God Amidst Trials and Storms

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Talking about trials and storms in the previous post, here are 2 accounts of people who have been through the storms of life but yet was touched by God, which in turn blessed and inpsired many others with their songs.

Horatio Spafford went through a series of tragedies in his family but yet pulls through it all with God. In the end, both he and his wife even continued to bless many others with their hands. This is his story:

On October 8, 1871, as Horatio and his wife Anna were grieving over the death of their son, the Great Chicago Fire swept through the city. Horatio was a prominent lawyer in Chicago, and had invested heavily in the city's real estate, and the fire destroyed almost everything he owned.

Two years later, in 1873, Spafford decided his family should take a holiday somewhere in Europe, and chose England knowing that his friend D. L. Moody would be preaching there in the fall. Delayed because of business, he sent ahead of him his family: his wife Anna, and his four remaining children, daughters Tanetta, Maggie, Annie and Bessie.

On November 21, 1873, while crossing the Atlantic on the steamship Ville du Havre, their ship was struck by an iron sailing vessel and two hundred and twenty six people lost their lives, including all four of Spafford's daughters. Somehow his wife, Anna, survived. On arriving in England, she sent a telegram to Spafford beginning "Saved alone."

Spafford then himself took a ship to England, going past the place where his daughters had died. According to Bertha Spafford, a daughter born after the tragedy, the hymn was written in mid-Atlantic.

After the tragedy, the Spaffords had two more children: a son, Horatio, born in 1876, and a daughter, Bertha, born two years later. Sadly, young Horatio contracted scarlet fever and died at the age of four. Then in August 1881, the Spaffords set out for Jerusalem as a party of 13 adults and 3 children and set up the American Colony.

Moved by a series of profound tragic losses, Chicago natives Anna and Horatio Spafford led a small American contingent in 1881 to Jerusalem to form a Christian utopian society known as the "American Colony." Colony members, later joined by Swedish Christians, engaged in philanthropic work amongst the people of Jerusalem regardless of their religious affiliation and without proselytizing motives--thereby gaining the trust of the local Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities. During and immediately after World War I, the American Colony played a critical role in supporting these communities through the great suffering and deprivations of the eastern front by running soup kitchens, hospitals, orphanages and other charitable ventures.

Spafford died on October 16, 1888, of malaria, and was buried there in Jerusalem.

It Is Well with My Soul


When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

(Refrain:) It is well (it is well),
with my soul (with my soul),
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
(Refrain)

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
(Refrain)

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
(Refrain)

And Lord haste the day, when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
(Refrain)

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Spafford

You might not be familiar with John Newton but he wrote one of the songs we are all familiar with, Amazing Grace. John's account is one where God used a storm to begin to bring him back to him. Through the storm, John recognised that he could only rely on God and later worked with William Wilberforce towards the abolition of slave trade in the British Empire. This is his story:

John Newton was born in Wapping, Essex, in 1725, on July 24, the son of John Newton, a shipmaster in the Mediterranean service, and Elizabeth Newton (née Seatclife), a Nonconformist Christian. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 6. Newton spent 2 years at boarding school, at the age of 11 he went to sea with his father and sailed with him on a total of six voyages until the elder Newton retired in 1742. Newton's father had planned for him to take up a position as a slave master at a sugar plantation in Jamaica but in 1743, he was pressed into naval service, and became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich. After attempting to desert, Newton was put in irons and court martialed. The captain was determined to make an example of Newton for the rest of the crew. Thus, in the presence of 350 members of the crew, the 18-year old midshipman was stripped to the waist, tied to the grating, and received a flogging of 96 lashes, and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman. Following that disgrace and humiliation, Newton initially contemplated suicide, but he recovered, both physically and mentally, and, at his own request, he was placed in service on a slave ship bound for West Africa which eventually took him to the coast of Sierra Leone. He became the servant of a slave trader, who abused him. It was this period that Newton later remembered as the time he was "once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa." Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton’s father to search for him on his next voyage.

Religious Conversion
Sailing back to England in 1748 aboard the slave-ship Greyhound on the Atlantic triangle trade route, the ship encountered a severe storm and almost sank. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and prayed to God as the ship filled with water. It was this experience which he later marked as the beginnings of his conversion to evangelical Christianity. As the ship sailed home, Newton began to read the Bible and other religious literature. By the time he reached Britain, he had accepted the doctrines of Christianity. The date was March 10, 1748, an anniversary he marked for the rest of his life. From that point on, he avoided profanity, gambling, and drinking, although he continued to work in the slave trade. He later said that his true conversion did not happen until some time later: "I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterwards."

Newton returned to Liverpool, England and, partly due to the influence of Joseph Manestay, a friend of his father’s, obtained a position as first mate aboard a slave trading vessel, the Brownlow, bound for the West Indies via the coast of Guinea. During the first leg of this voyage, while in west Africa (1748-49), Newton acknowledged the inadequacy of his spiritual life. While he was sick with a fever, he professed his full belief in Christ. He later said that this experience was his true conversion and the turning point in his spiritual life. He claimed it was the first time he felt totally at peace with God.

Still, he did not renounce the slave trade until later in his life (when he wrote a tract decrying it in aid of abolitionist William Wilberforce). After his return to England in 1750, he made three further voyages as captain of the slave-trading ships Duke of Argyle (1750) and the African (1752-53 and 1753-54). He only gave up seafaring and his slave-trading activities in 1754, after a serious illness.

Anglican priest
In 1755 Newton became tide surveyor of the port of Liverpool, again through the influence of Manestay and, in his spare time, was able to study Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. He became well-known as an evangelical lay minister, and applied for the Anglican priesthood in 1757, although it was more than seven years before he was eventually accepted and ordained into the Church of England. Such had been his frustration during this period of rejection that he had sought also to apply to the Methodists, Independents and Presbyterians, as well as directly to the Bishops of Chester and Lincoln and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Eventually, in 1764, he was introduced by Thomas Haweis to Lord Dartmouth, who was influential in recommending Newton to the Bishop of Chester, and who had suggested him for the living of Olney, Buckinghamshire. On 29 April 1764 Newton received deacon’s orders, and finally became a priest on 17 June.

As curate of Olney, Newton was partly sponsored by the evangelical philanthropist John Thornton, who supplemented his stipend of £60 a year with £200 a year "for hospitality and to help the poor". He soon became well-known for his pastoral care, as much as for his beliefs, and his friendship with dissenters and evangelical clergy caused him to be respected by Anglicans and non-conformists alike. He was to spend sixteen years at Olney, during which time so popular was his preaching that the church had a gallery added to accommodate the large numbers who flocked to hear him.

Some five years later, in 1772, Thomas Scott, later to become a biblical commentator and co-founder of the Church Missionary Society, took up the curacy of the neighbouring parishes of Stoke Goldington and Weston Underwood. Newton was instrumental in converting Scott from a cynical 'career priest' to a true believer, a conversion Scott related in his spiritual autobiography The Force Of Truth (1779).

In 1779 Newton was invited by the wealthy Christian merchant John Thornton to become Rector of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London, where he officiated until his death. The church had been built by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1727 in the fashionable Baroque style. Newton then became one of only two evangelical preachers in the capital, and he soon found himself gaining in popularity amongst the growing evangelical party. He was a strong supporter of evangelicalism in the Church of England, and was a friend of the dissenting clergy as well as of the ministry of his own church.

Many young churchmen and others enquiring about their faith visited him and sought his advice, including such well-known social figures as the writer and philanthropist Hannah More and the young M.P., William Wilberforce, who had recently undergone a crisis of conscience and religious conversion experience as he was contemplating leaving politics.

Abolitionist
John Newton has been called hypocritical by some modern writers for continuing to participate in the slave trade while holding strong Christian convictions. However, during his early years as a slave trader he did not consider himself to be a true Christian: 'I was greatly deficient in many respects...I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time later."

It is true, after what he felt was his true conversion to Christianity, he continued working the slave routes for a few years, but he eventually came to repent. He later joined William Wilberforce in the campaign for abolition. In 1787 he wrote a tract supporting the campaign, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.

Among his greatest contributions to history was encouraging William Wilberforce, a Member of Parliament for Hull, to stay in Parliament and "serve God where he was", rather than enter the ministry. Wilberforce heeded the ex-slaveship captain's advice, and spent the next twenty years successfully working for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.

"Amazing Grace"


Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton