DAY 13

MORNING

PSALM 68

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

An Open-air Evangelist

Wesley’s biographer, 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. 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.” 111

God went ahead of Wesley and chose
 him for this task and the next week, on the following Sunday after his first experience of open–air preaching he tried it another time. In his journal, John Wesley wrote:112

Sunday, 8 April

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]

Prayer

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 missionary 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.

111 Skevington-Wood, A. The burning heart, 94.

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

DAY 13

EVENING

PSALMS 69–70

Psalm 69:9 “Zeal for your house consumes me.”

An Enthusiast

Many of Wesley’s contemporaries saw him as a fanatic. He was frequently called in a mocking way, ‘an enthusiast’. Howard Snyder suggests that although Wesley never left the Church of England and he was strongly committed to the institutional church, his approach and values were in almost every respect those of what he calls a “Radical protestant”. These are some
 of the hallmarks of Radical protestants, as Snyder defines them:113

1 Voluntary adult membership based on a covenant-commitment to Jesus Christ, emphasising obedience to Jesus as a necessary evidence of faith in him.

2 A community or brotherhood of discipline, edification, correction and mutual aid, in conscious separation from the world, as the primary visible expression of the church.

3 A life of good works, service and witness as an expression of Christian love and obedience expected of all believers.

4 The spirit and the word as comprising the sole basis of authority implying a de-emphasis on or rejection of church tradition and creeds.


5 Primitivism and restitutionism.


6 A pragmatic functional approach to church order and structure.


7 A belief in the universal church as the body of Christ, of which the particular visible believing community is but a part.

The first hallmark, “Voluntary adult membership”, was very important to Wesley. Often adult baptism and a rejection of infant baptism has been considered the key feature that identifies a “Radical Protestant”. However ‘volunteerism’ is really the issue. Wesley knew that a conscious adult commitment and obedience to the Gospel was what mattered and in his preaching this was paramount. Wesley demonstrated how important it was 
to him, by building a committed community of discipline and edification. Although the Methodist classes and bands were effectively a sub-community within the Church of England, they never became a distinct or separate sect.114

Prayer

Set us on fire, Lord, with a burning passion for you and your house, we pray. We pray for another awakening in our nation with many flames going up and down our land, lighting such candles as by God’s grace would never be put out. Remove the ‘dread asbestos of other things’ that would distract us from the ‘one thing’ that is needful—lives laid down, devoted to you, Lord Jesus.

113 Snyder, H. The Radical Wesley, 113–114.

114 Snyder, H. The Radical Wesley, 116–117.