It is a wonderful thing when an anxious soul discovers that God loves it. The love of a most advanced Christian towards God is but a drop in the ocean compared to God’s love to man, and the more we learn of the evil of our own hearts and the weakness of our desires after Christ, the less shall we want to speak of our love to Him.
His love to us is everlasting, and it is this very love of His which seeks and saves the lost, and draws a poor wandering sinner’s heart to know and taste that love in a closer way. Would the prodigal son ever have returned to his father’s house if the father had not been longing after him and been on the watch for him? The Bible says,
An elderly lady, whom we will call Mrs. E—, who had spent most of her life in seeking after souls in need of God’s salvation, was attending a series of evangelistic meetings held in the hall of one of our towns. She always sat in a particular seat at one side of the hall, with a happy party of Christian relations and friends around her.
But one evening the thought came to her, that in the midst of her pleasure in sitting among her friends, she might be losing an opportunity of coming in contact with any who as yet could not say that Christ was their Saviour. With this object in view she moved across to a seat on the other side. Her friends remonstrated with her, telling her she would feel a draft, and would not hear so well, but she remained firm in the certainty that she must sit in that particular seat.
Soon two ladies, sisters, seated themselves beside her, and during the service she could see that one of them was deeply moved. At the closing prayer she could not restrain her tears, and laid her head upon the shoulder of her sister, so great was her agony.
When the meeting was ended Mrs. E—spoke to her, and found she was one who had lived only for the world in the fullest sense, who had utterly refused to receive Christ, or even to think of the future, and although brought up in a Christian way, had turned her back upon everything. And now she felt it was too late to wish for what she had always spurned, and thought that she had committed the “unpardonable sin,” for which there is no forgiveness.
Nothing seemed to reach her in her state of despair, and the child of God returned to her home sad at heart, and spent part of the night in crying to God to give her a message from Him, that would show this aching heart that God was still beseeching her to be reconciled to Him (2 Cor. 5:2020Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:20)). She felt so sure that the way He had acted in bringing her poor acquaintance to the service, and in thus distinctly throwing her across her path, must end in blessing, and she longed to give His message aright.
As she awoke in the morning she suddenly felt brought to her mind:
But ere she had finished breakfast, the sister of the one in whom she was interested, appeared, to tell her that her sister had been ill and in terrible anguish all night, and had made her promise to go the first thing in the morning to seek out the lady who had spoken to her. She had therefore left her asleep, and had come before breakfast. Mrs. E—wrote down the verse above mentioned on a piece of paper, and went at once to the address given.
On entering the room she went straight to the bedside and said, “God has given me a message for you, and this is it: ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.’”
“How wonderful,” was the reply; “for those very words sounded in my ears as I awoke a few minutes ago, and I was waiting for you to tell me if they were to be found in the Bible, and where.”
Yes, God’s “everlasting love” had drawn her into the haven of repose at last, and in the knowledge of that love she has lived ever since, doing her utmost to serve the Master she now loves to follow.