Fanny Crosby

July 12, 2026
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Busy... But Spiritually Empty? Many women know what it's like to stay busy doing good things while quietly feeling distant from God. You may be caring for your family, serving at church, building a career, or faithfully showing up for everyone around you. But Fanny Crosby's story reminds us that even a life filled with Christian activity can leave our hearts longing for a deeper relationship with Christ. God isn't asking you to be perfect or accomplish more. He's inviting you to place Him first above every dream, responsibility, and ambition. When Jesus becomes the center of your heart again, your purpose becomes clearer, your burdens become lighter, and your service flows from love instead of striving. Ask yourself today: Has anything—even something good—taken the place that belongs to God alone? "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33 ESV)

Full Transcript

A century behind the fashion, blind, and living in poverty, Fanny Crosby was one of the most influential Christians of the nineteenth century. Born in 1924, Fanny supplied the evangelistic campaigns of giants such as DL Moody and Ira Sankey. It is estimated that books containing her hymns have sold more than 100 million copies, and songs such as “Blessed Assurance” remain popular a century and a half later. These hymns came to Fanny in many ways, the best of them arriving all at once. Moments of inspiration and divine appointments would crystalize a thought or a theme, and a cascade of blessings often followed.  

If We Never Meet Again on Earth 

One evening, while speaking at the home of composer Willian Howard Doane, Fanny Crosby became distracted by a persistent thought, “…Some mother’s boy in the audience ‘must be rescued that night, or not at all.’” She pleaded urgently, “If there is a dear boy here tonight who has perchance wandered away from his mother’s home and his mother’s teaching, would you please come to me at the close of the service?” 

“Did you mean me?” asked a young man of about eighteen, who had responded to Fanny’s plea. He was facing a crisis of conscience because he had promised his mother that he would meet her in heaven. But he did not believe he could fulfill the promise because of how he had been living.  

His words moved Fanny, for she knew the weight of such a pledge. She prayed with the young man, and the evidence of new hope was plain to see.  

“Now I can meet my mother in heaven, for now, I have found her God!” he said. 

The young man’s transition from doubt to confidence moved Fanny to write “Rescue the Perishing.” The inspiration for the hymn came all at once, and it soon became a staple of revivals and Sunday services, helping countless lost souls discover new life. 

Years before, “on a rosy summer evening” in 1831, Fanny had sat with her grandmother. “…Grandma sat in her favorite rocking chair, her voice a painful whisper. ‘Grandma’s going home,’ she said, and told  the frightened child she would soon be in heaven.” Fanny bawled. Grandma said, “Tell me, my darling, will you meet Grandma in our Father’s house on high?”  

“Then the child overcame the lump in her throat, and said, ‘Yes, by the grace of God, I will.’” 

But her heartfelt commitment soon became a source of concern. Fanny wanted to be sure she would make good on the promise. But she also believed that salvation could only be confirmed by a defining moment of conversion. She had been raised a Christian and had no “one defining moment.” 

As a teenager and in her twenties, Fanny attended twice-a-week meetings, where young people sang and prayed and testified. But after a while, Fanny had become “somewhat indifferent” and only went to the meetings to provide the music for the others. And she only did that if they promised not to call on her to speak.  

Then a teacher-friend asked Fanny to go with her to a certain revival, and she decidedly did not jump at the chance. But then she had a dream. A dream about that friend. In the dream, the sky had been cloudy day after day. When she found her friend lay dying, he asked if she would promise to meet him in heaven. “Yes, I will,” she said in the dream.  

“Then the clouds seem to roll from my spirit, and I awoke from the dream with a start. I could not forget those words, ‘Will you meet me in heaven?’ and … I began to consider whether I really could meet him” there, Fanny said. She saw that even though she was always deeply religious, her work and her art came first in her life. “She felt there was something terribly lacking in her spiritual life.” 

In the fall of 1850, she attended revivals on a nightly basis. Twice she had gone to the altar, and the “frenzied elders all but crushed her skull,” laying hands on her and praying for her conversion. And still, she did not receive the sign she sought. By November, she was frantic. “It seemed the light must come then or never.” 

Once again, she knelt before the altar, and during the third line of the hymn, “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed,” she felt her soul flooded with celestial light. “Hallelujah,” she shouted, realizing, “I had been trying to hold the world in one hand and the Lord in the other.” 

A breakthrough! She had been hoping to make a name for herself through her poetry and songs. But now she knew that honoring God must be foremost in her process. And that is how she lived. 

When Fanny was seventy-nine years of age, she had a most gratifying experience after sharing what had inspired “Rescue the Perishing.” A man from the audience approached her and said, “Miss Crosby, I was that boy. … That evening you spoke, I sought and found peace, and I have tried to live a consistent Christian life ever since. If we never meet again on earth, we will meet up yonder.”  

And Fanny had one more heavenly appointment she would be sure to keep.  

 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33 ESV).  

A century behind the fashion, blind, and living in poverty, Fanny Crosby was one of the most influential Christians of the nineteenth century. Born in 1924, Fanny supplied the evangelistic campaigns of giants such as DL Moody and Ira Sankey. It is estimated that books containing her hymns have sold more than 100 million copies, and songs such as “Blessed Assurance” remain popular a century and a half later. These hymns came to Fanny in many ways, the best of them arriving all at once. Moments of inspiration and divine appointments would crystalize a thought or a theme, and a cascade of blessings often followed.

If We Never Meet Again on Earth

One evening, while speaking at the home of composer Willian Howard Doane, Fanny Crosby became distracted by a persistent thought, “…Some mother’s boy in the audience ‘must be rescued that night, or not at all.’” She pleaded urgently, “If there is a dear boy here tonight who has perchance wandered away from his mother’s home and his mother’s teaching, would you please come to me at the close of the service?”

“Did you mean me?” asked a young man of about eighteen, who had responded to Fanny’s plea. He was facing a crisis of conscience because he had promised his mother that he would meet her in heaven. But he did not believe he could fulfill the promise because of how he had been living.

His words moved Fanny, for she knew the weight of such a pledge. She prayed with the young man, and the evidence of new hope was plain to see.

“Now I can meet my mother in heaven, for now, I have found her God!” he said.

The young man’s transition from doubt to confidence moved Fanny to write “Rescue the Perishing.” The inspiration for the hymn came all at once, and it soon became a staple of revivals and Sunday services, helping countless lost souls discover new life.

Years before, “on a rosy summer evening” in 1831, Fanny had sat with her grandmother. “…Grandma sat in her favorite rocking chair, her voice a painful whisper. ‘Grandma’s going home,’ she said, and told the frightened child she would soon be in heaven.” Fanny bawled. Grandma said, “Tell me, my darling, will you meet Grandma in our Father’s house on high?”

“Then the child overcame the lump in her throat, and said, ‘Yes, by the grace of God, I will.’”

But her heartfelt commitment soon became a source of concern. Fanny wanted to be sure she would make good on the promise. But she also believed that salvation could only be confirmed by a defining moment of conversion. She had been raised a Christian and had no “one defining moment.”

As a teenager and in her twenties, Fanny attended twice-a-week meetings, where young people sang and prayed and testified. But after a while, Fanny had become “somewhat indifferent” and only went to the meetings to provide the music for the others. And she only did that if they promised not to call on her to speak.

Then a teacher-friend asked Fanny to go with her to a certain revival, and she decidedly did not jump at the chance. But then she had a dream. A dream about that friend. In the dream, the sky had been cloudy day after day. When she found her friend lay dying, he asked if she would promise to meet him in heaven. “Yes, I will,” she said in the dream.

“Then the clouds seem to roll from my spirit, and I awoke from the dream with a start. I could not forget those words, ‘Will you meet me in heaven?’ and … I began to consider whether I really could meet him” there, Fanny said. She saw that even though she was always deeply religious, her work and her art came first in her life. “She felt there was something terribly lacking in her spiritual life.”

In the fall of 1850, she attended revivals on a nightly basis. Twice she had gone to the altar, and the “frenzied elders all but crushed her skull,” laying hands on her and praying for her conversion. And still, she did not receive the sign she sought. By November, she was frantic. “It seemed the light must come then or never.”

Once again, she knelt before the altar, and during the third line of the hymn, “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed,” she felt her soul flooded with celestial light. “Hallelujah,” she shouted, realizing, “I had been trying to hold the world in one hand and the Lord in the other.”

A breakthrough! She had been hoping to make a name for herself through her poetry and songs. But now she knew that honoring God must be foremost in her process. And that is how she lived.

When Fanny was seventy-nine years of age, she had a most gratifying experience after sharing what had inspired “Rescue the Perishing.” A man from the audience approached her and said, “Miss Crosby, I was that boy. … That evening you spoke, I sought and found peace, and I have tried to live a consistent Christian life ever since. If we never meet again on earth, we will meet up yonder.”

And Fanny had one more heavenly appointment she would be sure to keep.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33 ESV).