Have You Received God’s Merciful

Early Call?

© 2022 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

I became concerned about eternity very early in life.  My earliest recollections began when I was about 4 years old.  I’ve often wondered why the Lord started working on me so early in life.

Some time before beginning kindergarten, I was rolling my toy truck on the wooden kitchen threshold while Mom prepared food.  I suddenly looked up at her and said, “Mom:  Do you think I’ll go to Heaven when I die?”  Several months later, I was in a DVBS class at the chapel we attended.  An elderly lady presented a flannelgraph lesson explaining the gospel of Christ.  She explained that we’re all sinners.  I already knew that!  I’d had many opportunities to be spanked for disobeying Mom and Dad.  She explained that sinners go to Hell unless they trust Christ who died to save sinners.  But, anyone who trusts Christ to save them will go to Heaven instead.  She said that the Lord Jesus was coming back to take saved people to Heaven.  She warned that it was important to be saved before that happened.  I was afraid that He might come back in the next few minutes before I was saved.  I began bawling my eyes out and was surprised that no one else was doing so.  It seemed like everyone else in the room should be afraid too.  I didn’t stop crying until the elderly teacher finished her lesson and took me aside.  She explained that, if I asked the Lord to save me from my sins, He would.  I asked him right then and there.

As a pre-kindergarten child, I wondered why I was, seemingly, the only one in my DVBS class troubled by sin.  I knew nothing about the increasing temptations I’d face later.  As I grew, and succumbed to some of them, I realized I was even more sinful than I’d realized.  I thought that God had probably chosen to work on me early because of this.  Even then, I think I began to understand that God, not we ourselves, initiates our desire to trust Him.  It had been the work of God in my heart which brought about my fear and crying during the DVBS class!

After I asked the Lord to save me, I was so overjoyed I ran all over the chapel shouting:”I just got saved!”  Most of the people I told were adults.  I think I was not quite eye level with their waists.   I think most of them figured I was too young to know what I was talking about.  Over the next few days I told my older sister’s friend that I’d been saved.  I told her she needed to be saved too.  My sister later told me that her friend kind of mocked me and asked, “Does he even know what he’s talking about?”  I didn’t care.  I was full of joy because the Lord had saved me.

Consider these words of Jesus, the Savior:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

Are you laboring and heavy laden over sin?  Cry out to Christ, the crucified and risen Savior, for mercy and forgiveness!

 

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