William Wilberforce and the Voice He Mistook for Ambition

In the autumn of 1785, twenty-six-year-old William Wilberforce sat across from John Newton in a small parlor on Charles Square in London. Wilberforce had been a member of Parliament since age twenty-one, brilliant and restless, but something had been stirring in him for months — a persistent inner disturbance he couldn't name. He assumed it was political ambition. He assumed it was guilt over his privileged life. Three times he nearly dismissed it entirely.

Newton, the former slave trader turned hymn writer, listened carefully. He had known that kind of restlessness himself. When Wilberforce finally described the weight pressing on his conscience — a growing horror at the slave trade, a sense that he was supposed to do something about it — Newton leaned forward. "God is calling you," he said simply. "Do not silence what He is stirring."

It took a mentor's weathered ear to help the young man recognize what was happening. Wilberforce had been hearing the voice for months but kept running to the wrong room, attributing the call to everything but the Almighty.

Young Samuel heard the voice three times before Eli recognized what was happening. Sometimes God speaks, and we need someone further along in faith to say, "That restlessness you feel — that is not anxiety. That is not ambition. That is the Lord. Go back, lie down, and when He speaks again, answer Him." The question is whether we, like Samuel, will finally say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."