Wesley's Strangely Warmed Heart

By May of 1738, John Wesley had already been ordained for thirteen years. He had crossed the Atlantic to serve as a missionary in Georgia, preached hundreds of sermons, fasted twice a week, and visited prisoners in Oxford's dank cells. If anyone understood religion, it was Wesley. Yet something gnawed at him — a hollowness no amount of discipline could fill.

On the evening of May 24th, Wesley reluctantly attended a small Moravian gathering on Aldersgate Street in London. Someone read aloud from Martin Luther's preface to the book of Romans. At about a quarter to nine, Wesley later wrote, he felt his heart "strangely warmed." For the first time, he trusted Christ — not as a doctrine he defended, but as a Savior who had come for him personally.

Wesley was the Nicodemus of eighteenth-century England. He came with impeccable credentials and sincere devotion, yet Jesus's words to that Pharisee on a Jerusalem rooftop applied just as surely to a clergyman in London: "You must be born again." All of Wesley's theological training could not substitute for the wind of the Spirit blowing where it wills.

Nicodemus asked, "How can these things be?" Wesley might have asked the same question for years. The answer was never an explanation — it was an experience. The God who so loved the world does not merely inform the mind. He transforms the heart.