- Steve Richards
- Sep 3, 2020
Last week, we visited the Buckinghamshire town of Olney. As you approach the town centre, you are greeted by a roadside sign, ‘Welcome to Olney, the home of Amazing Grace’.
The famous hymn, Amazing Grace, was one of the many hymns written by John Newton. In the mid-18th century, together with his close friend William Cowper, Newton wrote many songs. They were compiled for a bestselling volume entitled Olney Hymns.
John Newton is well known as the sea captain who earned his pay from the slave trade. He lived his life in defiance of God despite the fact that he did have some vague understanding about Christianity. A singer of bawdy songs; foul mouthed; a blasphemer and a man who didn’t trouble to curb his many appetites. He was brought up short whilst in a severe storm off the Irish coast. In utter desperation he called upon the mercy of God. The storm abated. From that time forward, Newton was keenly conscious that God was on his case.
He became more and more aware of how God’s grace and mercy towards him worked out in both theory and practice. The bawdy songs gave way to him expressing his musical talents in the praise of God. His coarse storytelling was replaced by a desire to tell others of what he had discovered about the God of grace who had come into his life and about the Bible which expressed in words that which his heart had experienced. His new appetite was to serve God by becoming a Minister in the church and it is in this role he came to Olney. It was here, based in the parish church, that he spent 16 years preaching and teaching about Jesus Christ who is the Gateway into God’s mercy and grace.
So what did John Newton mean when, throughout his remaining years, he told of how he just couldn’t get over the grace of God as he had experienced it? We might ask, ‘What’s so amazing about God’s grace?’.
In terms of the Christian message, as explained to us in the New Testament, grace means the undeserved, unmerited favour that God gives to any and every person who realises their need of it and in simple trust, asks for it. In Newton’s case, his immediate need was deliverance from a storm which looked like it would be the death of him. Having been rescued from that physical plight, he came to see that the same deliverance of God was there for him when the eternal books would be opened and the life that he had been living came up for review.
Like me, you haven’t lived the life of an 18th century sea captain for whom excesses of all kinds were the norm. But, like John Newton, do we live in defiance of the bits we do know about God? John Newton was not beyond the pale and neither are we, but I don’t recommend waiting for a death-threatening storm before we call out for God’s mercy!
‘It was Grace that taught my heart to fear……’ is a phrase from Amazing Grace. Newton discovered that even the unpleasantness of God facing him with his own powerlessness and mortality was actually an act of God’s grace, just as much as was the remedy. The verse continues, ‘…and grace my fears relieved; How precious did that Grace appear, the hour I first believed!’
That roadside sign at Olney is misleading! The Amazing Grace (of God) doesn’t reside in a town, nor in a church building but in the hearts of all who place their faith
in Jesus.
- Steve Richards
- Aug 7, 2020
We’ve just visited the North Cotswolds; the furthest from home that we have travelled since January. Looking for somewhere to sit in Broadway, we found two suitable benches pleasantly situated on the main street. However, on each of them was stuck a notice warning that the wooden surface held a potential risk for COVID-19 transmission, and consequently it was best not to use them. Immediately behind the benches was an outdoor eatery complete with wicker chairs and tables where, doubtless, the proprietors are hoping for people to heed the government’s slogan ‘eat out to help Out’.
Life is full of mixed messages, none more so than with matters of faith. I was confronted with these, when, some decades ago, I started to take seriously the reality of God and how I might actually be accountable to him. Where was I to go for guidance? What about all of the different church denominations – C of E, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist etc. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, Mormons etc were wanting to add to the mix. And then there were the non-Christian ones: Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and loads I’ve never heard of. I certainly knew that two or three claimed an exclusivity to truth which, if they were correct, would mean all the others were wrong. Could I use this as a logical excuse to relieve me from pursuing matters further?
This would actually have been faulty logic. Why should a number of claims to exclusivity preclude one of them from being valid? If someone pursues this line of thinking by insisting that it does, then they are simply setting themselves up as making an exclusive claim of their own!
Christianity recognises that finite, human intellectual reasoning doesn’t possess the ability to get us to the God of truth. Rather, what we need is the God of truth to get to us! Some people might demand, ‘Then why doesn’t he?’ The first chapter in the Gospel of John reveals that he has done just this, ‘Grace and truth has come to us by Jesus Christ’. The same chapter says that this Jesus is God shown to us as a human person. In this way, we can get a handle on what God is really like. We can look at Jesus’ words, claims and actions and see whether he is a fraud or not. It’s important that we know whether he is, because he says that he is the truth personified and will not tolerate any rivals to the title.
Going back to those decades when I was wrestling with the mixed messages of faith, I came to see that there was no mileage in trying to sort out which denomination or which religion to sign up to. I simply needed to accept Jesus’ invitation: ‘Come to me all you who are heavy laden and burdened and I will give you rest for your souls’. It is true that you may hear mixed messages about Jesus with quotes from various Scriptures. We can live with this, so long as we understand that Jesus is still calling us to himself and not just a discussion about him.
- Steve Richards
- Jul 3, 2020
My stepfather’s graveside funeral was held a few weeks ago. Following a short stay in hospital, he was discharged to a nursing home where he died less than four days later.
During the preceding week he and I had a particularly meaningful telephone conversation. He was bright, not in pain and, more than once, expressed that he was both comfortable and content. I confirmed that this was how he was coming across, which was, I said, an answer to my prayers, ‘…because I have been praying that you would know both contentment and assurance.’
‘That’s what I want – assurance,’ he said. ‘It’s as though I’m looking for something which I can’t quite get; like a bridge from here to heaven.’ He had been a most devout man all of his life, being thoroughly grounded in his religious tradition.
I told him that the bridge he was seeking was Jesus. ‘It’s Jesus who brings us to God.’ I then proceeded to remind him of a previous conversation when we had mentioned a portion from the New Testament, namely the Gospel of John, the opening verses of chapter 14, frequently read at funerals, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.…’
It is easy to miss an important point in this familiar quote: a general belief in God only takes us so far, it’s needful to actually trust Jesus who is the one who brings us to the true God.
I then quoted a famous verse, again from John, ‘God loved the world and so sent his Son, Jesus, so that whoever believes/trusts in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.’
I emphasised the word ‘trust’ so as to avoid the pitfall of imagining that ‘believe’ is just a mental acknowledgement that Jesus existed or exists. When a wife says that she believes in her husband, she doesn’t mean that she acknowledges that he exists! Rather, she gives him her trust.
My stepfather then said, ‘When it comes down to it, it’s all about faith isn’t it? That’s all we want; something simple. We talk about knowing God’s will, but we don’t really know what God’s will is. It needs to be simple.’
I agreed and then referred to another verse from John’s Gospel where the people ask Jesus what they must do in order to do the works (or will) of God. Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he sent [i.e. Jesus]’.
From the words he then spoke, it was plain that my stepfather very much valued these shared minutes, as indeed did I.
You may be reading this and thinking that it is inappropriate for me to share such personal things. I am convinced that during the recent months, many people, whether they consider themselves religious or not, will have been looking for strength and assurance. They will have discovered that neither those in places of power, nor those in the field of science, are willing to give authoritative answers on matters of life and death. I believe that, in the name of the love of God, Christians are right to point to Jesus. This is because it is Jesus who is the only credible person that has ever claimed to have been given all authority which includes matters of life and death. Based on this, I am glad to be able to share with you the words ‘… trust in God, trust also in Jesus’.