I Stand Amazed In The Presence

Christ took our sins and the sins of the whole world, as well as the Father's wrath on his shoulders. And he has drowned them both in himself so that we are thereby reconciled to God and become completely righteous. Martin Luther. This is The Bright Forever.

The Bright Forever

Hello and welcome to The Bright Forever. We've made it to episode number two. My name is Andy Peavyhouse and I am your host as we discover the richness of some of the greatest hymns of the church. Last week, we talked about where the name for the podcast came from and the hymn of the same name, The Bright Forever. It's a hymn by Fanny Crosby. When we talked about my girls and my desire to impart some... of this faith knowledge that I have to them through the hymns that I learned and loved when I was their age. For the sake of time, I'll just say this. If you haven't had a chance to listen to it, take a moment, go and listen so that you get kind of an idea of where we're going with this podcast and maybe how you can join us in this little adventure that I'm doing. And I would absolutely love to hear any stories you are creating out there, whether you're going through these hymns solo or with a group or in your own families. How is God using these hymns and maybe even our story on this podcast to help you grow spiritually? Reach out to us at podcastatthebrightforever.com. Again, that's podcastatthebrightforever.com. We would love to hear from you. Now we are one week into this journey and my girls are loving this idea. I think more because they think there's a possibility that they will be able to join me in future podcasts, which of course they probably will. And that will happen at some point. But more than that, they seem genuinely excited to learn these songs and hear what daddy has to say and to teach them about them. So I must admit, this made me even more excited about beginning this. All right. Well, this week we will be looking at one of my most favorite hymns. Full disclosure, you may hear me say that a whole lot because we're going to get to him and I'm like, this is one of my favorites. This is one of my favorites. This is one of my favorites. I'll try and control myself, but I can't promise you anything. But I will tell you one of my most favorite hymns in the whole world is this one. This week, we're looking at I Stand Amazed in the Presence, also known as How Marvelous. It's written by a guy named Charles Gabriel in 1905. My girls, I believe, may love this hymn almost as much as I do. And when we were in the car riding around, I'd play them Every different version of it I could find on either Spotify or Amazon Music. The song has been recorded and re-recorded so many times by so many artists. My favorite version we have come across so far is is by a group called the Norton Hall Band. I just like the way they've done it. It's got a nice beat. It's got a nice kind of, it just, it's not too fast, not too slow. It's fantastic. And my girls, however, love Bart Millard's version on Hymns 2. He does a version. It's awesome. It puts some pep in their step, as they say. They're like, ooh, this is peppy. But all that to say, we really loved listening to all these different versions and all these different ways of doing this hymn and learning this hymn. I Stand in Maze was written in 1905 by Charles Gabriel. Charles grew up on a farm in Iowa. He taught himself music. playing the reed organ that he had at his home. And it's a good thing too. We may have been deprived of seven or 8,000 hymns he is credited with writing. So we talked about Fanny Crosby last week with her 8,000 hymns. This is another one, seven to 8,000 hymns that he is credited with writing. The 35 song collections, Sunday school song books, collections for men's and women's choirs, Numerous cantatas, including 41 Christmas cantatas that he wrote. As one author put it, in the early 1900s, Charles Gabriel was the king of gospel music. He also taught in singing schools that were very popular at this time. One problem was he wrote under so many different pseudonyms, it makes it really hard to actually determine which one's are actually his and which ones aren't. He's credited with writing even more music than he is actual hymn texts, including Martin's His Eye is on the Sparrow. He wrote the music for that. And Johnson Oatman's Higher Ground. And my bluegrass-loving favorite, Ada Haverson's Will the Circle Be Unbroken. He started leading singing school educational events when he was just a teenager. He began working with Grace Episcopal Methodist Church, located in San Francisco, in 1890. And in 1892, he moved to Chicago, where he wrote and composed for Homer Roadheaver and his publishing company, and EOXL and his publishing company. Rodeheaver and Excel were singing evangelists. They were song leaders for popular revival evangelists like Billy Sunday and D.L. Moody, respectively. Not bad for somebody who's self-trained. Not bad at all. Some of his more well-known hymns include Send the Light, the Blessed Gospel Light, and Oh, That Will Be Glory for Me. But the hymn that seems to have had the longest life and the greatest impact, at least for me, and I'm going to guess from all of the other recordings of this for a lot of other people, is I Stand Amazed in the Presence. The hymn first appeared in EOXL's collection Praises in 1905. I can't find any profound story of inspiration for why Gabriel wrote this hymn. There's no tragic life event, nor deep revelation, just an awe of his Savior's love. It's in the second stanza where we get a glimpse of the writer's thoughts. He gives us just this little look As to what makes him stand amazed and shout, how marvelous. He says, for me, it was in the garden. He's talking about the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus went with his disciples to pray. Just before Judas betrays him and he is arrested, spat on, beaten and tortured, and eventually led to Golgotha to be crucified. Luke 22 verse 41 through 44 reads, and he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed saying, father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. And then appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. And his sweat became like drops of blood falling down to the ground. He says, for me, it was in the garden. He prayed not my will, but thine. He had no tears for his own griefs, but sweat drops of blood for mine. I must admit that when I first came across this hymn as a child, it confused me, and my girl's the same. Jesus is sweating drops of blood, stricken with grief, sorrow, and agony and suffering, dying alone, and we're happy about this? How marvelous? How wonderful? What? As a child, I didn't get it. I walked down in front during VBS. I got baptized, but I didn't know Jesus. I was at church every time the doors were open, but I didn't know Jesus. I loved going to mission friends and to RAs and The children's choir and camps and Bible drill. Eventually to youth camp and to choir tours and to mission trips. Even helping lead worship on Wednesday nights for our high school. But I didn't know Jesus. I knew a lot about the Bible. I even taught student-led discipleship classes. But I didn't know Jesus. I knew about Jesus. But I didn't know Jesus. I didn't really understand what was so amazing. I mean, I knew he loved us. He was a great teacher. He was God's son. But he died for me? Okay. Why? I'm not that bad. He didn't need to die because I may have lied once or twice. This was my thought process until I reached college. I was confronted by a man named Charles Spurgeon. Okay, actually, I wasn't confronted by the man Charles Spurgeon. I was confronted by a man by the name of John Reed who quoted Charles Spurgeon. I was on a college ski trip to Colorado with my church. When I heard this from Spurgeon. to the honor of the redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed. I was confronted with the fact that I had created this tiny pocket sized savior for my tiny little pocket size sins. When in fact, my sins were immense. and destructive and weighing on me so much that I burst into tears. You see, you see, I didn't understand this song because I didn't understand my own sin. If all my sins were were small, little, itty-bitty, pocket-sized sins. And all I needed was that small, tiny, little Savior. But when I was confronted with how big and how terrible my sins truly are, and how my sin offends God, I can only stand amazed. at the greatness of my Savior's love and sacrifice. I fell on my knees and in a Colorado ski lodge, I finally gave my life to Jesus and made him Lord and Savior. And I finally began to fully understand the song. He took my sins and my sorrows. He made them his very own. He bore the burden to Calvary and suffered and died alone. How marvelous. How wonderful and my song shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me.

presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how he could love me a sinner condemned unclean singing how marvelous how shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love. Yeah. Thank

you so much for listening to this podcast. Thank you for continuing this journey with me. Please subscribe to this podcast, either through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, or any of the other sites that you find us on. You can also find us at www.thebrightforever.com and copy our RSS feed into whatever podcast app you want. Also, again, let us know what you think. Send your comments to podcast at thebrightforever.com We would love to hear from you. We'd love to hear what you think of the show, what you think of just this idea in general. If there are stories that you want to share, we would love to hear those too. And we'd love to even share some of those stories here on the podcast. So please send us anything that you want to talk to us about. Again, thank you for joining me. Thank you for listening. I hope you will continue to enjoy this as we go. Let me leave you with this benediction. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May he turn his face towards you and give you peace. Have a great week and I'll see you back here next week. God bless you all. We're out.