SOUL REST

By Celia Jolley

At this season of our lives, I am finding a clear space to ponder on the rock upon which I stand.  It has been the entire thrust of our lives, the entire purpose of our ministry: holiness.  In college while an art major, I used most of my electives in classes in the religion department.  My favorite was taught by a visiting elderly gentleman from England, Rev. Albert Lown, a class on Christian Perfection.  As the class went on, I struggled to fit my experience with what was clearly taught in Scripture.  Where I lacked, I found the enabling of the Holy Spirit to fill me.  This second work was accepted entirely by faith, just as had been salvation.  

When I accepted Christ as a child, I struggled to believe it had happened because it was not an emotional experience, probably because my worst sin was stealing a pack of gum.  I had already repented of this because of the misery of guilt.  I remember getting up from the altar in Lawrence, Kansas, where my father pastored, and going to the bathroom, hefting myself up on the sink so I could look into the mirror to see if I had cried.  Alas, I had not, so I doubted my salvation.  I came to the time when I had to accept it by faith, not an emotional experience.    

It was the same with the second work of grace, purity of heart, entire sanctification.  It was not an emotional experience for me, but something I accepted by faith because it was promised in Scripture.  Thank you, Dr. Lown for teaching this clearly.

This was such a certainty in my life, that it upheld me in the next thirty-eight years of pastoral ministry.   Let me tell you that it is not easy to give one's all to the Church, because though some of the greatest people in the world are in the church, some of the meanest people are found there as well.   But sweetness of the soul was the mark of those who enjoyed entire sanctification, the beauty of holiness shining through their lives.

Parenting has been the joy of our lives, but the dedication of our lives was to teach, and for my husband to preach, holiness unto the Lord, the holiness without which no one shall see God.  Just as my parenting was far from perfect, my love never wavered for our children; so too in my humanness, I was not perfect in my Christian walk except in my heart of love for my Father.  In this was perfection or purity of heart.

Thus, I will give snippets in my following blogs taken from the book, Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfection," ("As believed and taught by Rev. John Wesley from the years 1725 to 1777).

"1.  What I purpose in the following papers is, to give a plain and distinct account of the steps by which I was led, during a course of many years, to embrace the doctrine of Christian perfection.  This I owe to the serious part of mankind, those who desire to know all 'the truth as it is in Jesus.'  And these only are concerned in questions of this kind.  To these I would nakedly declare the thing as it is, endeavoring all along to show from one period to another, both what I thought, and why I thought so."  

"2.  In the year 1725, being in the twenty-third year of my age (probably the same age that I was when I took the class on Christian Perfection), I met with Bishop Taylor's 'Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying.'  In reading several parts of this book, I was exceedingly affected; that part in particular which relates to purity of intention.  Instantly I resolved to dedicate all my life to God, all my thoughts, and words, and actions; being thoroughly convinced there was no medium; but that every part of my life--not some only--must either be a sacrifice to God, or myself, that is, in effect, to the devil."

"Can any serious person doubt of this or find a medium between serving God and serving the devil?"

More selections from John Wesley will be continued in my next blog.