Prayer and God's Promises

Enjoy the music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu3o8W5JMuU

As the ending of 2016 was quickly approaching, I was meditating on how to develop a deeper prayer walk in 2017. So I decided to look into finding some short devotional books on prayer and came across one titled "How To Pray" by John Wesley. 
I am not very familiar with old authors, such as John Wesley, but I have heard his name mentioned in several books which I read.

Please allow me to share from that book. This is titled Prayer and God's Promises. Please let me know what you think of this piece. 

"More especially in time of sickness and pain does satan press with all his might. “Does not God say, without holiness no one shall see Him? You know holiness is the full image of God and how far is this out of your reach! You cannot attain it. All these things you have suffered in vain! You are yet in your sins, and you must perish at the end.”

If your eye is not steadily fixed on God who has borne all your sins, satan will again bring you under that fear of death in which you were once subject to bondage. By this means he impairs, if not wholly destroys, your peace as well as joy in the Lord. Now, the peace of god is a precious means of advancing the image of God in us. There is scarcely a greater help to holiness that this – a continual tranquility of spirit, the evenness of a mind fixed upon God and a calm repose in the blood of Jesus.

(repose means “a state of tranquility,” what a powerful old English word, right?).

Without this, it is scarcely possible to grow in grace and in the vital knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So, hold fast the beginning of your confidence steadfast to the end! You shall undoubtedly receive the promise of God, for time and for eternity.

Be anxiously careful for nothing. Only make your requests known without doubt or fear but with thanksgiving to the One who has made these precious promises".

For a little while, you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

                                                            1 Peter 1:6

John Wesley June 1703 – March 1791 was a theologian who, with his brother Charles and fellow cleric George Whitefield, founded Methodism.

Educated at Charterhouse School and Christ Church, Oxford, Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford in 1726 and ordained a priest two years later. 

He led the "Holy Club", a society formed for the purpose of study and the pursuit of a devout Christian life; it had been founded by his brother Charles, and counted George Whitefield among its members. After an unsuccessful ministry of two years at Savannah in the Georgia Colony, Wesley returned to London and joined a religious society led by Moravian Christians. On 24 May 1738 he experienced what has come to be called his evangelical conversion, when he felt his "heart strangely warmed". He subsequently departed from the Moravians, beginning his own ministry.

A key step in the development of Wesley's ministry was, like Whitefield, to travel and preach outdoors. In contrast to Whitefield's Calvinism, Wesley embraced the Arminian doctrines that dominated the Church of England at the time. Moving across Great Britain and Ireland, he helped form and organize small Christian groups that developed intensive and personal accountability, discipleship and religious instruction.

Most importantly, he appointed itinerant, unordained evangelists to travel and preach as he did and to care for these groups of people. Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day, including prison reform and the abolition of slavery.

Although he was not a systematic theologian, Wesley argued for the notion of Christian perfection and against Calvinism—and, in particular, against its doctrine of predestination. He held that, in this life, Christians could achieve a state where the love of God "reigned supreme in their hearts", giving them outward holiness. His evangelicalism, firmly grounded in sacramental theology, maintained that means of grace were the manner by which God sanctifies and transforms the believer, encouraging people to experience Jesus Christ personally.

Throughout his life, Wesley remained within the established Anglican Church, insisting that the Methodist movement lay well within its tradition. In his early ministry, Wesley was barred from preaching in many parish churches and the Methodists were persecuted; he later became widely respected and, by the end of his life, had been described as "the best loved man in England"