by Larry Browning
“Absolute Sovereignty is what I like to ascribe to God. But my first convictions were not so.”
Reading this verse is the first instance Jonathan Edwards can remember the sweet inward delight of God and divine things.
He had struggled with the Sovereignty of God as a very young person but late in college at Yale, his mind rested in it and that put an end to all those cavils and objections. “Afterwards, the doctrine has very often appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet.” Edwards wrote. “The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in sense, was on reading these words, 1 Timothy 1:17: ‘Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.’”
“As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seem to me as those words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to Him in Heaven, and be, as it were, swallowed up in Him forever. From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by Him. An inward, sweet sense of these things, at times, came into my heart, and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. My mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of His person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in Him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those which treated of these subjects. …After this, my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered. There seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything.”
Have you had a “dawning moment” where God somehow reaches into the center of your soul straight to your spirit with His Word to somehow forever change your spiritual trajectory? Mine was during a sermon preached by Chris Hodges during which he spoke of the love the Father has for us. The passage was John 17:23 which says, “I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” God filled my mind with that thought, the thought that God the Father loves ME to the exact same degree that He loves His Son, Jesus! That powerful thought has stayed with me, and even as I’m typing this post, I’m thanking Him for that truth. It has truly changed my spiritual journey. Thank you Lord!!!!
God filled my mind with that thought, the thought that God the Father loves ME to the exact same degree that He loves His Son, Jesus!
If you have a similar experience, I’d sure love to read about it. It fascinates me at how God uses different verses to grab ahold of people right where it will be the most spiritually effective.