I have been recently asked if I could answer the 19 questions that John Wesley had his bishops ask those wanting to enter the ministry. I believed I could so in taking on that challenge I am going to post my answers. They probably won't be perfect or how you might answer them but they will be mine. Perhaps you might ask yourself how you might answer them.
John Wesley’s Questions
Responses by Charles Wesley Areson
4. Are you earnestly striving after
perfection in love?
When I
consider striving toward perfection in love, I don’t think of my struggles to
break bad habits or even to study the word of God as important as those may be,
I think of loving as God would love. This for me involves living a life of
forgiveness and seeing everyone as God does.
I have
written on forgiveness in Impossible to
Forgive: What God Can Do When You Can’t. I do not wish to go into those
struggles here but to say that for me if I am not willing to forgive everyone
for even the least offense then I am putting myself in a place where my ability
to love will be challenged. Truly you can’t fully love those you are unwilling
to forgive. This isn’t even considering the dangers of cutting myself off from God
(Matthew 6:5-15).
Secondly, I
strive to remind myself that God loves everyone and wants to see everyone redeemed.
Red and yellow, black and white, conservative or liberal, Christian, heathen or
atheist… God loves them all even if they aren’t little children. God so loved
us that while we were, yet sinners Christ died (Romans 5:8). If I love only
those that love me, I’m no better than the world (Luke 6:32). This isn’t always
easy but remembering scripture and praying for those I disagree with as Jesus
commanded (Matthew 5:43-48) helps me live out this love.
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