I recently read a beautiful story about William Wilberforce, the English Christian politician who worked about 200 years ago to bring down the slave trade in Britain and illustrated what happens in your relations with people when you see the world as Jesus sees it. by people who were hardened in their personal faith in Christ by the formalities of their nominal Christian churches and schools, but their way of seeing the world was that they had a great need for personal faith in Christ as their Savior.
So he kept a list of people he talked to about his personal faith, with ideas on how to address them. What really struck me about this story was that Wilberforce often spent an hour after dinner thinking about how he could develop what he calls initiators. Gaps in conversations with friends to start?a discussion about faith. Isn’t that extraordinary? I thought things were easier 200 years ago, maybe not. Have you ever had difficulties with initiators? You’re not the only one. This has been going on for centuries. A story in his diary shows how he was thinking of reaching people:
- [Ms.
- And Mrs.
- : What books do you read? Walker’s Sermons.
- Call Ms.
- S and speak for a moment.
- Lend him Venn’s last sermon.
- His children’s education?Ask.
- Pray.
- Etc.
- Your next Sunday at Battersea Rise to listen to Venn.
- Call often and be kind.
- (City of Murray Pura and Donald Lewis.
- “On Spiritual Symmetry: The Christian Devotion of William Wilberforce”.
- “In Alive to God”.
- Edited by JI Packer and Loren Wilkinson.
- [Downers Grove.
- IL.
- InterVarsity Press.
- 1992].
- P.
- 185.
- ).
Sometimes I was afraid I wouldn’t be effective. But it seems that more is often communicated than I thought. One of the stories is this:
Once, after speaking for a while with a sick friend, “Mr. N,?” Wilberforce knew he had not addressed the issue of religion. Another friend came and asked the patient how he was doing. N? He said, “In the best possible way, with Wilberforce sitting here and telling me I’m going to hell. ” (p. 185)
So here’s a world-class statesman, who worked for decades on the frustrating secular company of politics to defeat the slave trade in Britain, taking some time with a friend to alert him to the reality he had never known, except for the fact that he learned from Jesus to see the world in a totally different way.
With Mission Week resonating and 2000 for 2000 still ringing in our ears, let’s be like William Wilberforce. We’ll worry about the condition of the oppressed now. And we will worry even more about the eternal oppression of judgment and hell. If we love people, we’ll be like Wilberforce and spend time thinking about initiators. Then we will begin with prayer and dependence of the Holy Spirit, knowing that he, and only he, can open the eyes of people’s hearts to see god’s glory in Christ.
Starting with you