We can all benefit from spiritual self-assessment:
It was Plato who once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. This should be true for all of us, especially Christians. We are to keep a close eye on our spiritual condition. Spiritual checkups are always in order, and a growing believer is one who does regular examinations on his spiritual condition.
There are two extremes to avoid however. One is to live a life without any thought about the state of our soul, or to put all our attention in areas that are not as important. Thus some believers put far more time and effort into their physical condition than in their spiritual. The other extreme is a morbid introspection where we are paralysed from doing anything as we are so intent on examining every thought, word and deed a thousand times over.
Regular physical exercise is of course helpful, but we also need regular – indeed daily – spiritual exercise. The usual methods of Bible reading, prayer and fellowship with other Christians is a part of this. Being in a small accountability group is also important.
The ‘Holy Club’ started by John and Charles Wesley while they were at Oxford is a case in point. Never having more than two dozen or so people – and including George Whitefield – these believers regular met to hold one another to account and to encourage each other in spiritual growth, discipline and maturity.
A part of this involved daily asking themselves some searching questions about their spiritual condition. Various lists of these questions were used, but a famous list of 22 questions became the norm. Here are John Wesley’s 22 Questions:
Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?
Can I be trusted?
Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
Did the Bible live in me today?
Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
Am I enjoying prayer?
When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
Do I pray about the money I spend?
Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
Do I disobey God in anything?
Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
Am I defeated in any part of my life?
Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
How do I spend my spare time?
Am I proud?
Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
Do I grumble or complain constantly?
Is Christ real to me?
That is not a bad set of questions that we can be asking ourselves as well. Other questions could be included, but we see how seriously Wesley took this matter. We should also consider some such spiritual exercises. Given the weakness of the flesh and the snares of the devil, we need all the help we can get along these lines.
More on John Wesley
There is a large library of works about the Wesleys in general and John Wesley (1703–1791) in particular. Here I just want to draw your attention to two authors. The first is Thomas Oden. His four-volume set on John Wesley’s Teachings published by Zondervan is very useful indeed. The books are:
Vol. 1 – God and Providence (2012)
Vol. 2 – Christ and Salvation (2012)
Vol. 3 – Pastoral Theology (2012)
Vol. 4 – Ethics and Society (2014)
John Wesley's Teachings, Volume 3: Pastoral Theology (3)by Oden, Thomas C. (Author)
In the Introduction to Vol. 3 Oden says this:
The early evangelical revivals in Great Britain were profoundly shaped and informed by the ministries of George Whitefield, the Countess of Huntingdon, William Wilberforce, and William and Catherine Booth. Earlier than all of these, however, was the evangelical revival initiated by the Spirit through the calling of John and Charles Wesley. All of the above owed a great debt to the Wesleys.
John Wesley showed remarkable gifts and skills as a pastoral guide. Wesley gave himself unreservedly to the soul care of thousands in countless Welsh, English, Colonial Georgian, Native American, Irish, and Scottish villages, traveling incessantly to serve the interests of their spiritual maturation. Much of his pastoral care is revealed in his letters and journals, but most of its grounding appears in his teaching homilies….
Modernity has not outdated Wesley. It is still possible for persons thoroughly immersed in modern consciousness and technology to appropriate Wesley’s spiritual counsel. He is not as remote in language and time as the earliest Christian writers, but he is very close to them in spirit. In pastoral care, he was deeply attentive to the historic roots from which he drew strength, especially the patristic writings and the magisterial Reformation texts of Luther and Calvin, as well as Anglican, holiness, and in particular, the Puritan traditions.
What is most powerful in Wesley’s pastoral teaching has close affinities with the classic consensual Christian writers of the earliest Christian centuries. Wesley offered his teaching in plain speech because the gospel was addressed to ordinary people in plain speech. Diverse audiences, including Reformed, Catholic, pietistic, and charismatic hearers have listened to his teaching or appropriated echoes of his teaching. They intuitively recognize his affinity with the best minds of ancient ecumenical teaching.
In classic Christian teaching, all truth claims are tested in relation to apostolic teaching. That rule applies to Wesley, and he confirms its truth. So do not brace for some sort of disproportionate dogmatic slant on pastoral care. Wesley was an evangelical Anglican who was thoroughly grounded in classic orthodoxy predating modern partisan divisions. (pp. 29-31)
The other author worth being aware of is Fred Sanders. His volume also looks carefully at Wesley and spirituality: Wesley on the Christan Life (Crossway, 2013). Several quotes from him are also worth presenting here. In his Introduction he notes how John Wesley is not as well-known today as he should be. But we all can benefit from knowledge of the man and his ministry, those from the Reformed camp included:
John Newton (1725–1807) was as young, restless, and Reformed as anybody, but he could testify of John Wesley, “I know of no one to whom I owe more as an instrument of divine grace.” Not to be outdone, Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) ventured that “if there were wanted two apostles to be added to the number of the twelve, I do not believe that there could be found two men more fit to be so added than George Whitefield and John Wesley.”
He continues:
John Wesley intended his ministry to be an influence on all existing churches; he considered himself a spokesman for the evangelical message to all. As he said, “the original design” of his work was “not to be a distinct party, but to stir up all parties, Christians or heathens, to worship God in spirit and in truth.” (It should be obvious, by the way, that he would stir up the heathens to worship God by converting them to Christ.) When in 1742 he undertook a defense of the word Methodist, he began by saying, “I should rejoice (so little ambitious am I to be at the head of any sect or party) if the very name might never be mentioned more, but buried in eternal oblivion.” In that tract, The Character of a Methodist, he stated his principles as clearly as possible in hopes that “perhaps some of you who hate what I am called, may love what I am by the grace of God; or rather, what ‘I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.’”
Wesley understood himself well when he said his mission was “to stir up all . . . to worship God.” He was above all a revivalist, an awakener of slumbering souls and torpid institutions. Surely there is a great need for his kind of stirring and awakening today. For one thing (inside the Wesleyverse), the very institutions started by Wesley have taken on the kind of coldness and lethargy that Wesley arose to stir up. Evangelicals inside of Methodism are well aware that “the Methodist movement has become what it was once a reaction against.” That is, believers have long since learned to look to Methodism as the mainline church, not as a movement for revival that reaches all the churches.
Second, there is a great need for Wesley’s kind of stirring in our time because his message is medicinal for much that ails us all today. He perceived the inherent unity of things that we have, to our harm, learned to think of as separate, or even as opposites. He saw that holiness of heart and life was internally and necessarily linked to the free forgiveness of sins. He saw the connection between justification and sanctification, and was able to communicate it powerfully. “He was possessed of one central truth, that man is justified by faith and perfected in love.” He did not pick and choose from among the various benefits of union with Christ, and his preaching did not leave his listeners with that option either. He had a unified understanding of grace as both unmerited mercy and the power of God the Holy Spirit who works in us. If this vast doctrine of grace could get a grip on Christians in our time, it would catalyze the same kind of awakening as when Wesley first preached it. (pp. 14-15)
Yes we can learn much from people like Wesley. And we all can be challenged by things like the Holy Club and the self-assessment they championed with things like the 22 Questions.
