Anthem: Grace in Your StorySample

Amazing Grace

How does a song written in 1772 live on for hundreds of years? How are words about one man’s experience relevant to our lives today?

Maybe because these lyrics speak to the intrinsic need every one of us has: the need for grace. Maybe because one man’s story is also ours: lost to found.

It’s these reasons that the song Amazing Grace lives on.

What’s less known is the story of the man who penned these famous words in the English town of Olney.

As a young man, John Newton cussed more than he prayed. He exploited people rather than loving them. He felt hopeless far more than he felt hope. As the captain of a slave ship, he lived far away from God and abandoned the Christian values his mother had taught him as a boy.

In other words, Newton was lost. Completely, utterly, unquestionably lost. But his story didn’t end there.

In 1748, Newton was steering his ship through a violent storm. He feared that the ship and his crew would submerge beneath the waves and all would be lost, including his life. It was in this storm that Newton remembered the God his mother had taught him about. He called out to Him and pleaded to be rescued from dying at sea and from the man he had become.

This was the turning point for Newton. The ship ended up making it to safety and he began his new life with Christ. The old was gone and the new had begun.

Newton went on to become one of the most influential pastors of his time and became a key part of the abolition of slavery—the very movement he had once fueled.

Throughout his life, Newton never forgot two things: “He [was] a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.” Newton knew the reason his story changed was because of the grace of God.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

John Newton left this earth a long time ago, but the anthem of his life hasn’t—Amazing Grace:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch; like me!

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind, but now I see