Honest Offering: A 6-Day Devotional With CAINSample

This Is My Story, This Is My Song

(Blessed Assurance)

You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials 7 so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

1 Peter 1:6-9

Critics of Christian belief may hear hymns like Fanny Crosby’s “Blessed Assurance” and roll their eyes. Phrases like “happy and blessed” and “filled with His goodness, lost in His love” hit them as unrealistic fantasies. They believe the people who sing those words will one day experience the hard realities of life and undoubtedly change their tune.

The thing is, Fanny Crosby knew the hard realities of life long before she wrote the hymn—not as occasional experiences but as a state of being. At just six weeks of age, an eye infection caused Fanny to become blind. Shortly after that, her father died. Fanny was raised primarily by her grandmother, as her mother worked hard to provide.

In adulthood, Fanny’s giftedness became as well-known as her blindness. She was a poet and often published author, but her troubles didn’t end. Her only child died in infancy, and Fanny and her husband eventually began to live apart.

So, Fanny Crosby didn’t write Blessed Assurance or any of her other thousands of hymns unaware of life’s hard realities. She wrote them partly because of what God taught her in those realities.

Amid the pain, suffering, and brokenness that comes with this life, an eternal perspective of life with Christ gives us every reason to rejoice. We can’t yet see Christ as He is, but we can rejoice in anticipation of what will come. By God’s grace through faith in Christ, we have been born into a living hope. So even in discouragement and suffering, our story, our song, is the promise of Christ in us—the hope of salvation, both now and for eternity. Singing that song reorients our gaze to the greater award that awaits us in glory.

Fanny Crosby knew it, and so can we—the blessed assurance that comes through Christ is ours, even in the darkest of days. A day is coming when all things will be made new, and we will see the fully redeemed versions of our stories. We’ll see that it was all worth it because of the salvation we have fully realized in Christ.

• Listen to CAIN’s “Blessed Assurance.” What lyrics stand out to you as particularly encouraging? Which stand out to you as most challenging?

• What would others perceive to be the song of your life? Is joy in Christ evident to people who know you? Why or why not?
• Rejoice in the hope you have in Christ. Name the places where joy feels impossible and ask the Lord to fix your eyes on Him.