Daily EncouragementSample

“I chose you.” The privilege implied by these words is quite overwhelming.

There is the fact of his choice. There is a mystery about his choice and ours. “O happy day that fixed my choice” we sing, and then we pause:

I sought the Lord and afterward I knew,
He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Saviour true,
No, I was found of Thee.

There is the nature of his choice. It has its origin in eternity - “for he chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Eph 1:4). Time and eternity get mixed up here. “As a child of five,” writes R. K. Harrison, the Old Testament scholar, “I received a call from God to the Christian ministry. At that time I did not know the Lord personally, as was the case with Samuel. But God revealed himself to me as a teenager.” It is the choice of love. Someone has said, “the only phase of the divine election with which we have to do is electing love.”

J. S. Stewart tells of Count Zinzendorf’s life-changing experience, when he gave up trying to burn a piece of scrap parchment and happened to read what was written on it:

O let us in Thy nail prints see
Our calling and election free.