Useful to the Lord, No Matter What

I’ve been reading through “The Letters of John Newton” and was impacted by what he wrote to a friend. Being retired from pastoral ministry, I was encourage by these words to keep active for the Lord and to do so with the right attitude.  Most who come to this blog probably are still active in pastoral ministry but I’m thinking it still is a helpful insight. We should always live with the end in view and this thought from John Newton certainly helps us do that.

“It will, however, be well worth while to live while the Lord is pleased to enable me — for the preaching of the gospel, and to own me in it. And should he see fit to lay me aside, I hope still to be willing to live my appointed time. May his grace make me so! If I could exercise submission, patience, and thankfulness — I might be still useful, even if bedridden.

“I have no notion of a minister outliving his usefulness, provided he is preserved in a right spirit. Might not I sit quiet in a corner, and rejoice to see others coming forward to serve the Lord better than myself, when I could serve him no more? Might not I bear private testimony to his goodness, and his truth — when I could no longer speak for him in public? I have observed sometimes that caprice, peevishness, jealousy, and other evils have stained the old age even of good men. My chief prayer now respecting myself is, that I may be preserved from indiscretion and folly; and that if it pleases the Lord, my evening of life may be consistent with my profession, and that I may set without a cloud.”