There are many of us, throughout the years, who have sat under the preaching of the Word yet little does it shine true in our own hearts. Week in and week out we hear the Gospel preached yet as if it falls unto deaf ears. Like the whistling of the wind that a busy city would care less about. Perhaps there are some of you here today reading this entry who are still in this state.

You read the Word. You attend the preaching of the Word in the Sunday meeting. Yet there is no luster, there is no shine and beauty to be found found. No joy and weeping in the reception of Truth.

A couple of pricks to the conscience here and there may be present but a distinct reality of being broken at the weight of your own sin working in you a contrite and tender heart in beholding the majesty of the Almighty God? Not once have you seen nor felt it.

Fact of the matter is from our birth in this world we never truly desired God, the God of Scripture. Though we seem to think we are seeking God, in our practice we seek nothing but a “god”. An idol fashioned to satiate our own selfish desires.

As Scripture declares:

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

There is no one who calls upon Your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you…

Isaiah 64:6-7

John Calvin spoke of the world as the theatre of God where the glory and majesty of the Almighty is clearly revealed in all of creation. Yet we in our obstinacy in sin esteemed not His glory. We walk through His theatre blindfolded and utterly ignorant of the Supremacy of His Being. And instead of being neutral to Him and the work of His hands, we spurn and hate Him all the days of our life, in thought, word and deed. For anything that does not proceed from faith is sin (Romans 14:23). All that we have done is sin.

And here I open this entry from C.H. Spurgeon’s recollection of his conversion. When God begins to work in a man. When God saves a man. When God draws a man unto Himself (John 6:44). When saving grace begins it’s work in an undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinner.

And though Spurgeon speaks of his seeking God, let it be a reminder that it is only so in all of those who are His because it is Him and Him alone who first sought them. And though our sins may be as scarlet they will be as white as snow; though they be red as crimson they shall be as wool.

In my conversion, the key was making the discovery that I had nothing to do but to look to Christ and I would be saved. I believe that I had been a very good, attentive hearer; my own impression about myself was that nobody ever listened much better than I did.

For years, as a child, I tried to learn the way of salvation. Either I did not hear it explained, which I think cannot quite have been the case, or else I was spiritually blind and deaf and hence could not see it or hear it. Either way, the good news that I was, as a sinner, to look away from myself to Christ as much startled me and came as fresh to me as any news I ever heard in my life.

Had I ever read my Bible? Yes, I had read it earnestly. Had I ever been taught by Christian people? Yes, I had, by mother and father and others. Had I not heard the Gospel? Yes, I think I had. However, somehow it was like a new revelation to me that I was to believe and live.

I confess that I had been tutored in piety, put into my cradle by prayerful hands, and lulled to sleep by songs about Jesus. I had heard the Gospel continually, with “precept upon precept; line upon line” (Isa. 28:10), here much and there much. Yet, when the Word of the Lord came to me with power, it was as new as if I had lived among the unvisited tribes of Central Africa and had never heard the tidings of the cleansing fountain filled with blood, drawn from the Savior’s veins.

When for the first time I received the Gospel and my soul was saved, I thought that I had never really heard it before. I began to think that the preachers to whom I had listened had not truly preached it. But, on looking back, I am inclined to believe that I had heard the Gospel fully preached many hundreds of times before.

This was the difference: I then heard it as though I did not hear it.

When I did hear it, the message may not have been any more clear in itself than it had been at former times, but the power of the Holy Spirit was present to open my ears and to guide the message to my heart.

I have no doubt that I heard a hundred times such texts as these: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16); “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isa. 45:22); “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

However, I had no intelligent idea of what faith meant. When I first discovered what faith really was, I exercised it.ⁱ I believed as soon as I knew what believing meant.ⁱⁱ Then I thought I had never heard the truth preached before. Now I am persuaded that the light shone often on my eyes, but I was blind; therefore, I thought that the light had never come there.

The light was shining all the while, but there was no power to receive it.

The eyeball of the soul was not sensitive to the divine beams. I could not believe that it was possible that my sins could be forgiven.

I do not know why, but I seemed to be the one exception in the world.

When the list was made out, it appeared to me that for some reason I must have been left out. If God had saved me and not the world, I would have been surprised indeed; but if He had saved all the world except me, that would have seemed only right to me.

And now, being saved by grace, I cannot help saying, “I am indeed ’a brand plucked out of the fire’ (Zech. 3:2)!”

I believe that some of us who were kept by God a long time before we found Him, love Him better perhaps than if we had received Him right away. We can preach better to others, and we can speak more of His loving-kindness and tender mercy.

John Bunyan could not have written as he did if he had not been dragged around by the Devil for many years. I love that picture of dear old Christian.

I know that when I first read The Pilgrim’s Progress and saw the picture of Christian carrying the burden on his back, I felt so sorry for the poor man that I thought I would jump with joy when, after he had carried his heavy load so long, he at last got rid of it. That was how I felt when the burden of guilt, which I had borne so long, was forever rolled away from my shoulders and my heart.

I can recollect when, like the poor dove sent out by Noah from his hand, I flew over the wide expanse of waters and hoped to find some place where I could rest my wearied wing (Genesis 8:6-11). Up towards the north I flew. My eye looked keenly through the mist and darkness to perhaps find some floating substance on which my soul might rest its foot, but it found nothing.

Again it turned its wing and flapped it, but not so rapidly as before, across that deep water that knew no shore. Still there was no rest. The raven had found its resting place on a floating body and was feeding itself on the carrion of some drowned man’s carcass, but my poor soul found no rest. I flew on. I fancied I saw a ship sailing out at sea. It was the ship of the law.

I thought I would put my feet on its sail or rest myself on its ropes for a time and thereby find some refuge. But, ah, it was an airy phantom on which I could not rest. My foot had no right to rest on the law. I had not kept it, and the soul that does not keep it must die (Ezekiel 18:20).

At last I saw the ship Christ Jesus—that happy ark. I thought I would fly there, but my poor wing was weary. I could fly no further. Down I sank. But, as providence would have it, when my wings were feeble and I was falling into the flood to be drowned, just below me was the roof of the ark.

I saw a hand stretched out, and One took hold of me and said, “’I have loved thee with an everlasting love’ (Jer. 31:3). Therefore, I have not delivered ’the soul of [My] turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked’ (Ps. 74:19). Come in, come in!”

Then I realized that I had an olive leaf in my mouth. It was an olive leaf of peace with God and peace with man, plucked off by Jesus’ mighty power.

Once, God preached to me by an object lesson in the depth of winter. The earth had been black, and there was scarcely a green thing or a flower to be seen. As I looked across the fields, there was nothing but barrenness—bare hedges, leafless trees, and black, black earth—wherever I gazed.

Suddenly, God spoke, and He unlocked the treasures of the snow. White flakes descended until there was no blackness to be seen, and all was one sheet of dazzling whiteness. It was the same time that I was seeking the Savior and not long before I found Him. I well remember that sermon that I saw before me in the snow:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isa. 1:18)

—C.H. Spurgeon

Taken from C.H. Spurgeon’s recounting of his conversion, entitled “My Conversion”:

Read the rest of Spurgeon’s recollection of his conversion here: My Conversion

Footnotes

1. Aye, but let us understand that it is but the empty hand of faith. A faith that undresses all self-righteousness and self-confidence, and just turns to receive the free grace sovereignly granted by the Savior. As the hymn sings of it, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the Cross I cling. [↩]
2. When God opens the eyes of those He saves they cannot help to do no other but believe. [↩]