Archive: Our Glorious Salvation

Restoring the Main Mast of a Storm-tossed Church

By Sandy Kirk

Black waves pummeled the ship, lifting her high, then plunging her into watery valleys. The storm mounted, the winds roared, the main mast split, and the vessel rocked and reeled violently. Panic swept through the crew. A young Anglican priest, chaplain of the ship, shivered in dark terror. In shame, he watched as a group of Moravians worshipped their God, filled with unutterable peace.

That young priest was John Wesley, on a missionary trip to the American Indians. When at last he reached Georgia, he asked the Moravian pastor for advice. But the Moravian shot back with some heart searching questions: “My Brother … Do you know Jesus Christ? … Do you know he has saved you?”

Wesley gulped, then stammered, “I hope he has died to save me.”

“But do you know yourself?” pressed the Moravian.

“I do,” he quavered, but later admitted, “I fear these were vain words.” Finally, John Wesley lamented, “I went to America to covert the Indians; but O! who shall convert me?”[1]

A Storm-tossed Church

Isn’t this where we are in our church today? Isn’t there a deep, aching void in the soul of the United Methodist Church?

Indeed, the ship of the Church has been tossed and pummeled by waves of religious turmoil. She’s been lifted on rising swells of political upheaval, plunged into watery valleys and flooded with unbiblical views. The main mast of the ship has been split, the church has rocked and reeled, and thousands of “people called Methodist” seem lost in the midst of the storm.

If the question were asked of the vast majority of United Methodists today, as the Moravian asked Wesley, “Do you know Jesus Christ has saved you?” what would be our response? Would multitudes falteringly say, as Wesley said, “I hope he has died to save me”?

Like our founder, could our own plaintive cry be, “We went to convert the world, but O! who shall convert us?”

Wesley’s New Birth

John Wesley did, however, seek the Lord with all of his heart. He was a soul athirst for God. Like David, he longed for the presence of God as the deer pants and longs for the waterbrooks.

And wondrously, even as a river flows down to the lowly, thirsty places of the earth, God delights in sending his river of life to thirsty, seeking hearts. For on that day, May 24, 1738, the Spirit of God descended like a fiery stream upon Wesley, and his “heart was strangely warmed.” In that one divine moment he knew he had been gloriously saved. He said, “An assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me …”[2]

From that time on, Wesley began to preach the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. He was a man ablaze with a message. Along with his friend, George Whitefield, he began to spread the flame of the new birth experience throughout all of England. The Anglican Church was scandalized by their insistence that even baptized church members must be born again. In fact, George Whitefield was asked why he preached over 300 sermons on “You Must Be Born Again.” He responded, “because you must be born again!”

But what about our church today? How often do we hear a clear, clarion call to salvation? How often do we hear that simple but poignant call of Jesus, as well as the early Methodists— “You must be born again”?

Urgent Calls to Salvation

Our hearts were gripped with awe as Margaret Therkelsen, at a retreat in Lubbock, Texas, told of her preacher father in the hills of Kentucky. She described how her father and other Methodist preachers went out into the congregation, pleading with lost souls to come to Christ. Tears slipped down our cheeks as Margaret vividly told how the town drunk was converted to Christ because her little mother fervently prayed, then tenderly implored him to receive Christ at the altar.

My heart ached as I thought: what has happened to this kind of urgent pleading today? I recalled the story of the conversion of one of the world’s greatest preachers, powerfully saved through the urgent call of a Methodist layman:

The year was 1850. It was a blustery, cold, snowy morning when a teenage boy decided to walk to church in the village. The snow froze his face and stung his eyes till he decided to stop at a little Primitive Methodist church along the way. The pastor had been snowbound himself, so an untrained Methodist layman was preaching instead.

The layman began with the Scripture, “Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45:22). Then with simple, earnest passion, he said: “Look. … do not look to yourselves … Look unto me: I am sweating great drops of blood for you. Look unto Me: I am scourged and spit upon. I am nailed to the cross. I die, I am buried, I rise and ascend, I am pleading before the Father’s throne, and all this for you.”

The teenager’s heart pounded harder and faster as the layman spoke. Then the preacher leaned over his pulpit and looked at him. “Young man, you are very miserable, and you will always be miserable if you don’t do as my text tells you, that is look unto Christ.” Then he thundered with all his might, “Young man, look! In God’s name look, and look now!”

The boy looked. And in that moment Charles Spurgeon was gloriously saved.[3] One of the greatest preachers of all-time was born again because of the urgent plea of a Methodist layman.

But where are the fiery altar calls that convict the soul and draw one’s heart to Christ in our church today?

Could it be that multitudes of good, baptized Methodists are lost, and they don’t even know it? Could they be lost because we’ve forgotten our primary purpose: very few are telling them, “You must be born again!”

Have We Smothered the Baby?

It’s like the story of the couple who decided to hold a christening party on the night before their baby’s baptism at church. When the guests arrived, the infant was laid on the guest-room bed. A few guests came into the room, and, not noticing the baby, flung their coats across the bed. Several others threw their coats upon the bed. Soon the infant had been completely covered by heavy coats. The next morning, the newspaper told the tragic account of the baby that had been smothered to death at his own christening party.

Is this what we have done? Have we covered the Baby with our religious trappings and distracting political issues? Have we forgotten our main purpose—to spread the glorious message of salvation in Jesus Christ? Have we smothered the Baby in the midst of his own Church?

Repentance at the Foot of the Cross

We must come like little children to the foot to the cross—the place of true repentance.

Those whose hearts are burning with the desire to see our church restored, must ask God for a spirit of repentance, a gift from heaven of true, godly grief over the sins of the church. Like Daniel, who stood in the gap for the sins of his nation, we need to stand in the gap and repent over the sins of our denomination. Most of all, we need to weep over our heartless praying, our lifeless evangelism our passionless preaching, our listless alter calls, and our prideful divisions.

Secondly, we need to repair the mast of the ship; for in the midst of the storm, the main mast, the cross, has fallen from its central place. We need to once again lift high the cross of Jesus Christ and proclaim his glorious salvation. As Charles Spurgeon said, “Down, down, down with everything else … but up, up, up with the doctrine of the naked cross and the expiring Savior!”[4]

When at last the cross, with its blazing, magnetic power, is lifted in the church, people will be drawn to Christ. Said Spurgeon, “We slander Christ when we think that we are to draw people by something else but the preaching of Christ crucified.”[5] For it is not our polished preaching, our social benevolence, or even our miracles that draw a person to the Lord. Jesus said, “If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to me.” Like fingers on the strings of a harp, the Spirit of God tugs and draws a person to Jesus when the cross of Christ is lifted.

We Saw It Happen

Because I believe this so strongly, I started teaching a course in our church called “God’s Masterpiece,” a study of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We looked at Jesus lifted up on the cross until we could almost feel his tears splashing upon our hearts; we could almost see the love spilling from his wounds; we could almost run our fingers over his scars.

Women wept in sorrow for the sin that nailed Jesus to the cross. Deep, cleansing floods of repentance swept through us until were washed of condemnation over past abortions, bitterness toward husbands, and guilt over sexual sins.

A young medical doctor, whose heart had turned hard toward God because of repressed grief over her mother’s death, looked at her Savior’s raw and bleeding wounds until her own wounds began to surface. As she gazed at Jesus Christ, the Divine Physician himself began to pour his healing oil into her broken heart. Within weeks, she was filled with the Holy Spirit and praying with others to be made whole.

A mother of teenagers opened her pain-filled heart to the love of her Lord and forgave her father for years of incest and abuse. An unbelieving nurse looked upon Jesus’ dying love until she received him as her Savior and was healed of the eating disorder, bulimia.

As we gazed at the blazing cup of wrath which Jesus drank in punishment for our sins, many wanted to know, “What can I do to be saved?” One lady said, “I’ve been Methodist all my life. I’ve believed in Jesus Christ, but tonight I ‘received’ him for the first time in my life.”

Amazingly, we found—as we looked with all our hearts at the cross of our Lord, the Holy Spirit began to come. Like a soft, summer breeze, he came, filling hungry hearts and causing people to fall in love with Jesus.

This is what can happen any place where the cross of Christ is lifted. If we will restore the main mast of the ship, the presence of the living Christ will come with a fresh visitation from God. Then we will begin to see revival, for revival begins at the foot of the cross.

O come, Holy Spirit—restore the cross to its central location till the glorious message of salvation spreads again through our storm-tossed church!

Sandy S. Kirk is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Good News. She is a Bible teacher and the wife of R. L. Kirk, pastor of St. Luke’s UM Church in Lubbock, Texas.

[1] John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1872), Vol.l, pp. 23, 74.

[2] Wesley, Works, p. 103

[3] Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon at His Best, Tom Carter, compiled (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), p. 249.

[4] Ibid., p. 46.

[5] Spurgeon, p. 301