“I don’t want to be a Christian,” I said. “Why, I’d have to give up everything that makes life pleasant. I’d have to go around with a long face all the rest of my life. No, thank you! I’m happy as I am.”
I turned my back on my sister’s pleading and put the disagreeable thought from my mind. I was determined to go on as I was. Why should I give up the world at nineteen? I had all that any girl could want - a happy home, plenty of friends, and parties without number. If I became a Christian I would have to give up the parties, so of course I wouldn’t even think of it!
Just about this time some gospel meetings were being held and I heard of one or two “conversions” among the girls I knew. When I heard of the wonderful change that had come into their lives and how happy they were now, I just laughed and predicted that “it would soon wear off!”
“Won’t you come and hear for yourself?” begged my sister. “It can’t hurt you to just go once.”
I steadily refused.
One day my mother asked me to take a note to the house of a friend of hers who lived nearby. “I think you may have to wait for an answer,” she said as she sealed and handed it to me.
At first I rebelled. I knew the woman the letter was addressed to was one of those religious ones I usually avoided. Finally I agreed to go, determining in my own mind to let her see that I had no intention of being spoken to about my soul. So, feeling very determined, I set off.
At the door I was invited in. I went in, inwardly resolving to hold my own, no matter what happened.
To my horror, when we reached the living room I found myself in the midst of one of the dreaded meetings I had heard so much about. My mother’s friend rose to greet me and motioned me to a seat.
I will never forget my feelings as I sat there! I could see it all! I had fallen unsuspectingly into the trap that had been laid for me by my mother and her friend.
Curiously and critically I listened, wondering what there could be in that dry and uninteresting Book to be so important to these people. Soon, bored with listening to what I could not understand, I began planning how I could slip out of the room and get away without attracting any attention.
Prayers followed the discussion, and I thought, “Now is my chance!” but the person sitting next to me began to pray, pleading with God for “the one outside the fold.” Others followed, all asking the Lord not to let me leave without a blessing.
Deeper and deeper their words sunk into my heart. I felt as I knelt there that a holy God was searching me through and through. All my sins came sweeping over me like a great wave.
What had I been doing? How had I dared to turn away from the God who was at this moment reading my very soul?
Terrified, I rose from my knees and stood waiting as all the others except my mother’s friend left the room. She came to me at once, and asked me that question I had always dreaded, “Are you saved?”
“No,” I answered flatly.
“Do you want to be?”
For a moment I hesitated. Then, “Am I too wicked?” I faltered. “Oh, you don’t know what I am, and all the dreadful things I have done.”
“Never mind what you have been, or what you have done,” she said quietly. “If you know yourself to be a sinner, just listen to what God says to you.” Opening her Bible she read, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
I said doubtfully, “But how can I know that was meant for me? How can I know that God wants me?”
From the last chapter of Revelation she read this verse: “Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. Now, do you suppose God has left you out of that ‘whosoever’?”
“No-o,” I answered slowly, while the wonderful truth began to dawn across my mind.
At last I saw and believed. I needed no more! I saw it all so clearly, and a joy I had never known before flooded my whole being. Oh, the wonderful grace of God to me!
From that moment the current of my life was changed. Old things are passed away . . . all things are become new! v