Amazing Grace

“Although we all sing the hymn ‘Amazing Grace,’ it amazes few. Why? Because grace cannot amaze until we feel the judgment we deserve… This grace amazed John Newton [1725-1807]. This is why he wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace.’ Newton became a Christian in his late twenties. Prior to his conversion, he had been a slave trader in West Africa and was a godless, ruthless man.
For example, he kept a black slave as a mistress. When he caught her in a sexual relationship with a black man, he beat the man to death with his shovel only to find out later that he was her husband.
On the long voyages across the Atlantic, he and his mates raped the women being transported to their North American masters. Though many arrived pregnant with his seed, he was hard and indifferent to the fate of these women and their children.
This is why, after his conversion, Newton looked at the cross with amazement. There he saw grace – Christ suffering the agony of God’s wrath in his place, so that God could reward him with eternal life. The grace of God stunned him, and he never got over it.
Our sins may be different from those of John Newton, but God’s grace works the same way for us. When a Christian choral group changed the words in Newton’s hymn from ‘saved a wretch like me’ to ‘saved a person like me’ I knew that grace had sprouted wings and flown away. Grace appears most perfectly in the knowledge of our sin revealed at the cross. Only cross-centered Christians find grace amazing.”

Farley, Outrageous Mercy (Baker)

Flavel

Flavel was ejected from the pulpit in 1662 for nonconformity, but he continued to meet secretly with his parishioners in conventicles. On occasion, he would preach for them in the woods, especially on days of fasting and humiliation. Once he even disguised himself as a woman on horseback in order to reach a secret meeting place where he preached and administered baptism. At another time, when pursued by authorities, he plunged his horse into the sea and managed to escape arrest by swimming through a rocky area to reach Slapton Sands. (Beeke and Pederson)

Lewis on Humility

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

Prayer for Revival

In 1934, Mordecai Ham preached in Charlotte, NC, and a great awakening took place. A farmer was deeply concerned about the meetings, so he invited a group of his Christian friends to come spend a day in prayer at his farm. As they prayed, they felt compelled to ask God to raise up a man from their city to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. Although they didn't see an immediate answer to their prayer, the great awakening had begun. The farmer's teenage son was converted during the crusade, and that boy--whose name is Billy Graham!--has indeed carried the gospel to the ends of the earth. (Leighton Ford)

Bunyan Poem

On Holiness of Life by John Bunyan


Now, then, if holiness thou wouldst obtain,
And wouldst a tender Christian man remain,
Keep faith in action, let that righteousness
That Christ fulfilled always have express
And clear distinction in thy heart, from all
That men by Scripture, or besides, it, call
Inherent gospel holiness, or what
Terms else they please to give it; for 'tis that,
And that alone, by which all graces come
Into the heart; for else there is no room
For ought but pride, presumption, or despair,
No love or other graces can be there.
Received you the Spirit, saith St. Paul,
By hearing, faith, or works? not works, and shall
No ways retain the same, except you do
Hear faith, embrace the same, and stick thereto.

Baxter on Reading

The Puritan Richard Baxter gives the following advice on what to read:

"Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church . . . but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings."
1. As there is a more excellent appearance of the Spirit of God in the holy scripture, than in any other book whatever, so it has more power and fitness to convey the Spirit, and make us spiritual, by imprinting itself upon our hearts. As there is more of God in it, so it will acquaint us more with God, and bring us nearer Him, and make the reader more reverent, serious and divine. Let scripture be first and most in your hearts and hands and other books be used as subservient to it. The endeavours of the devil and papists to keep it from you, doth shew that it is most necessary and desirable to you.
2. The writings of divines are nothing else but a preaching of the gospel to the eye, as the voice preaches it to the ear. Vocal preaching has the pre-eminence in moving the affections, and being diversified according to the state of the congregation which attend it: this way the milk comes warmest from the breast. But books have the advantage in many other respects: you may read an able preacher when you have but a average one to hear. Every congregation cannot hear the most judicious or powerful preachers: but every single person may read the books of the most powerful and judicious; preachers may be silenced or banished, when books may be at hand: books may be kept at a smaller charge than preachers: we may choose books which treat of that, very subject which we desire to hear of; but we cannot choose what subject the preacher shall treat of. Books we may have at hand every day. and hour; when we can have sermons but seldom, and at set times. If sermons be forgotten, they are gone; but a book we may read over and over, till we remember it: and if we forget it, may again peruse it at our pleasure, or at our leisure. So that good books are a very great mercy to the world: the Holy Ghost chose the way of writing, to preserve His doctrine and laws to the 'Church, as knowing how easy and sure a way it is of keeping it safe to all generations, in comparison of mere verbal traditions.
3. You have need of a judicious teacher at hand, to direct you what books to use or to refuse: for among good books there are some very good that are sound and lively; and some good, but mediocre, and weak and somewhat dull; and some are very good in part, but have mixtures of error, or else of incautious, injudicious expressions, fitter to puzzle than edify the weak.

Honesty

One of the requirements to attend Spurgeon's college was a recommendation from the applicant's pastor. Spurgeon tells one story of a pastoral recommendation:

"I had a curious experience with one applicant. His pastor had given him an open letter, warmly commending him to me as a man called to the ministry; but, in another communication, sent to me by post, the minister wrote that the young man was not at all likely ever to become a preacher, and that he had only written the recommendation because the candidate's father was his chief deacon, and he feared to offend him by telling him the truth. I felt that it was quite unjust to put upon me the onus of refusing the young man; so, when he arrived, I gave him the epistle I had received, and left him and his father to settle the matter with their pastor in the best way they could"