The Wesleyan Way, Part 1:Filled with God's Love

August 4, 2024 Pastor Mike Romans 8:15-16

Over the next five weeks, I'll be helping us to explore some of the most enduring characteristics of our Wesleyan spiritual heritage. It's called "Wesleyan" because of John and Charles Wesley. They were two brothers, born in England at the dawn of the 18th century, who experienced the love of God so powerfully that they were compelled to organize a revival movement that escaped the rigid bounds of the national church to catch fire among the common folk of England, the American colonies, and, eventually, all over the world. John was the theologian, preacher, and organizer of the movement; Charles was the poet and hymn writer.

Their movement became known as Methodism. As an institution, Methodism has changed a lot over the past three centuries. Today there are United Methodists, Free Methodists, Nazarenes, Wesleyans, African Methodist Episcopalians, and others who all trace their roots back to the Wesley brothers. So it's better, I think, to talk about the Wesleyan Way as broadly as possible. It's a way that we share with others who may worship at churches with different names.

Today we are going to talk about being filled with God's love. In the book of Romans, Paul tells us that we have received a spirit of adoption, a Holy Spirit that speaks to and with our own spirits, steadying and grounding us in a divine love that we can trust. That assurance is the great privilege, John preached, of knowing Christ.

Listen to some of these lines from the hymns of Charles Wesley.

"My soul is all an aching void, Till thy Spirit here abides, And I am filled with God."[1]

“Send us the Spirit of thy Son, To make the depths of Godhead known, To make us share the life divine.”[2]

“Plunged in the Godhead’s deepest sea, And lost in thy immensity.”[3] “Give me thyself, forever give.”[4]

To share in God's own divine life, to be filled with God, to want more and more of God every day -- that's what you and I, along with every human being, have been created for. Let's go back and see how the Wesley's came to recover, in their own time and place, this basic truth of Christian life.

As John Wesley was growing up in Epworth one thing became increasingly clear in his young, developing mind: he would become, like his father Samuel, an ordained in priest in the Church of England. It might've been the daily examinations his mother Susanna put him and his eight siblings through, testing their Latin, Greek, and scripture memorization before meals, or her weekly spiritual interview with each child. It might've been watching Samuel go about his parish duties, preaching, teaching, counseling, and administering the Sacraments. Perhaps it was the fire that struck the family's home in 1709 when John was six years old, imprinting on him a sense of destiny; the fire had trapped him on the top floor, and he would have perished if a parishioner, standing on another man's shoulders, had not hauled him out of the window at the last second. He believed he was saved for a reason. Even outside these peculiarities of circumstance, to be upper-class, educated, and a preacher's kid in England at that time meant the chances were good that you'd turn out a preacher yourself. And so it was for all three of Samuel's sons: Samuel Jr., John, and Charles.

John Wesley was born and bred for the institutional Church of England, which in his time was high-brow and ritualistic, largely unconcerned with life beyond parish boundaries, with the growing number of poor folk -- men, women, and children -- forced into the new mines, mills, and factories popping up all over the country. John got an elite education, took on a modest professorship at Oxford, and  was ordained at the age of 25. His path could not have been more clearly laid before him.

But something in Wesley craved more. He had the pedigree. He knew the languages. He knew the scriptures by heart. He knew the rituals and traditions and the proper theological answers. But he was profoundly unhappy. His heart ached for something more than knowledge and tradition, for an experience of something living, personal, and real. That something, of course, was a someone. Wesley was longing for God. Not just the idea of God, but God Himself.

So John did what he had been trained to do at home and at school: he disciplined himself. He held himself to a high standard of Christian living, and meticulously tracked his progress in perfection.  He and his brother Charles started what they called the Holy Club at Oxford. The Holy Club was a small group of Christians devoted to the pursuit of holiness. They held each other accountable to a rigorous regiment of prayer, fasting, and service. In his journal, John broke down each day to the minute, keeping an account of how every moment was in some way devoted to God.

This didn't work. This intense discipline didn't bring him any closer to an assurance of God's love for him. So, John pivoted; he went for a totally new experience, taking a path that many kinds of seekers were taking at that time: a path across the Atlantic Ocean to the American colonies. At the age of 32, Wesley landed in the brand-new town of Savannah, Georgia to serve as the local priest.

But...wherever you go, there you are. The change of scene did not answer the longing in his soul, and his ministry in Savannah was doomed from the start. Ineffective among the native peoples, at odds with the colonists who preferred a less formal style of religion, and mired in a messy love triangle, Wesley returned to England a broken man after just two years abroad.

His next move -- and this, while not the answer, was a major step in cracking open his ego -- his next move was to seek spiritual counsel from leaders in a different tradition, the Moravian faith. Wesley had first encountered the German Moravians on his voyage over to Georgia. During a great storm at sea, Wesley had been terrified for us his life while the Moravians had remained calm, singing hymns and testifying to their unshakeable faith in God's love and power. It made a real impression on him. Their tradition emphasized individual assurance of salvation and personal prayer.

When Wesley got back to England, he sought out the Moravians and spent time living and praying among them. The story goes that he received this counsel from one of their leaders: "Preach faith until you have it." Wesley didn't have it, and he hadn't had it for so long that he was doubting even his call to preacOver the years, he had tried to muscle his way to perfection; he had tried healing his soul sickness in a different climate; he had tried to reproduce somebody else's faith in his own life. None of it had worked. That longing for a living relationship with God had almost become torture to Wesley. It would not go away, but he did not have the power to satisfy it.

It is very fitting that what came next came "unwillingly," because Wesley had done everything he could to will his way into God's love.

Here is the famous entry from Wesley's journal, dated May 24, 1738:

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.[5]

Here it was. Trust. Assurance. The strange warming of a cold heart. The Spirit of Christ himself, suddenly burning in Wesley's very being. Knowing God's love in this immediate, personal way changed everything for him.

John realized that his great longing for God had all along been an echo of God's longing for him. And once he stopped trying to micromanage the journey toward God, God was able to break through to him. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourself, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8).

We all have a longing deep within us. A wanting. A craving. Ages before the Wesley brothers walked the earth, the African bishop St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."

At bottom, we ache for a love that will set us free. Free from fear.  Free from our ego's need to be in control, to force its way, to define itself and defend that definition. We ache for a love that will set us free from stories that don't fit or serve us any longer. We ache for the freedom and forgiveness and joy of God.

The church, as a human organization, can't satisfy that longing in you. Your pastor can't satisfy that longing. Your education or politics or possessions can't satisfy that longing. You can't get to God by trying to live the perfect life. It won't work to take your old problems to new places. You can't know love for yourself through the words and experiences of someone else, no matter how wise and good they are.

Friends, Christ wants to give you everything -- love, and trust and freedom. He wants to give you himself. God wants to put his very Spirit within you, to gather up all your longing and return it to its source: "Abba, Father!"

Whatever else it is, our Wesleyan Way flows from the strangely warmed heart, from the heart that has been brought to life by grace.

As we sang at camp this week:

Love is flowing like a river Flowing out from you and me Flowing out into the desert setting all the captives free.

At the bedrock of our tradition is John Wesley's conviction that his Aldersgate experience was not unique to himself or reserved for a super-spiritual class of people. He thought that every human being could come to know God in an intimate way. John dedicated the rest of his life to helping as many people as possible come to trust in God's love.

In response to a message like this, there are many good questions you might ask yourself. I think one of the best places we can begin is to become curious about our own inner longing.

In John's Gospel, Jesus doesn't call his first disciples to follow him. Instead, his first disciples come to him. When he turns and sees them already following him, he asks them: "What are you seeking?" And they can only answer his question with one of their own, "Master, where are you staying?"

What are you seeking? By waking up our deep wanting, by stirring up our desire, Jesus brings to bring us to himself.

So, take a few minutes to sit with those two questions printed in your bulletin. Or, if these questions don't seem to fit what you're feeling right now, sit with whatever God is doing in you in this moment.

●  What are you seeking?

●  And what does this seeking mean for your life

After a few moments of silence, we'll share Communion together.

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1]Charles Wesley, “Wretched, and miserable,” stanza 6.

[2]Charles Wesley, “Hymn 1,” Whitsunday Hymns (1746), stanza 6.

[3]Charles Wesley, “Hymn to the Holy Ghost,” Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), stanza 4.

[4] Wesley, “Hymn to the Holy Ghost,” stanza 2.

[5]William J. Abraham, Methodism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 4.