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
Love First: The Story Behind Oh How I Love Jesus
A simple hymn can change the tone of a Monday, especially when its story holds more twists than we expect. We open with a warm welcome to a five-minute reset and then dive into the surprising path of Oh How I Love Jesus: verses penned by Frederick Whitfield in 1855 joined to a chorus that wandered across 19th-century America, attaching to hymns like Amazing Grace before finally finding its home. That union created a song so many of us know by heart, yet few know how it came to be.
We share five rarely-sung Whitfield stanzas that expand the hymn’s world: daily guidance from the Father, comfort for deep sorrow, a still small voice that dries tears, a fragrance along a thorny road, and a future song among the blood-bought throng. Each line adds texture to our faith, carrying us from morning anxieties to long-haul hope.
We reflect on what loving Jesus truly means: recognizing His identity as God and Creator, remembering His descent into suffering and the cross, and responding with awe, gratitude, and trust. The result is a devotion that steadies our steps, whether we’re facing deadlines or walking through shadowed paths. To seal the moment, we point you to a moving performance by Carrie Underwood, so the truth lodges not just in thought but in song.
If this short journey lifts your morning, follow the show for weekday five-minute reflections, share it with a friend who loves classic hymns, and leave a rating so more listeners can find a hopeful start to their day.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mack. 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. Good morning everybody, and welcome to Music Monday. Today we're going to take a look at an old hymn written in 1855. The hymn is Oh How I Love Jesus. Frederick Whitfield wrote the verses, and they are some beautiful, powerful words. But when it comes to the well-known chorus, it was written by someone who had never met Whitfield. And in fact, the tune and the words of the chorus were associated with several other hymns before it was ever joined together with Oh How I Love Jesus. And what's more, Whitfield was from England, and the chorus, it seemed to come from somewhere within the United States over the early 1800s. It sort of floated around for a number of years, attaching itself to different hymns in different ways, including Amazing Grace and Alas and Did My Savior Bleed. These and several other hymns were all sung to this tune for a number of years. It wasn't until this chorus married to Frederick Whitfield's verses that we finally had this wonderful, wonderful song in which we declare how much we love Jesus. Of course, this hymn is based upon first John four nineteen, which says we love him because he first loved us. Isn't that a great message? Particularly on a Monday morning, to know that God loved us first before we ever deserved it, before we were ever right with him, and in reality before we ever even thought about him, God loved us. And that love never ends and it never fades. And because of his love for us, we now love him. If you look at most hymnals today you'll find that there are four verses to this song, but Whitfield actually wrote five more verses, which are not included in any of the hymnals, but they have some powerful words. Here are the words of the verses that we don't sing. They go like this It tells me what my father has in store for every day, and though I tread a darksome path, yields sunshine all the way. It tells of one whose loving heart can feel my deepest woe, who in each sorrow bears a part that none can bear below. It bids my trembling heart rejoice, it dries each rising tear, it tells me in a still small voice To trust and never fear. This name shall shed its fragrance still along this thorny road, shall sweetly smooth the rugged hill that leads me up to God. And there with all the blood bought throng from sin and sorrow free, I'll sing the new eternal song of Jesus' love for me. Oh how I love Jesus because he first loved me. Loving Jesus is not just an emotional response to him. It's recognizing who he is, that he is God, that he is the creator of all things, he is the almighty. And then it's also remembering what he's done for us, that this almighty God left heaven to come down to this earth to suffer terribly and to die on a cross so that we might have the forgiveness of our sins and be able to have eternal life, living forever with him. He did that because he loved us, because he wants to work in our lives and wants to give us life. And then we love him because we remember that he did all of this because he loved us. When we say the words or we sing the song, Oh, how I love Jesus, it's a sense of awe and gratitude and respect, responding to the unbelievable acceptance that he has of us and for us, no matter where we come from, no matter what our background is, no matter the mistakes that we make, he has this overwhelming love and acceptance for us. And he's always willing to help us. And so we can sing with a pure heart that is just filled with his gratitude and love that says, Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. I'm going to leave you with a clip of this old hymn being sung by Carrie Underwood, and there will be a YouTube link in your notes today that you can click on and listen to the entire thing on YouTube. It's a great old hymn that declares our love for God and the fact that he has always loved us. In fact, he loved us first. Never forget that God loves you and he is for you. Have a great day, my friends. Here's Carrie Underwood with Oh How I Love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00:It sounds like music in my ear. The sweetest name of Jesus.
