A Warmed Heart

Is anyone ever helped by religion?

The answer is clearly a resounding no!

One of the best examples of its futility to bring about any significant hope or joy is found in the first three decades of John Wesley’s life.

Raised by godly parents, in a pastor’s home.

Trained in the Scriptures, at the feet of his disciplined Puritan mother.

Schooled in theology and Biblical languages at Oxford University.

Taught these subjects, at that same university.

Passionate about ministry to the poor and those in prison.

Missionary to the American Indians in the Colonies.

But still unable to experience any confidence in his salvation, other than the fleeting satisfaction of doing charitable works.

No assurance that he was indeed a child of God.

Certainly, no joy in his life, as he worked himself almost to death to prove his righteousness to God.

Then, at the end of his rope and desperate, he was exposed to the ministry of Moravian missionaries and he experienced true faith in Christ alone.

Wesley’s biography, written by W. H. Fitchett, and published in 1917, provides a fascinating description of the early decades of Wesley’s struggle to experience faith in Christ alone…and the joy he finally entered into.

Please wade through the older English below to allow the futility of a vague and useless “faith in God” to sink in, versus a faith in Christ, who is “made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30 ASV).

In later years, this became Wesley’s favorite verse in the Bible.

Describing the results of religion that Wesley experienced before his Aldersgate conversion, the biographer writes…

“Can it be God’s purpose that the child He has received into His family continue to believe the lie that he is still an outcast? Though God smiles upon him, must he still think that He frowns? After sin’s dark substance is gone, can it be God’s will that it’s shadow should remain? Surely this is a paradox of incredible quality!

Who will rejoice in a forgiveness so furtive that not even the soul to which it is granted knows whether or not it has happened.” (p.134)

No wonder, when John Wesley emerged from his decades’ long immersion into religion, that he describes his moment of true salvation at Aldersgate as the evening when his heart was strangely warmed.

Even after his Aldersgate experience of forgiveness of sin and profound assurance of salvation, the enemy tried numerous times to drag Wesley back to that deadness of religion that had plagued him for thirty years. But with prayer and the Word, he maintained a daily fight with the forces of evil and, in his own words, “always emerged the conqueror.”