Day 4: From Lost to Found

We have all lost things in this life. Perhaps it is an inconvenience, like a lost pair of glasses. But maybe it is more serious, like a lost wedding band. For some, it’s unbearable - like the loss of a relationship or a close family member. While we experience different levels of pain depending on the weight of our loss, one thing we can be assured of is that WE are never lost. And as long as we have breath in our lungs, we are not a lost cause.

John Newton, by all accounts, seemed like a lost cause at one point in his life. Though his Christian mother tried to instill the love of her Savior into his young life, rough years at sea weathered him into a hardened man making a living in the slave trade. By his early 20s, even fellow slave traders were fed up with him, reportedly leaving him behind in Sierra Leone, where he became a slave to an African princess. For three years, he was in bondage and was treated mercilessly until the love of his father financed a rescue mission.

On his return voyage to England, a storm so severe that he feared for his life came upon the trading vessel…and it was in this moment that he cried out to the same Lord his mother had loved - to save him. History tells us that over the next two years, he solidified his faith and became an evangelical preacher and a staunch abolitionist, eventually fighting for the same freedom he had found.

Surely you know the famous words he penned in one of the world’s most famous hymns, Amazing Grace: “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

If you need to experience this saving power of Jesus, please tell the Lord that you, like Newton, are a wretch in need of saving. He is a good Father scanning the horizon for His prodigal children, and He is waiting for you to come home to Him - to accept the sacrifice He made on the cross so that you can be found in His love.

Questions:

• What lessons do you learn about God from the life of John Newton?
• How would you celebrate if one of your lost friends or family members found Jesus?