How gracious that calling must have been since it came to you from God! It came to you irresistibly and came to you with such personal demonstration! What Grace was here! What was there in you to suggest a motive why God should call you? Oh, Beloved, we can hardly ask you that question without tears rising in our own eyes—

“What was there in us that could merit esteem,
Or give the Creator delight?
‘Twas even so, Father!’ we ever must sing,
‘Because it seemed good in Your sight.’”

Some of you were drunkards, were profane, were injurious. Many of you cared neither for God nor man. How often have you mocked at God’s Word! How frequently have you despised God’s ministers! How constantly has the holy name of the Most High been used in a flippant, if not in a profane manner by you! And yet for all that, He fixed His eyes upon you and would not withdraw. And when you spurned the Divine Grace that would have saved you, still He followed you, determined to save, till at last, in the appointed time, He got the grasp of you and would not let you go until He had made you His friend, turned your heart to love Him and made your spirit obedient to His Grace!

I think, throughout eternity, if we had this problem to solve—“why did He call me”—we should still go on making wrong guesses! We could never arrive at the right conclusion unless we should say, once and for all, “I do not know.” He did as He willed. He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion. And here, let me say, if these things are so, oh should not this calling of ours tonight evoke our most intense gratitude, our most earnest love? Oh, if He had not called you, where had you been tonight? You shall sit tonight at the Lord’s Table—where would you have been but for Divine Grace?

To repeat the old saying of John Bradford when he saw a cartful of men going off to Tyburn to be hanged, “There goes John Bradford but for the Grace of God.” When you see the swearer in the street, or the drunkard rolling home at night—there are you, there am I—but for the Grace of God. Who am I—what should I have been if the Lord, in mercy, had not stopped me in my mad career!

- C.H. Spurgeon, The Special Call and the Unfailing Result