History
John Wesley was already an ordained priest, a missionary, and a man of severe discipline when he went unwillingly to a meeting on…
Conversion · Faith · Grace
Wesley · Romans 5 · Romans 8
History
The vow in the thunderstorm
Martin Luther, July 1505, near Stotternheim
In July 1505, a law student named Martin Luther was caught in a violent storm near Stotternheim. Terrified, he cried out to St. Anne and vowed to become a monk. Within weeks he entered the Augustinian house at Erfurt. The Reformation did not begin in that field. It began years later, in a conscience that could not find peace by the vow he had made. The storm is not a cute origin story. It is a man trying to bargain with God — and God, eventually, answering with a gospel Luther was not looking for.
How you’d preach it
Use for callings that begin in fear, or for people who think their first religious bargain was the same thing as faith. God can use a terrified vow without endorsing the theology inside it.
- Calling
- Fear
- Grace
Luther · Romans 1
Romans 1:16–17