A Heart Opened to the Gospel

Christians are called to proclaim the gospel far and wide, but God alone can make hearts receptive to the truth of Christ. Today, R.C. Sproul tells the story of a woman whose heart was opened to the good news of salvation.

I remember once doing an evangelism call at a home where there were two young ladies there, and the one was openly hostile to Christianity. And I was trying to go through the Scriptures with her and explain the basic essence of the gospel to this woman. And she kept interrupting and saying, “Look, I’ve heard that a thousand times. My uncle was a minister.” And I said, “Well, if you’ve heard it a thousand times, could it possibly harm you to hear it just one more time?” And I asked her permission to finish, and she said, “OK.” I said, “Just let me finish and I’ll get out of your life.” And I finished it and left.

Six months later, this woman shows up in a new member’s class at the church where I was working. And the other minister asked her, “What led you to want to come and become a member of this church?” And she told the story of our visit to her home that night. To be honest with you, I’d forgotten about it. And she told how she was hostile, belligerent, and totally closed to the hearing of the gospel. And she related how I had asked her to let me finish it, and I did. And then we left. And she said as soon as we walked out the door, she went back to her bedroom and burst into tears, got on her knees beside her bed alone, and embraced Christ as her Savior.

And she said, “I thought I had heard it, but I never heard it before. It’d never penetrated before.” Not because I was more articulate or more persuasive than her uncle or the other people who had told her these things, but that seed had been planted before on stony ground. It had been tossed among thorns. But in the meantime, God had done a work in this woman’s heart that prepared the soil for the seed to be planted and to bring forth its fruit to germinate into life. She had been given ears to hear.