The following 6-minute video says a lot about how Christ sanctifies and instructs His followers. His word is seemingly most fully understood when He teaches us via our experiences.
Video highlights:
- The school of the cross teaches one to extract real good out of seeming evil
- The flesh is a dunce in this school
- Grace makes the spirit willing to learn by suffering so that one’s flesh may be mortified
- Such is necessary for conformity to Christ
- If the Lord did not exercise us in affliction, we would be utterly unlike Him
- Jesus was despised, reproached, neglected, betrayed…, lived in poverty, sweated blood because of anguish…
- If we lived a life of abundance and ease, then we would be utterly unlike our Lord
- If we are to be recognizable as His followers, then we must taste his sufferings
- He drank the dregs of the cup of wrath from His Father; and left us a tiny part of His afflictions
- How could we, without suffering, manifest the nature and truth of the Christian graces?
- What place would we have for patience, submission, meekness, forbearance and readiness to forgive if we had nothing to try us?
- A Christian without trials is like a mill without water
- Our difficulties strengthen our graces
- The new man would languish with a long course of ease
- By struggling through trials, our new man is exercised and we are made ready to leave this world – even then there is some cleaving to it
- A picture of this can be seen in Egypt: Israel was under severe bondage and cried out for deliverance, but even then, in the wilderness, they had fond memories of the flesh pots
John Newton – The School Of Suffering
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John Newton – The School Of Suffering
1 John 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
John Henry Newton (July 24, 1725 — December 21, 1807) was an English Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including “Amazing Grace” and “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken.”
John Newton – The School Of Suffering
Newton tells his own story:
“I was born in London the 24th of July, 1725, old style. My parents, though not wealthy, were respectable. My father was many years master of a ship in the Mediterranean trade. In the year 1748 he went Governor of York Fort in Hudson’s Bay, where he died in the year 1750.
“My mother was a dissenter, a pious woman, and a member of the late Dr. Jennings’s church. She was of a weak, consumptive habit, loved retirement, and, as I was her only child, she made it the chief business and pleasure of her life to instruct me, and bring me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have been told, that, from my birth, she had, in her mind, devoted me to the ministry; and that, had she lived till I was of a proper age, I was to have been sent to St Andrew’s in Scotland to be educated. But the Lord had appointed otherwise. My mother died before I was seven years of age.
“I was rather of a sedentary turn, not active and playful, as boys commonly are, but seemed as willing to learn as my mother was to teach me. I had some capacity, and a retentive memory. When I was four years old, I could read, (hard names excepted,) as well as I can now: and could likewise repeat the answers to the questions in the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, with the proofs; and all Dr. Watt’s smaller Catechisms, and his Children’s Hymns.
“When my father returned from sea, after my mother’s death, he married again. My new mother was the daughter of a substantial grazier at Aveley in Essex. She seemed willing to adopt and bring me up; but, after two or three years, she had a son of her own, who engrossed the old man’s notice. My father was a very sensible, and a moral man, as the world rates morality; but neither he, nor my step-mother, was under the impressions of religion: I was, therefore, much left to myself, to mingle with idle and wicked boys; and soon learnt their ways.”
“I was never at school but about two years; from my eighth to my tenth year. It was a boarding-school at Stratford, in Essex. Though my father left me much to run about the streets, yet, when under his eye, he kept me at a great distance. I am persuaded he loved me, but he seemed not willing that I should know it. I was with him in a state of fear and bondage. His sternness, together with the severity of my schoolmaster, broke and overawed my spirit, and almost made me a dolt; so that part of the two years I was at school, instead of making a progress, I nearly forgot all that my good mother had taught me.
“The day I was eleven years old, I went on board my father’s ship in Longreach. I made five voyages with him to the Mediterranean. In the course of the last voyage, he left me some months at Alicante in Spain, with a merchant, a particular friend of his. With him I might have done well, if I had behaved well: but, by this time, my sinful propensities had gathered strength by habit: I was very wicked, and therefore very foolish; and, being my own enemy, I seemed determined that nobody should be my friend.
“My father left the sea in the year 1742. I made one voyage afterwards to Venice, before the mast; and, soon after my return, was impressed on board the Harwich. – Then began my awfully mad career, as recorded in the Narrative; to which, and to the Letters to a Wife, I must refer you for any further dates and incidents.
“I am truly yours,
John Newton”