Following The Leaders

In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you, dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.

1 Peter 5:5-6

JOHN WESLEY WAS a proud man. He traveled by ship to America in the early 1700s, bent on converting the masses to the truth of God. But there wasn’t only the problem of his pride—John Wesley wasn’t even converted to God yet.

After his total failure as an evangelist on that trip, Wesley traveled to America again to give it another try. On the ship were a number of Moravians, committed believers who held strongly to the idea of a personal relationship with God, and Wesley realized that his pride and lack of a true conversion were holding him back. Later, in a church in Aldersgate, England, Wesley listened to a reading of Martin Luther’s commentary on the book of Romans. While listening, Wesley expressed true faith in God and felt his heart “strangely warmed,” a phrase Luther had used to describe his own conversion experience.

His pride vanished, his heart relationship with God flourished, and he went on to become one of the great evangelists of the 1700s, establishing Methodism, which later became one of the major denominations of Christianity.

Are you proud in heart? Then you will not feel closeness with God. When we’re proud, we don’t see our need of God. We won’t successfully live the Christian life. But when we are willing to leave our pride behind, self is out of the way, and God is able to “lift [us] up” and use our service.