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Stumbling blocks

Building blocks
Building the Body, encouraging the faint-hearted and supporting the weak

Amazing Grace

John Newton's devout mother dedicated him to be a pastor at an early age. Sadly, she died when he was seven. At the age of eleven, after several years of schooling away from home, he went to sea with his captain father. He served in the British Navy, but later deserted.

John abandoned the faith taught by his mother and embarked on such a life of extreme debauchery that his friends questioned his sanity. He signed onto a slave ship and was soon the master of his own ship, dealing in the evil of bringing slaves from Africa to America. With a whip in one hand and a gun in the other, Newton - often given to drunkenness and lust - sank into the depths of sin. In 1748, at age twenty-three, he ran into a savage storm that threatened to sink his ship.

Newton thought of himself, like Jonah, as the cause of the mountainous waves and raging wind. His close brush with death set him thinking about the true meaning of life. The Holy Spirit used the storm to convict him of his need for Christ. Sick of his pitiable condition and the filthy slave trade, he was led to leave it and ultimately go into the ministry.

All through his life John Newton never ceased to marvel at the grace of God that transformed him so completely. While the pastor of a church, he wrote his spiritual autobiography in a song that God gave him from the dark night of his soul - "Amazing Grace".

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" 1Thess 5:21