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About the Book
"Eyes That See" by Patricia King is a spiritual guide to cultivating a deeper relationship with God through developing a discerning spirit. The book explores the importance of having spiritual eyes that can see beyond the physical realm and perceive the spiritual truths and realities around us. Through personal stories and biblical insights, King offers practical advice on how to sharpen our spiritual vision and walk in greater intimacy with God.
Andrew Fuller
Fuller was born in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England, where in 1775 he was ordained pastor of the Baptist church. Originally schooled in the hyper-Calvinist theology then prevalent in parts of the Particular Baptist denomination, he became convinced in 1775 that the hyper-Calvinist position was not scriptural. In 1785 he published The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which did much to prepare his denomination for accepting this missionary obligation. As pastor in Kettering, Northamptonshire, from 1783, Fuller became firm friends with John Sutcliff of Olney, John Ryland of Northampton, and later the young William Carey. The strengthening missionary vision of this group bore fruit on October 2, 1792, when the Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen (later known as the Baptist Missionary Society) was formed in the home of one of Fuller’s deacons in Kettering. Fuller was appointed secretary. Until his death he combined the demands of a busy pastorate with managing the affairs of the BMS. He traveled extensively to raise funds for the society, especially in Scotland, which he visited five times.
Brian Stanley, “Fuller, Andrew,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 230-231.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
Pastor, apologist, and promoter of missions
Though not university trained, Andrew Fuller was recognized by his contemporaries as the preeminent Baptist theologian of their day and was awarded honorary doctor of divinity degrees by both Princeton (1798) and Yale (1805). Fuller’s published works, preaching ministry and churchmanship was, perhaps, the primary mediating agency between the transatlantic evangelical revival and the English Particular (or “Calvinist”) Baptists who had distanced themselves from what was largely at the start an Anglican renewal movement. Fuller was also well known as a co-founder of the Baptist Missionary Society (or, the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen [est. 1792]), on whose behalf he itinerated regularly in the British Isles, lobbied the East India Company, and wrote numerous letters and magazine articles during his twenty-two year tenure as its first general secretary. He was an opponent of the British slave trade and, though a dissenting non-Anglican, an acquaintance of William Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham sect, who were key allies in Parliament. He was a pastors’ pastor who exerted no small influence for evangelical doctrine and a missionary vision through the many ordination sermons he preached. From 1782 until his death in 1815 he served as pastor of the Kettering Baptist Church and was frequent chairman of the Northamptonshire Association, a consortium which included the likes of William Carey, Samuel Pearce, John Sutcliffe, and John Ryland, Jr.
Fuller was born in 1754 at Wicken, Cambridgeshire, to non-conformist parents who worked a dairy farm. In 1775, six years after his own conversion experience, he was inducted as pastor of the forty-seven member church in Soham, where he had received his baptism and was a member. In 1776 he married his first wife, Sarah Gardiner, with whom he had eleven children, only three surviving beyond early childhood. Sarah would die in 1792, less than two months before the founding of the British Missionary Society (BMS). During this seven year pastorate, Fuller immersed himself in the literary culture of Anglo-American evangelical Calvinism. He cultivated his theological perspective and ministry philosophy by ardently studying the Scriptures alongside the works of the Reformers, seventeenth-century Puritans (especially John Owen), early English Baptists like John Bunyan and John Gill, as well as the writings of American Congregationalist philosopher-theologian and pastor, Jonathan Edwards. Fuller also acknowledged in his most popular book, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1781), the influence of the lives of John Eliot and David Brainerd, both late missionaries to the native Americans. The Gospel Worthy was Fuller’s remonstration against the hyper-Calvinism that negated the propriety of evangelistic appeals. By the 1790s, evangelical (or “strict”) Calvinism was known in England as “Fullerism” (vs. “High” or hyper-Calvinism). The Gospel its Own Witness (1800) was Fuller’s refutation of Deism. Fuller gained a reputation by these two books, especially, for publically, clearly and systematically opposing in print whatever widely held doctrines he believed were undermining the church and its mission.
In the Northamptonshire Assocation Fuller was a member of a thriving intellectual community most influenced by Edwards. In 1784 John Sutcliff initiated a “concerts of prayer” movement similar to the program suggested by Edwards in An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer (1748). Baptist congregations prayed monthly for the spread of the gospel and the kingdom of Christ to the ends of the earth through all denominations. In 1791, Sutcliff, Fuller and Samuel Pearce each preached at significant events (Sutcliff and Fuller at the association meeting of pastors, Pearce at William Carey’s ordination) on the duty of the church to evangelize the whole inhabitable globe. Fuller based his appeal on the eternal truth of the gospel, the eternal relevance of the gospel, the eternal power of the gospel, and the circumstances of the age that made missionary endeavors possible and obligatory.(1) Carey’s much touted association sermon from Isaiah 54:2-3 in May of 1792 did not arise in a vacuum. The influence was mutual between Carey and Fuller, both being influenced by Robert Hall, Sr. and Samuel Pearce (who had been inspired by the Methodist Thomas Coke in Birmingham).
On October 2, 1792, the BMS was formed with Fuller its first secretary and the assumption that its support would come largely from the churches of the Northamptonshire Association. When the society sent Carey and John Thomas to India the following year, Fuller preached their commissioning service from John 20:21 (“As the Father has sent me, even so I [Christ] am sending you.”). Fuller believed the mission’s raison d’être was the uniqueness of Christ and Christian responsibility to proclaim him. Bible translation and evangelism should take priority. Hindus were not desiring or seeking the Christian Scriptures. But to ignore and neglect anyone in an unconverted state is inconsistent with the love of God and man. In addition, God had promised the messiah the inheritance of the nations (An Apology for the Late Christian Missions to India, 1808). The church is obligated to employ means and make an effort as the means God uses to fulfill that promise to Christ. Obstacles are merely a test to sincerity of faith.
Fuller spent up to ten hours per day in correspondence and reporting for the BMS. He contributed articles to Evangelical Magazine, Missionary Magazine, Quarterly Magazine, Protestant Dissenters’ Magazine, Biblical Magazine, and Theological Miscellany. He sought financial support via letters and by an average of three months of vigorous itineration each year among various evangelical churches in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England. John Ryland, Jr. wrote of Fuller’s style, that he, “…always disliked violent pressing for contributions, and attempting to outvie other societies: he chose rather to tell a plain, unvarnished tale; and he generally told it with good effect.”(2) Through written correspondence he “pastored” the missionaries in the field while maintaining a decentralized approach to mission administration. He believed the missionaries were more capable of governing themselves and that the time required for correspondence made central control impractical anyway.
The security of the unlicensed Baptist missionary society’s place in the British Empire was frequently tenuous up to 1813. Fuller occasionally had to petition Parliament or the Board of Control for continued tolerance of the BMS. Muslim irritation at the Christian missionary presence and the conversion of some Indians from Islam had been blamed for the Vellore Mutiny of 1806. Thomas Twining had openly claimed efforts at conversion were contradictory to “the mild and tolerant spirit of Christianity.” Fuller responded to Twining and other English defenders of Hinduism with his three-part Apology for the Late Christian Missions to India (1808) in which he argued for a toleration of religion that allows all religious views as well as efforts to persuade through reasonable means. He attributed several social ills, like ritual infanticide and sati, to Hinduism, and commended the missionaries for trying to put an end to such practices. Fuller was also a critic of the “detestable traffic” of the African slave trade, asserting it made England deserving of ruin at the hands of the French (from whose invasion he urged prayer that God would mercifully protect England). The prosperity of the empire should not come at the expense of other human beings. Patriotism must “harmonize” with “good will toward [other] men.”(3) On the other hand, Fuller often counseled BMS missionaries not to become “entangled” in political concerns which were “only affairs of this life” and endangered colonial toleration of the mission.(4) Because Jesus accomplished “moral revolution” in the heart, loyalty to the British government, rather than republicanism, should be encouraged as far as it is compatible with Christian commitments.(5)
Fuller, the pastor of families in England and abroad, counseled missionary families to nurture a deep spirituality for the sake of attaining the character commensurate with the nature of the gospel and their mission. Fuller knew the vicissitudes of even the Christian heart, and the “spiritual advantage” of engaging in mission. Reflecting in his diary on July 18, 1794, he wrote:
Within the last year or two, we have formed a missionary society; and have been enabled to send out two of our brethren to the East Indies. My heart has been greatly interested in this work. Surely I never felt more genuine love to God and to his cause in my life. I bless God that his work has been a means of reviving my soul. If nothing comes of it, I and many others have obtained a spiritual advantage.(6)
Fuller died in 1815. The epitaph stone for Fuller in the Kettering meeting house says he devoted his life for the prosperity of the BMS.(7) One biographer has said Fuller “lived and died a martyr to the mission.”(8) After December, 1794, he was assisted in life by his second wife, Ann Coles. Fuller also spent himself itinerating for the British and Foreign Bible Society after it was founded in 1804. His many occasional writings and sermon manuscripts reveal a love for the gospel message itself and the life-orienting impact of Bible texts such as Matthew 28:16-20 and Mark 16:15-16; John 12:36 and 20:21; and Romans 10:9, 14-17. Fuller is noted today for making a significant contribution to the revitalization of Particular (Calvinist) Baptist life in late eighteenth century England as well as for being a key figure in the historic turn toward a proliferation of free Protestant missionary societies at the beginning of the Great Century.
How to Recognize the Holy Spirit
Of all the blessings that are ours in Christ, is any greater than the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is “the sum of the blessings Christ sought, by what he did and suffered in the work of redemption,” Jonathan Edwards writes (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 5:341). The Spirit illumines our Savior’s face (John 16:14). The Spirit puts “Abba! Father!” in our mouths (Romans 8:15). The Spirit plants heaven in our hearts (Ephesians 1:13–14). For all the blessings the Spirit brings, however, many of us labor under confusion when it comes to recognizing the Spirit’s presence. As a new believer, I was told that speaking in tongues and prophesying were two indispensable signs of the Spirit’s power. Perhaps others of us, without focusing the lens so narrowly, likewise identify the Spirit’s presence most readily with his miraculous gifts: visions, healings, impressions, and more. “Of all the blessings that are ours in Christ, is any greater than the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit?” To be sure, the Spirit does reveal himself through such wonders (1 Corinthians 12:8–11), and Christians today should “earnestly desire” them (1 Corinthians 14:1). Nevertheless, when Paul tells the Galatians to “walk by the Spirit” and “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16, 25), he focuses their attention not on the Spirit’s gifts, but on the Spirit’s fruit. So if we want to know whether we are keeping in step with the Spirit, or whether we need to find his footsteps again, we would do well to consider love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Fruit of the Spirit In order to understand the Spirit’s fruit, we need to remember the context in which it appears. Paul’s list came at first to a community at odds with each other. The apostle found it necessary to warn the Galatians not to “bite and devour one another,” nor to “become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5:15, 26). The Galatians, in turning from God’s grace in the gospel (Galatians 1:6), had evidently begun to turn on one another. In this context, the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit describe two communities: the anti-community of those in the flesh, seeking a righteousness based on their works (Galatians 5:19–21); and the true community of those in the Spirit, justified through faith alone in Christ alone (Galatians 5:22–23). As we use Paul’s list to examine ourselves, then, we need to ask if these graces mark us, not when we sit in peaceful isolation, but when we move among God’s people. I may appear patient, gentle, and kind when alone in my apartment, but what about when I am with the church? Who we are around others — baffling others, irritating others, oblivious others — reveals how far we have come in bearing the Spirit’s fruit. Now, what are these nine clusters of fruit that manifest the Spirit’s presence? To keep the survey manageable, we will include only one or two angles on each virtue, and restrict ourselves mostly to Paul’s letters. Love: Do you labor for the good of your brothers and sisters? When God pours his love into our hearts through the Spirit (Romans 5:5), our posture changes: once curved inward in self-preoccupation, we now straighten our backs, lift our heads, and begin to forget ourselves in the interests of others (Philippians 2:1–4). We find our hearts being knit together with people we once would have disregarded, judged, or even despised (Colossians 2:2; Romans 12:16). Our love no longer depends on finding something lovely; having felt the love of Christ (Galatians 2:20), we carry love with us wherever we go. “Who we are around others reveals how far we have come in bearing the Spirit’s fruit.” Such love compels us to labor for the good of our brothers and sisters (1 Thessalonians 1:3), to patiently bear with people we find vexing (Ephesians 4:2), and to care more about our brother’s spiritual welfare than our own spiritual freedom (1 Corinthians 8:1). No matter our position in the community, we gladly consider ourselves as servants (Galatians 5:13), and are learning to ask not, “Who will meet my needs today?” but rather, “Whose needs can I meet today?” Better by far to carry even an ounce of this love in our hearts than to enjoy all the world’s wealth, comforts, or acclaim. For on the day when everything else passes away, love will remain (1 Corinthians 13:7–8). Joy: Do you delight in the Christlikeness of God’s people? For Paul, the fellowship of God’s people was not peripheral to Christian joy. He could write to Timothy, “I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy” (2 Timothy 1:4), or to the Philippians, “In every prayer of mine for you all [I make] my prayer with joy” (Philippians 1:4). To be sure, the joy of the Spirit is, first and foremost, joy in our Lord Jesus (Philippians 4:4). But genuine joy in Christ overflows to all who are being remade in his image. By faith, we have seen the resplendent glory of our King — and now we delight to catch his reflection in the faces of the saints. The pinnacle of our horizontal joy, however, is not simply in being with God’s people, but in seeing them look like Jesus. “Complete my joy,” Paul writes to the Philippians, “by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Philippians 2:2). What would complete your joy? When we walk by the Spirit, the maturity of God’s people completes our joy. We rejoice when we see humility triumph over pride, lust fall before a better pleasure, the timid speak the gospel with boldness, and fathers lead their families in the fear of the Lord. Peace: Do you strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit, even at significant personal cost? The Holy Spirit is the great unifier of the church. Because of Jesus’s peacemaking work on the cross, the Spirit makes Jew and Gentile “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15); he gathers former enemies as “members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19); he builds us all “into a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21–22). No matter how different we seem from the person in the next pew, we share a body, we share a home, we share a sanctuary — all because we share the same Lord, and will one day share the same heaven (Ephesians 4:4–6). “Kindness receives an offense, refashions it in the factory of our souls, and then sends it back as a blessing.” Those who walk by the Spirit, then, do not grieve him by tearing down what he has built up (Ephesians 4:29–30), but rather “pursue what makes for peace” (Romans 14:19): We ask for forgiveness first, even when the majority of the fault lies with the other person. We renounce unwarranted suspicions, choosing rather to assume the best. We abhor all gossip, and instead honor our brothers behind their backs. And when we must engage in conflict, we “aim for restoration” so that we might “live in peace” (2 Corinthians 13:11). Patience: Are you growing in your ability to overlook offenses? As a fruit of the Spirit, patience is more than the ability to sit calmly in traffic or to wait at the doctor’s office well past your appointment time. Patience is the inner spiritual strength (Colossians 1:11) that enables us to receive an offense full in the face, and then look right over it. Patient people are like God: “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6), even when confronted with severe and repeated provocation (Romans 2:4; 1 Timothy 1:16). Patience is integral to one of the church’s primary responsibilities: discipleship. When Paul exhorted Timothy to “preach the word . . . in season and out of season,” he told him to do so “with complete patience” (2 Timothy 4:2; cf. 3:10–11). Ministry in the church, no matter our role, places us around people whose progress is much slower than we would like. We will find ourselves around “the idle, . . . the fainthearted, . . . the weak,” and instead of throwing up our hands, we must “be patient with them all” (1 Thessalonians 5:14). We must come alongside the plodding, stumbling saint, and remember that he will one day shine like the sun (Matthew 13:43). Kindness: Do you not only overlook offenses, but also repay them with love? It is one thing to receive an offense and quietly walk away. It is quite another to receive an offense, refashion it in the factory of your soul, and then send it back as a blessing. The former is patience; the latter is kindness (Romans 2:4–5; Titus 3:4–5; Ephesians 4:32). Spirit-wrought kindness creates parents who discipline their children with a steady, tender voice; sufferers who respond to ignorant, insensitive “comfort” with grace; wives and husbands who repay their spouses’ sharp word with a kiss. This fruit of the Spirit has not yet matured in us unless we are ready to show kindness, not only to those who will one day thank us for it, but also to “the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). The kind are able to give a blessing, to receive a curse in return, and then to go on giving blessings (Romans 12:14). Goodness: Do you dream up opportunities to be helpful? Outside the moment of offense, those who walk by the Spirit carry with them a general disposition to be useful, generous, and helpful. They do not need to be told to pitch in a hand when the dishes need drying or the trash needs emptying, but get to work readily and with a good will. “Just as no one can sit beneath a waterfall and stay dry, so no one can gaze on this Jesus and stay fruitless.” Such people, however, do not simply do good when they stumble upon opportunities for doing so; they “resolve for good” (2 Thessalonians 1:11), putting their imagination to work in the service of as-yet-unimagined good deeds as they seek to “discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8–10). They follow the counsel of Charles Spurgeon: “Let us be on the watch for opportunities of usefulness; let us go about the world with our ears and eyes open, ready to avail ourselves of every occasion for doing good; let us not be content till we are useful, but make this the main design and ambition of our lives” (The Soul-Winner, 312). Faithfulness: Do you do what you say you’ll do, even in the smallest matters? The faithfulness of God consists, in part, of his always doing what he says he will do: “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24). The faithfulness of God’s people consists, likewise, in our making every effort to do what we say we’ll do, even when it hurts. The Spirit makes us strive to say with Paul, “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No” (2 Corinthians 1:18). The faithful build such a trustworthy reputation that, when they fail to follow through on their word, others do not say, “Well, you know him,” but are rather surprised. If we say we’ll come to small group, we come. If we commit to cleaning the bathroom, we clean it. If we agree to call someone on Thursday at 4:00, we call on Thursday at 4:00. We labor to be faithful, even if our areas of responsibility right now are only “a little” (Matthew 25:21), knowing that how we handle little responsibilities reveals how we will handle big ones (Luke 16:10; 2 Timothy 2:2). Gentleness: Do you use your strength to serve the weak? Gentleness is far from the manicured niceness it is sometimes portrayed to be. “Gentleness in the Bible is emphatically not a lack of strength,” but rather “the godly exercise of power,” David Mathis writes. When Jesus came to save us sinners, he robed himself with gentleness (Matthew 11:29; 2 Corinthians 10:1). When we do our own work of restoring our brothers and sisters from sin, we are to wear the same clothing (Galatians 6:1). Gentleness does not prevent the godly from ever expressing anger, but they are reluctant to do so; they would far rather correct others “with love in a spirit of gentleness” (1 Corinthians 4:21). “In making our home with him, Christ makes our hearts a heaven.” No wonder Paul pairs gentleness with humility in Ephesians 4:2. As one Greek lexicon puts it, gentleness requires “not being overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance.” In the face of personal offense, the proud unleash their anger in order to assert their own significance. The humble are more concerned with the offender’s soul than their own self-importance, and so they channel their strength in the service of gentle restoration. Self-control: Do you refuse your flesh’s cravings? Scripture gives us no rosy pictures of self-control. Paul writes, “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. . . . I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1 Corinthians 9:25, 27). The Greek word for discipline here means “to give a black eye, strike in the face.” Paul’s use is metaphorical, but the point still holds: self-control hurts. It requires us to say a merciless “No!” to any craving that draws us away from the Spirit and into the flesh (Titus 2:11–12). The need for self-control applies to every bodily appetite — for sleep, food, and caffeine, for example — but in particular to our sexual appetites (1 Corinthians 7:9). Those governed by the Spirit are learning, truly even if fitfully, to hear God’s promises as louder than lust’s demands, and to refuse to give sexual immorality a seat among the saints (Ephesians 5:3). Walk by the Spirit The Spirit of God never indwells someone without also making him a garden of spiritual fruit. If we are abounding in these nine graces, then we are walking by the Spirit; if these virtues are absent, then no spiritual gift can compensate for their lack. How, then, should we respond when we find that the works of the flesh have overrun the garden? Or how can we continue to cultivate the Spirit’s fruit over a lifetime? We can begin by remembering three daily postures, the repetition of which is basic to any Christian pursuit of holiness: repent, request, renew. Repent. When the works of the flesh have gained control over us, we must go backward in repentance in order to go forward in holiness. Confess your sins honestly and specifically (perhaps using Paul’s list in Galatians 5:19–21), and then trust afresh in “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Remember again that we are not justified by fruit, but by faith. Request. Apart from the renewing, fructifying presence of God’s Spirit, we are all a cursed earth (Romans 7:18). If we are going to bear the fruit of holiness, then, we need to ask him “who supplies the Spirit” to do so more and more (Galatians 3:5). “Those governed by the Spirit are learning to hear God’s promises as louder than lust’s demands.” Renew. Finally, we renew our gaze on Jesus Christ, whom the Spirit loves to glorify (John 16:14; Galatians 3:1–2). Here we find our fruitful vine: our Lord of love, our joyful King, our Prince of peace, our patient Master, our kind Friend, our good God, our faithful Savior, our gentle Shepherd, our Brother who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet with perfect self-control. Just as no one can sit beneath a waterfall and stay dry, so no one can gaze on this Jesus and stay fruitless. Heaven in Our Hearts Of course, renewing our gaze on Jesus Christ is more than the work of a moment. When Paul said, “I live by faith in the Son of God” (Galatians 2:20), he was speaking of a lifestyle rather than a fleeting thought or a brief prayer. We must do more than cast an eye in Jesus’s direction; we must commune with him. We cannot commune with Christ too closely, nor can we exert too much energy in pursuing such communion. If we make nearness to him our aim, we will find ourselves rewarded a hundredfold beyond our efforts. The Puritan Richard Sibbes once preached, Do we entertain Christ to our loss? Doth he come empty? No; he comes with all grace. His goodness is a communicative, diffusive goodness. He comes to spread his treasures, to enrich the heart with all grace and strength, to bear all afflictions, to encounter all dangers, to bring peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost. He comes, indeed, to make our hearts, as it were, a heaven. (Works of Richard Sibbes, 2:67) This is what we find when we walk by the Spirit of Christ: in making our home with him, he makes our hearts a heaven. Article by Scott Hubbard
