Devotional Thoughts Based on the Glory to God Hymnal

Isaiah 12:2

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God, is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.

Some hymns transport me back to the days of my earliest faith development. What about you?

As soon as I hear He Lives!, Just as I Am, Softly and Tenderly, Jesus Is Tenderly Calling, and Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine!, I find myself in a pew with my parents or grandfather singing in the sanctuary of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Union, South Carolina. My grandmother and great aunt are singing in the choir. I am in my early teens or younger and I hear the sound of those hymns filling the sanctuary.

Growing up, my family and I often watched the Billy Graham Crusades on television. Perhaps the most memorable songs sung at those events, other than George Beverly Shea’s How Great Thou Art and the crowd singing Just As I Am was Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine!

In many scriptures we learn that we belong to God. In Romans 14:8, we read, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” The writer of this hymn and all those who sing and believe, claim that God is our salvation. We trust in God and acknowledge God as the source of our might and strength. God has become our salvation and so we are eager to praise Him and proclaim His mighty acts.

Prayer

O Lord, we thank You for those hymns that we learned as children when our faith was in its earliest stages of development. It truly is wonderful to stand and sing of our salvation and what a blessed assurance it is knowing our Lord Jesus. Amen.