I recently heard someone speaking of a heart that has become reprobate. I wonder if my struggle isn't something related to that, even though I don't totally understand the word. (I take it to mean my sin of non belief is so great that erasing it is almost impossible.) If that is the meaning, the Broudnoy may have suffered the same.
>I was probably an atheist/agnostic.
Yes, I was one too. I hated the government and hated the church even worse, but God had a different plan. Looking back on it now, I see that he was knocking at the door of my heart long before I knew him; putting certain people in my life, prompting me to ask deep questions, giving me a thirst to understand the Bible. Yet I was arrogant and hateful at the time; with one fist raised up at God and the other at the Government and my parents.
By all rights, God should have chose to have nothing to do with me. The amazing things is that after 32 years, I still say the same thing about myself even now, but God keeps knocking, laying out treasures, now and then using the Shepperd's crook on me; proving again and again that He is there.
I used to think I had to maintain it, or do something to have His presence in my life. but after memorizing Lamentations 3:23/25 "The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness." I have come to see that it is God that drives the Christian life; he lays out new lovingkindnesses every morning for folks like us. And by looking at our Savior, we see his providences.
God is very tender to the believer as a loving Father is tender to His only Son. His discipline, though often not so fun, is good because it bears fruit for eternity.
I heard that David has died and Pray that in the last moments of his life, he turned from his own righteousness and justification to the Savior and made that plea. For an eternity without the Heavenly Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is not to have love or freindship anymore.
It would be far better, to be able to hear a testimony of God's merciful love toward him from his mouth and for him to have real love and friendship for all eternity than anything else.