Some years ago a speaker stood in the open air in the town of Dudley, and issued a challenge to a crowd of about sixty or more men who were standing about him.
“Men,” he said, “if I were here as a pugilist crowds of you would be thronging about me, and if I were offering to take any of you on for a bout with the fists you would be tumbling over one another to accept my challenge and have a fight, for in a matter like that you have plenty of pluck. Now I am not offering anything of the kind today, though I have done a bit of fighting in my time. My challenge is this, what man of you dares acknowledge himself lost and undone and in need of a Savior? What man of you has the pluck and courage to come forward and take my hand as an acknowledgment that he receives Christ as his Savior and Lord?”
And suiting his action to his words he stretched forth his opened hand for someone to clasp it. He stood with hand outstretched for some little time. No one responded. Not a man came forward to accept his challenge.
Some three years passed, and again the same preacher stood on the same spot in Dudley and declared his message. After he had spoken a man accosted him, asking him if he remembered issuing his challenge three years before. He assured him that he did most certainly remember it.
“Well,” said the other, “I was there without a bit of pluck, just a coward like all the rest. But when I got home I was absolutely wretched; so wretched that I did not sleep. About midnight I could bear it no longer, so got out of bed, and kneeling down I cried to God; telling Him I was a sinner and a coward and calling upon Him for mercy. He heard me and saved my soul. And not only that, my wife roused from her sleep and asked what ailed me. I told her the truth and owned to her my wretchedness. Very soon she joined me and was by my side on her knees, and she got saved just as I did.”
And then he added these words: “I want to tell you that the last three years have been the happiest three years of all my life.”
The kind of cowardice to which the man of Dudley had to plead guilty is by no means uncommon. The fact is, it simply abounds. It takes some courage of a mental and spiritual sort to face up honestly to ugly and discreditable facts, acknowledging oneself to be a sinner, lost to all human hope. And further, when one has believed on the Lord Jesus Christ to the saving of the soul, it takes some courage to confess His name, as being His follower, before men. Is it not so?
What about it then? Have you had the courage to begin at the beginning and face, without weak excuses or palliation, the fact of your own sin and consequent condemnation before God? “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” So says the Scripture in Romans 10:99That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9); and if you believe and confess Him you will find that salvation is yours.
Have courage for that, and the happiest years of your life will promptly begin.
O Happy day, that fixed my choice
On Thee, my Savior and my God!
Well may this glowing heart rejoice,
And tell its raptures all abroad.