As part of God’s creation, we are all spiritual beings who,
during the course of our lives, are naturally drawn to the fundamental
questions of ‘why are we here’ and ‘is there a God?’ This ‘God shaped hole’ can
be filled by many different things; all of which are ultimately falsehoods
unless they recognise that Christ comes from God and that we have the ‘Spirit
of truth’ in us.
John Wesley, the leader of the Methodist movement in the 18th
century, wrote that he once conversed with a man who said to him, "Sir,
you wish to serve God and go to heaven? Remember you cannot serve him alone;
you must therefore find companions or make them; the Bible knows nothing of
solitary religion."
The passage tells us that ‘we love because He first loved us’
and, as Wesley understood, anyone who loves God must also love their brother
and sister. He, therefore, created organisational structures for the movement
which enabled people to be ‘united in order to pray together, to receive the
word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help
each other to work out their salvation.’
He wrote later that ‘many now happily experienced that
Christian fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. They
began to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ and ‘naturally to care for each other.’
The movement sought to be a practical outworking of the words, ‘Anyone who
loves God must also love their brother and sister.’
(member of Christ Church