"I've Never Heard Amazing Grace"

James, one of our new believers, has spent alot of time pondering the depth of God's grace.  A young looking 22-year-old, he is already the father of a 5 year old and an infant.  There isn't much he hasn't done and he is the first to admit it......confess it.....weep over it......and stand amazed at our Heavenly Father's forgiveness of  it!  Since committing his life to Christ at our jail he has been faithful to attend Bible studies and church,  completed several Bible correspondence courses that we offer,   confessed his wrongdoings to his family and friends,  and helped other inmates to find  help  in Jesus. 

On Thanksgiving Day, at the men's Bible study,  James sat in his usual spot in the front row.  The Bible study--a  topical discussion of what Proverbs has to say about fools--generated alot of  comments from the men.   Jim talked alot on that evening.  Then he asked something that would surprise most of our readers.  He asked,   "Do you have the words to Amazing Grace?  Can you have someone sing it for me?   I've never heard Amazing Grace." 

Evidently in the pod, James and some of the other men had been talking about how amazed they were that God could forgive them.  Someone had mentioned the song only to find that  some of  our young inmates have never heard it. (In liberal modern day America it is politically incorrect to admit that you are lost, blind, or wretched!  Certainly the schools do not teach that God needs to rescue you from your own depraved sin nature.)   But here were our baby believers, absolutely ashamed of their debauchery and absolutely awed that God would have anything to do with them.

That night in the Bible study, James heard the story of  John Newton, a cruel slave trader and then slave from the 17th century, who came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ and then penned the remarkable words:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now I'm found

Was blind, but now I see!

James then said, so sweet and unashamed,  "I love those words.   That's how I feel sometimes...just like that!"  Others nodded their heads in agreement.  Our inmates had discovered the timelessness of God's love...that it spans centuries.   They had felt the power of God's love...that it captures even the hardest hearts and then sets them free.  And, so poignantly,  they had experienced the awesome wonder of God's love...that for every sin-stained human being who cries out in agony, desperately wanting to be saved, there is hope.   God is ready to wipe away their tears of shame and guilt with the blood of His own Son.   

Amazing grace indeed!