Dear Friends,
The apostle Paul told the Corinthians that his ministry among them did
not depend on clever tricks but on spiritual power. It has been so with
all great Christian leaders as today’s attached devotional illustrates.
God bless you!

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• I Corinthians 2:4-5 (ESV)

  4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

“In the eighteenth century, John Nelson.…heard John Wesley preaching for the first time at Moorfields in London: ‘O that was a blessed morning to my soul! As soon as he got upon the stand he stroked back his hair and turned his gaze towards where I stood, and I thought fixed his eyes upon me. His countenance struck such an awful dread upon me before I heard him speak that it made my heart beat like the pendulum of a clock. When he did speak, I thought his whole discourse was aimed at me.’

“For a while Nelson fought against those convictions until he heard a soldier testifying to some women how he had become a Christian hearing Wesley: ‘When he began to speak his words made me tremble. I thought he spoke to no one but me, and I drust not look up, for I imagined all the people were looking at me.’ Nelson sought out Wesley and heard him preach again, finally saying, ‘I found power to believe that Jesus Christ had shed his blood for me, and that God, for his sake, had forgiven my offences. Then my heart filled with love to God and man.’ Soon, Nelson became one of Wesley’s first assistant ministers, accompanying him to preach in Cornwall and elsewhere. He too became a mighty proclaimer of the divine message of the gospel.” [Geoffrey Thomas, “Nonconformist Preaching,” Which Church? How to identify a biblical church, edited by Robert Strivens, (Faverdale North Industrial Estate, Darlington, England, Evangelical Press, 2007), p. 77]