"The Roots of Endurance" in the life of John Newton

I am reading a book right now by John Piper entitled The Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce. The book, in my own words, is a biography about the three men mentioned above, written by Pastor John Piper in order to encourage men and women to see and know and love Jesus, and to encourage the saints to "...not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises" (Hebrews 6:12).

Therefore, in my hope that whoever reads this blog will be encouraged unto Jesus, and that they will be supplied with the grace to say "Because Your love is better than life Lord, my lips will glorify You," I thought it profitable to share what is written in the pages of this book, adding my own thoughts as I pray the Spirit leads me.

"John Newton: The Tough Roots of His Habitual Tenderness" (p.41)

According to this biography, John Newton, the writer of the famous hymn "Amazing Grace," was known to be a man who glorified God with his tenderness (which God undoubtedly supplied him with). John Piper writes about what he believes to be the "roots of John Newton's habitual tenderness" (69). These roots are made of the following:

(1) Realism About the Limits of This Life (70)

• "Few things will tend to make you more tender than to be much in the presence of suffering and death. 'My course of study,' Newton said, 'like that of a surgeon, has principally consisted in walking the hospital.'" (70).

• "In other words, his tender patience and persistence in caring for difficult people came, in part, from a very sober and realistic view of what to expect from this world. Life is hard, and God is good" (70).

• A quote from the works of Newton:

"The day is now breaking: how beautiful its appearance! how welcome the expectation of the approaching sun! It is this thought makes the dawn agreeable, that it is the *presage of a brighter light; otherwise, if we expect no more day than it is this minute, we should rather complain of darkness, than rejoice in the early beauties of the morning. Thus the Life of grace is the dawn of immortality: beautiful beyond expression, if compared with the night and thick darkness which formerly covered us; yet faint, indistinct, and unsatisfying, in comparison of the glory which shall be revealed"(71).(*added)

*presage - "something that foreshadows or portends a future event" or "an intuition or feeling of what is going to happen in the future" (Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary)

(2) All - Pervasive Humility and Gratitude at Having Been Saved (71)

• "Till the day he died, he never ceased to be amazed that, as he said at age seventy-two, 'such a wretch should not only be spared and pardoned, but reserved to the honor of preaching thy Gospel, which he had blasphemed and renounced...this is wonderful indeed! The more thou hast exalted me, the more I ought to abase myself'"(71-72).

• A quote from the works of Newton:

"[The 'wretch' who has been saved by grace] believes and feels his own weakness and unworthiness, and lives upon the grace and pardoning love of his Lord. This gives him an habitual tenderness and gentleness of spirit. Humble under a sense of much forgiveness to himself, he finds it easy to forgive others"(73).

(3) Peaceful Confidence in the Pervasive, Loving Providence of God (73)

• "In order to maintain love and tenderness that thinks more about the other person's need than our own comforts, we must have an unshakable hope that the sadness of our lives will work for our everlasting good"(73).

• Another quote from Newton, describing the follower of Jesus:

"And his faith upholds him under all trials, by assuring him that every dispensation is under the direction of his Lord; that chastisements are a token of his love; that the season, measure, and continuance of his sufferings, are appointed by Infinite Wisdom, and designed to work for his everlasting good; and that grace and strength shall be afforded him, according to his day" (74).

• "He..." (Newton), "...approved of Samuel Rutherford's comment that 'there is no temptation like being without temptation'"(74). Rutherford was a 17th century Scottish minister.

"Amazing grace! - how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

John Newton" (40)

My God grant us to imitate our brother who has gone before us, in order that we may shine brightly the grace that God has shown us through Jesus Christ, and that "others may see our good deeds and praise our Father who is in heaven."