To say that you are “too bad” to be saved is to diminish the glory of the all-abounding grace of God and to limit the power of the all-cleansing blood of Jesus. It is as easy for the ocean to bear the five thousand ton merchantman upon her bosom as the downy feather from a sea gull’s wing. And since it is our hearts He seeks for, and since those to whom much is forgiven love much, be assured that He is as willing to welcome the worst as He is able to save the most sinful.
The writer once called at the house of a well-to-do business man, to see, if possible, his only daughter. She was dying—dying without hope, and she knew it. The poor mother had tried in vain to soothe her daughter’s fears by telling her there was no real cause for alarm as to the future that though she had spent her last summer on earth amid all the gaiety of the “social season,” yet she had been “such a pure minded girl in it all.”
After considerable reluctance on the part of the parents, the writer was at last permitted to go upstairs to the sick room.
The nurse was asked to leave the room and the visitor knelt down by the bedside. He cried from his soul for the eternal blessing of this dying girl. Rising from his knees, he read a few verses from Rom. 5, dwelling on verse 8: “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
At this point the troubled girl exclaimed, “Ah! you don’t know what I’ve been, or you would not talk to me about God’s love. There can be no mercy for me!”
To this the writer replied, “Miss—, I believe that if you saw yourself as God sees you, you would think yourself ten thousand times worse than you do. But you have made a great mistake today, I think.”
The father looked inquiringly through his tears from the other side of the bed, as much as to say, “What mistake could my daughter make?”
“Well,” continued the writer, “I have not come these eleven miles to inquire whether you think you are sufficiently worthy for God to trust you, but to bring you the blessed news that God thinks His Son sufficiently worthy for you to trust Him. And upon this your blessing for eternity depends.”
In a moment her countenance changed, as though a ray of heavenly light had just entered. Nor can there be a doubt that it was so; for her father wrote shortly afterward to tell of his daughter’s trust in the Savior. He said that she had gone “Where no cloud could arise to darken her skies, Or hide for one moment her Lord from her eyes.”
The Lord give the rays of the glory of His grace to enter your troubled heart, too.
May He give you to see that God is not looking for worthiness in you as to the past, nor for any resolve that you will be worthy for the future; but He has much to say to you about the worthiness of Jesus, His beloved Son. Look to Him. Trust Him.