John Wesley, the Early Hours, and Redeeming the Time

There is something deeply impressive about the disciplined lives of many of the great servants of God. When we read their journals and biographies, we are often struck not merely by what they accomplished, but by the manner in which they ordered their days. Prayer had its appointed hour. Scripture had its place. Work was undertaken diligently. Time was regarded as a stewardship entrusted to them by God. Few men illustrate this better than John Wesley.

John Wesley was a man of extraordinary industry. His long ministry involved incessant travelling, preaching, correspondence, reading, writing, organising societies, visiting the sick, and attending to innumerable pastoral duties. He preached thousands of sermons and travelled enormous distances, much of it on horseback. Behind this astonishing activity stood a remarkably ordered life.

For much of his adult life, Wesley rose at four o’clock in the morning. This was not merely an occasional burst of enthusiasm. Early rising became part of the settled rhythm of his life. Wesley believed that the morning hours were exceedingly valuable, particularly for prayer, study, and preparation for the day’s labour.

To make such early rising possible, he ordinarily retired at about half-past nine in the evening. This provided him with approximately six and a half hours of sleep. Wesley did not arrive at this amount merely by adopting an arbitrary rule. He paid careful attention to his own constitution. He experimented with his sleeping hours, using an alarm to determine approximately how much sleep he required. His aim was to obtain sufficient rest without spending unnecessary time awake in bed. In an age long before modern sleep laboratories and electronic sleep trackers, Wesley approached the matter with characteristic method and discipline.

His practice reflected one of the governing principles of his life: time belonged to God. He therefore disliked wasting it. As Wesley grew old, however, even his remarkable constitution began to feel the effects of advancing years. There were occasions when he could no longer maintain his customary four o’clock rising and slept considerably later, sometimes until about half-past five. Wesley did not welcome the change. To a man accustomed to rising while much of England was still asleep, it represented an unwelcome reminder that age was finally diminishing his strength. Yet there is an important lesson here. Even John Wesley could not command his body indefinitely. The strongest constitution eventually reminds its owner that he is a creature and not the Creator.

Other Servants of God and the Early Hours

Wesley was by no means alone in placing great value upon the early morning. George Müller of Bristol, famous for his orphanages and his life of prayer, placed considerable importance upon beginning the day with God. Müller came to believe that his first great business each morning was not immediately to begin working for God, but to have his own soul made happy in God through meditation upon the Scriptures and prayer. His precise sleeping pattern was not necessarily identical throughout his long life, but his testimony demonstrates the importance he attached to giving God the first portion of the day.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon presents a somewhat different example. Spurgeon possessed an extraordinary capacity for labour. He preached, wrote, edited, taught, administered numerous institutions, answered correspondence, and produced a vast body of literature. Yet Spurgeon also suffered periods of severe physical illness and depression, and he recognised that the body had limits. His life reminds us that Christian diligence must not be confused with treating physical weakness as though it were a moral failure.

George Whitefield likewise lived at an exhausting pace. His evangelistic ministry carried him repeatedly across Britain and the American colonies. He preached with extraordinary frequency, sometimes several times in a single day, often to immense outdoor congregations. His journals reveal a life in which prayer, preaching, travel, correspondence, and comparatively brief periods of rest followed one another relentlessly. Such a life commands admiration, but it should not automatically become a pattern for everyone.

Then there is Martin Luther. Luther was capable of working exceptionally long hours and sometimes sacrificing sleep when circumstances demanded it. Yet the feature of his life most worthy of imitation was not how little he could sleep, but the priority that he placed upon communion with God. The more demanding his responsibilities became, the greater his perceived need for prayer.

The same principle appears repeatedly in the lives of earnest Christians. Their schedules differed. Their constitutions differed. Some required more sleep than others. What united them was not a particular number of hours spent in bed, but a conviction that their waking hours belonged to God.

Early Rising Is Not Godliness

There is a danger in reading the biographies of remarkable Christians. We can easily turn another man’s personal discipline into a universal Christian command. If Wesley rose at four, we imagine that we ought to rise at four. If another preacher prayed for three hours, we suppose that every faithful Christian must pray for three hours. If some missionary survived upon comparatively little sleep during a particularly demanding season, we may begin to regard exhaustion as evidence of spirituality. Scripture does not teach this. There is certainly biblical warrant for diligence and early prayer. David declared, “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee” (Psalm 63:1). Our Lord Himself sometimes rose very early to pray, “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35).

Yet Scripture also recognises sleep as one of God’s ordinary provisions for human weakness. “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2). Sleep is therefore not wasted time merely because we are unconscious during it. The body requires restoration. We are creatures of dust, and the necessity of sleep is one of the daily reminders of our dependence upon God. Christian discipline means governing the body wisely; it does not mean pretending that we do not possess one.

My Own Struggle With Sleep

This subject is particularly personal to me because I have long found sleep difficult. I generally sleep for about five hours each day, and I have found that I can function remarkably well on comparatively little sleep. Nevertheless, I am under no illusion that this is an ideal pattern. Five hours of sleep is considerably less than is generally recommended for an adult, and chronic sleep deprivation can carry serious consequences for physical and mental health.

I therefore do not recommend my sleeping pattern to anyone else. It is simply the reality with which I presently live. My circumstances also require careful use of the hours available to me. In addition to writing, preaching, and fulfilling other Christian duties, I have a secular occupation in which I work twelve-hour days.

On the days when I am working at my secular employment, there is simply not sufficient time to maintain the same writing schedule that I can keep on my days away from work. I therefore do comparatively little writing on those days.

There is, however, one appointment which I endeavour to preserve. Before leaving for work, I spend about an hour at my desk in personal reading of the Holy Scriptures and prayer. That hour matters greatly to me.

Before the demands of secular employment begin, before the noise and responsibilities of the working day press themselves upon the mind, I desire to sit before an open Bible and seek God in prayer. I cannot always give the entire morning to study, but I can endeavour to give God the first part of it.

My days away from secular employment are very different. When I have several days free from work, I spend the vast majority of that time at my desk. Those hours are devoted principally to prayer, reading, study, and writing. What may appear to another person to be a quiet day at a desk is, to me, a day filled with labour.

Books are opened. Scriptures are searched. Notes accumulate. Pages are written, corrected, discarded, and rewritten. Sermons and studies are considered. Prayer accompanies the work. This is where I am happiest and where I believe much of my useful work is accomplished. Yet I must also remind myself of the very lesson demonstrated by Wesley in his declining years: the body has limits. There is no particular holiness in sleeping five hours.

If anything, knowing that I habitually obtain so little sleep gives me reason to be more careful, not less. A man should not deliberately damage his health and then call the consequences Christian sacrifice. There are occasions when duty requires weariness. Parents know this. Ministers know it. Nurses, carers, soldiers, labourers, and countless others know it. There are seasons when circumstances deprive us of the rest we would ordinarily desire. But unavoidable weariness is one thing; cultivating sleep deprivation as a badge of spirituality is another.

Redeeming the Time

The real lesson from Wesley is therefore larger than his six and a half hours of sleep. It is stewardship. Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:15–16, “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” We are all given twenty-four hours in a day. We do not possess Wesley’s twenty-four hours in addition to our own. We cannot recover yesterday, nor can we borrow an hour from tomorrow. Every morning places another portion of life into our hands, and every evening records how it was spent.

The question is therefore not simply, How little can I sleep? A better question is, How faithfully am I using the hours in which I am awake? A man may sleep eight hours and accomplish far more for God than another man who sleeps five. He may possess greater concentration, better health, greater patience, and clearer judgement precisely because he is properly rested. Conversely, a person may spend ten hours in bed and still squander much of the remaining day.

The issue is not merely duration but stewardship. For some Christians, redeeming the time may mean rising earlier. For others, it may mean going to bed earlier. For many today, the greatest improvement would probably come not from reducing sleep at all, but from reducing the hours surrendered to television, social media, endless scrolling, trivial entertainment, and aimless internet browsing. An hour recovered from distraction is generally better than an hour stolen from necessary sleep.

Give God the Best Hours

There is nevertheless something admirable in the old Christian practice of meeting God before meeting the world. Wesley rising at four o’clock, Müller opening the Scriptures, Luther giving himself to prayer amid immense responsibilities, and our Lord withdrawing into a solitary place before the day’s demands began all point towards a valuable principle.

Give God more than the remnants of the day. We readily make appointments with employers, doctors, customers, friends, and relatives. We arrange our lives so that we arrive at work at the appointed hour. Yet communion with God can easily be relegated to whatever scraps of time remain.

It ought not to be so. Whether we rise at four, six, or eight is secondary. Whether we sleep six hours or eight will depend partly upon constitution, health, age, occupation, and circumstances. No universal Christian sleeping schedule can be constructed from the biographies of great preachers.

But every Christian can ask whether God receives a deliberate portion of his day. John Wesley’s sleeping habits are interesting. His stewardship of time is far more important. The great object is not to discover the smallest quantity of sleep upon which a Christian can survive. It is to discover how the life God has given us may be employed faithfully in His service.

There is a time to labour and a time to rest; a time to speak and a time to be silent; a time to sit over our books and a time to close them. And when the day’s work is finished, there is no shame in sleep. For even the most diligent servant must eventually lay down his pen, close his Bible, extinguish the lamp, and acknowledge by the simple act of sleeping that while he rests, God remains awake.

“I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me.”
Psalm 3:5