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Use your gifts

The abolition of the slave trade was not one man's achievement. It was a body of differing gifts, each used to the full. Yours has a place here too.

How they did it before

Wilberforce in Parliament was only the visible tip. Around him the Clapham Sect and their allies brought every gift they had: Wesley and Newton preached; Thomas Clarkson rode the country gathering evidence from the ships; Hannah More wrote; lawyers drafted; researchers documented; organisers gathered hundreds of thousands of petition signatures; households boycotted slave-grown sugar. And Josiah Wedgwood — a potter — put the question "Am I not a man and a brother?" on a medallion that fashionable Britain wore until the message was inescapable. A crafted product helped change a nation's mind.

None of them could do everything. All of them did something, with the gift they actually had.The full story →

First, for everyone: pray

Prayer is not one gift among the others — it is the ground they all stand on. The first abolition movement was born in prayer meetings before it ever won a vote, and none of what follows works without God. Whatever else you take up, take upthe standing prayer points first.

And do not wait

Expect opposition. The devil, the world and our own flesh have no interest in these children being saved, nor in the gospel reaching into this darkest of sins — the very place where the light of Christ would expel the darkness (John 1:5; Ephesians 6:12). Where God moves to rescue, resistance follows. That is not a reason to hesitate; it is confirmation that this is the Lord's work, and prayer is how it is fought.

So act now, not when it is convenient. Act for the sake of Christ, whose image every one of these children bears. Act for the hundreds of thousands of children who will be torn apart this year while we deliberate. And act for the sake of the nation — and for your own soul — for Scripture is not silent about what the shedding of innocent blood brings upon a land (Genesis 4:10; Numbers 35:33; Proverbs 6:16–17). Judgement is coming on the UK for the blood it has shed; mercy is offered now (Isaiah 1:15–17). "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might" (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

How we stand: cross-shaped obedience

The manner matters as much as the act. This work is cross-shaped obedience to the Father, through His Word and by His Spirit — not zeal running on its own strength. And the way to more courage is not to summon it but to be filled: more of Christ, more of His Word, more of the gospel understood and believed. Paul applied the gospel to almost every area of life — marriage, work, parents and children, the church, even government (Ephesians 5–6; Colossians 3; Romans 13) — and he did not reason it out of his own mind; he took it straight from the Word. If we are going to see society change, we must be people rooted and grounded in God's Word (Colossians 2:6–7; Ephesians 3:17).

They stood on the Word — against the world

The people who changed nations were the people who stood on God's Word, and they were not popular when they stood. When much of the church itself had drifted after the Arians — teaching that Christ was a created being and not fully God — Athanasius stood on the Word almost alone, and stood so long that it became a proverb:Athanasius contra mundum, Athanasius against the world. God prevailed through him, and the heresy was driven back.

Luther stood before the assembled establishment at Worms and would not recant against Scripture and conscience — the stand tradition remembers as "Here I stand; I can do no other." The Oxford martyrs — Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer — burned at the stake rather than compromise the truth. William Tyndale was strangled and burned for putting the Bible into English and would not soften it, even for the king — and every English Bible on our shelves stands in his debt. God turned nations through such stands.

The stakes are no lower now. We are playing for the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, and for the soul of a nation. Stand on the Word, and stand now.