Jonathan Edwards had been in school for years, studying to become a minister. Despite this, he had never truly experienced God as he knew he ought if he were to enter the pastorate. One day while reading his Bible, he reflected on I Timothy 1.17, and though he would later never be able to remember the day or time, yet he could remember that this moment began a change in his life, even though he did not even recognize it at the time.

The verse: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

The reflection:

As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the divine being; a new sense, quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I though with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God and be wrapt up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him. I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of Scripture to myself; and went to prayer, to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection. But it never came into my thought [i.e., at the time], that there was anything spiritual, or of a saving nature in this.

From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him. I had an inward, sweet sense of these things, that at times came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged, to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ; and the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation, by free grace in him…. [I] found…an inward sweetness, that used…to carry me away in my contemplations; in what I know not how to express otherwise, than by calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns o[f] this world; and a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden…kindle up a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that I know not how to express.

(Quotation taken from Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word.)