I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow

When we come to the New Year observation, we naturally look back and also look forward as Christians.  Paul did this (though from prison, not a New Years!) when he wrote in Philippians 3:13-14, “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  We do this from the perspective of our relationship to God and the revelation from God, seeking to learn from what He has done in our lives in the past, and also to prepare for what He may intend to teach us in the future.  We can do that with the aid of our hymnody in this wonderful (but not too well-known) hymn by John Newton (1725-1807), “I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow,” written in 1779.

While this hymn may not be familiar to many, most will have heard something of Newton’s amazing testimony, and the hymn that chronicled his deliverance from sin into glorious union with Christ, the hymn “Amazing Grace.”  In it, he reviewed how the Lord had allowed him to endure much suffering in order to bring him gospel comfort, and the privilege of preaching the gospel he “had once labored to destroy” (as he directed to be written on his tombstone).

John Newton is one of the most well-known Christian figures of the past 500 years. Born in London in 1725 and died in London in 1807, Newton, as a young man, lived a vulgar and sinful life and worked on slave ships, including becoming captain of one for several years prior to turning in faith to Jesus in 1748. Upon his rebirth, he soon left the slave trade.  After some time in secular work, while continuing to study and grow in his faith, he came to believe God was calling him into pastoral ministry.  His applications for ordination were rejected by Anglican bishops for several years before he was finally approved and placed as pastor of the church in the village of Olney, north of London. His ministry there was richly blessed, as the church grew to the point of adding side balconies to accommodate larger numbers of people who came to hear the preaching of the gospel from this former slave trader.

After being transferred to the influential St. Mary Woolnoth parish in London, he would go on to spend nearly 40 years as an abolitionist, befriending and influencing such anti-slavery voices as William Wilberforce, among others. During his 30 years as a pastor, he became close friends with, and caregiver of, William Cowper (author of “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”) over the final years of Cowper’s life due to Cowper’s severe mental health issues. Newton is best remembered today as a prolific hymn writer, famously authoring “Amazing Grace,” which is probably the most well-known hymn in the English-speaking world today.

One of the songs that Newton wrote which has gained increasing attention among Christians over the past twenty years or so is, “I Asked the Lord that I Might Grow,” which was originally “Prayer answered by Crosses.”  Like every Christian, Newton wanted to grow in his spiritual life.  But God does this so often through trials that cause us to exercise the spiritual muscles of our soul.  There is something of a sense of irony in Newton’s text, but one which matches many of our experiences.  We ask God for one thing, but He chooses to give it to us in a way that was not at all what we expected.  Newton leads us to sing with him that he asked God that he might grow, expecting happy, joyful experiences to follow.  But instead, God sent him the painful experiences, not in any sense as punishment for already-forgiven sin, but so that he (and we) might see that there was more sin in his heart than he had previously realized, causing him to grow stronger in his fight against temptation and in his reliance on divine grace each day.

What is going on this song? The answer is clear.  If we take this song at face value, it is Newton’s personal testimony regarding his progression in the Christian life. Starting out as a young believer, we presume, in keeping with the heart of God Himself, Newton asks not for wealth, health, success, or comfort, but for growth in Jesus: greater degrees of maturity, more love for people, more strength against sin, and a deeper personal relationship with the Lord himself.  As Tim Keller wrote, “We don’t pray in order to get more of what we want, but rather to get more of Jesus.”  Many of us can relate to that. Newton goes on to testify that God did, in fact, answer his prayer. But rather than making Newton the “super Christian” he might have asked to be, God grew him in a way that he never could have imagined, and that, by the sounds of it, drove him to the point of despairing of life.

In Newton’s understanding, God did two things in answer to Newton’s prayers for growth. First, he showed him the depths of the darkness and grossness of sin and wickedness that were still so alive and well within his own heart (4^th stanza). Second, he disrupted Newton’s life ambitions, undermining those desires that we all have for success and influence (5^th stanza). In fact, if Newton’s short biography is any indication (he became a pastor nearly 30 years after his conversion) he may have, for years and years and years, struggled with his own sin and the ugliness of his own heart.

What a timely challenge this is for us when we launch into a New Year’s observance. We instinctively ask God afresh that we might grow.  And we look back to see how He has done that in the past year.  But we also look ahead in anticipation of the ways He will work in the year ahead to make us grow in holiness and Christ-likeness and spiritual usefulness.

The seven stanzas of this hymn flow together in a seamless narrative, each verse following logically on the heels of the one before. We can see this poetic structure if we just look at the opening line or two of each stanza:

One of the ways this hymn connects with the experience of every believer is in the matter of what we temporarily feel is unanswered prayer, or at least the struggle we face when God’s answer seems to be the opposite of what we had requested from Him.  We could be tempted to give up and cease praying. Charles Spurgeon is helpful here.

Give not up praying because you cannot pray, for it is when you think you cannot pray that you are most praying; and sometimes when you have no sort of comfort in your suppli­ca­tions, it is then that your heart all broken and cast down is really wrestling and truly prevailing with the Most High

And we can be tempted to grow weary, forgetting that prayer is hard work that requires significant effort and perseverance. E. M. Bounds wrote,

Prayer is spiritual work; and human nature does not like taxing, spiritual work. Human nature wants to sail to heaven under a favoring breeze, a full, smooth sea. Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them.

“I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow” was published along with “Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder” in 1779 in the Newton/Cooper volume, “Olney Hymns.” Here are the original lyrics in full.

Stanza 1 is a perfectly reasonable and righteous request, one for which we should spend much time asking. The Bible has many examples of prayers that God’s people would grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. We should all want to know more of this great salvation, of this “Amazing Grace!” And so we should want to seek God in prayer more earnestly.

I ask’d the Lord that I might grow In faith and love, and ev’ry grace;
Might more of His salvation know, And seek more earnestly His face.

Stanza 2 tells us that it was God Himself who taught us to pray this way. But here we get the first hint that this prayer comes in a dark time in the author’s life. God has certainly answered our prayer, but as so often happens, He does not answer our prayer in the way we might wish or the way we had envisioned. Indeed, God sometimes crushes us. With Newton, God almost drove him to despair. He will cause us to look at the sinfulness of our heart and rather than growth, He will show us that we are more sinful than we ever knew! We might even wonder if we were even saved.

Twas He who taught me thus to pray, And He, I trust, has answer’d pray’r;
But it has been in such a way, As almost drove me to despair.

Stanza 3 describes what we expected when we asked God for faith and love and every grace. We thought that perhaps God would zap us with a bolt of sanctification! And we hoped that would all come in a single hour, that God would conquer every sin in our heart, and that we would have rest from the constant battle!

I hop’d that in some favor’d hour, At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r, Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Stanza 4 stuns us by what He gives us in answer to our prayer.  Instead of the exalted brightness of immediate peace and joy, He first sends us a deeper sense of the darkness that remains within us in our fallen, even though redeemed, but not yet fully sanctified, nature.  This can be so dark and bleak, that it seems He has allowed “the angry powers of hell” to assault our heart.

Instead of this, He made me feel The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell Assault my soul in ev’ry part.

Stanza 5 drives the surprise even deeper into the inner darkness of our heart. Far from striking us with instant sanctification, God seemed to drive us to see more and more of our own sin. Temptations seemed to multiply.  We seemed weaker than ever to resist sin. We fall, over and over. This is what almost drove us to despair. But as if this wasn’t bad enough, it seemed as though God Himself was working against us. Every attempt we made to avoid sin failed miserably, as though God actually thwarted us.  Recent publications changed the reference to “gourds,” which came from the account in Jonah when God caused a gourd plant to grow up quickly to give the prophet shade.  Most update that to read “Humbled my heart” instead of “Blasted my gourd.”

Yea more, with His own hand He seem’d Intent to aggravate my woe;
Cross’d all the fair designs I schem’d, Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Stanza 6 expresses the final step of despair, asking God that terribly painful question, “Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?”  But the God of wisdom and God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1) at just the right time answers us, to reassure us that He knows what He’s doing.  His answer is that this is the way He answers prayers “for grace and truth.”  And we can see that over and over again in the Bible, as well as in the common experiences of His people.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cry’d, Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?
“’Tis in this way, the Lord reply’d, I answer pray’r for grace and faith.

Stanza 7 gives us more of the Lord’s response to this agonizing prayer of the soul, awaiting an answer from the sovereign covenant God.  His response is that we must trust Him, in the confidence that He not only loves us but also knows our every need, and knows what is essential for us to grow.  And wasn’t that exactly what this hurting soul had prayed, that he/she might grow? This is how God answers such prayers. He is determined, not to crush me, but to destroy my reliance on myself, to crush my pride. He will break, not me, but all my leaning on the things of earth, all seeking my joy in anything but God Himself. For this is the great answer to prayer, that I would love and cherish nothing but God Himself. Yes, Lord. Even so, Amen.  (Some versions change “seek” to “find.”  Both are equally true and proper.)

These inward trials I employ, From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy, That thou may’st seek thy all in Me.”

Because it has only become better-known in recent years, there have been several tunes used for it.  As a Long Meter (LM) text, there are many possibilities.  The text is found with different tunes by Indelible Grace and Sovereign Grace, as well as in the recent Trinity Psalter Hymnal, which uses ROCKINGHAM OLD.  That is a particularly good choice, since that tune was written in 1790, just a few years after Newton wrote the text.

Here is a recording of the text as sung by over 10,000 pastors and church leaders to the tune O WALY WALY at a national “TOGETHER FOR THE GOSPEL” (T4G) conference.