God’s Providence in a Child’s Conversion

Berean Baptist on August 13, 2017

John Flavel has long been one of my favorite Puritan authors and his masterpiece on God’s providence is one of the first of his books I read. Providence is a very important concept in scripture as it describes how God works all things after the counsel of will and knows how each detail of His creation works together for the blessings of His children. In other words, providence comprehends more than the predestination of God’s people to salvation. It considers His total control of all His creatures to bring about His sovereign purposes. Among its many properties is the confirmation that all things consist by the power of God and that no creature is self-sustaining.

In chapter 3 of Flavel’s book, he deals with God’s providence in salvation. Flavel seems enraptured as he expounds on the way God orders all the occasions that bring His people to belief in Him. There are no accidents in our conversion. Each step is carefully planned by God. Of all the good God does for us, nothing compares to His meticulous care to bring us to salvation.

The point of this chapter is the gratitude and the testimony of a Christian because of what Christ has done. And yet Flavel points out that all testimonies are not equal. All experiences of conversion are not the same. Every Christian does not tell the same story or give as much detail in relating what happened in their lives at the time God saved them.

This interested me because I have experienced exactly what Flavel describes. I was saved when I was very young. My father was a Baptist preacher and I grew up in a Christian home. The first place I was taken as a child was to church. My name appeared on the cradle roll of South Broadway Baptist Church when I was just a few days old. There has never been I time when I have not been in church, and at the age of seven I trusted Christ as Saviour. Believe me, that was a long time ago.

If you ask me to provide the details of my conversion, to tell you the sermon, the songs, to relate what happened afterwards, to tell you how I felt—I cannot. I do remember the conviction, but that is all. Because I can’t remember the details, does it mean I am not saved? Surprisingly, I have heard preachers say if you don’t know the day, the hour, and the minute you trusted Christ, then you aren’t really saved.

Your experience of coming to Christ may be different. I have heard many testimonies of people who were in deep sin when they were saved. Some were in drugs, alcohol, adultery, pornography—and each has a very clear recollection of the day God brought them out of those horrible lives of sin. And there lies the difference. I was young and had very little life experiences. I needed salvation as much as anyone, but I don’t have that riveting, interesting, enthralling story that causes people to shout, Praise God! I don’t believe anyone ever said ooh and ah at my testimony.

Here is the point. An exciting testimony is no more proof a person is saved than a dull, vague, boring memory of a child who came to know Christ. In fact, you should pray to God every day that your children end up with a boring story of conversion rather than a spectacular turnaround. When a child is saved, it is the most exciting salvation of all.

 

Pastor V. Mark Smith

The Steps of a Good Man

Berean Baptist on February 15, 2016

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. (Psalms 37:23-24)

 On the last Lord’s Day, we read the first seventeen verses of Psalm 37. My remarks on this Psalm were about the hardships of the Christian life and how it seems we always fall behind the prosperity of the world. We are encouraged not to despair because this life is as good as it gets for the wicked. Though the evil man may appear to be prosperous, his prosperity is a mirage. He may clutch his title deed to the earth for a while, but soon all he has will be taken away. The earth belongs to God and is the inheritance of the people of God (v. 11).

This Psalm is filled with hope for the troubled Christian, but none is better than the words of verses 23 and 24. Think carefully on this phrase: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD…” These are the most hopeful words you will ever read. They speak of two great doctrines of the faith—God’s divine providence and His sovereign predestination. There is not a step you will ever take that God did not know you would take. He knows because He is the one that puts one foot in front of the other.

When God formed the world by His spoken word, He knew it would be inhabited by a race that He had chosen for His name. The beginning of man was in the predestination of God and we dare not think that after man was created God abruptly relinquished His divine providence. The fall in the Garden was not a surprise to Him and neither was the means by which He would restore all that was lost in that devastating event. If God should have relinquished control at that awful hour, there is not one soul that would ever have hope of redemption. Through the fall, we became completely corrupted. Every faculty of man was radically altered so that we are consumed with sin through and through. This radical corruption is what we call total depravity, and it left man in such a state that we are wholly incapable of looking up to God and helping ourselves in any way. We will not look because we care not to look. The scriptures say we became the enemies of God and of His righteousness. If God should leave us alone in our depravity, we are hopeless because we do not have the power or will to escape it.

The scriptures do not present a God who has abandoned us. We are enabled to come back to Him for one reason—His marvelous grace. In regeneration, He changes our disposition from hostility against His grace to openness to receive His grace. He orders the steps of repentance and faith. If you trust Christ as Saviour, you owe your trust to a sovereign act of the Holy Spirit. You did not change your mind; He changed your mind. Our statement of faith says accurately: “[He] secure[s] our voluntary obedience to the gospel” (Article 7). God’s method leaves Him alone responsible in all ways for our salvation.

With the tremendous costliness of salvation requiring the death of Christ for sin, how can we imagine that God who purchased our redemption with blood should ever let us go? When we fall, God does not cast us off. In the bleakest hour of our deepest despair, God still has His eye on us. He fully intends to raise us again and put us back upon the solid rock. The timing of His lifting is also His alone. We know it cannot be too long because the time of life is nothing compared to eternity. Our long time is God’s short time.

The promise is providentially intact. He sees with His eye but goes much further—He holds with His hands. We know we can never sink too low to be beneath His tender embrace. We often say, “Keep the faith!” We shall because we are kept by the power of God (1 Peter 1:5).

Pastor V. Mark Smith