Returning from preaching the gospel in a neighboring city a few nights ago, I found two young men the only other occupants of the coach I was in. To each of them I gave a different little book. “The Two Alexanders,” and “The Young Doctor,” each narrating God’s grace to a young man. They read their books carefully. At the first stop one young man got out, first asking that he might keep the little book as he would like to read it again, a request I was only too glad to comply with.
Left alone with my other fellow-traveler, who had been reading “The Young Doctor,”
I said, “Well, could you die like that young doctor?”
“No indeed, I couldn’t; I wish I could though.”
“God’s grace it was that saved him: can it not save you also?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I wish it could.
I know I’m not saved, and though I think about it sometimes I can never see through it; I can’t get to the point somehow.”
“Then evidently you have sometimes thought seriously about your soul and eternity, and that you have to meet God some day?”
“Yes, and I have had some warnings that made me think.”
“What were they?”
“I work a big crane, and twice I’ve fallen off a great height and been badly hurt. During the summer, the rocks where we were working were struck by lightning. It was awful, but I wasn’t hurt.”
“And didn’t you feel that God was speaking to you in all this?”
“Yes; and for a while—about three months—I did my best to be a Christian. Then the impression wore off and I gave way to temptation. Now I’m as bad as ever.”
“That is sad! but I fear you were trying to be religious as many do, and that’s a grand mistake.”
“Perhaps I did; but, anyway, I know I’m all wrong.”
“That is the first step to getting right,” I replied; and then putting the gospel simply before him, I think he came to see that Christ saves the lost out-and-out without any doings on their part, and was led simply to trust in Him.
Friend, it will be a great day in your history when you wake up to say, “I know I’m all wrong!” It was the moment of blessing for the prodigal when, in the far country, he said, “I perish with hunger.” Have you ever yet “come to yourself” with this appalling discovery, “I’m all wrong”—not partly wrong, but “all wrong”? When you discover this, you are at one with God’s thoughts about you, for He has said, “There is none righteous, no, not one... there is none that doeth good, no, not one... for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
May you be enabled, dear reader, to trust Him and then, truly tasting “that the Lord is gracious,” pass on your way no longer “all wrong,” but all right, happy in His love, and waiting for His coming.