.
The Foundery’s ministry carried on until 1779. Of its ending Wesley wrote, "What hath God wrought there for 40 years!"
So from the earliest times it has always been a Methodist imperative to go
where the people are and not to wait for them to come to us. It is a ministry
that still continues today, in all sorts of ways even here at Bethany:
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· This past Community Christmas Concert at WCCC (boy did that help me to envision the possibilities!)
· Verona Teen Center
· Kingsway Prison Ministries
· Acts of Kindness—like the snacks Witness Team Ministry gave out aaat BRCC at registration
· Gifts to patients at WSH by the UMW
· The men who recently traveled to the Pennisula District to help restor homes destroyed by Hurricane Isabel
· The team going to Indiana this week as Volunteers in Mission (Recognize)
· The Bethany teens doing the live Nativity the past 2 Christmases.
Can you think of your own examples?
Can you think of other possibilities?
John Wesley taught that people must be Christians in both word and deed, which were to express the love of God. He believed that Christians must grow in God’s grace, which first prepares us for belief, then accepts us when we respond to God in faith, and sustains us as we do good works and participate in God’s mission.
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John Wesley not only preached about works of mercy, he "practiced" what he preached. For example, he:
· lived modestly and gave all he could to help people who were poor
· visited people in prison and provided spiritual guidance, food, and clothing to them
· spoke out against slavery and forbade it in Methodism
· founded schools in addition to the Foundery in London, but also in Bristol, and Newcastle
· published books, pamphlets, and magazines for the education and spiritual instruction of people
· taught and wrote about good health practices and even dispensed medicine from his chapels
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wesley/mission.stm
Because the Methodist societies cared for the needs of the poor and people on the edge of society, Wesley is given credit for helping to avoid a revolution from organizing in 18th Century England.
So what we as a church learn from Wesley that’s important in the 21st Century is to
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D. Meet people where they are
Evangelism, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, was the order of the day. For thirty-three years, Wesley went to the fields to do his preaching. The reason was because the people would not come to the church building.
Wesley said to his preachers, "If you don’t like field preaching, learn to like it!" After John Wesley’s many years of open-air preaching, he confessed: "To this day, field preaching is a cross to me. But I know my commission and see no other way of preaching the gospel to every creature"
Wesley taught the Methodists to identify and reach out to receptive people and to go outside the walls to where they are. This strategy became a standard principle of Methodist evangelization. Excerpts from the Minutes of Several Conversations Between the Wesley and Others are especially memorable:
Q. Where should we endeavor to preach the most?
A. 1. Where there is the greatest number of quiet and willing hearers. 2. Where there is most fruit....
I believe this is where God is calling Bethany—we are going to talk about out to be the church outside of the walls and make plans to do that tonight at our BELT session.
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In summary reviewing his life and the revelance of his life for today, it appears that Wesley truly was a "church growth specialist" and believed in church health:
*He developed a strategy for outreach and discipleship.
* He was constantly observing classes, societies, towns, hecklers, and detractors, leaders, parish churches, persons, and crowds.
* He insisted that the ministry be practical and meet the needs of people.
* He moved toward receptive people, although he preached to all people.
* He encouraged local ministries in the multiplication of units.
* He believed in seed planting by sharing the good news and letting people think about it before they were challenged to accept Christ.
* He reached across social networks to people.
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If I were to sum up Wesley’s message for his day and our day it could be:
E. Put your whole being into your relationship with God.
In the church for several we have sung traditional hymns like,
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold.
Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war.
Is marching what you had in mind when you joined the Church? Or is Sitting what you had in mind when you joined the Church?
Someone has asked, How do you know a religious person in our society? They go to church for an hour a week, and they sit.
Listen to this story:
“A man had two sons. One son was uncomfortable with piety, but he felt a responsibility that he couldn’t get away from. He felt an obligation to do what he could to make this world a better place. The other son liked to sing, go to church, but said no when he was asked to make a sacrifice. Which one did the will of the Father?” ( Susan Pendleton Jones )
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Charles Wesley wrote the hymn (that we will use to close the service today), “A Charge to Keep I Have.” It is said that the Methodists would sing their theology. Other churches had creeds, and they would recite their theology to define who they were and what they believed, but the Methodists put beliefs in hymns and sang them. Charles Wesley did that.
So I want you to notice the second verse of the hymn with (which we will sing to close the service). It goes like this.
To serve the present age,
my calling to fulfill;
O may it all my powers engage
To do my Master’s will!
That’s what we believe. And if we are going to sing it, then we better believe it. And if believe it, then we better do it. That’s why we are here.
And what we are to be doing was summarized by John Wesley as he often preached from this passage in the Bible:
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READ THIS ALOUD WITH ME:
Matthew 27:37-40: (Jesus): ’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
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Conclusion & Invitation
Still, all of this, even our own works of spiritual disciplines and doing good to otehrs, all that we are, all that we become, all that’s done in us and through us - it’s all due to this awesome, amazing grace of God that was a major theme in Wesley’s teaching and life.
To go back to Bass Mitchell’s analogy, indeed, grace is the true soil in which we flourish. Grace is our fertilizer, our sunshine, our water, and our air. Grace produces a harvest of love of God and neighbor in us that continues to transform us and the world. For we are, in reality, you see, weedy fields, but taken over by grace and transformed into God’s fields, fields of grace.
So let me ask this question of each of you are regular Bethany attenders: Are we willing to be used of God in our day as John Wesley was in his?
At the conclusion of almost every sermon, John would call people to repent and seek salvation. He would write in his journal: "We offered Christ". So now I offer Christ to you. (Rev. Dr Gordon Moyes)
If you have never done this before this is the invitation that I give to you today: Receive Him into your heart by faith.
In a church in Chester, England, the congregation erected a plaque that reads: "Near this spot on June 20th 1752, the Rev. John Wesley preached his first sermon in this city. His sermon was "O let me commend my Saviour to you."
So on this spot, this place we call Bethany in our 50th year of ministry, let me commend my Savior to you. Believe God loves you, Jesus Christ died for your sins, and the Holy Spirit endows you with gifts for both now and eternity.
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PRAYER
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NEXT WEEK—I’ll Conclude this series on Christianity and the Religions of the world with a discussion of the essentials of the Christian gospel, Christianity Through the Lens of the Religions, and talk about why I am a Christian.
http://wesley.nnu.edu/JohnWesley/methodist/index.htm
http://www.phil-books.com/John_and_Charles_Wesley_Selected_Prayers_Hymns_Journal_Notes_Sermons_Letters_and_Treatises_0809123681.html
http://www.gbod.org/worship/default.asp?act=reader&item_id=2785
