Great Lessons from John Newton

I have been listening to sermons that John Piper has delivered over the years on Biographies of Famous men on the faith. They have been blessing me greatly. I listen to the stories of these men's lives and the lessons we can learn from their strengths and weaknesses. Their triumphs and their failures, and i want to be like these men. Listen to these men's lives as piper tells it and let your heart grow and let you soul pray out to God to make you like these men. I pray that, I want to be like these men. I so desperately want God to help me become like Jesus; To have his strength and his tenderness. Here is one great example, A quote from a sermon piper gave on the life of John Newton:

Ever since I came to Bethlehem in 1980 this vision of ministry
has beckoned me because, soon after I came, I read through Matthew and Mark
and put in the margin of my Greek New Testament a "to" (for tough) and a
"te" (for tender) beside all of Jesus' words and deeds that fit one category
or the other. What a mixture he was! No one ever spoke like this man.
It seems to me that we are always falling off the horse on one side or the
other in this matter of being tough and tender—wimping out on truth when we
ought to be lion-hearted, or wrangling with anger when we ought to be
weeping. I know it's a risk to take up this topic and John Newton in a
setting like this, where some of you need a good (tender!) kick in the
pants to be more courageous, and others of you confuse courage with what
William Cowper called "a furious and abusive zeal."[2] Oh how
rare are the pastors who speak with a tender heart and have a theological
backbone of steel.

I dream of such pastors. I would like to be one someday. A pastor whose might
in the truth is matched by his meekness. Whose theological acumen is matched
by his manifest contrition. Whose heights of intellect are
matched by his depths of humility. Yes, and the other way
around! A pastor whose relational warmth is matched by his rigor of study,
whose bent toward mercy is matched by the vigilance of his biblical
discernment, and whose sense of humor is exceeded by the seriousness of his calling. I dream of great defenders of true doctrine who are mainly known
for the delight they have in God and the
joy in God that they bring to the people of God—who enter
controversy, when necessary, not because they love ideas and arguments, but
because they love Christ and the church.

There's a picture of this in Acts 15. Have you ever noticed
the amazing unity of things here that we tend to tear apart? A false doctrine
arises in Antioch: some begin to teach, "Unless you are circumcised . . . you
cannot be saved" (v. 1). Paul and Barnabas weigh in with what Luke calls a
"not a little dissension and debate" 2). So the church decides to send them off
to Jerusalem to get the matter settled. And amazingly, verse 3 says that on
their way to the great debate they were "describing in detail the conversion
of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren" (v. 3).
This is my vision: The great debaters on their way to a life-and-death show down of doctrinal controversy, so thrilled by the mercy and power of God in the gospel, that they are spreading joy everywhere they go. Oh how many there are today who tell us that controversy only kills joy and ruins the church; and oh how many others there are who, on their way to the controversy, feel no joy and spread no joy in the preciousness of Christ and his salvation.

One of the aims of this conference since 1988 has
been to say over and over again: it is possible and necessary to be as strong and
rugged for truth as a redwood and as tender and fragrant for Christ as a
field of clover.So now, with the help of the life of John Newton, I want
to say it again. And make no mistake: our heroes have feet of clay. There
are no perfect pastors. Newton himself warns us:
"In my imagination, I sometimes fancy I could
[create] a perfect minister. I take the eloquence of –, the knowledge of –, the
zeal of –, and the pastoral meekness, tenderness,
and piety of –: Then, putting them all together into one man, I say to
myself, "This would be a perfect minister." Now there is One, who, if he
chose to, could actually do this; but he never did it. He has seen fit to do
otherwise, and to divide these gifts to every man severally as he
will. [3]So neither we nor Newton will ever be all
that we should be. But oh how much more like the Great Shepherd we should
long to be. Newton had his strengths, and I want us to learn from them. At
times his strengths were his weakness, but that too will be instructive