“The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (Ps 145:18).
James M. Gray, an editor of the first Scofield Bible, was a close associate of D.L. Moody. Raised in a nominally Christian home, he did not know the Lord. One evening, while reading a book on the Proverbs—by his confession a very unusual situation—he read the following statement from the author, William Arnot: “Every soul not already won to Jesus is already lost.”
Deeply convicted by the Holy Spirit, he knew the “prayers” he had recited since childhood would do him no good. Suddenly the prayer of the publican flew to his mind, and, with his face on the floor of his room, he prayed it as his own: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Gray writes: “And God heard it. He always hears that prayer. He put the everlasting arms under me that night…He put a new song in my mouth, which I have been singing ever since!” Gray, interestingly, authored the hymn, Only a Sinner, Saved by Grace.