Three Stirrings Before Aldersgate

In January 1736, a violent storm battered the ship carrying John Wesley to the Georgia colony. While English passengers screamed in terror, a group of Moravian Christians sang hymns calmly through the gale. Something stirred in Wesley — a pang he couldn't name. He had been ordained for years, yet these simple believers possessed something he lacked.

The stirring came again in Georgia. Wesley's rigid ministry collapsed. Colonists rejected his High Church formality. He returned to England in 1738, confessing in his journal, "I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh, who shall convert me?"

Then came Peter Bohler, a young Moravian pastor who recognized what Wesley could not see in himself. Over weeks of conversation, Bohler played the role of Eli to Wesley's Samuel. "You do not yet have living faith," Bohler told him plainly. He urged Wesley to stop striving and simply listen.

On May 24, 1738, at a small meeting on Aldersgate Street in London, Wesley finally heard clearly. As someone read Luther's preface to Romans, Wesley felt his heart "strangely warmed." The voice that had been calling through storms and failures — he could finally name it.

Like young Samuel in the temple, Wesley needed three callings and a wise guide before he could say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."