Stress Test Devotional April 28
April 28, 2024
ROMANS 7:21-24 | 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!”
John Newton identified with St. Paul’s self-criticism. Paul had, of course, celebrated the brutal stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and actively persecuted the Jesus movement, before meeting the Risen Christ. John Newton had mocked Christianity for the first thirty years of his life. As a sailor, in a profession famous for profanity, one of his captains on the ship Greyhound, described him as the most profane man he ever met. He was punished during a stint in the Royal Navy for desertion. He was frequently insubordinate. He captained a slave ship transporting Africans to North America. The sense of his own wretchedness, which he captured in the first line of his great hymn, Amazing Grace, was very real.
If you were writing your own biography what would be the lowlights?
Gracious God,
Grace is sweet because of our wretchedness. Like St. Paul and John Newton, we feel the gap between our calling and our living, our best and worst selves. Thank you for your mercy.
Amen.
