I was listening to a preacher who was saying that christians ought to make more reliance on intellectual and logical arguments instead of the supernatural in witnessing of their faith to  unbelievers.

I was unconciously shaking my head sadly so I got earwigged after the meeting which gave me the opportunity to vent.

It is perfectly logical and reasonable to believe in God-you may not but at least you accept that others do and can put forward reasonable and valid arguments for why they believe as they do, arguments which you may or may not be able to counter.

But the gospel is not reasonable or logical it makes no appeal what-so-ever to human intellect, what? that a child should be born to a virgin? and that this child should Himself be God the Creator? that He should be nailed to a tree until His life-blood run to the ground? and that by this means God should make reconciliation with His rebellious creatures? that after three days in the tomb God should raise His Son from the dead? no no these are not reasonable or logical arguments at all, they make no appeal even to my limited education.

Some people  believe these truths because they were taught them from earliest childhood, I am an example of that, John Wesley is an even better example for he was highly educated with a razor sharp intellect.

When Wesley graduated from Oxford he set sail for America as a missionary to the native Americans but he was not at that time saved, he did not have living faith. He failed in America, in fact he very nearly got run out on a rail. He came back to England under a cloud.

It was on board the return ship that he met a bunch of simple Moravian christians and in fellowshipping with them he witnessed that they had something he did not have. He did not know it then but he was witnessing the inner life of Christ in the soul, he was witnessing a new  kind of faith, a LIVING faith.

You may one day look through the eyes of wonder at the creation all around you and you may well come to an understanding and apprehension that all you see must be the work of a Master Creator of infinite wisdom and power. But this not the faith of the christian by which he is saved, in which he stands. This is not the living faith I am talking about.

Days later John Wesley testified at a meeting in Aldersgate St London that "my heart was strengely warmed and I knew in my soul that He had borne away my sins, even mine."

From that day forward Wesley became with his brother Charles, who had already come into this faith, an announcer of the new birth and their message spread throughout the length and breadth of these British Isles in times when the church was at a lower ebb than she is today, and there was all kind of evil and oppression in the land.

May God bless you this day and grant to you the peace and joy that come with believing in His Son Jesus Christ.