You went out before your people, O God Psalm 68:7

• DAY 13 MORNING PSALM 68

• DAY 13 EVENING PSALM 69-70

Skevington- Wood says ‘It was an unpredictable providence which led John Wesley to become an open- air evangelist. Field preaching was not congenial to him. Some men might have felt themselves to be in their element as they stood beneath the canopy of heaven. Not so Wesley. To him this seemed a strange way indeed. It was certainly not his own choice. He endured it only because God called him to adopt such a means of approach to the people. There is something ironical that such a man as Wesley should expose himself to the four winds like this like this. Nor did he shrink from the uncouth mob which always surrounded him with filth and foul odours and often with heckling and violence. Wesley was a dapper little don. He was finical about his personal appearance. In company he was always as neat as a tailor’s model. He was so very particular that he could not bear the slightest speck of dirt on his clerical attire. He hated noise and disturbance. He was accustomed to the academic calm of Oxford or a country rectory. That he should venture into the highways and byways and face the great unwashed is nothing short of a miracle. Only grace could have turned Wesley into a missioner to the common people. ‘

God went ahead of Wesley and chose him for this task and on the Sunday following his first experience of open –air preaching he tried it another time.’ In his journal, John Wesley writes:-

Sunday, April 8.—At seven in the morning I preached to about a thousand persons at Bristol, and afterward to about fifteen hundred on the top of Hannam Mount in Kingswood. I called to them, in the words of the evangelical prophet, “Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters;.…come, and buy wine and milk without money and without price” [Isa. 55:1]. About five thousand were in the afternoon at Rose Green (on the other side of Kingswood); among whom I stood and cried in the name of the Lord, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” [John 7:38].

• We live in a desperate generation that still thirsts for life. By grace you led Wesley to preach in the highways and byways. You turned him into a missioner to the masses. Show us your strength Lord, as you have done before. GO BEFORE US and choose men and women to be your vessels ONCE AGAIN in our day to preach your Gospel to the lost in our nation, that many in their thousands would come to the waters and come and buy wine and milk without money and without price.

REFERENCES

Skevington-Wood, A. The burning heart John Wesley: Evangelist,Cliff College Publishing, 94

Wesley, J. Journal, April 8th 1739 , Vol 1, 186