Frances, or Fanny as she was called by her school friends, lay ill at home on the farm, and the village doctor came to see her.
“Give her a spoonful of this medicine every four hours,” said the Christian doctor to her mother, “and I will call tomorrow.”
But Fanny did not like taking medicine; she wanted to feel better without it. “Can’t I get well without taking that stuff,” she asked her mother. She wanted to get well, but in her own way.
“No,” said her mother, “if you want to get better, you must take what the doctor has left for you. You need not expect to feel well before you take what he has left to cure you.”
Fanny did not like this way of doing it. She wanted to feel well without taking the medicine. However, at last she yielded, took the medicine, and was much better the next morning. When the doctor called the next day, he found his little patient much better. And her mother told him how unwilling she was to take the medicine.
“That is just like the way many treat the gospel,” said the Christian doctor. “Many would like to go to heaven, but they want to feel saved before they really are. They want to be happy and to get to heaven, but in their own way,” he said.
That was a very true saying of the doctor’s and I am afraid there are many boys and girls, as well as grownup folks too, who want to be saved and go to heaven in their own way. But we must come God’s way. God’s way of salvation is to receive the Lord Jesus as our Saviour first, then you will be saved and know it. You cannot feel what you have not got. You cannot know the assurance of salvation until you have it.
ML-11/08/1964