p. 3 | Editorial by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Dec 15, 1904

Editorial

By Editor

Talking With God

HAVE you ever really talked with God? Has your praying ever risen to the plane of actual communion with a personal Father in heaven? or has it been a mere one-sided expression of your wants and purposes? There is even a great difference between praying to God, or toward God, and holding personal communion with God. “In order to commune with God, we must have something to say to him concerning our actual life.” If we believe in God, it strengthens that faith to tell him about it. If we have doubts and fears, there is no other way so effectual for getting rid of them as to tell our Father all about them. Simply spreading them out before him often dissipates them altogether. But even though clouds and darkness still abide, we may yet talk with God, and the Comforter will take of things of his and declare them unto us. Public prayer is in God’s order, and should not be neglected, but the real inner experience of the individual Christian depends upon his personal interviews with him who is the very life of our life—the living God. Instead of talking things over privately with the enemy of our souls, who is constantly urging his views upon us, and agreeing with so much that he says about God, let us listen to what God says about himself, and as the infinite Father opens up his heart to us and reveals his feelings toward us, let us do the same with him. This heart-to-heart talk is a divine method for changing our sinful hearts until they shall beat in unison with the heart of God.

“Talk with us, Lord, thyself reveal, While here o’er earth we rove; Speak to our hearts, and let us feel The kindling of thy love.

“With thee conversing, we forget All time, and toil, and care; Labor is rest, and pain is sweet, If thou, my God, art there.”