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Introduction

Our Advent journey requires a road map, one that will orient us in the right direction and chart our progress. For this Advent, we turn to one of the most important sermons that John Wesley every preached.

It was on July 25, 1741, that John Wesley preached a sermon to his fellow Oxford University colleagues called “The Almost Christian,” in which he described a person who, on the surface, had all the outward appearance of godliness. This person did all the basic things right: practiced decency toward others, went to church, abstained from bad behavior, and sincerely tried to do his or her best. But Wesley would say that as commendable as that person might be (and wouldn’t it be great if everyone were at least that good!), such a person would only be almost a Christian.

Instead, Wesley called followers of Jesus to live an “altogether” life, one that, first of all, fully loves God: “Such a love is this,” he writes, “as engrosses the whole heart, as rakes up all the affections, as fills the entire capacity of the soul and employs the utmost extent of all its faculties.”¹ Second, he calls us to fully love others, including and especially those who have wronged us, and those whom we have wronged. Third, he calls us to have a full trust and confidence in God, so that the faith is not just an exercise in intellectual conviction, but a holistic offering of mind, body, and spirit. An “altogether” Christian is one who unreservedly and wholeheartedly trusts God and puts that trust into action.

To help his hearers and readers get from that almost faith to one that altogether loves God, Wesley’s sermon is filled with dozens of questions. Each one explores a different aspect of a life that is fully committed to Jesus Christ, ranging from belief (“Do I believe that Jesus has taken away my sins and cast them as a stone into the depth of the sea?”) to practice (“Do I seriously follow God’s commandments whenever I can?”) to our relationships with others (“Do I love others as Christ loved me?”)

Even though “The Almost Christian” was never intended to be an Advent or Christmas sermon, its questions can still guide us in our Advent journey, especially in preparing us to receive Christ more fully in our hearts and lives. For the next thirty-one days, beginning on December 1, we invite you to explore each question in depth, interspersed with meditations on some popular Christmas carols. And we will conclude on December 31 with a reminder of the Wesley Covenant Prayer to prepare you for the new year.

Read each entry, pray through the questions that Wesley asks, and consider how God is leading you to make steady movement from an almost faith to an altogether one, as we welcome a fresh arrival of Jesus into our lives.

Magrey R. deVega

1John Wesley, Sermon 2 “The Almost Christian,” accessed July 21, 2019, http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-2-the-almost-christian/.