Each of us would acknowledge there are times when for no clear reason we suddenly feel ourselves to be in the presence of God. It may happen at a favorite mountain or coastal setting, in a worship service or anywhere the spirit is free to communicate with God. It is a memorable experience that we can recount in great detail years later.
    At various times throughout his life, Wesley would have intense experiences of the presence of God.  The strange warming of his heart at Aldersgate (5-24-38) is the most commonly known of these experiences.  But there were other times as well — some more remarkable than others.
    At an all-night, New Year's Eve love feast with the Fetter Lane Society and a few Oxford colleagues (12-31-38), Wesley expressed “awe and amazement” at the power of God coming mightily upon them at 3 a.m., “insomuch as many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground.”
    On another occasion, while preaching at Sheffield [6-17-42], Wesley had to stop in the middle of his sermon:  “our hearts were so filled with a sense of the love of God, and our mouths with prayer and thanksgiving.” At other times, Wesley would record in his journal ecstatic experiences of God's presence.   
    As 1744 drew to an end, Wesley found himself “unusually lifeless and heavy.” At a love feast on the Sunday evening of Dec. 23, he experienced another nosebleed: “Just as I was constraining myself to speak, I was stopped whether I would [speak] or no. In a few minutes it stayed, and all our hearts and mouths were opened to praise God. Yet the next day (Monday) I was again as a dead man. But in the evening, while I was reading prayers at Snowsfields, I found such light and strength as I never remember to have had before. I saw every thought (as well as action or word) just as it was rising in my heart, and whether it was right before God or tainted with pride or selfishness. I never knew before (I mean not as at this time) what it was to be 'still before God.’”
    On Tuesday, Christmas Day: “I waked by the grace of God, in the same spirit, and about eight, being with two or three that believed in Jesus, I felt such an awe and tender sense of the presence of God as greatly confirmed me therein. So that God was before me all the day long; I sought and found him in every place, and could truly say when I lay down at night, ‘I have lived a day.’”
    We never know when or where God will reach out and touch us.