God's Amazing Grace

God's Amazing Grace

That song, Amazing Grace, is the most popular song...and the most recorded song in history. Traditionalists...Country Western...Alternative...Rock n Roll...Blues…Christians...non-Christians... All types of people and all types of musical styles have sung or recorded this song.

It's sung or played at weddings... It's sung or played at funerals... At the beginning of life, or at life's end... Amazing Grace touches the heart of both sinner and saint.

It doesn't matter what language it's sung in or what country you're in... Before the end of the very first measure, it will be recognized by almost everyone who hears it.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Twas blind, but now I see.”

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God's grace...is truly, amazing. By God's grace we live and breathe. Whether sinner or saint...believer or unbeliever...friend of God, or God's enemy...all have partaken of...and benefited from...God's grace.

Rom 9:22-24 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? [23] And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, [24] even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

The love of God is so rich toward all mankind that He withholds Himself from bringing judgment until His perfect time arrives.

He is willing to delay judgment and continue to show kindness toward those who hate Him (because He causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall upon the wicked as well as the righteous) so that all will have ample opportunity to escape His coming judgment.

God doesn't want anyone to perish... He wants all men to repent and accept His offer of salvation... He knows in His sovereignty and omniscience, that most, the majority of mankind will turn down His free offer of grace.

Mat 7:13-14 "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. [14] "For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

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“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Twas blind, but now I see.”

Who can't identify with those words? Most of us can sing at least the first verse of this song by heart. But we tend to sing by rote memory and seldom contemplate what any of it means. We don’t think about who the author was...why would he, and how could he pen such simple words that would touch the immortal souls of all who hear them.

The author of “Amazing Grace”, John Newton is an example to all of us of God's Amazing Grace, and how that grace can touch a life and take hold of it in such a way as to make a complete transformation in a person's life.

God's grace was abundant toward John Newton. Throughout his life, we see a pattern where he comes close to death... then examination of his relationship with God... and then relapsing into bad habits and sin once again. Sounds like many of us today, doesn’t it? We have that same Disaster, Examination, Repentance, and Sin cycle.

Early in his seafaring career, he denounced his faith in God, and later, after reflecting on this part of his life, he said, *“Like an unwary sailor who quits port just before a rising storm, I renounced the hopes and comforts of the gospel at the very time when every other comfort was about to fail me.”

As bad as he was up to this point, his life began to nosedive toward worse and more vile things. While in the Royal Navy, he requested and was transferred to a slave ship. The horrors and atrocities that occurred on slave ships could make even the hardest of hearts shudder in disbelief.

Sometimes I think we have this notion today, of a ship with slaves, though in chains, making a sort of leisurely cruise across the water...and then dropping them off at their destination. It wasn't like that, folks.

Only the worse of the worst...the vilest of humanity, would seek employment on a slave ship. When you have that type of person given complete control over another human being...only bad things will happen.