An old woman with a halo of silver hair and tears following down her furrowed cheeks was praying for her son. Her worn hands busy over a wash-board in a room of poverty – praying – for her son John. John, who had run away from home in his teens to become a sailor, was now reported that he had become a very wicked man. She was fervently praying, as always, that her son might be of service to God.
The mother believed in two things, (1) the power of a righteous Christian in fervent prayer and (2) the power of God to change a life. So while she scrubbed she continued to pray for her son. God answered the prayer by working a miracle in the heart of John Newton. The black stains of sin were washed white in the blood of the Lamb. Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
The wash-tub prayers were heard as are all prayers when asked in His name. John Newton, the drunken sailor, became John Newton, the sailor-preacher. Among the thousands of men and woman he brought to Christ was Thomas Scott. Thomas Scott was a cultured, selfish, and self-satisfied man. But, because of the wash-tub prayers another miracle lead to thousands of unbelieving hearts to Christ – among them, a young man named William Cowper.
He too, was washed by the cleansing Blood and in a moment of inspiration wrote:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s Veins,
And Sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
And this song has brought countless thousands to the One who died on Calvary. Among the thousands was William Wilberforce, who became a great Christian statesman, and unfastened the shackles from the feet of British slaves. Among those whom he led to the Lord was Leigh Richmond, a clergyman of the Established Church in one of the Channel Islands. He wrote a book, “The Dairyman’s Daughter” which was translated into forty languages and with intensity of a leaping flame burned the love of Christ into the hearts of thousands.
All this resulted because a mother took God at His word and prayed that her son’s heart might become as white as the soapsuds in the wash-tub.
