I read something today about John and Charles Wesley’s group at Oxford, “Holy Club.”
John and Charles Wesley started a group at Oxford called the Holy Club. This club of men sought to serve God every hour of the day. They set aside time for praying, examining their spiritual lives, studying the Bible, and meeting together. In addition, they took food to poor families, visited lonely people in prison, and taught orphans how to read.
Immediately I felt like these people were nuts. How sad is that? If you know about the Holy Club you know that they had accountability questions that they would ask each other. There were 22 questions that they would ask each other to keep each other accountable and number 1 and number 22 are especially informing to me.
1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
22. Is Christ real to me?
From the beginning you have already failed. Seriously, all of us have utterly failed that first question, and that’s the first one of twenty-two questions. John Wesley was known very well as someone that had his “methods” and he was constantly criticized for having such ridiculous methods, but aren’t we all a little ridiculous?
The existence of faith is ridiculous. Believing in someone that is not visibly seen, but believing anyway.
One thought occurred to me as I read over this today. Do I aspire to serve God in every hour of my day? My immediate and impulsive answer was “I wish, but I really don’t.” So the next question for is then, “Is Christ real to me?”
If Christ is real to me shouldn’t I aspire to serve God in every hour of my day?
But how can we do that?
That’s impossible!
Father God, I pray that we all would acknowledge the realness of you in our lives and let that reality fuel us to serve you in all we do, even though we fall short Father help us to be more and more like you!
Amen.