When I was a teenager my family began going to a small Southern Baptist church. The song leader there would lead the congregation to sing from the old Baptist Hymnal. It was here I learned the old beloved hymns of the faith. I still treasure them and find myself singing them quietly often when they run through my head and my heart.

I learned something though, he would always almost without exception lead us to sing the first, second, and last verse of every hymn. Most of the hymns only had four verses so that third verse was the forgotten verse that I never learned. As I grew and moved away, I realized he wasn’t the only song leader to have this practice. Song leaders across Baptist churches left out the third verse of the song book. I wondered why the writer even bothered to write the verse for it only to be forgotten.

As I have gotten older, I began to focus on the third verse. I mean really read the words. I have heard it said that there is a lot of good theology in the old hymns. I am no theologian, but reading the verses of these hymns was a real eye opener.

Take for instance the third verse of It is Well with my Soul:

My sin -oh, the bliss of this glorious thought: My sin – not in part, but the whole Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

What a wonderful verse! What a wonderful thought! What truth! We can easily spend a day meditating on that “glorious thought”. So, this it the intention behind Third Verse Devotions. I want to bring to life some of these wonderful forgotten lyrics and meditate on the truth found in the words. Sometimes they are the second verse, or the last verse, but you get the idea. The words of the old hymns we overlooked or have forgotten or never really thought about let’s dive into with fresh eyes.