Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

“I once was lost but now am found.”

JOHN NEWTON, the son of a sea captain, was born in London in 1725. When he was six, he lost his mother, but before she died, she prayed that he would become a minister. Choosing another path, Newton went to sea with his father at age eleven. After an unsuccessful stint in the Royal Navy, he went to work for a slave trader. As things went from bad to worse in his life, he hit bottom as the slave of a white slave trader’s black mistress on one of the Plantain Islands off the Sierra Leone coast. For two long years he was hungry and destitute. Then in 1747 he began working once more on a slave ship.

In March 1748 Newton had an experience that changed him forever. He wrote in his journal: “Among the few books we had on board, one was Stanhope’s Thomas à Kempis; I carefully took it up, as I had often done before, to pass away the time; but I had still read it with the same indifference as if it was entirely a romance. However, while I was reading this time, an involuntary suggestion arose in my mind—what if these things should be true?”

He went to bed that night but was awakened by a fierce storm. Within a few minutes the ship was a virtual wreck, filling with water. Working frantically, the crew finally plugged the leaks. In his exhaustion, Newton heard himself say to the captain, “If this will not do, the Lord have mercy upon us.” Newton was instantly taken aback by his own words. This was the first time he had desired God’s mercy in years. Then the thought went through his mind, What mercy can there be for me?

The next day, March 21, 1748, the storm continued. Newton was summoned to the helm, where he had time to reflect. He sadly concluded that there had never been a sinner as wicked as he and that his sins were too great and too many to be forgiven.

His journal records the deliverance from the storm and his spiritual deliverance as well: “[This] is a day much to be remembered by me, and I have never suffered it to pass wholly unnoticed since the year 1748. On that day the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of the deep waters. . . .”

Later he wrote: “I stood in need of an Almighty Saviour, and such a one I found described in the New Testament. . . . I was no longer an infidel; I heartily renounced my former profaneness, and I had taken up some right notions; was seriously disposed, and sincerely touched with a sense of the undeserved mercy I had received, in being brought safe through so many dangers.”

Although he continued sailing and working in the slave trade for a time, he studied the Bible, prayed, read Christian books, and finally left the sea behind. In 1764 at age thirty-nine John Newton began a new life as a minister in the Church of England, later writing his autobiographical hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

Throughout his life, he stopped to thank God on the anniversary of his conversion. The last entry in his journal was written on March 21, 1805, the anniversary of his deliverance, “Not well able to write; but I endeavor to observe the return of this day with humiliation, prayer and praise.”

Reflection

Often God will use danger or tragedy to get our attention. Has that ever been your experience? If so, did the experience produce a permanent result similar to John Newton’s?

Suddenly, there was a great earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open. He assumed the prisoners had escaped, so he drew his sword to kill himself. But Paul shouted to him, “Don’t do it! We are all here!”

Trembling with fear, the jailer called for lights and ran to the dungeon and fell down before Paul and Silas. He brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Acts 16:26-30