In 1924, Pe­ter W. Phil­pott was serv­ing as pas­tor of the Moody Church in Chi­ca­go, Il­li­nois. One night he was awak­ened by a call to come help a young wo­man stay­ing at a ho­tel in the ci­ty.

He ar­rived to find her in the com­pa­ny of two fa­mi­ly mem­bers. The wo­man—Lela Long—was grave­ly ill, and in great dis­tress. Phil­pott prayed for her phys­ic­al needs, and had the pri­vi­lege of lead­ing her to faith in Christ. Late the next day, he phoned the hotel to see how she was do­ing, on­ly to learn the three had checked out. He won­dered what had be­come of them, but had no way of get­ting in touch.

Five or six years lat­er, Phil­pott was pas­tor of a large church in Los An­ge­les, Ca­li­for­nia. At the close of one ser­vice, who should come up to him but the three peo­ple he had met in Chi­ca­go. They had seen his pic­ture in a church ad­ver­tise­ment and came to meet him.

An emer­gen­cy had re­quired their ra­pid de­par­ture from Chi­ca­go, and they apo­lo­gized for not get­ting in touch. Le­la Long thanked him for point­ing her to the Sav­ior, say­ing her life was won­der­ful­ly changed, and that she was now us­ing her mus­ic­al tal­ent to serve the Lord.

She hand­ed Phil­pott a co­py of Je­sus Is the Sweet­est Name I Know, writ­ten short­ly af­ter her con­ver­sion: I have wri­tten this es­pe­cial­ly for you, in re­mem­brance of the day that you in­tro­duced me to the most won­der­ful Per­son I have ev­er known.