Susanna Wesley

For one thing, especially in the church, we create heroes out of clay pots, and we're all clay pots, aren't we?

We assume also that if we do everything we see somebody else doing, that our lives will be as satisfied and fulfilling as we assume their lives are. Maybe if I use these 16 rules of conduct, I make sure my kids are structured and they're in bed by 8 p.m. and I have devotions under my apron. All my children will become participants in the coming awakening. John and Charles Wesley, preachers during the Great Awakening, were raised by a godly mother named Susanna. As Stephen Davy continues his series looking at the biographies of some Christian heroes who have gone before us, we come today to the biography of Susanna Wesley. We don't study her life so that we can learn to be just like her and potentially have children like hers. We study her life so that we can be encouraged to be more like Jesus.

This is wisdom for the heart, and today Stephen continues through his series entitled Legacies of Light. Susanna Wesley considered her home to be a mission field, and we'll learn about that next. If you dig back into church history 300 years or so ago, you find one particular woman worth getting to know. She attempted to live up to this responsibility of Proverbs chapter 1 verses 8 and 9, a responsibility to teach and instruct and counsel her children with biblical truth. Her name was Susanna Wesley. She was born into a pastor's family in the late 1600s. Now to give you sort of a setting of the stage so that we can better understand her and appreciate her, the 17th and the 18th centuries were among the worst years in England's history.

If you think our generation is morally bankrupt, just go back in time to these years. One author wrote that England had degenerated into a moral cesspool. Thomas Carlyle, the 19th century philosopher, and by the way an unbeliever, wrote that England had a stomach that was well alive but its soul was dead.

Lawyer William Blackstone visited the church of every major clergyman in London during this same period of time and later wrote that in most sermons, he wrote, it was impossible to tell whether the preacher was a follower of Cicero, Mohammed, or Jesus Christ. Gambling was so extensive that another historian called England one vast casino. Newborns were left exposed to die in the streets, just as in late Roman days.

Tickets to public executions were sold like theater tickets. The slave trade further calloused the nation's conscience. The same author wrote, historians now recognize that the nation of England changed course in the 18th century largely through the Great Awakening and the ministries of George Whitfield and John Wesley, among others, including his brother Charles. Most people know of these founders of Methodism, John and Charles Wesley. Rather few know much about the woman who served as their early teacher and mentor, this woman named Susanna. By the way, and I think you'll appreciate her as we go along, she would not have been surprised at all when two of her sons would become the catalyst for a Great Awakening. She kind of expected that, I think. Two men whom God would use to literally reshape England spiritually, intellectually, morally, and for years to come.

Let me back up to the beginning. Susanna was born in the home of a London pastor and his wife. She was the youngest of 25 children.

25, you heard that right. Since this was before TV shows featured large families and these families had no royalties then to live off of, they suffered poverty as you could imagine. Susanna's father passed down to his youngest daughter.

They seemed to be fairly close. His own passionate personality was passionate for justice and the holiness of God and he kind of gave her, I think, his backbone of steel. In fact, on one occasion, Susanna's father, which I found myself kind of digging into his life, I had to stop because I really wasn't pursuing his story, but on one occasion, Susanna's father was invited to preach to Parliament and he chose as his text, Job 27.5, which reads, far be it from me that I should declare any of you right.

What a text, huh? I don't think he'd do well in Washington either, by the way, and he was never invited back. Surprise, surprise. During his father's ministry, the church grew tremendously and he was involved in a seminary and young seminarians would often visit with him, sometimes in his home. On one occasion, a young man named Samuel, the young seminarian, came for a visit. Susanna was 13 at the time and he was 19. Now, this is the part you might not want your daughters to hear, okay? But they immediately had an attraction for each other and a few years later, they married.

Their first child would be born a year later. Now, although Samuel was an Oxford scholar, this young man she married, he was placed by the Church of England in a small country parish 150 miles away from London, population 206. Their parsonage was literally a mud hut with no glass in the windows, just wooden shutters.

In fact, one author said that the house was perched on a rutted mud road surrounded by little farmsteads with scraggly pastures. To make matters worse, Samuel wasn't well-liked and it wasn't long before the parishioners responded with hostility. These were difficult days. In fact, one of the forgotten aspects of ministry during these terrible days of spiritual darkness was the price paid by those who preached the gospel and they would be among them. In fact, in my research, I catalogued these following abuses by people living around them, people in their parish, even attending church with them.

Several, I'll just string together. They demonstrated their displeasure by mocking the children. On a couple of occasions, they burned the family crops. They damaged the parsonage, burning it to the ground on one occasion.

They slit the udder of the family cow so she couldn't give milk and they even killed the family dog. On one occasion, when Samuel's political views defended the king, villagers gathered around that parsonage one night, not knowing, by the way, that Samuel was away on church business and Susanna and her children were there alone, but they shouted through the entire night, beating on drums and firing their weapons. Susanna, at that moment, was just recovering from delivering her 16th child and the baby's nurse was so exhausted after that night of commotion and childbirth that she lapsed into a deep sleep, pulling over on the baby and crippling it for life.

A few years later, in 1709, villagers torched the Wesleys' home in the middle of the night. They all scrambled out to safety, including Susanna, who at that time was expecting her 21st child. When they got outside, they did a head count and found they were missing one of their children, six-year-old Jackie. That was his nickname. His real name was John. He had awakened later but was unable to go down the stairs because of the fire, so he stood on a chest by the open window and was spotted by a neighbor down below and one neighbor picked up another neighbor on top of his shoulders and reached up and grabbed little John or little Jackie and literally snatched him moments before the roof fell in. John would later go on in his ministry and take as his life motto, testifying that he was a, quote, brand snatched from the burning. He met it both physically and spiritually.

That didn't end their troubles. One parishioner demanded immediate payment of a debt that Samuel was unable to pay and he had his pastor thrown into debtor's prison. Now, after that little list, you might wonder if God should call you into something a little more safe. Frankly, we have no idea today of what it meant to preach the truth as it relates to the current issues of the day. In fact, if you do a little study on that brand plucked from the burning, John Wesley's ministry, his chapel pulpit in London was designed so that it was entered down from the balcony. It could not be accessed from the floor and that was to protect John. On one occasion, he preached on the evil of slavery and the congregation rioted, breaking apart the pews and he was able to escape up into the balcony into offices that I've had the opportunity to tour there in that balcony area.

I've stood in his pulpit and marveled at his courage. He was well prepared, by the way, by watching his own parents suffer greatly. None of their ministry challenges would compare to the pain of losing so many of their children. In their first seven years of marriage, Susanna would deliver seven children. Three would die, which included a set of twins. They would end up having 21 children, but only nine of them would survive childhood.

Imagine burying 11 of your children, including two sets of twins. It would be these surviving children that mattered most to Susanna. She literally dedicated her life to them, to live out Proverbs chapter 1 verse 8 and 9, to teach and to counsel their minds and hearts, to wrap around their hearts truth, like you'd wrap a scarf around your neck to keep warm. You can imagine with all the activity and challenges of this household that Susanna hardly had any time alone. One biographer wrote that she struggled to find a secret place to get away and she finally gave up, telling her children that whenever they came in and saw her with her apron over her head she was in prayer and could not be disturbed.

Imagine, the only way you can get alone is to pull your apron over your head and there's your quiet time. Still she found time not only for herself and her children, but as they aged she actually began to give each child attention individually. In fact, after her oldest moved away, she decided to intensify her personal counsel with her remaining eight children. And so she devised a plan to spend one hour a week with each child in conversation. We have her schedule. On Monday it was Molly. On Tuesday it was Hetty. Wednesday was for Nancy. Thursday held an hour for Jackie. Friday was Patty's day.

Saturday was little Charles day. And Sunday, two hours devoted individually to Amelia and Susanna, nicknamed Suki, dedicated to providing the counsel of biblical truth. Like other biographies in our study in this series, it's kind of tempting to put a period here and leave well enough alone. In fact, most of what I knew about Susanna and Samuel Wesley ended with what I've just delivered to you.

Other factors are worth noting. In fact, in order to have a realistic perspective on the home, on raising children, on ministry, leaving certain realities hidden behind closed doors and appearing as if they didn't exist, I think does a lot of damage. For one thing, especially in the church, we create heroes out of clay pots, and we're all clay pots, aren't we? We assume also that if we do everything we see somebody else doing, at least that which we visibly see, that our lives will be as satisfied and fulfilling as we assume their lives are. Maybe if I use these 16 rules of conduct, I make sure my kids are structured and they're in bed by 8 p.m. and I have devotions under my apron, maybe I'll have the kind of home Charles and Susanna had, and all my children will become participants in the coming great awakening. We could be left to believe that.

That only works if you don't know much about their home or anyone else's home, for that matter. The truth is Samuel and Susanna struggled their entire marriage with inflexible personalities and stubborn wills. In fact, on one occasion, Samuel prayed at the dinner table for the king, and at the end of the prayer, everyone said, amen, except Susanna. He demanded to know why, and she simply told him that King William of Orange was not the rightful king, but King James II was the one who should be on the throne, and she would not say amen. Samuel stood to his feet in front of the children and demanded she repent and say amen.

She refused. He then said, well, we must part ways, for if there are two kings, then we shall have two beds. And he left the house in a fury. A couple of months later, he returned to see if she changed her mind, and she hadn't, after which he told her that he would leave her and never see her or the children again.

It wasn't the first time he had left in a rage, and it wouldn't be the last. On his way out of town, on that particular incident, by the way, Samuel met another clergyman who persuaded him to persist in his marriage vows, regardless of his wife's political views. So he relented, and on his way back to the house, Samuel discovered that the parsonage was on fire, more than likely by villagers once again. So he stayed, rebuilt the parsonage, reconciling with Susanna.

They agreed to disagree about which king should be on the throne, and their 15th child, John Wesley, was born a year later. Other issues plagued their home. Samuel was not only a poor manager of money, he evidently didn't really care to repay his debts, as he should.

He would go to jail twice for failing to pay his bills, and it would be the mercy of others to bail him out. He had several failed attempts to make money beyond his ministry and, frankly, beyond his abilities. For instance, he was convinced that what the church really needed was an exhaustive commentary on the Book of Job in Latin, which the average person couldn't read. One biographer wrote that Samuel used most of their meager funds for this publication, which then never sold. He then tried publishing poetry, but it was an embarrassment and a joke, and he seemed oblivious to it all.

Perhaps you've seen that in others, that lack of self-objectivity, where someone is convinced that they are good at something, and everybody just kind of bites their lip around them, not willing to tell them the truth. This was the case here. As a result, the Wesley's lived on the edge of destitution. They lived in perpetual debt, owing to Samuel's stubbornness.

In fact, his debts would never be repaid fully until after he died and John, his son, paid them off. Whatever consistency in the home was due primarily to Susanna's efforts, but trying to raise them alone presented its own challenges. While the world knows a lot about two of her 21 children, the truth is she would be challenged and heartbroken over and over again with children who chose not to walk with Christ, even after all of her efforts. And this is worth saying as well, because I fear especially in the church, even to this day, there's the belief that if you do A, B, and C, out comes a spiritually minded child.

Ladies and gentlemen, we can provide the truth. God's Spirit alone produces a spiritually minded child. Let me give you some illustrations, as unfortunate as they are. Their daughter Susanna, the one nicknamed Suki, chose to marry an unbeliever who ended up physically abusing her. She nearly died in childbirth and finally, suffering from her husband's cruelty, fled with her children to London, refused to ever reconcile again. Their daughter Amelia also fell in love with an unbeliever, but ended the relationship after her brothers persuaded her, counseled her.

Again, the absent person here is Samuel, the father in his counsel. But her brothers counseled her and she listened. Unfortunately, at the age of 44, Amelia was so concerned that she would never marry, that she married too quickly a man without proof of his character. He soon took her life savings and left her with his debts and their dying baby. Another daughter, they nicknamed Hetty, ran off with a lawyer who promised her a future home and marriage. A few months later, he changed his mind and she returned home pregnant and disgraced. Unfortunately, her father Samuel disowned her and then foolishly demanded that she marry a local plumber to rescue her reputation. She agreed and then endured an unhappy marriage.

Only after Samuel's death did she and her mother Susanna reconcile and they enjoyed a rich, affectionate relationship. Finally, their daughter Martha also married a man without genuine spiritual interests. He was often unfaithful to her. On two occasions, he brought home illegitimate children, fathered by himself, whom she chose to raise as if they were her own.

Her husband eventually left her for another woman and then died overseas. Little wonder that Samuel's repeated abandonment of his family, his unwillingness to manage his household well, his stubborn arrogance that demanded applause for his minor achievements, all the while overlooking the needs of his wife and daughters, as you can imagine, brought great difficulty and pain into Susanna's life and a void into the lives of his daughters. In fact, Susanna once wrote out a prayer while in the crucible of pain that sheds some light on her commitment to the sovereign purposes of God. She prayed, and I quote, all my sufferings by the admirable management of omnipotent goodness have concurred to promote my spiritual and eternal good.

Glory be to thee, O Lord. Susanna Wesley never preached a sermon, she never published a book, she never planted a church, but she became known as the mother of Methodism. And that's because while several of her children abandoned the faith she so persistently believed and taught, two of her children, John and Charles, would embrace it and would impact their world.

Charles would write more than 9,000 hymn. John would preach to over a million people as the Methodist movement took England by storm, a movement named after methodical, systematic methods, how they got their name, methods, systems, structured patterns, by the way that ironically mirrored the structured upbringing under the tutelage and council of John and Charles' mother to study all of its own. Unlike her husband, Susanna said late in life, and I quote, I am content to fill a little space if God be glorified. When his father Samuel died, John Wesley moved his mother into their ministry headquarters that included a church, a school, a clinic, a headquarters where a host of people and itinerant preachers lived as this movement grew, and she kind of became a mother to them all. She passed away on July 23, 1742, and most of her adult children gathered in those final days. Her last command to her children was recorded as this, children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.

Her son John bought the land where she was buried, he built another home nearby where he would live, and he positioned his desk near a window facing that cemetery. It was sort of a way of being reminded of the verse that his mother had obviously attempted to live out, not perfectly, but passionately. Hear my son, your father's instruction, and do not forsake your mother's teaching. Indeed, they are a graceful wreath to your head and ornaments around your neck. They will guide you and guard you. They will be like a beacon to your path throughout your life.

That's good wisdom for your heart today. I hope this time in God's Word has blessed and encouraged you today. Stephen Davey is working his way through a series entitled Legacies of Light. He's examining the lives of some Christian heroes who provide a Godly example to us today. If you haven't already, I invite you to take advantage of a gift that we offer to all first-time callers. In addition to equipping you with these daily Bible lessons, we have a magazine. Each issue includes articles to help you explore various topics related to the Christian life. We want to encourage you to grow and mature as a child of God. This month, the focus of the magazine is Bible study. It explores the importance of God's Word and shows how Christians can approach and study the Scriptures. The magazine also has a daily devotional guide.

Stephen's son, Seth, writes a devotional for each weekday and one for the weekend. The magazine is called Heart to Heart. We always send Heart to Heart magazine to our wisdom partners, but we'd be happy to send you the next three issues. That's our gift to all first-time callers. Your number is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-482-4253. If you prefer, you can introduce yourself to us online instead of over the phone. If you go to our website, wisdomonline.org, you'll see a link near the top that says Magazine. Click there and follow the instructions. Once again, that's wisdomonline.org. Call or sign up online today. Well, thanks again for joining us. We're so glad you were with us. Be sure and come back next time for more wisdom for the hearts.