A dear brother has kindly allowed me to send the following for the “Message,” hoping it may encourage many to ask and receive from the living God. He writes: ―
My eldest boy and girl were returning from Sunday school with a girlfriend... who inquired if my youngest boy was saved. On being told, “I do not think so,” she suggested they might put the Bible to the test, reminding them of the promise of God, Matthew 18:1919Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 18:19). Then these three children, solemnly standing in the roadway, definitely asked God to perform a miracle. The weightiest of all agencies was set at work that day, for Jesus Himself has said, that prayer will remove mountains. I was the preacher that night, and could not understand why an address, on which I had spent a whole week’s thought and prayer, should be forgotten, when the time came to deliver it. I know that I blindly stumbled in my speech, felt humbled to the very dust, and returned crestfallen home, there to learn that “Salvation is of the Lord.” I did not know that my youngest boy sat in that meeting, a convicted sinner.
About 9:30 p.m., long after the children had gone to bed, I heard a patter of bare feet, and my eldest boy same to say his brother was crying bitterly, and troubled about his sins. Picking up my Bible, I went to him and said, “Well, my boy, what is the matter?” “Oh, I am such a sinner, daddy,” was the reply. I smiled at him, and said, “And so am I, but my sins don’t trouble me in the least.” He looked up in my face with wondering inquiry as I said, “You remember the chorus the ‘pilgrim preachers’ taught us, ‘God has blotted them out’?” He said “Yes,” and I said “Then let us look, where they got it from,” and turning to the sacred page we read together “I have blotted out,” etc., Isaiah 44:2222I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee. (Isaiah 44:22). My dear laddie looked very earnestly again at the printed word, and I could see the cloud of doubt rolling away from his face, and, before he told me, I knew he had passed from death unto life.
And now nearly a year has gone, and he is still a sinner, but know a saved one, saved by grace.
My friend would ask anyone who may read this to exercise the same faith in God that those children did, and so help others to enter the kingdom of God.
A. A. L.