"To Whom Much Is Given Shall Much Be Required."
Luke 12: 48
AMAZING GRACE
No longer than an hour or so after I was born of God I discovered that I had a talent I had never been aware of before.
After leaving the home of my grandparents where I had knelt in prayer and repentance and acknowledged the Lord Jesus as the One who bore away all my sin at the cross. I asked Him to come and help me to live my life for His honour and for His glory.
All I ever longed for was to have a living relationship with God and perhaps the ability to be able to do something that would somehow give Him pleasure. And now that at last I was saved by His wonderful grace and made one of His children, I knew all that everything I had longed was ahead of me, at last. I cannot explain the joy that filled my heart as I walked back to my car. I felt as if I was walking on air. It was a thing most wonderful to me to know that “I am His and He is mine” – forever! It didn't matter to me that I couldn't actually see Him, because I knew I would one soon day. All that mattered to me from that moment on was to find a way that I might be able to please Him in some small way.
I sat in my car for a while before setting out on my short journey back home wondering and praying at the same time about what was now ahead of me. On the way I began to do something I had never done before. I sang the beautiful Hymn, “Amazing Grace” when there was no one to hear but God alone. I didn't know the words to any other hymns; however this one seemed to utterly fit my thoughts and feelings at that precise moment of time.
"Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost but now I'm found;
Was blind, but now I see.
T'was grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fear relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come:
‘Tis grace that brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun."
John Newton
Traffic lights interrupted my journey for a while and I remember leaning forward against the steering wheel and looking through the windscreen up into the night sky and whispering “I can sing! ... I can sing!”
After arriving home I asked God if perhaps He would like me to sing for Him one day, and if He did, then perhaps He would give to me the opportunity and courage to do so. This was the desire of my heart and even to this very day it is still there.
With wonderment and with great joy in my heart I have a story to tell of the mighty workings of God in the life of this individual who was born of God almost forty years ago, and can testify of His goodness, His grace, and His loving kindness to someone so unworthy as I.
