Theme this week: Channels of Blessing
October 22, 2021 (Friday)
I’m sharing a chorus with you that I used to sing with my fellow young people in our home church (Liberty Road Baptist of Houston) during the one year (1949-1950) I was in church before going off to college. We sat in a circle, and someone started us off with a song, after which we would spontaneously sing a song (everyone joining in), quote a Scripture, or share brief thoughts about the Lord, or sing another gospel song.
At Baylor we had Friday night missions, fanning out across the city of Waco, presenting the gospel to people, utilizing available buildings of various kinds, after which we gathered together in the Baptist Student Union Building, in a huge, spacious, beautiful room to share testimonies and sing choruses and hymns. We often sang this chorus there, just as we had done back at our church at home.
The writer of this song, L. F. Taylor, was one of the Taylor Brothers evangelistic team. The Taylor brothers, Charles Forbes Taylor and Lawrence Forbes Taylor, were famous traveling evangelists for most of the first decades of the 20th century, and this song was their invitation hymn.
DON’T GO AWAY WITHOUT JESUS
L.F. Taylor
circa 1930s
When trials and troubles surround you,
The road seems eternally long,
Your life seems a meaningless wasted way,
And everything seems to go wrong,
Chorus:
Oh, don’t go away without Jesus,
Oh don’t go away without him.
You know he is willing to save you,
And cleanse from your heart every sin.
Oh, yield to his offer of mercy,
Oh, take of the grace he imparts;
And don’t go away without Jesus in your heart.
The pathway of life is before you,
And you must decide on the way,
With Jesus to guide you and make you strong,
Oh, make your decision today.
Chorus
You may enjoy listening to the composer’s nephew, David Wyper: