Thursday, December 13, 2007

Buried in the forehead


Often young Christians here amazing stories how someone was saved in a most dramatic way and they can scarcely remember when they did not believe or if later in life they became a Christian, there was no dramatic salvation. I have known some that this troubled. In reading I found this addressed in a sermon by Thomas Guthrie, a Scottish preacher that covers the subject well---

“On these subjects the experience of saints is very different. Some can tell the time of it—giving day and date, the hour, the providence, the place, the text, the preacher, and all the circumstances associated with their conversion. They can show the arrow which shot from some bow drawn at a venture, pierced the joints of their armor, and quivered in their heart. They can show the pebble from the brook, that, slung, it may be, by a youthful hand, but directed of God, was buried in the forehead of their giant sin.
They can show the word that penetrated their soul, and ---in some truths of Scripture – the salve that healed the sore, the balm that stanched the blood and the bandage that Christ’s own kind hand wrapped on the bleeding wound. Able to trace the steps and whole progress of their conversion--- in its most minute and interesting details--- they can say with David, “ Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.”

It is not so, however, with all, or perhaps, with most. Some, so to speak, are still-born; they were unconscious of their change; they did not know when or how it happened; for a while at least, they gave hardly a sign of life. With many the dawn of grace is, in more respects than one, like the dawn of day. We turn our face to the east, and our back to the setting stars, to note the very moment of the birth of morning; yet how hard it is to tell when and where the first faint, cold, steel-gray gleam appears! It is so with many in regard to their spiritual dawn, -- with the breaking of an eternal day, -- with their first emotions of desire and of alarm, as with that faint and feeble streak, which brightened, and widened, and spread, till it blazed into a brilliant sky.”

No question there are these two types of conversion, and I have always wondered if God uses the more dramatic experience, for that soul that is less sure, more apt to wander, and needs something of a more tangible experience to stick in their mind of faith. Whether that’s true or not, He uses whatever means are necessary, of that I’m sure.

1 comment:

Donna said...

My experience was one of those dramatic moments that no one can take from me. And I have had to lean on it more than once when arrows from hell would attempt to pierce me with doubt. There was no other explaination in my mind but that what I experienced was through the Love of God.

And these experiences that we have whether in the beginning of our journey with God or middle, are part of the personal relationship that He creates with us. I don't really believe that faith is non-tangible. I believe God makes it tangible with experiences or spiritual manifestations whether to many or personally. Sometimes for all to see, and sometimes just for our eyes only.

And I don't believe in blind faith. I believe just the oposite. God opens our eyes so that we are able to believe.

D