Life as a Christian Woman

My husband and I watched the movie "Amazing Grace" this weekend.  The movie is an account of the abolition of the slave trade in England at the time when the lyricist of the song Amazing Grace was still alive.  There is a quote in the movie that set me to thinking about how God uses people.

"Found God, sir?

"I think He found me.  Do you have any idea how inconvenient that is?"

Have you ever experienced that feeling?  Has God ever place an urging in your heart that just made you stop and say, "You want me to do what?  Now?"  We get caught up in our day-to-day lives of being wife, mother, sister, daughter, employee, and a hundred other roles. 

Then God speaks.  He sets before us a task that seems to have no place in our ordered (or disordered) lives.  For William Wilberforce, that task was working to abolish the massive and immoral human trafficking taking place between England, Africa, and the Americas.  Perhaps in your life and mine, the task is not so great as that.  But it may very well be something we feel utterly unequal to at the time. 

If you have ever felt that urging from God, then you know how impossible it is to ignore.  You become consumed with it.  First, perhaps, questioning whether the idea truly came from God or was an errant thought of your own.  Second comes the questioning of your own abilities to actually carry out the task.  Then the questions to God of "why me" begin.  Lastly, you begin to plan how you could do what He has asked of you while still maintaining everything else and your sanity.  And if you do not begin to take action at that point, the whole cycle may very well start all over again. 

Then faith must take hold, no matter how inconvenient it may seem at the time.  Are you the only person in the world that could carry out the task?  Probably not.  But there is a reason He chose you.  Perhaps you will soon move into a position, like Mr. Wilburforce, that will give you a unique advantage.  Perhaps someone close to you needs the message God is trying to impart.  Maybe you are one of many on which He has placed that particular burden, and He is waiting to bring you all together to accomplish His will. 

Whatever His reason, always trust that He has one.  Denying the will of God is much more life-altering than inconvenient faith.  

The history of Amazing Grace:

The words of the spiritual Amazing Grace were written by Father John Newton.  He wasn’t always a priest.  Before answering the call from God, he spent 20 years as the captain of a slave ship.  During his years as a priest, he always said he was never alone because he lived with the ghosts of 20,000 slaves.  Through God’s amazing grace, Father John gave up his ship, dedicated his life to the Lord, and wrote the words of the world’s best-known spiritual.  It is believed he wrote to a slave melody as he used to hear it humming up from the bowels of his ship.  Father John’s testimony aided William Wilberforce in abolishing the African slave trade in England.

The following video is a segment by Wintley Phipps during a Gaither Homecoming Concert and his interpretation of what the melody must have sounded like rumbling up from the despairing depths of 200+ human souls chained and shackled by the greed of men.