Moment by Moment

There are times when God reveals to me the precipice on which I walk. This morning was one of those times. Our lives are spent walking on the edge of a cliff, and it is naught but the grace of God that keeps us from falling over that cliff. We continue to run toward the edge imagining that, like the glass platform over the Grand Canyon, we can walk beyond the edge and not fall. Jonathan Edwards captured similar imagery in his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which remarkably is mischaracterized by its own title. The sermon is not about the wrath of God, per say, but the grace of God which keeps us from His wrath despite our utterly deserving it. When Scripture says, "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience," Paul is preaching the same sermon that Jonathan Edwards preached and that we as believers need to hear again (Colossians 3:5-6, NASB). We are sinners sustained only by the grace of God, and the moment that we forget our need of him, we start to slip over the cliff.

In 1872, Annie S. Hawks wrote the well-known hymn, I Need Thee Every Hour. While that hymn is beautiful, there is an oft-heard criticism of it, which is at once accurate and unnecessary (because the people who sing the hymn know this truth), that we need him every moment. However, in 1893, a lay preacher from London named Henry Varley made a similar remark to Major Daniel Webster Whittle while at the World's Fair in Chicago, who wrote that year (though he did not publish it until 1896) the hymn, Moment by Moment. His daughter, May Whittle (who would later marry William Revell Moody, the son of Dwight L. Moody), wrote the tune, which has been named simply Whittle. This hymn has an unfamiliar yet simple tune, which you can listen to here.

I love this hymn because it truly conveys the grace of God and the devotion which He has to us. So often I fail to respond by devoting myself completely to Him. But even when I am faithless, He is faithful. There is never a trial that He is not there, there is never a tear that He does not know, and Never a danger that He is not sovereign over. Moment by moment I'm kept in His love and given His life from above.

Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine;

Living with Jesus, a new life divine;

Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine,

Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.

Moment by moment I'm kept in His love;

Moment by moment I've life from above;

Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;

Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.

Never a trial that He is not there,

Never a burden that He doth not bear,

Never a sorrow that He doth not share,

Moment by moment, I'm under His care.

Refrain

Never a heartache, and never a groan,

Never a teardrop and never a moan;

Never a danger but there on the throne,

Moment by moment He thinks of His own.

Refrain

Never a weakness that He doth not feel,

Never a sickness that He cannot heal;

Moment by moment, in woe or in weal,

Jesus my Savior abides with me still.

Refrain

(Public Domain)