….wherever I lodge. Psalm 119:54

• DAY 25 MORNING PSALM 119:33- 119:72

• DAY 25 EVENING PSALM 119:73- 119:104

‘In order to fulfill his mission throughout the land, John Wesley had to resign himself to incessant travel. He became the great itinerant. For the sake of the gospel, he was prepared to lead a gypsy life. We have caught something of the energetic momentum of the man as we have dipped into his Journal. He was in almost perpetual motion. At Oxford he had wondered "how any busy man could be saved…. God taught me better by my own experience."

As late as 1781 he was still on the move. "I must go on; for a dispensation of the gospel is committed to me; and woe is me if I preach not he gospel." He noted in 1777,"I have travelled all roads by day and by night, for these forty years, and never was interrupted yet." Although nearly shipwrecked when sailing to Guernsey, his boat was saved from disaster. Wesley was saved from serious accident throughout fifty years of travelling ministry.

For a season John Nelson travelled with John Wesley. There is an unforgettable picture in John Nelson’s journal of himself and John Wesley sleeping on the floor at St Ives and Wesley using Nelson’s top coat for a pillow and Nelson using Burkitt’s notes on the New Testament for his. One morning at 3am after enduring this hard bed for a fortnight, Wesley turned over, dug Nelson in the ribs and joked, "Brother Nelson, let us be of good cheer… for the skin is off but on one side yet."

Anyone who accompanied Wesley was in for a grueling experience. Duncan Wright discovered that. He joined Wesley for part of 1765 and 1766, but he found he was unable stand the pace. "As the exercise was too much I gave it up," he confessed. There is a graphic account in the Journal of the treacherous quicksands of the Solway Firth. Perhaps that was the last straw so far as Duncan Wright was concerned. Yet at this date Wright was only thirty years of age and Wesley was sixty-three.'

•Lord we pray that you would raise up labourers for today’s harvest. Thank you for the inspiration, and example of our spiritual forefathers. Unleash a new wave of firebrands, of young zealots who have the energy, the perseverance and the tenacity to complete the dispensation of restoring the gospel to England, to whomsover they are sent, wherever you call them, whatever the cost.

REFERENCES

Skevington-Wood, A. The burning heart John Wesley: Evangelist,Cliff College Publishing, 115-117, 122