Imagine entering a filthy room in the dark. Light a small match, and you notice that there is some overturned furniture. Turn on a flashlight, and you also see piles of dirty clothes. Use a halogen bulb, and you can see the dust settled on the furniture and mildew around the baseboards.
This is what awakening to God is like. One of the first signs of the light of grace coming into your life is that you have eyes to see the darkness in your own heart. As the light grows, so does your awareness of your sin. Growth in grace first shows itself as growth in the awareness of your need for grace.
“My heart was fallow and covered with weeds, but on a certain day the great Farmer came and began to plow my soul. Ten black horses were his team, and it was a sharp plowshare that he used, and the plowers made deep furrows. The Ten Commandments were those black horses, and the justice of God, like a plowshare, tore my spirit. I was condemned, undone, destroyed, lost, helpless, hopeless. I thought hell was before me.
But after the plowing came the sowing. God who plowed the heart in mercy made it conscious that it needed the gospel, and then the gospel seed was joyfully received.” ~Charles Spurgeon
“I was not willing presently to know the evil of sin, . . . But endeavored, when my mind at first began to be shaken with the Word, to shut mine eyes against the light thereof. . . . I was ignorant that this was the work of God upon me. I never thought that, by awakenings for sin, God at first begins the conversion of a sinner.” ~John Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress)
“Christ is never fully valued, until sin is clearly seen. We must know the depth and malignity of our disease, in order to appreciate the great Physician.” ~J. C. Ryle
“A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.” ~C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
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