“Know how to speak a word in season to them that are weary” by John Newton

“The angel who appeared to Cornelius did not preach the Gospel to him, but directed him to send for Peter. (Acts 10:1-31)

For though the glory and grace of the Saviour seems a fitter subject for an angel’s powers than for the poor stammering tongues of sinful men, yet an angel could not preach experimentally, nor describe the warfare between grace and sin from his own feelings.

And if we could suppose a minister as full of comforts and as free from failings as an angel, though he would be a good and happy man, I cannot conceive that he would be a good or useful preacher; for he would not know how to sympathize with the weak and afflicted of the flock, or to comfort them under their difficulties with the consolations wherewith he himself, in similar circumstances, had been comforted of God!

It belongs to your calling of God as a minister, that you should have a taste of the various spiritual trials which are incident to the Lord’s people, that thereby you may possess the tongue of the learned, and know how to speak a word in season to them that are weary; and it is likewise needful to keep you perpetually attentive to that important admonition, ‘Without me ye can do nothing.’

Thus much considering you as a minister. But we may extend the subject so as to make it applicable to believers in general.

I would observe, therefore, that it is a sign of a sad declension, if one, who has tasted that the Lord is gracious, should be capable of being fully satisfied with anything short of the light of his countenance, which is better than life.

A resting in notions of Gospel truth, or in the recollection of past comforts, without a continual thirst for fresh communications from the fountain of life, is, I am afraid, the canker which eats away the beauty and fruitfulness of many professors in the present day; and which, if it does not prove them to be absolutely dead, is at least a sufficient evidence that they are lamentably sick.”

–John Newton, Wise Counsel: John Newton’s Letters to John Ryland Jr., 2nd Edition, Ed. Grant Gordon (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009/2026), 24-25.