“Beware of idolatry. Husbands, children, possessions, everything by which the Lord is pleased to afford us content or pleasure, are full of snares. How hard is it to love a creature just as we ought; and so to possess our temporal blessings as neither to overvalue nor undervalue them!
How rare is it to see a believer go on steadily, and in a lively, thriving spirit, if remarkably favoured with prosperous circumstances! It is hard, but it is not impossible: impossible, indeed, it is to us; but it is easy to Him who has said, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’ (2 Corinthians 12:9)
My desire is, that you may be both witnesses of the Lord’s faithfulness to this His good promise.
I wish you health, peace, and prosperity; but, above all, that your souls may prosper; that you may still prefer the light of God’s countenance to your chief joy; that you may still delight yourselves in the Lord; be daily hungering and thirsting after Him, and daily receiving from His fulness, even grace for grace; that you may rejoice in His all-sufficiency, may taste His love in every dispensation; that every blessing of His common providence may come to you as a fruit and token of His covenant-love; that the frame of your spirits may be heaven-ward, your conduct exemplary, and your whole conversation may breathe the meekness, simplicity, and spirituality, which become the Gospel of Christ.
I have strong confidence in the Lord for you, my dear friends, that it shall be even thus.—And it will rejoice my heart to hear that it is so.
However the Lord may be pleased to indulge us with comforts and mercies here, still this is not,—cannot be, our rest. Indwelling sin, the temptations of Satan, changing dispensations, and the vanity which is inseparably entwined with every earthly connection, will more or less disturb our peace.
But there is a brighter world, where sin and sorrow can never enter; every moment brings us nearer to it.
Then every imperfection shall cease, and our best desires shall be satisfied beyond our present conceptions.
Then we shall see Him whom having not seen we love: we shall see Him in all His glory, not as now, through the medium of ordinances, but face to face, without a veil. We shall see Him, so as to be completely transformed into His perfect image.
Then likewise we shall see all His redeemed, and join with an innumerable multitude of all nations, people, and languages, in singing the triumphant song of Moses and the Lamb forever!
Then we shall look back with wonder on all the way the Lord led us through this wilderness, and shall say, ‘He hath done all things well.’
May this blessed hope comfort our hearts, strengthen, our hands, and make us account nothing dear or hard, so that we may finish our course with joy.”
–-John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Volume 6 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1988), 6: 46-48.
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