At Esther Press, we empower and equip women to courageously stand strong in the truth of who God made them to be. Let us do that for you today by sharing the story of Susanna Wesley.
“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” —Henry Ward Beecher
When we hear the names Charles and John Wesley, what comes to mind? For many, it’s likely the Methodist denomination shaped by John and influenced by Charles through his hymns, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” “And Can It Be?” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” However, the lasting legacy these men left on the world is rooted in the life and influence of the woman who raised them.
The Dissenter’s Daughter
Susanna Annesley was born on January 20, 1669, in Spitalfields, London. Her father was a clergyman whose Presbyterian views led him to dissent from the Church of England. Reverend Annesley was unique for his time in many ways. He believed in educating all of his children equally, including the girls. Susanna and her sisters were given freedom to read any of their father’s books, and they were exposed to many great Puritan thinkers and writers.
At barely thirteen, Susanna declared to her father that she wanted to join the Church of England. She and her siblings had been taught to question things and form their own opinions, and her father honored her wish. Around the same time, she met the man who would later become her husband, Samuel Wesley.
Susanna and Samuel were married when she was nineteen and he was twenty-six. Samuel was an Anglican priest who spent most of his years in ministry at Epworth in Lincolnshire, England.
The Mother of Methodism
The Wesleys had nineteen children, but only ten survived infancy. Their life together was not always a harmonious one. Once, in a marital dispute over England’s rightful king, Samuel left home for almost a year. “You and I must part,” he told her, “for if we have two kings, we have two beds.” After the king’s death the two were reconciled, and in 1703 their son John was born.
While Samuel was away for several months at the Convocation of the Church of England in London, he arranged for an assistant to fill his place in the church. But the man’s preaching left much to be desired. Making her children’s spiritual health a top priority, Susanna began leading a service in their kitchen. She led the family in singing psalms, and she read a sermon from her husband’s or father’s collections. Before long, servants and neighbors joined in the family’s service. The assistant wrote to Samuel complaining about the meetings, and Samuel suggested Susanna stop. But she pushed back with a reminder that if Samuel commanded her to stop, he would answer for it at the final judgment.
Although the kitchen services stopped when Samuel returned to Epworth, the services left a lasting impression on the children. The fingerprints of these meetings were all over John’s Methodist gatherings, which were not held in formal church services and which were often led by laypeople, including women. Susanna’s disciplined ways of raising and teaching her children are largely thought to have influenced John’s development of Methodism.
Faithful in Little, Faithful in Much
Later in her life, Susanna responded to John’s claim about a moment of personal assurance of salvation with a degree of reproof. But in 1739 her reservations about this type of assurance were put to rest when she experienced her own moment. While she was receiving communion, her son-in-law said the words, “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee.” She wrote that “the words struck through my heart, and I knew God for Christ’s sake had forgiven me all my sins.”
Susanna died only three years later. John wrote that her final request was that as soon as she passed, her children gathered around her would “sing a psalm of praise to God.” Without Susanna’s faithfulness in raising her children in God’s Word, her sons could not have known Him and served Him. Her impact goes beyond her own home and time and reaches into many lives across history, all by the grace of the God she loved.
How does Susanna Wesley’s legacy inspire you to live faithfully where God has placed you? How can you influence those around you to know and love Jesus more?
Prayer: Lord, help me to see those around me who need to know You better, whether they live in my own home or elsewhere. Help me to be faithful to point the next generation to You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
