"The river of His grace,
Through righteousness supplied,
Is flowing o'er the barren place,
Where Jesus died.”
Jim Blanton was a powerful young machinist, able and willing to work, but often the victim of his own sinful nature.
Before his conversion, intoxicating drink was his overpowering besetment. When he was under its baneful influence, his wild violence became a terror to all who came near him. During his last bout before God's deliverance came in, it took six strong men to hold him. There was generally such a tendency to self-destruction that every knife or dangerous weapon had to be removed out of his way. How like the cruel murderer that he served, and in whose hand he was for so long a willing slave!
But the blessed One at God's right hand had His eye upon him, and that for blessing.
One day at work he was accidentally struck in the eye by a chip of iron which very seriously injured it. This necessitated his being taken to the hospital a few miles from where he lived.
There was one great boon in connection with this occurrence: it gave Jim time to think. But, sad to say, he was not brought to genuine repentance. In his own strength only he resolved to be different if God would only spare his life and let him get better.
He did recover and returned home; but he only did worse than he had ever done before. Was grace then to be thus defeated? Not at all. Remarkable to say, shortly afterward the accident was repeated. For a second time the very same eye was struck by a splinter of iron, and he had to return to the hospital. Fresh vows and resolutions followed, which, like the first, were doomed to be as completely shattered. Coming back to his old associations, he met the same temptations; and these soon proved he was no match for them. Like "the sow that was washed," he turned to his "wallowing in the mire," and speedily forgot all his good intentions.
But "God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not." Job 33:1414For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. (Job 33:14). There came another pull-up in the shape of a very severe attack of influenza. Again Jim vowed to reform his life, but his recovery was only followed by fresh outbreaks of wickedness. Yet, with all this, God's grace was still as persistent as ever. To an onlooker, Jim's case might have been considered utterly hopeless. But not so with God, for "the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy." James 5:1111Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. (James 5:11). What a God He is!
One night Jim was in his bedroom undressing, when something transpired which proved to be the turning point of his history. He had, as he said, just thrown his coat off when he distinctly heard, or thought he did, a voice saying: "PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD." He turned sharply around to his wife and asked if she had said that. "No," she replied, "nor did I hear anything.”
"Then it must be God," he exclaimed. Instantly he dropped upon his knees, his wife kneeling with him.
There and then as a sinner, not as a self-reformer, he sought and found the Savior.
Notice this, my reader. True conviction has regard to the sinful history of the past, and the person so convicted honestly pleads guilty and humbly seeks for mercy. With repentance for the past comes God's PRESENT forgiveness for all. The precious blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, both clears and cleanses the vilest sinner that thus comes to Him.
All of this man's former experiences had only brought out a desire to find in himself some future merit on which to stand without charge before God. He knew it was no use to look in the past for it. That was bad and black enough. But if he could, by turning over a new leaf and by sticking to his resolution, establish a good character, and thereby induce God to overlook the past, he might eventually be able to pass into heaven on that ground. So thought Jim.
But this sudden call to meet God—for he could regard it in no other light—to meet Him just as he was, knocked all such vain thoughts into hopeless confusion. Men seem slow to understand that when God judges He will judge the whole of their history, not a part. "Every idle word, every secret thing," will have to be accounted for then.
But what is the inspired reply?
Suppose that it were possible that at a certain point in a man's history he thought he had become good; yea, as good as he ought to be, and that therefore he could safely stand before God on the ground of that goodness. God would surely have a double charge against him: First, that he had ignored God's right to judge him for all he had done as a sinner in the early part of his history, as well as the rest of it.
Second, that standing self-righteously on the reformed portion of his history, he had denied the necessity for the sacrifice of Christ and willfully refused the provision God has freely held out to him in that blessed Savior.
In the first part he had ruined himself; in the second he had shut Christ out as God's only remedy for his ruin.
But what a blessed contrast to this is a case of genuine repentance toward God and simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ!
"Could the creature help or ease us,
Seldom should we think of prayer.
Few if any, come to Jesus,
Till reduced to self-despair.
"Long we either slight or doubt Him,
But when all the means we try
Prove we cannot do without Him,
Then at last to Him we cry.”
Reader, have you thus been brought to Christ? Or are you still blindly satisfied with hopeless, fancied self-improvement?
GEO. C.