A Living Experience in God

My desires for a closer walk with God were greatly strengthened by my in latest visit to India. As I found myself working with the brethren facing the task in that difficult field of bringing into the hearts of those countless mil­lions of people some consciousness of God, I realized how futile it would be for us as a people to meet the challenge of a situation like that with nothing more to give the people than a mere outline of doctrine. The great need of the world today, wherever you try to measure that need, is for a living experience in the things of God; and this experience we must take to them.

As I walked down that old familiar street of boyhood days, in the city of Calcutta, India, and stood opposite the house in which our family lived when we became Seventh-day Adventists, thirty years ago, I found myself won­dering what had really been worthwhile as a reward for the change that took place in our experience and the stand that we took with Seventh-day Adventists. I tried to discover the in­trinsic worth spiritually of having been a Seventh-day Adventist for thirty years.

And is it not well for us all, in this late hour of human history, at this critical juncture of our own experi­ence, at this close point of contact with the complete fulfillment of the divine purposes, to find out whether we have been able to gather from the things that we have professed, power enough to bring us into possession of that which will carry us through? Power for victory ought to be the pos­session of every Seventh-day Adventist.

At the close of one of our meetings in India, I said to the brethren, "Let us visit some of the native believers;" and in the afternoon we went to the home of one of those humble men. We found him in his mud hut. Bending low, we passed through the door, and then, as I looked into the face of this man, I sensed that I was in the pres­ence of a true child of God. As we talked, he told me about the movings of God's Spirit upon his heart. He said there had come to him recently, as he had thought of his own individ­ual responsibility in the light of the opportunities which God had given him, a conviction as to the necessity of his finding some avenue of service for God.

Then the thought came to him, he said, as to what a poor, old, ignorant man could offer God in service. He could neither read nor write; but with the conviction and the desire to find an avenue of service, there came a gleam of light as to how to begin. He remembered a friend who he thought might be responsive to his appeals, so he took some literature and went to visit him. Sharing with us the privi­lege of this afternoon visit with this old saintly soul, was this same friend; and turning to him, the old man said, "He is with me in the truth now; he was in the Sabbath meeting this morn­ing; and, O, I am so glad that under the pressure of a conviction from God I sought out a soul and won him for Jesus Christ!"

If such were the definite result of the experience that God brings into the life of every Seventh-day Adventist the world over, there would be a sud­den change in the affairs of the world.

A still further disclosure was made concerning the secret of this godly life when, after we had left the place, the brethren referred to the "prayer cor­ner" in this little mud hut. I had ob­served that corner, which was notice­able because of being so well lighted. And I was told that, because of the old man's need, and extremity, someone had suggested it would be a good thing to rent that little corner for just a rupee or two. But the brother resisted the temptation of that proposal, say­ing, "I can better starve than deny myself the experience of having per­sonal fellowship with God; for what shall it profit me, if I make provision for this life, and in so doing, lose my grip on God and do not secure eter­nity?"

I am so glad that there is a plane upon which God steps out of the realm of His infinite life and setting, into the experience of personal relation­ship with the struggling soul. It is certain that the only personal knowl­edge we have of God is what we dis­cover in our individual experience. No Christian can go out into this world of need, and testify to having looked into the face of his God. We have not had that privilege. Much of the story that we tell, if it has the certain and sincere ring about it that will carry conviction as it is told, grows out of the fact that we know of the cer­tainty of these things because we have experienced the blessing of them in our own hearts. God must be drawn into the actual realm of the individual life, that there we may find the blessed­ness of this relationship with Him.

Washington, D. C.