April 24 Devotional
"A More Convenient Time"
“And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, ‘Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity, I will summon you’”
Acts 24: 25.
God doth not only beseech thee to be reconciled to him but . . . [more]. For thy encouragement he hath pronounced, in your hearing, exceeding great and precious promises; “and hath confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.”
God’s ordinary dealing with sinners, when at first, he ministers conviction to them by his Word, how strangely do they behave themselves! They love not to have their consciences touched. They like not to ponder upon what they have been, what they are, or what is like to become of them hereafter. Such thoughts are unmanly, hurtful, disadvantageous. Therefore, “they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear” (Zechariah 7 & 11). And now they are for anything rather than the Word; an alehouse, a brothel,[1] a playhouse, sports, pleasures, sleep, the world, and what not so they may stave off the power of the word of God.
Secondly, when God now comes up closer to them and begins to fasten conviction upon their conscience, [even] though such conviction be the first step to faith and repentance. Yes . . . [even] to life eternal, yet what shifts will they have to forget them and wear them off! Yes, although they now begin to see that they must either turn or burn. Yet oftentimes even then they will study to wave [off] a present conversion. They object, they are too young to turn yet. Seven years hence time enough when they are old or come upon a sick bed [they will come].
[1] Bunyan originally employed “whorehouse.” Edited out so as not to disturb the sensibilities of the reader.