He had passed twenty, thirty, or forty years in wickedness, and had grown worse and worse!
(Be sure to LISTEN to the Audio, as you READ the text below.)
Isaiah 55:8-9, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts"
We cannot understand, and we need not understand, all that God is doing; but we may be quite sure that He does all things well.
His way of bestowing saving grace is often inscrutable. God will certainly save His chosen people; but how strangely does He deal with some of them! I have known God to allow a chosen child of His to run headlong into sin after sin, for many long years.
The godly mother has anxiously prayed that God would save her boy, but he has grown up to manhood unsaved. He had passed twenty, thirty, or forty years in wickedness, and had grown worse and worse!
It did not seem as if all this could be according to God's mind, and yet it was. For in the mysterious providence of God, this man became greatly debauched by his riotous living. And then, and not until then, was God pleased to save him. His mother had slept amidst the clods of the valley, not knowing that her supplications for him had been answered.
Yet that profligate man, because he had gone so far in sin, became the greater monument of God's sovereign grace. He was the more firmly bound to Jesus, and the more ardent in Jesus' service through the gratitude that he felt, than he would have been if he had been saved earlier in life.
John Bunyan, if he had not been among the chief of sinners, might never have been among the chief of saints. Had he never been what he was--one of the worst men in the village; then he might never have preached as he did, and might never have so boldly declared that the worst of sinners could receive the greatest mercy, and that God would be most glorified in their salvation.
God, in His perfect wisdom and sovereign will, determines when, where, and through what means He effectually grants saving grace to His elect people. He knows why He chooses this man at this time, and that man at that time. So let Him do as seems good in His sight, for He always does what is right and best!
"The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." John 3:8
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Today's choice AI resource: Understanding the Imprecatory Psalms (one page)