A Plea to Accept Christ

Beginning the Christian Life

It was a very great privilege to me to have the little talk with you last evening. I had supposed that you were both members of the Church. I am sure, however, that you both love Christ and trust him, and are trying to do what he would have you do.

Church membership is not the only test or proof of a Christian life. The Christian life begins in the heart. God is your Father and you are his children. The moment you take a child’s place with God, know that he loves you and begin to love him in return and trust him, and try to do his will, that moment you are a Christian. It is a very sweet privilege to be a child of God. We all are God’s children, but many people go on year after year without recognizing him as their Father. I have read of a young man who had gone away from home, into some foreign country, and was absent for years, never writing home, never hearing from home. At last he grew homesick and came across the sea and found his way back to the village where he had spent his childhood and where his father and mother used to live. But when he asked for them he found that they had moved away into the country — he could not exactly learn where. He was disappointed very much and left the town, walking aimlessly along the country road. It was near night and the darkness was coming down. At last he stood before the door of a cottage, heartsick, weary, exhausted, and sat down upon the doorstep. Growing faint, he fell back against the door, which flew open. It was his own father ’s house, although he knew it not, and the father and mother were sitting inside, yearning for their long-lost boy. He did not know he was so near to them until, in his faintness, he found them bending over him. In the same way people often go on in their life, not knowing of God’s love for them, until some experience of suffering or trouble reveals him to them.

I should like to help you to believe in God’s love for you, his own children. He loves you tenderly and deeply. He gave his Son to die for you. Christ loves you and wants you to give yourselves to him. I am not preaching to you. I am merely trying to help you to know the wonderful love there is in the heart of Christ for you, and to help you, if I can, to accept him and take your place as his friend. As I said to you last evening, it will be very sweet if you will together give yourselves to Christ. This does not mean that you should join the Church at present — it means only that you shall, in the sweetness and the quietness of your own room, in the tenderness of your love for each other, take Christ into your lives and give yourselves to him.

Then it is a very sweet privilege to put into Christ’s hands all your affairs. You can talk to him about your sickness and ask him to bless the physician and give him wisdom, and to use the medicines and means for recovery. You can trust him with everything for the future, knowing that his love will be about you all the time.

You know how a child comes to a father or mother, opening his heart, telling his desires and longings and needs. You cannot see God and, therefore, it seems strange for you to think of talking to him. I suppose from what you say you have not been accustomed to pray. Let me say this to you, therefore, that if you kneel before God and talk to him out of your heart, telling him the very things you have told me, telling him you want to take your place as his child, that you want to have your sins forgiven, that you want to know his love for you, he will hear you, although you cannot see him, and will give you help. That is what prayer is — just talking to God out of your heart, telling him the things that you wish to tell him.

All these years, as I understand, you have not known, or, at least, have not stopped to think that you are God’s child and that God loves you. God does love you. It may be hard for you to understand that God, the great God who made all the worlds, loves you, just one being, amid the millions on the earth. But it is true. You know what the word “father” means. You know how you feel toward your children, how your heart yearns for them. Try to think of God, therefore, as loving you just as you have loved your children ever since they were born. It may seem mysterious and strange, but it is true.

The Bible teaches us also that to show his love, to make it plain to people in this world, God came into the world and lived as Jesus Christ. In John 3:16 we read, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever belie veth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 9 The reason that God gave his Son was that he might make himself known in a human life. If you will quietly read one of the Gospels to-morrow — Matthew or Mark or Luke or John — in which you will find the story of the life of Jesus Christ, you will learn how God feels toward you. He loves you, he wants to save you. Jesus Christ died on the cross that he might redeem the world. Now all those who accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour, as their Master and their Friend, are saved.

All these years you have not known God. Think of a child growing up in a home twenty,

Beginning the Christian Life 75

thirty, forty, fifty years, and never recognizing the father or the mother, never showing them any love or honor, never making any requests of them, never doing anything for them. If yon have not been recognizing God as your Father, do you not want to do so at once? That is what it is to become a Christian — it is simply to believe in God’s love for you, to accept that love, to take a child’s place toward God, and begin to love and honor and serve him.

I want to help you in every possible way. What I have written to you here tells you of the first step. Go to God in prayer, begin to talk to him, tell him that you have sinned against him, that you have neglected him all these years, that you have not even thought of his love for you, that you have not loved him, that you have not lived for him. A good many years of your life are gone, but you cannot change this now. One thing, however, you can do — you can give God all that remains.

Then if you wish to unite with the Church the way will be open for you. Christ wants us to confess him before our friends, not to hide our love, nor try to be secret friends, but to tell others. He says,” Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.”