God's Grace In Everyday Living

By David M. Wilson

God's grace does much more than simply save us. It changes us. It teaches us. It leads us. It provides strength for daily Christian living. It encourages us. Find out that grace is not a license for sin, but rather a power for daily living in this simple, readable, inspirational volume that is sure to assist the believer in better understanding the grace of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329956469

Book preview

God's Grace In Everyday Living

God’s Grace In Every Day Living

By David M. Wilson

Pastor

Grant Avenue Baptist Church

Redondo Beach, CA

God’s Grace in Everyday Living

By David M. Wilson

Introduction

I love the wonderful song Amazing Grace! How Sweet the Sound! by the former slaver John Newton.  His story is indeed amazing.

At the young age of 18, he was forced into service in the Royal Navy.  As a midshipman, he tried to desert and was publicly flogged, receiving eight dozen lashes on his naked back, and reduced in rank to seaman.  He so resented the Captain who ordered his punishment he seriously contemplated murdering him and then throwing himself into the sea in order to commit suicide.  However, he was soon transferred to another ship, The Pegasus.  One would think his lot in life would have improved but his attitude was such that the crew did not accept him and in fact, the Captain sold him into slavery when they reached Africa.

The slave trader gave Newton to his wife as a slave and his situation worsened.  She was abusive and mistreated him terribly.  He was the low man on the totem pole so to speak and therefore he was a slave to even the other slaves.  However, in 1748 a sea captain ransomed him from the slavers on behalf of Newton’s father. 

During the return voyage to England, Newton had a spiritual conversion, though later he recounted that was not necessarily his salvation experience.  He embraced the doctrines of evangelical Christianity and renounced gambling, profanity, and drinking.  He began to read the Bible and other Christian literature.  All of this came about during a storm at sea.  Newton testified of crying out to God as a hole in the cargo hold filled with water and threatened to sink the ship.  Through God’s grace, Newton would say, the ship rolled and the cargo shifted and plugged the hole, which allowed them to reach safety. 

Newton, continued to work in the slave trade, though he confessed he had found sympathy for those souls who were being sold into bondage and his conscience bothered him.  He said later, I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterwards.  On a later voyage, while in West Africa, he contracted a fever and became quite ill.  At that time, he later said, he gave his heart and life fully to Jesus Christ and placed his destiny in God’s hands. He made several more trips as a slave-trader and eventually suffered a stroke that caused him to retire, though his investments in slave-trading remained.

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