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Just yesterday, on February 23rd, the new film entitled Amazing Grace was released. It is the dramatic story of how God used a man named William Wilberforce to advance his kingdom in British Parliament and society. Having studied a bit of Wilberforce in grad-school, I can hardly wait to see the film.

William Wilberforce, wealthy and eloquent rising star of the British Parliament, paced nervously around a square near John Newton’s home before knocking at the door. The politician had recently become a Christian and was unsure whether he should retire from public life. Wilberforce sent a sealed letter to Newton asking to see him and requested that he not tell anyone of their planned rendezvous. When he finally plucked up the courage in December 1785 to see the pastor/hymn-writer, he did so with “ten thousand doubts,” and with great secrecy and subterfuge.1

Just a month earlier, Wilberforce wrote to tell a friend of “the great change” in his life. He expressed the fear that their friendship would be lost and mentioned his intention to withdraw from public life to better serve God. His friend’s reply was gracious, but challenging:

“If a Christian may act in the several relations of life, must he seclude himself from all to become so? Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple, and lead not to meditation only but to action.”2

Wilberforce was still undecided, so he went to see Newton, whose preaching he had heard as a boy when staying with his relatives. Newton declared that he had never given up hope about God’s work in Wilberforce since the time he met him as a boy, and counseled him not to withdraw from public life: “The Lord has raised you up for the good of his church and for the good of the nation.”3 His words were not in vain. Within months, Wilberforce’s thinking was clear: “My walk” he wrote in his diary “is a public one; my business is in the world; and I must mix in assemblies of men, or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.”4 A sense of Christian responsibility took hold: “A man who acts from the principles I profess reflects that he is to give an account of his political conduct at the judgment seat of Christ.”5

Sometimes we may despair of accomplishment in ministry, thinking our words are scarcely adequate to meet the resistance of the day. We fail to see the great potential and blessed susceptibility of our hearers. Many of the people whom we serve stand at the crossroads of life, and a simple word of encouragement and admonition can have exponential effect. We never know how profoundly God may use our words in the advance of his kingdom.

Footnotes:

1 Quoted in Wilberforce’s letter to Newton, cited in Kevin Belmonte, Hero for Humanity (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002), 85.
2 Belmonte, 88.
3 Garth Lean, God’s Politician: William Wilberforce’s Struggle (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), 35.
4 Belmonte, 96.
5 Hancock, 15.

On what do we set our affections? A simple drive to work each morning presents a multitude of options: houses, cars, certain kinds of relationships. None of these objects are bad in and of them self. However, there is a proper way for the Christian to view them, as Bonhoeffer explains.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945), a Protestant pastor, was one of Germany’s leading scholars of the twentieth century. He courageously returned from Union Seminary in New York to oppose Adolf Hitler. His great desire was for Christians to follow Christ whatever the cost. It was a cost he knew only too well: he was arrested, imprisoned, and executed (just days before the end of the Second World War) for his opposition to the Nazi regime. In his most famous work, The Cost of Discipleship (1937), he urged Christians to throw off everything that hindered their wholehearted allegiance to Christ, including the accumulation of wealth.

“Jesus does not forbid the possession of property in itself. He was man, he ate and drank like his disciples, and thereby sanctified the good things of life. These necessities, which are consumed in use and which meet the legitimate requirements of the body, are to be used by the disciple with thankfulness . . . Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected. In the wilderness God gave Israel the manna every day, and they had no need to worry about food and drink. Indeed, if they kept any of the manna over until the next day, it went bad. In the same way, the disciple must receive his portion from God every day. If he stores it up as a permanent possession, he spoils not only the gift but himself as well, for he sets his heart on accumulated wealth, and makes it a barrier between himself and God. Where our treasure is, there is our trust, our security, our consolation and our God. Hoarding is idolatry.1″

Footnotes:

1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1959), 155-156.

It is now over a week since Simeon entered the world. When he is not sipping espresso and casually paging through Calvin’s Institutes, he sleeps quietly in his basinet.

It is interesting to consider the life Simeon had two weeks ago in the womb, compared to his current experience. Some things are common; most aspects of his existence are entirely new. This comparison offers us a tremendous lesson about the life we live in this world as members of Christ’s kingdom. Peter Kreeft elucidates this truth in the following excerpt from his book Love is Stronger than Death:

“Some of the physical habits the fetus learns in the womb are necessary for its survival both in the womb and in the world, such as heartbeat. Others make sense only in the world outside the womb, such as kicking. These are essentially preparatory acts, rehearsals. So in our analogy, some of the spiritual habits or virtues that we learn in this life are necessary to our survival in the world, such as justice and wisdom; but others do not seem to make rational, this-worldly sense: virtues like humility, martyrdom, or the “divine discontent,” the longing for perfection. The specifically Christian virtues taught in the Gospels are absurd to the world, even the wise world. Contrast the ethics of Aristotle with the ethics of the New Testament! Poverty, chastity, and obedience make no sense if this world is all there is. They limit the earthbound me; they repress my desire for this-worldly gratification and pleasure. They seem to be weaknesses, not strengths. Indeed, this is probably the most popular criticism of Christian ethics, both among playboys and practical people, and among psychologists and philosophers like Freud, Sartre, Nietzsche, and Marx. But if this world is a womb, Christian values do make sense as training for the next world. Jesus preaches his ethic as an ethic of the New Kingdom, the “Kingdom of Heaven.” A fetus might wonder what his feet are for, might wonder where in the womb he will find them useful and fulfilling; but the womb gives him no adequate answer. Similarly, the world gives me no adequate answer when I wonder what such things as self-sacrifice or my longing for eternal joy mean (p. 67-68).”