Spiritual Life of a Pastor

John Wesley has a moving reflection of where he was with God, at least in a sliver of a moment in time, caught in a letter written to his brother Charles. The selection is profound in its honesty and sense of feeling of God.  Can you relate to Wesley’s double-mindedness as a pastor?

In one of my last I was saying that I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery), I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore I am only an honest heathen . . . And yet, to be so employed of God! and so hedged in that I can neither get forward nor backward! Surely there was never such an instance before, from the beginning of the world! If I ever have had that faith, it would not be so strange. But I never had any other evidence of the eternal or invisible world than I have now; and that is none at all, unless such as faintly shines form reason’s glimmering ray. I have no direct witness (I do not say, that I am a child of God, but) of anything invisible or eternal. And yet I dare not preach otherwise than I do, either concerning faith, or love, or justification, or perfection. And yet I find rather an increase than a decrease of zeal for the whole work of God and every part of it. I am borne along, I know not how, that I can’t stand still. I want all the world to come to what I do not know (excerpt from Tomkins’s biography).