Aiming High, Missing Low, Aiming High Again

If January is the month to set new goals and resolutions for the New Year, February is the month to desert resolutions, like the abandoned cars on D.C. side streets packed tightly under the snow tossed from city plows.

Pastor John Newton (1725–1807) was familiar with this challenge of attaining lofty goals, a topic he discussed in a letter written in February 1772 to one of his friends.

Newton writes, “The Lord has given his people a desire and will aiming at great things; without this they would be unworthy of the name of Christians.”

The desire to aspire is very important to the Christian life. We are to aim high in so many great things. Newton notes four of them:

1. We aim to pray regularly. What greater privilege to approach the throne of grace and to cast all our burdens upon the King of Kings?

2. We aim to read and study Scripture diligently. What is more desirable than much fine gold, sweeter than the dripping honeycomb, but God’s Word?

3. We aim to delight frequently in Christ and live in his debt. What greater aim to live daily with a grateful heart for the Savior’s work on the cross?

4. We aim to trust God in all circumstances, whether prosperity or adversity. What events in life are not directed by the infinite goodness and wisdom of God?

But …

… what often happens?

Newton writes:

1. In reality, prayer becomes a mere chore. Our lips move, but our hearts are far from God.

2. In reality, Scripture gets neglected. We give our time and attention to other books, and magazines look more appealing.

3. In reality, Christ gets ignored. In an average day we show more gratitude for the people in our life than the Savior who saved our life.

4. In reality, God's providence over life is forgotten. When life gets hard we are quick to “complain, murmur, and despond.”

Newton writes,

Alas! how vain is man in his best estate! how much weakness and inconsistency even in those whose hearts are right with the Lord!

Alas, we aim big—but we often miss big. We miss because we are weak sinners.

Divine Designs in the Missing

So is there anything to learn in the missing?

Again Newton writes:

By these experiences [the misses] the believer is weaned more from self, and taught more highly to prize and more absolutely to rely on him, who is appointed unto us of God, Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption.

The more vile we are in our own eyes, the more precious he will be to us; and a deep repeated sense of the evil of our hearts is necessary to preclude all boasting, and to make us willing to give the whole glory of our salvation where it is due.

We mean well and we aim high, but we are sinful, inconsistent creatures. Our aims often fail like a field goal kick that lands on the 5-yard-line. So often we miss low—very low.

The solution is not to aim lower. The proper response is to continue aiming high. Rejoice in the successes and the periods of consistency. And then redeem the misses; let them remind you of your weakness and of your need for Christ, “who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31).

By continuing to aim high,

we honor God in our aims
we learn firsthand of our feebleness, weakness, and inconsistencies
we are weaned from self-sufficiency
we long to see Jesus and to be freed from this body of sin
and we learn to boast in Christ alone

When a kicker aims high but fails, he hangs his head.

When the Christian aims high but fails, he learns to properly boast.

Tony Reinke serves as the editorial and research assistant to C.J. Mahaney. Reading Newton’s Mail is a series of blog posts reflecting on various published letters written by John Newton (1725–1807), the onetime captain of a slave trading ship, a self-described apostate, blasphemer, and infidel, who was eventually converted by grace. Newton is most famous for authoring the hymn “Amazing Grace,” or maybe for helping William Wilberforce put an end to the African slave trade in Britain. Less legendarily, Newton faithfully pastored two churches for 43 years, a fruitful period of his life when a majority of his letters were written. Reading Newton’s Mail is published on Fridays here on the Cheap Seats blog.

Source letter: John Newton, Works of John Newton (London: 1820), 1:439–444; Letters of John Newton (Edinburgh; Banner of Truth: 1960), 88–92.

Posted by Tony Reinke