I almost let it slip by! Today is the 279th anniversary of Aldersgate!
John Wesley searched for peace with God for years. He even served as a missionary to the American colony of Georgia, but that experience was a disaster.
After two years in Georgia, John Wesley was a broken man with broken dreams on a ship returning to England. He wrote these words in his journal. “It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country, in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity: But what have I learned myself in the mean time? Why, (what I the least of all suspected,) that I who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God...”
In all of his searching, John Wesley had not found God. But God was about to find him. He returned to London on Feb. 3, 1738, and just four days later he met Peter Bohler. Peter Bohler was a German Moravian Christian.
Peter Bohler shared with John Wesley that he would never earn his salvation by good works. He could never do enough good works to atone for his sins. Salvation must be received as a free gift by faith.
John Wesley resisted this gospel of grace at first, but as he read the scriptures it was as if a blindfold fell from his eyes.
He writes, “I was now thoroughly convinced; and, by the grace of God, I resolved to seek it unto the end, By absolutely renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own works or righteousness; on which I had really grounded my hope of salvation though I knew it not, from my youth up...."
On May 24, 1738, John Wesley found the peace with God for which he had so long sought. Read to his description of what happened:
“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.”
Aldersgate changed John Wesley, and it also changed the world! Happy Aldersgate! May your heart be strangely warmed!
And I highly recommend the "John Wesley Collection" in Logos Bible Software!
