p. 1092 | Getting Right With God by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 13, 1913

Getting Right With God

By C. M. S.

THIS is the week of prayer. It is a special season to more than one hundred thousand persons, who are invited to petition the throne of grace, as one man, in behalf of the greatest work ever committed to mortals.

But while there is going up to our Father in heaven this mighty petition that wraps the whole world in its embrace and concerns a work that is to touch every portion of earth, God would have his people realize that a right relation to him, on their part individually, is of greater importance to the work, to themselves, and to him than any amount of time spent in the repetition of words of prayer while the life is out of harmony with the purpose of God and the principles of the closing message. It must not be a season of lip service. That, our Saviour says, is hypocrisy. “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.” Matt. 15:7, 8. Such service is not recognized by the Lord as service unto him.

When we pretend to possess what we do not possess, we act a falsehood. When our lips speak one thing and our lives another, we act a falsehood, and in so doing bring into disrepute the cause we pretend to serve. It is better not to pretend than to pretend and not do. But that does not release us in any sense from our duty of service. Service is our duty; to possess the things of God and to experience the blessings of service are our privilege.

We are in the time of the end; and because we are, this admonition and invitation of the Lord is particularly applicable to this generation and to us individually: “The day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it? Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. . . . Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar.” Joel 2:11-17.

The whole chapter and the chapter following deal with the same thing. It is God’s personal call to his people to turn from the service of the world to his service; and the reason, written plainly through the whole book, is that it is the day of Jehovah’s preparation for his last great work, and he will not leave his people unwarned. But mere profession will not do. It is true heart service to which he calls his people now. The rending of the garments—the formal and outward profession of sorrow and repentance—will not suffice. The Lord sees not as man sees; he looks not on the outward appearance. He sees the heart and searches the purpose; and when he sees stubborn and unconverted hearts covered with the rent garments of professed conversion and professed repentance, he says, “Ye hypocrites,” “rend your heart, and not your garments.” If we refuse to do that, we are lost; for pretense and profession without possession are abominable in the sight of heaven.

“But,” one says, in excusing himself from the service of God and accusing others for not living up to their profession, “I do not make any profession,” as if that were something to be commended. That does not help the matter; for, while God refuses to permit the hypocrites to enter his kingdom, he also refuses entrance to those who make no pretense of service. The kingdom of righteousness is a kingdom of loyalty, of truth, of sincere service, of unquestioned devotion. The characters that go into that kingdom will not be clouded with sin and selfish ambition. The searchlight of God will play upon those characters and find in them nothing but the pure crystal. Therefore God calls them his jewels. They are his precious trophies mined out of the dark and dismal shafts of this world of sin.

The purity of character which God requires has been held before the eyes of some by Satan in order to discourage them by the very impossibility of human attainment. But God has not left man to himself to accomplish that undertaking. “My grace is sufficient for thee.” “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” What is necessary is submission to the divine will. When the soul is yielded to God, so that God can work out his will in the individual unhindered, the work will be accomplished.

Christ said, “I and my Father are

one.” They were one because there was only one purpose between the two. Now if there is only one purpose between us and God, we also shall be one with him, true children of God the Father and true brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then the prayer of Jesus in our behalf will come true in our experience: “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are.” John 17:11. Again: “Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us. . . . I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one.” Verses 20-23.

As we, through the grace of Christ, put out of our lives those things that hinder our being at one with God, we shall at the same time and by the same act put out of our lives those things that hinder our being at one with one another. As we draw nearer to God in reality, we draw nearer to one another in reality, and find less and less occasion for faultfinding against one another. It will be a wonderful, glorious, and soul-satisfying thing to step over the line from mortality to immortality, and realize that all the sorrows and disappointments and woes of this world are in the past, while eternity stretches before us in the kingdom of righteousness, where nothing can ever come to hurt, to disturb, or to annoy. But they who long for that blessed experience must realize that in order for such a kingdom ever to be, God must see to it that no one who enters there shall have in his soul the taint or contagion of sin. While God makes the requirement, he also furnishes the facilities for bringing it about. In the life and the sacrifice of Christ, and in the power and grace he has promised, man finds all he needs to enable him to pass within the gates of the New Jerusalem and to share with all the redeemed what God has in store for his faithful children.

Therefore let this be a season of true heart searching, of consecration, of glad yielding to God’s leading, of drawing nearer to God and nearer to one another. Then we can say, “The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.”

C. M. S.