FIRST STEPS TOWARDS CHRIST.
What are the first steps of a soul in coming to Christ? 1. The initiatory step we would commend to you, my good friend, is—sincere prayer. Do this at once. Do it irrespective of the amount of feeling, or of the degree of your conviction of sin. You may be but slightly convicted of your guilt. If you have a sufficient sense of the evil of your heart to desire a better heart and a purer life, that is sufficient feeling to commence with. If you have confidence enough in Jesus Christ to go and ask him for a new heart (instead of undertaking a self-salvation), that is a sufficient faith to start upon. Remembering that the mightiest saint was once a lisping, groping, feeble babe in grace, do not despise the day of small things. If you are convinced by the Holy Spirit that you ought to give yourself to Christ, then to prayer, you do not need to be told for what to pray. An honest inquirer can be trusted to frame his own petition and will make his own liturgy. The less stereotyped the better. Pre-eminently let your requests be honest. Then let them be importunate. Let them be mainly directed to Jesus Christ for the pardon of your sins, and for divine aid to help you to do your duty. For these two things, “pray without ceasing.” 2. The second vital step is the prompt abandonment of known sin. Let us imagine an individual awakening to his need of Christ, and setting about the work of securing his salvation. He opens his Bible and reads, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Further on he reads, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” From his Bible he goes to his knees. After his morning prayer he sallies out to his place of business. The first acquaintance that meets him politely presents to him a claim for an honest debt that ought to have been paid many months ago. It is a debt; that is enough. The divine command, “Owe no man anything,” is the original of John Randolph’s apothegm. Pay as you go. It means what it says. Our anxious troubled friend admits that his creditor ought to be paid, and secretly admits to himself that he could pay him if he would put himself to some inconvenience. But instead of shouldering up the sacrifice and doing his duty as an honest man, he sends away the creditor with another silver promise (in lieu of a silver payment), and with a new furrow in his brow, goes into his counting room. * In his “first works” our friend failed, and then strangely wondered how it was that his soul was making no headway, and his prayers were receiving no answer. We admit, indeed, that an obedience to the law of Christ that day, would not have purchased for him an acceptance with God. But it would have made him a very different man, as he presented himself before the Saviour at the mercy seat. It would have strengthened his as yet weak and irresolute purpose to live to God. It would have been a sincere attempt at obeying Christ by renouncing sin and crucifying selfishness. It would have been a first step toward a practical following after Christ. 3. To the anxious inquirers whose eye may rest on this paragraph, we would say, each one of you has some first steps of actual duty to perform. Salvation is a free gift on the part of God; but on your part it is a work. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” God graciously gives the inestimable boon of pardon and a new heart through the mediation of Jesus Christ; but he gives it to those who prove their desire for it by repentance and practical obedience. It is not for us to specify to you all the thousand methods in which you are to do your “first works.” In the general we would say, refuse the first temptation to sin. Secondly, obey God at the first call of duty. Begin to serve him. Crystallize inward emotions into external acts—deeds of benevolence—sacrifices for conscience' sake. Make your repentance real by making it fruitful. One of you, for example, goes right away from that closet in which he has been praying for a new heart, and hunting up a person whom he has wronged, he makes reparation on the spot. Another one seeks out an ancient enemy against whom his heart has been simmering a slow hatred for years, and offering his hand says, “Come, sir! you and I have quarreled about long enough; let us forgive and forget.” [How differently that man will pray the next time he comes before an all-forgiving Saviour.] Another who has bolted out a poor erring daughter, sends for her to come home again—remembering as he does so, how Jesus once drew a weeping outcast through a baptism of tears to his own loving heart. Still a fourth seeker after Christ finds that his appetites are his snare. So he says to himself, “I must give up my glass, or give up my soul.” His first step toward Christ is to shatter that satanic antichrist, his decanter, into a thousand fragments. For the Holy Spirit, and the spirit of the wine-cup cannot tabernacle in the same soul. An audible prayer before his family has been a first step with more than one awakened man. It was hard work to get through it between the suppressed smiles of his children and the scarce suppressed tears of his astonished overjoyed wife. But never in his life—though he were to outlive Methuselah—will he offer a prayer that will tell so prodigiously on his spiritual history as that first, broken, stammering, disjointed, but agonizing prayer before his household. When he offered it he took his first decisive step toward Christ. My friend, have you taken yours?