He Who Sits By the Furnace

One of the things I look forward to in Wisdom For the Week is to introduce you to some of my heroes. It is a good thing to have spiritual heroes – people whose words and lives draw us upward and onward in the adventure of faith. A spiritual hero is someone you get to know through reading what they wrote, and learning about how they lived out their lives. We should know enough about our spiritual heroes to know their failings and weaknesses. A true spiritual hero doesn’t intimidate us, he or she is a life example of a big God working in and through ordinary people.

My greatest spiritual hero is John Newton, writer of the hymn “Amazing Grace”. If you’ve seen the move “Amazing Grace” about William Wilberforce, Newton is portrayed as an almost monk-like spiritual mentor to Wilberforce. Although he did play a significant role in Wilberforce’s life, and in the abolition of the slave trade, Newton wasn’t a monk. During the time of the movie he was the most prominent pastor in London – a man of international reputation. He was also a very warm and insightful pastor. He was equally adept at ministering to the poor as the powerful. And he had a real sense of humor about his life. But most of all, you see a man who in his life and labors loved the Savior. He had done some of the worst things imaginable, but had seen the mercy of God in a way that marked his life. When I read his letters, I see a man who glories in Christ and wants nothing more than to impart a passion for the Lord to every person in every condition of life. Here is a quote from a letter to a distressed woman in his congregation. If you are experiencing trial or pressure this week, read slowly through these words and let them bathe you in grace.

“In a way inconceivable to us, but consistent with His supreme dignity and perfection of happiness and glory, (Our Great High Priest) still feels for His people….With the eye, and the ear, and the heart of a friend, He attends to their sorrows; He counts their sighs; puts their tears in His bottle; and when our spirits are overwhelmed within us, He knows our path, and adjusts the time, the measure of our trials, and everything that is necessary for our present support and seasonable deliverance, with the same unerring wisdom and accuracy as He weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance, and meted out the heavens with a span…He will put his silver into the fire to purify it; but He sits by the furnace as a refiner, to direct the process and to secure the end He has in view, that we may neither suffer too much or suffer in vain.

(Taken from “The Sympathy of Christ”, dated November 29, 1776, from the collection of letters The Voice of the Heart, p. 127)