Southern Snow and John Wesley

 After the Fourth Day -- All the white is ice and what looks like clearing is clear ice.

We are on our fifth day of dealing with a winter storm. Northerners make fun of us southerners because we seem to make a big deal over nothing.  Well, this one has been tough on a lot of folks.  We received about 4 or 5 inches of snow which in itself will shut things down for a day or so.  But after it snowed, we received freezing rain which turned all that beautiful white stuff into ICE.  With temperatures never going above 34 degrees and returning to the low twenties and teens at night, anything which melted refroze into sheets of slick ice.  Every morning the roads have seen endless spin-outs and wrecks.  Finally, today, the fifth day, most major arteries are clear.  But even now, many of the side-roads and driveways are sheets of ice.  Since this only happens every fifteen years or so, most people have no clue how to deal with it.  Needless to say, it has been an adventure for many in the south!!!

I have been reading "The Best of John Wesley -- How to Pray."  Here are several quotes from the famous Anglican priest whose followers started the Methodist Church.

The chief of these means (works of piety) are prayer, whether in secret or with the great congregation; searching the Scriptures (which implies reading, hearing, and meditating thereon); and receiving the Lord's Supper, eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Him:  And these we believe to be ordained of God, as the ordinary channels of conveying His grace to the souls of men.


O praise God for all you have and trust Him for all you want!


God grant that I may never live to be useless!


Lord, I am no longer my own, but Yours.  Put me to what You will, rank me with whom You will.  Let me be employed by You or laid aside by You, exalted for You, or brought low by You.  Le me have all things, let me have nothing.  I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal.  And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine and I am Yours. So be it. Amen.


On every occasion of uneasiness, we should retire to prayer, that we may give place to the grace and light of God and then form our resolutions, without being in any pain about what success they may have.


God's  command to "pray without ceasing" is founded on the necessity we have of His grace to preserve the life of God in the soul, which can no more subsist one moment without it, than the body without air.


Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees.  Have you any days of fasting and prayer?  Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.


Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.