Blessed Assurance

Blessed Assurance

During her lifetime, Fanny Crosby made many friends. She was equally loved by the homeless as well as the powerful and wealthy. She was as comfortable speaking on the floor of Congress as she was sitting in a homeless shelter talking about Christ to the roughest men in town.

One day, in 1873, Fanny was visiting the home of Phoebe Knapp, the wife of the founder of Metropolitan Life Insurance. Mrs. Knapp, an accomplished musician, was having a pipe organ installed. While they were waiting, she told Fanny that she had been working on a tune. She sat at the piano and began to play. She asked, “What do you think the tune says?”

Fanny knelt in prayer. She knew that every tune tells its own story if you listen to the notes. Her task was to hear that story and put it into lyrics that matched the tune. Fanny smiled, stood up and said, “The tune says, ‘Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.’”

Mrs. Knapp wrote the lyrics down and continued playing. Going through the tune several times together, they wrote the great hymn, “Blessed Assurance.”

It has become a hymn of great encouragement to men and women of the Christian faith throughout the world. Soldiers have sung it in times of war, believers in times of persecution and all of us, at one time or another, when we just need a little comfort and the assurance of Jesus’ love for us.

That sounds like the perfect song for today, doesn’t it? Couldn’t we all use a little more encouragement and assurance?

Here is the poem, as written that day.

BLESSED ASSURANCE:

Stanza 1

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Refrain:

This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;
this is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long.

Stanza 2

Perfect submission, perfect delight!

Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;

Angels descending bring from above

Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

(Refrain)

Stanza 3

Perfect submission, all is at rest!

I in my Savior am happy and blessed,

Watching and waiting, looking above,

Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

(Refrain)