The Young Man Who Ducked Into the Chapel on Artillery Street

On January 6, 1850, a fifteen-year-old boy named Charles Spurgeon trudged through a blizzard in Colchester, England. He had been visiting churches for months, searching for something he could not name, growing more skeptical with each disappointing sermon. The snow drove him off his intended route, and he ducked into a tiny Primitive Methodist chapel on Artillery Street — a last resort, not a destination.

Barely a dozen people sat in the pews. The scheduled minister had not made it through the storm, so a thin, unpolished layman stood to preach. His text was Isaiah 45:22: "Look unto me, and be ye saved." The man had little education and less eloquence. After ten minutes, he ran out of things to say. Then he looked directly at the teenager hunched near the back and spoke as though he already knew him: "Young man, you look very miserable. And you will always be miserable until you obey my text. Look to Jesus Christ!"

Spurgeon later said it was as if God Himself had seen him before he ever walked through that door.

Nathanael thought he was hidden beneath his fig tree, wrestling privately with God. But Jesus said, "I saw you." The Almighty does not wait for us to arrive — He has already been watching, already knowing the shape of our seeking, already preparing the word that will undo our doubt. Sometimes the Christ who calls us has known us longer than we have known ourselves.