Dear friend,

I desire to address you – the impressed but "unconverted" – personally in this editorial. As a pastor, I feel I have often neglected you, notwithstanding the fact that there are so many persons similar to you in spiritual condition. Let me explain why.

First, a word on "who" you are. You for one can't join hands with the world's philosophy, entertainment, and lifestyle. You know better. You have a speaking, "open conscience'' Nor are you indif­ferent about spiritual things. At times, you experience common convictions, pray fervently, tremble before your impending death and eternal home. Moreover, you are often impressed with the doctrines of grace and truth. You know very well what you need: To be born again by the saving power of the Holy Spirit.

And yet, you do not dare to claim grace. You recognize that where the Spirit works, steps and marks of grace will reveal themselves. You feel you lack a personal, saving knowledge of your misery, of deliverance in Christ, and of wholehearted gratitude for such redemption, evidenced in true love to God and others.

Often you are searching the Bible, ortho­dox literature, attending church, hoping that God will savingly work within you. But it seems nothing ever happens. As you grow older in years, you are the more impressed with what you need on the one hand, but on the other to receive the miracle of grace seems to become more impossible as your heart seems to grow less impressionable.

In a word, you are impressed but "unconverted" … and often neglected. For, in many messages, in much of your reading, you are sort of caught "in between." You feel you don't belong to God's children, but you have no desire to do the things often ascribed to the unconverted. You don't even belong to those who abuse elec­tion by saying flippantly: "If I'm elect, I'm elect; meanwhile, I shall live as I please" Rather, you use the means of grace prayerfully, hoping for an eternal blessing. You realize to some degree that if you go lost, it will be your own fault … but you don't know how to be saved.

Being caught in between, as it were, you often feel left out, and you begin to wonder: Is there any hope for me at all? All these years, hearing the truth since childhood – and still unconverted … It grieves you, but you feel unable to resolve your problem. You feel unable to come to God. You know room must be made for Christ in your heart, and try as you will, you can't produce that room.

Hence, at times you feel frustrated or near despair; at times, hopeless and helpless; at times, deserted. It seems that few under­stand. And all the while, time – precious years – is slipping by.

With God's help, I wish to provide you with pastoral advice along three lines of thought specifically for your spiritual condition:

First, don't give up. Continue to pursue the means of grace. Continue to sit faithfully in mercy's ways like blind Bartimaeus, asking for a forfeited blessing from the Son of David.

Don't listen to satanic reasonings which try to persuade you of the futility of using the means. For Satan, I know, whispers within you: "If you will be converted, you will be converted, regardless of all your efforts or lack of effort. So why not despise the means, live your own life? Abandon your present life in which you do not have enough religion to make you happy, but just enough to keep you unhappy"

Rather, listen to the godly reasonings of our invaluable Canons of Dort:

Those who do not yet experience a lively faith in Christ, an assured confidence of soul, peace of conscience, an earnest endeavor after filial obedience, and glorying in God through Christ, efficaciously wrought in them, and do nevertheless persist in the use of the means which God hath appointed for working these graces in us, ought not to be alarmed at the mention of reprobation, nor to rank themselves among the reprobate, but diligently to persevere in the use of means, and with ardent desires, devoutly and humbly to wait for a season of richer grace. Head I, Article 16

Keep courage: you need not despair! True, your conversion would be a miracle, but equally true is this: God is a God of miracles who delights to perform the miracle of conversion with almighty power. For God, miracles are normal – also the miracle of conversion! Particularly, He delights to sovereignly perform this miracle along covenantal lines from generation to generation within the pale of the church and under the means of grace. Oh, seek grace to confess with the church of all ages: "I believe in God the Father Almighty…!"

Follow the wise advice of a Puritan who wrote to persons in your condition:

Let sermons and prayers be thy delight, because they are roads wherein the Savior walketh. Let the righteous be thy constant company, for such ever bring Christ where they come. "Who can tell" whether the Lord might not be pleased to bestow grace upon thee while in the way of His ordinances. Even the beggar writes his petition on the flagstone of a frequented thoroughfare, because he hopeth that among the many passers, some few at least will give him charity; learn from him to offer thy prayers where mercies are known to move in the greatest number, that amid them all there may be one for thee. Keep thy sail up when there is no wind, that when it blows thou mayest not have need to prepare for it; use means when thou seest no grace attending them, for thus wilt thou be in the way when grace comes. Better go fifty times and gain nothing, than lose one good opportunity. If the angel stir not the pool, yet lie there still, for it may be the moment when thou leavest, it will be the season of his descending.

Think it not possible to pray too frequently; but at morning, at noon, and at eventide lift up thy soul unto God. Let not despondency stop the voice of thy supplication, for He who heareth the young ravens when they cry, will in due time listen to the trembling words of thy desire. Give Him no rest until He hear thee; like the importunate widow, be thou always at the heels of the great One; give not up because the past has proved apparently fruitless; remember Jericho stood firm for six days, but yet when they gave an exceeding great shout, it fell flat to the ground. "Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord. Let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease." Let groans, and sighs, and vows keep up perpetual assault at heaven's doors.

May God grant you to wrestle with Him like wrestling Jacob, "I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me" (Gen. 32:26). May He grant you a sigh to sigh, and a cry to cry. May He exchange your historical and temporary faith for saving faith; your common impressions, for saving impressions; your common convictions, for saving convictions.

Secondly, seek grace to realize that the fact you are still alive preaches that God does not take pleasure in your death, but rather that you would repent of your evil ways, and live, "for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" (Ez. 33:11) Oh, were you only as willing to be converted as you think yourself to be! Do you not see that you are still an enemy of free grace despite your continual petitions? Dispute with yourself, not with God.

The very fact that this world still exists preaches, first, that God's mansions are not yet full, and secondly, that there is still hope for you to be saved. Lost you now may be, but "the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost" (Lk. 19:10), and is now "exalted with the right hand of God to be a Prince and Savior, for to give repentance and forgiveness of sins" (Acts 5:31). In the days of His flesh, He was "not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt. 15:24), but prior to parting from his disciples, He informed them, "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be onefold, and one Shepherd" (Jn. 10:16). Ever since He has been gathering His elect "out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation" (Rev. 5:9). They have crowded by scores into His fold; they are pressing into it, by grace, even this very hour, and "yet there is room" (Lk. 14:22).

There is room, dear friend, for such as you are. Do not think that your being unconverted, destitute of spiritual life and having no room for God, must keep you from the Savior.

Rather, seek grace to flee all the more to Him as the only refuge from the approaching storm of eternal judgment! If you complain that your iniquities have increased over your head, and your trespasses have grown up unto the heavens (Ps. 38:4), this only renders the salvation of Jesus the more indispensable, and His grace in proffering it, the more alluring. His work is with sinners, the chief of sinners; His delight, to pluck them as "brands out of the burning" (Zech. 3:2). He has promised (and is both able and willing!) to "save them to the uttermost, that come unto God by Him" (Heb. 7:25).

Thirdly, consider seriously whether you may not be mistaking what true conversion actually is when you so readily deny yourself to be a recipient of saving grace. I fear many like you are looking for an "extraordinary" spiritual revelation as a basic criteria for conversion. You think that you can have no assurance without such revelation – a revelation, as it were, with an audible voice. Though our sins and Christ must be personally, experientially revealed to us, and we are in grave danger in our day of falling prey to "easy believers" and "self-made conversions," our forefathers guarded against teaching the necessity of such a "special" revelation. For example, our Canons state:

(We reject the errors of those) who teach: That without a special revelation we can have no certainty of future perseverance in this life. For by this doctrine the sure comfort of the true believers is taken away in this life, and the doubts of the papist are again introduced into the church, while the Holy Scriptures constantly deduce this assurance, not from a special and extraordinary revelation, but from the marks proper to the children of God and from the constant promises of God. So especially the Apostle Paul: "No creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," Rom. 8:39. And John declares: "And he that keepeth his commandments abideth in Him, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He gave us" (1 John 3:24). Head V, Error V.

Our Reformed forebears by no means regarded those who lacked "special" experiences to be unconverted. Calvin, for example, taught the judgment of charity for those who lived faith­fully under the gospel, but lacked such testimony. This concept of charitable judgment of the state of others became standard Reformed thought. It is defined and represented clearly in our Canons as well:

With respect to those who make an external profession of faith, and live regular lives, we are bound, after the example of the apostle, to judge and speak of them in the most favorable manner. For the secret recesses of the heart are unknown to us.  Head III-IV, Article 16.

This is not to say that the individual church member ought to be content without the personal experience and assurance of his salvation, or assume salvation apart from self-examination. In Revelation 22, Scripture forbids us to either add (v.18) or take away (v.19) from itself. When we presume or assume salvation apart from Scripture's call to examine the marks and fruits of grace in our lives (2 Cor. 13:5), we detract from the inspired Word of God. On the other hand, we must caution not to add to the marks and fruits of grace as recorded in Scripture, and thereby conclude on an unbiblical basis that we are unconverted. True conversion is more than "head knowledge," more than "notion." It is heart-felt, experiential. But also its felt reality must be subject to Scripture.

In short, true conversion consists of a heart-felt knowledge of my sins and misery, of heart-felt deliverance in taking refuge to Jesus Christ to find my only hope in Him, and of heart-felt gratitude to God for deliverance provided in the Son of His love (Ps. 50:15; cf. Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 2). Are you certain that you are a stranger of these scriptural, basic criteria?

Let me summarize. Don't give up. Continue in the means. Pray for saving knowledge of yourself and of God. Ask God to acquaint you with your sinnership, to make room within you for Jesus Christ and for the precious doctrines of free grace.

And examine yourself (2 Cor. 13:5): Don't expect the extraordinary. The miracle of ordinary conversion (i.e., experience of misery, deliverance, gratitude) is the one thing needful. It's the main course of salvation's meal. The "extraordinary" is like a luscious dessert – it tastes wonderful, but it's not essential.

Don't despise the day of small things (Zech. 4:10). And remember always: "Yet there is room" (Lk. 14:22).

Knock on. Pray on. Press on. "Strive to enter in at the strait gate" (Lk. 13:24).