Grace (Hear His Voice)

Now a word to you that are young, who are full of health and strength and who are chasing after some beloved ambition or some beloved pleasure. Stop and consider. What are all your beloveds compared to Christ the true beloved? What satisfaction and happiness have your beloveds brought you? Show us the peace, quietness and assurance of everlasting blessedness that they have brought you. Their paths are crooked. Whoever walks in them shall not know peace. So look and see that there is a fit object for your highest love, one in whom you may find rest to your soul, one in whom you will find nothing to grieve and trouble you to eternity. Behold, he stands at the door of your souls and knocks. Do not reject him, lest you seek for him and do not find him. Why do you spend your time in idleness and foolishness, wasting your precious time? Why associate with those who scoff at religion and the things of God? You only do this because you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. When he whom you have slighted and refused, how it will break your hearts and fill you with sorrow and remorse because you have neglected him. If you never come to know him, then it would have been better if you had never been born. 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.'

John Owen, Communion With God, P.52