THE COMPANY OF THESE POOR PEOPLE
Acts 11:25-26 Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for
Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year
Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The
disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
When
I had heard and considered what they said, I left them, and went about my
employment again: but their talk and discourse went with me, also my heart
would linger with them, for I was greatly affected by their words, both because
by them I was convinced that I wanted the true tokens of a truly godly man, and
also because by them I was convinced of the happy and blessed condition of him
that was a part of them.
Therefore
I would often make it my business to go again and again into the company of
these poor people; for I could not stay away; and the more I went among them,
the more I did question my condition; and, as still I do remember, I found two
things at which I did sometimes marvel, (especially considering what a blind,
ignorant, sordid and ungodly wretch I was before) the one was, a very great
softness and tenderness of heart, which caused me to fall under the conviction
of what by Scripture they asserted; and the other was, a great bending in my
mind to a continual meditating on them, and on all other good things which at
any time I heard or read of.
By
these things my mind was now so turned…still crying out, Give, give
(Proverbs 30:15); it was so fixed on eternity, and on the things about the
kingdom of heaven…that neither pleasures, nor profits, nor persuasions, nor
threats, could loosen it, or make it let go its hold; and though I may speak it
with shame, yet it is in very deed a certain truth, it would then have been as
difficult for me to have taken my mind from heaven to earth, as I have found it
often since to get it again from earth to heaven.
Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners by John Bunyan, pg.15.
