PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: THE INVITATION THAT MAKES IT PLAIN!
(By: Ron Woodrum)
The Swiss Evangelist and hymn writer Cesar Malan always liked to speak a word for Jesus. One day, while visiting England, he spoke to a young lady who was sitting at his table. He said he hoped that she was a Christian. Charlotte Elliott bristled! She would rather not discuss that question as he felt it to be a private matter of no one else’s business. Malan apologized if he had offended her. For Charlotte, however, Malan’s witness was a turning point. She could not get his suggestion out of her head. Three weeks later, she met Malan again. He asked her again about being a Christian. This time she told him that she had thought of nothing else for three weeks, but did not know how to do it. She had been trying but felt unsuccessful. He then told her “you have nothing of merit to bring to God. You must come to Him, Through Jesus, Just as you are!” That is exactly what Charlotte did. She rejoiced in her new found faith.
From the age of 33 until her death, Charlotte suffered crippling fatigue. “My Heavenly Father knows, and He alone, what it is day after day, and hour after hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost overpowering weakness and languor and exhaustion, to resolve, as He enables me to do, not to yield to the slothfulness, the depression, the irritability, skuch as a body causes me to long to indulge, but to rise every morning determined to take this as my motto, ‘If any man will come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me’ ” Despite her ailment, she made herself useful. For example she edited the Religious magazine The Religious Remembrance. In 1835, twelve years after her conversion, her brother was raising funds for a school for the daughters of clergymen–St. Mary’s Hall. Unable to help with the project Charlotte felt useless. Perhaps even God have rejected her! She fell into deep doubt. As she pondered her situation she remembered the words of Cesar Malan and decided to write a song for others who were in her same situation. The song she wrote became one of the greatest soul-winning songs in the history of hymns.
JUST AS I AM, WITHOUT ONE PLEA
BUT THAT THY BLOOD WERE SHED FOR ME
AND THAT THOU BIDST ME COME TO THEE
OH LAMB OF GOD, I COME, I COME
JUST AS I AM, AND WAITING NOT
TO RID MY SOUL OF ONE DARK BLOT
TO THEE WHOSE BLOOD CAN CLEANSE EACH SPOT OH LAM OF GOD, I COME, I COME
JUST AS I AM, THOUGH TOSSED ABOUT
WITH MANY A CONFLICT, MANY A DOUBT
FIGHTINGS AND FEARS WITHIN, WITHOUT
OH LAMB OF GOD I COME
JUST AS I AM THOU WILT RECEIVE
WILL WELCOME, PARDON, CLEANSE, RECEIVE
BECAUSE THY PROMISE I BELIEVE,
OH LAMB OF GOD I COME.
Charlotte’s hymn helped many come to faith. Dora Wordsworth, daughter of William Wordsworth, came to faith because of the hymn, and asked to have the lines read to her again and again on her death bed. What is more that when Charlotte died in 1871 that more than one thousand letters were found in her personal papers written by people who had come to faith through the message of the words she wrote in that hymn. What is more, in her own lifetime Charlotte learned that copies of the poem were being sold for money and the money was being donated to St. Mary’s Hall, the very project she thought she had not been able to help.
Later it came to be public knowledge that her poem had greater impact than ever imagined. In 1934 a Crusade came to Charlotte, N.C. an Evangelist Mordecai Ham was holding the crusade. William Franklin Graham, a high school student came to the crusade to see the evangelist who friends told him preached like a man fighting a swarm of bees swirling around his head. Mordecai Ham preached on hell. Billy was terrified of dying and going to hell. He joined the choir to sit behind the evangelist, who seemed to be preaching right to him. But that did no good. The first night in the choir he responds to the invitation and receives Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour. That night the hymn that spoke to his heart was Charlotte Elliott’s Just As I Am! When Billy began his crusades years later guess what Invitation Hymn he choose for his moment of decisions-JUST AS I AM. Even today when you watch a replay of Billy Graham Crusade Classics it takes your breath away when the first stanza of that great hymn begins people by the thousands begin to pour into the aisles rushing down to receive Christ! Charlotte Elliot never dreamed how God would use her simple hymn to speak to the heart of millions of people all over the world. That is how our God works! He takes those who give their best to Him, and reproduces it to accomplish more than we ever imagined!