I am reading Grant Gordon’s latest book, Wise Counsel: John Newton’s Letters to John Ryland Jr. [The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-84871-053-5], and found this comment as relevant and important today as it surely was for Ryland when Newton wrote it in April, 1773.
Newton is responding to John Ryland Jr.’s request for spiritual counsel regarding concerns of feeling spiritually inadequate for ministry.
“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’.”(Letter Five, pp.34-35)
