My favorite hymn is: It is Well with My Soul. I can say for myself that it is well with my soul because when I was six years old I believed and accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. I recall how my mom would read to me from the Children’s Bible every night before I went to bed, but one night the Lord opened my eyes and helped me to realize that the sinner which the Bible talked about was me. I didn’t want to be enslaved to my own sinful desires, but I wanted freedom to serve a righteous, loving God who had a special plan for my life and would help me to be the kind of person He created me to be. My mom helped me that night to pray to God and ask for forgiveness for my sins and that night I acknowledge Jesus Christ as my Savior. My walk with the Lord over the past twenty-five years has been a wonderful journey, but it has not been without hardships and tests either.
One test of my faith happened the summer after I graduated from High School. Summer was almost over and I was packing to go away to a Christian college. As I was packing I was reminiscing over all the stuff I had collected over the years. I was deciding what to take and what to leave behind. We started to smell smoke in the house and suddenly my parents were filled with panic telling us that a forest fire had started very near our house. Looking out from our backyard we saw smoke billowing up high. I saw big oak trees with flames leaping fifty feet high in the air. My parents told my brothers and sisters and I to each grab our most imprortant three things in our room and to get in the car as fast as we could. Suddenly all my stuff seemed unimportant when faced with the reality that everything I owned could burn before the day was over. I grabbed my flute, Bible and a picture album of my childhood and we soon drove away to escape the blazing forest fire before it blocked our only way out.
The forest fire started just one mile from our house and continued to blaze for six days covering a total of 48,000 acres and destroying 93 homes and buildings. Some people in our church let us stay at their house that week. Every night on the news we saw pictures of more homes burned to the ground and we kept looking to see if ours was going to show up next. The fire department was unable to tell us any updates on our specific area, and my parents just kept telling us to pray and have faith that God would take care of us regardless of what happened.
God not only protected our home, but showed me through this trial that “what is seen is temporal, but what is unseen is eternal.” My resolve to make my personal relationship with Jesus Christ top priority became stronger through that trial. Now, when I look back over the many years of being a believer I see how the time spent reading the Word, praying, and putting my faith into actions has built my faith and prepared me for the tests and temptations.
Horratio Spafford the author to the words It is well with my soul was a wealthy businessman who lost his business in the great Chicago fire of 1871 and was financially ruined. If that wasn’t enough, his wife and four daughters were on a ship crossing the Atlantic and their ship collided with another ship and sank. His wife just barely survived, but he lost all his children. Weeks later when he visited the place where the ship sank, he penned the words:
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
He wrote many verses to this song, but these first two sum up the essence of his thoughts that day. That day Spafford was still able to see God in his life even when he had lost nearly everything else. Today I hope you can say with assurance, “It is well with my soul”.
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