John Wesley
AGE: Lower Secondary |
THEME: John Wesley |
AIM: |
| To reflect on the life of John Wesley and the meaning of assurance. Is a feeling of assurance something that can be self-generated, or is it something that is given? |
RESOURCES: |
| A card with the word 'Assurance' printed on it, or an OHP transparency saying the same thing. |
DEVELOPMENT: |
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Leader: Does anyone feel confident enough to tell me what this word means? (Hold up the card with 'Assurance' printed on it, or use the OHP. You could also write down the various suggestions as they are made.) Perhaps the word 'confidence' is the best definition - certainly it's more familiar today. How many people here think of themselves as being confident? Girls would seem to be less self-confident than boys - at least if the number of magazines and books designed to boost self-confidence and published specifically for girls is anything to go by. Take the Just Seventeen Guide to Being Gorgeous, for example. It begins with a quiz that aims to reveal "if you’re a creature of ultimate confidence who can’t fail to be one cool teenager". Questions include: A boy you like just asked you out, how do you feel? You’ve got a split end, what do you do? Your armpits are smelly - what’s the next step? If you get a low score the book tells you not to worry ("life goes on despite your anxieties...") and goes on to give you lots of tips. Chapters include 'Your Body'; 'Why You Don't Need to Diet'; 'How to have Beautiful Skin' and so on. From the titles it would seem that the secret lies in how you appear to others. But is it true that boys are more self-confident than girls? More and more men's magazines are being produced that cover exactly the same sort of ground. It's become something of a cliché that boys hide their real feelings more than girls, but that they are equally prone to self-doubt. How many boys secretly read their sister's copy of the Just Seventeen Guide to Being Gorgeous for tips on how to get rid of their spots? (The secret, for those who don't have a sister, is to use "skin care products which contain salicylic acid"). The person we're thinking about today - John Wesley - was a person who suffered from a lack of self-confidence, or, as he would have put it, assurance. He compensated for it by being a bit of a big-head, pretending that he could tell others how to behave. But his lack of assurance really came to a head in his relationships with members of the opposite sex, particularly with a 17 year old called Sophy Hopkey. John was 32 at the time. He'd probably never kissed a girl until then, and he was the vicar of the church where Sophy worshipped. He fell in love with her, and she seems to have been quite keen. But John's lack of self-confidence meant that he could never bring himself to ask her to marry him. And by the time he did, she'd accepted someone else's proposal. John reacted in a way that made him seem a complete fool. He was deeply hurt. He banned her from taking Holy Communion, even though she hadn't done anything wrong. This got him into even more of a mess, because it showed that not only was he pretty hopeless when it came to having a love affair but also that he was spiteful and vindictive. In the end he had to flee from the parish in disgrace. He went to London but his future seemed bleak. It was there, though, that something happened that completely changed him. Even though he was a clergyman John had never felt completely right with God. One evening he was listening to someone reading a book about the Bible. Suddenly, ...about a quarter before nine, while he [the author] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ and Chris alone for salvation; and assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine ,and saved me from the law of sin and death. All at once, without expecting it, John knew that God loved him - even though he himself was a hopeless lover and a spiteful person; God loved him despite that, and always would. It's from this moment that the Methodist Church dates its birth. For John Wesley now had the confidence to go out into the world and preach. He didn't care what other people might say about him - it no longer mattered because he was utterly confident that God loved him. Sad to say, he never seems to have been able to get it right with women. But then again, unlike you, he never had the Just Seventeen Guide to Being Gorgeous to help him. Maybe if he had, things would have been different. In a perfect world it would be good to have both kinds of assurance: inner assurance that God loves you and the outer assurance of beauty and confidence that other people will love you. But you can't have everything - or can you? |
READING: |
| Read the words of 'Amazing Grace', a hymn written by a acquaintance of John Wesley called John Newton. These express the same confidence in God's love that Wesley so suddenly felt. |
REFLECTION: |
| Leader: While the music is playing (see below) think about the words, but also about your own life and the things in it that break your self-confidence. Is there anything in the words which might be helpful? |
MUSIC: |
| 'Amazing Grace'. The Judy Collins version is most suitable. |
FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES: |
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