An Irregular Candidate

Jackie Ross was a much-loved Free Presbyterian minister who went to be with the Lord earlier this year. He, started the Blythswood Tract Society which has been much used to spread the gospel and take aid to Eastern Europe. Here we reproduce part of his autobiography recently published by Christian Focus.

When my time came to do National Service, I joined the RAF. I was sent to London, to HQ Coastal Command, where I served as a teleprinter operator. There I discovered that though I thought I had grown up and could stand on my own two feet, I was every bit as homesick in London as I had been as a schoolboy in Balmacara.

Are you trusting?

Perhaps I'd feel the better of going to a SASRA meeting, I decided. But I didn't. I came out feeling very censorious about the whole thing, and in the darkness outside my billet I shared my thinking with a corporal who had been there too.

'John', he said, 'Are you trusting in Jesus yourself?'

It was like a bath of cold water to discover that he didn't join me in my criticism. Now I look on that as the providence of God for the corporal disappeared into the night and left me alone to work things out with the Lord.

Remembering the warmth of being with Christian people, I went along to the Free Presbyterian Church in London one Sunday some time afterwards.

'Are you saved?' Mr. MacQueen, the minister, asked as we shook hands at the door.

'I'm seeking', I told him.

He looked me in the eye. 'Seeking won't save you, only finding will.'

For me, seeking meant taking comfort in religious activities rather than in Christ, and perhaps that perceptive man knew the truth. I then went through a phase of trying to ensure I didn't do wrong things. And I was so blind to my real self that I thought I was doing very well. I measured my progress by how much I read my Bible and how often I prayed. Then one day a thought came into my mind which could only have come straight from Satan, and I realised then that there was nothing in me that was impressive at all. But what happened was an eye-opener to me, because I'd never before felt sin to be offensive. That was a new discovery. All my life I'd heard people talking about being convicted of sin, and for the first time I knew what they meant.

Comfort in Christ

Suddenly I was brought face to face with my helplessness to do anything about my condition, and the truth that everything depended on the Lord having mercy on me and saving me. I shared my concern with an elder of the church and he comforted me, telling me that it was wonderful that I was concerned for my soul, and that the Lord would save me in his own good time. A few days later Mr. MacQueen got hold of me. He was infuriated by the elder's advice and he pressed on me the urgency of trusting in Christ. The elder was trying to comfort me with no comfort while the minister made me uncomfortable by forcing upon me the need to find all my comfort in Christ and to find it right away. Looking back I think I probably was a believer by then, but I can't pinpoint a day of conversion. Even in my days of silly extremes, when I set legalistic standards of behaviour for myself and others, I may have been converted, because the only comfort I got then was when I thought about Christ

A lie from the pit!

National Service over, I headed back to the Black Isle. My mind was still restless and I longed to be sure that I had been saved from my sin. As I walked down the road to the prayer meeting not long after my return home I spoke to the Lord - it would be too high-flown to call it prayer.

'Lord, I'm willing to have you', I told him, 'but you're not willing to have me.'

On arriving at the meeting I took my seat, totally absorbed in my own thoughts.
The Rev. D.A. McFarlane started to speak. 'You are here thinking that the Lord is unwilling to have you', he said. Then his voice rose to a shout. 'It's a lie from the pit! The Lord is more willing to have you than you are to have him!'

No way could I get away from that answer, from that utterly immediate response to my desperation. But it still didn't get any further than my head. Soon afterwards it did. I was standing outside our home in the dark, feeling quite disturbed and distressed, when a verse came into my mind. 'Be not faithless but believing' (John 20.27). I went in and looked up the context. The words were said to Thomas, the believer who doubted his Lord. There and then I knew I was a believer though, like Thomas, a poor and doubting one, and it encouraged me to believe and to keep on believing. Although I felt so ashamed, that was a real help to me. It is from that evening that I knew assurance of salvation.

When I was in the RAF, the Rev. J.P. MacQueen introduced me to the use of tracts and the value of Christian literature. Occasionally I would walk through Battersea Park with him and he always had tracts to give out as we walked. While he didn't engage people in conversation, he did have a heart to reach out to them. After I came out of the RAF I felt a need to try and copy him. What he did certainly lodged in my heart.

Call to the ministry

But other things were happening in my heart too. I enjoyed my job as a draughtsman, even doing the occasional contract of my own, and it allowed me to live quite nicely and gave me comfortable relationships with the tradesmen in the district. But as time passed I became unsettled in myself, and began to seriously consider whether God was calling me into the ministry. I didn't view the prospect with any great enthusiasm as I thought that my interest in cars, motorbikes and buildings would have to be shelved if he was. What I did know was that the Lord had given me a real burden to see folk saved.

The Bible seemed to confirm that I should stay where I was. When, in my reading of Jeremiah, I came on the verse, 'Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not' (45.5), I thought I was off the hook. The ministry was to my mind 'a great thing', and God's Word seemed to be warning me against seeking that for myself. But the desire to preach the gospel wouldn't go away. It was months later that I realised the meaning of that verse. God was telling me not to seek great things in this world; wealth, status and comfort among them. There seemed nothing for it but to approach my Kirk Session with a view to being considered as a candidate. And that was a nerve-racking experience.

Give me a verse!

In the course of the interview an elder asked if a verse of Scripture had been given to me to show that I should be a minister. That threw me. I had no such verse. And when I left the Session I was in a state of desperation. What was I meant to do? If God wanted me in the ministry why hadn't he given me a verse to tell me so. Was it all in my mind? Why did I yearn to preach if that wasn't what I should be doing? Later that night, with my Bible open in front of me, I wrestled with myself as I had never done before. Then my eye caught a text of the page open in front of me. 'His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay' (Jeremiah 20.9). God's Word began to calm my soul. I took that not as a call but as an accurate description of what I was like. That's how Scripture has been for me over the years - not so much a vision but a confirmation and correction.

This extract is used with permission of Christian Focus Publications.
'An Irregular Candidate', written with Irene Howat. ISBN 1857927427. £8.99