Susanna Wesley was called the "Mother of Methodism" - not because she founded the movement, but because she raised the two men who did: John and Charles Wesley. Of her nineteen children, ten survived to adulthood, and she educated them all herself with remarkable discipline and devotion.
Years of Spiritual Struggle
Yet for most of her life, Susanna struggled with assurance of her own salvation. Though deeply religious, accustomed to spending hours in prayer and Bible study, she often relied more on her own spiritual effort than on simple faith. Her sons, after their own evangelical conversions in 1738, recognized that their mother's faith lacked the warmth they had discovered.
Finding Assurance of Salvation
Then, around 1740, two years before her death, something changed. Her sons spoke of this experience as ending her "long legal night" - the years of trying to earn God's favor through discipline and duty.
Transformation Through Simple Faith
The transformation was quiet but profound. The elderly widow, who had spent decades in reserved Anglican ceremony, found she could now embrace the outdoor preaching, the spontaneous prayers, the passionate testimony of the Methodist movement her sons had begun.
In one of her final letters, Susanna wrote her spiritual counsel to her daughter: "Only give me leave to add one request, which is, that you would commit your soul, in trust, to Jesus Christ, as God incarnate, in a full belief that he is able and willing to save you. Do this constantly, and I am sure he will never suffer you to perish."
A Peaceful Death with Certainty
Susanna Wesley died on July 23, 1742. Her son John recorded that she died "without any doubt, without any fear, in a manner which became the mother of such children." Her testimony reminds us that even those who have faithfully served God for a lifetime may still need to discover the simplicity of trusting wholly in Christ.
