J is for Just as I Am

Back when I was growing up, we used to have Come As You Are parties. Did you ever go to those?

Some of them were planned ahead and people would wear costumes to fake themselves in goofy situations, but we also had the true spontaneous type where we drove by our friends houses and picked them up in whatever condition they happened to be in. Think of it as a
drive-by flash mob. Instead of texting the time and place, we actually went and physically collected the people.

Yeah, I know, I'm old.

But they were fun. And the worse you looked, the better. It was something to talk and laugh about all evening.

It brings to mind the old hymn, Just As I Am. This song was one of those that our church would sing almost every week at the end of the service - the invitation song.

Sad to say, we don't sing this song anymore. It isn't one of the hymns that the contemporary artists have decided to redo, yet, but I'm hopeful. Some of my other favorites have had makeovers and I have the same joy in singing them as I did as a young girl when I was first saved and the words actually made sense.

I thought I was so familiar with it, but then I learned a little more about it.

Charlotte Elliot wrote the words to this song. In the West End of London in the 1830s, she was invited to dine with a popular minister of the time, Cesar Malan. During the course of the evening, the minister asked her bluntly if she was a Christian. She took offense to the question. Can't you just imagine a proper English lady's dignified response to such? She told him that it was a private issue.

But it bothered her for several weeks and when she again met with the minister, she revealed her great desire to come to know the Savior and asked how she should do that. He explained that Jesus accepted her just as she was. She went away rejoicing and penned the lines:

Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidst me come to Thee. O Lamb 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. O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Charlotte's own brother, who became a minister, said that all of his work did not add up to the impact that his sister's poem had on people who wanted to know the Lord. I think he was right.

There are more verses to the hymn, but that second one is the one that strikes at me right where I am. Conflicts, doubts, fears, they all tempt me to give up on my faith and throw up my hands saying, "what's the use?" But then I can run up to Abba and crawl into his lap and let Him whisper His truth to me again.

Today a friend came by with Isaiah 29:11 on her heart. "Behold I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "Plans to prosper and not to harm you that you may have a hope and a future." She told me that it was put to her that the verse was a promise to us. That our faith would be brought to a new level through all that is going on.

That right there brings me to another song that has been special to me for decades. The words are:

I will trust You Lord, when I don't know why. I will trust You, Lord, till the day I die. I will trust You Lord, when I'm blind with pain. You were God before and You'll never change. You can see my heart. You can read my mind and You've got to know I would rather die than to lose my faith in the One I love. I will trust You, Lord.

I could say that this week is a week of trust, but isn't every week? And aren't we glad that the Savior opens His arms wide to us regardless of our unlovely attitudes, our warts, and our issues!

What old songs are playing through your mind today?