¶ Welcome to Starting Right
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" . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 .