Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Trust Amidst Tragedy
Ever wonder how beautiful hymns emerge from life's darkest moments? Today we unpack the extraordinary story behind "'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus," written in 1882 by missionary Louisa Stead after watching her husband drown while attempting to rescue a boy at Long Island beach.
Louisa's journey takes us from her teenage calling to missionary work, through devastating personal tragedy, to faithful service in Africa. Has a hymn ever spoken directly to your circumstances? Share your story or favorite hymn in the comments—I'd love to hear how music has shaped your faith journey.
Follow this link to hear a powerful rendition of 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus, by Shane and Shane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srZ9IGsFy4o
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day, so grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day right. On Music Mondays, we talk about church music. We talk about worship, some of the new choruses, and in the past we've talked about some of the older hymns, and I was reminded last week that it's been a long time since I featured a hymn, and so today we're going to remedy that. We're going to look at one of the older hymns. In fact, this one was written back in 1882, and it is one of the hymns that I grew up singing in the church, not because I was born in 1882, but because it continues to be part of the music we sing in many of our churches Now. If you're a little bit younger, you probably don't even know this one. This one was written by a missionary by the name of Louisa Stead, and the hymn is "'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus".
Speaker 1:Louisa was one of these people who, very early on in life, realized what her calling was. In fact, she was just a teenager when she knew that God wanted her to be a missionary. In the early 1870s she made plans to travel to China and to join the mission work there, but her health was so poor at that point in time that she was not able to go. So she stayed home and shortly thereafter she married, becoming Mrs Louisa Stead. Sometime around 1879 or 1880, the family, now with a child four years old, decided to go and enjoy a day at the beach in Long Island, new York. They were enjoying their picnic lunch when suddenly they heard cries for help coming from a boy out in the water. Mr Stead charged into the water, swimming out to the boy to try and save him, but, as sometimes happens when you're trying to rescue someone who's drowning, the boy grabbed onto Mr Stead, keeping him from being able to swim and save either of them, and they both drowned.
Speaker 1:Shortly after that, louisa and her daughter Lily left for Cape Colony in South Africa. While there she met another missionary by the name of Robert Wodehouse. They were soon married and began to work very effectively together on the mission field. But then, in 1895, her health was bad again and they had to come home for five years. Her health was bad again and they had to come home for five years. Wodehouse pastored a Methodist congregation during those years until 1900, when they went back to the mission field, this time to the Methodist mission in Umtale, southern Rhodesia, which we know today as Zimbabwe.
Speaker 1:On April 4th 1901, she wrote home to her friend In connection with this whole mission, there are glorious possibilities, she wrote. One cannot, in the face of the particular difficulties, help saying who is sufficient for these things, but with simple confidence and trust we may and do say our sufficiency is of God. It's believed that during this time back in Africa that she wrote the song Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus. The chorus goes Jesus, jesus, how I trust him, how I've proved him, o'er and o'er, jesus, jesus, precious Jesus, oh for grace to trust him more. Psalm 56.11 tells us In God I have put my trust and I will not be afraid.
Speaker 1:Louisa did not have an easy life. Her health was a constant struggle to her. She saw her husband, the father of her child, drown right before her very eyes. She lived on the mission field, which is certainly not a glamorous life in any way, shape or form, but it was so fulfilling to her to know that what she was doing was reaching people for Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:We once had a missionary come to one of our church services. I remember him standing at the front and beginning his talk and he looked over the congregation and he said just before I begin, I just want to find out, is there anyone here who's a missionary and has spent time on the mission field? Everybody sort of looked around at each other but nobody responded. And he said one more time there's no one here that has spent time on the mission field. He lowered his head for a moment and then raised it back up with a bit of a sideways smile on his face. He said don't you realize that you are all missionaries and every time you leave the doors of this church you are entering the mission field? It's not necessarily a glamorous life, but it's a life that changes other lives and is the life that God has called you to live.
Speaker 1:I'll never forget that man. I don't know his name, but I do know what he said and I do know the impact that missionaries have around the world. Even today, they all, within their hearts, understand these words "'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take him at his word, just to rest upon his promise, just to know. Thus saith the Lord" To trust in Jesus. Just to trust Is getting by, and in simple faith, to watch me, faith to launch me With a healing, cleansing flood.
