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The Personal Saviour

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 5, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 45.

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The Personal Saviour

By W. A. S.

WE get acquainted with him just as we become acquainted with any earthly friend. We talk with him in prayer; he talks to us in his Word. And knowing him is the secret of constancy and courage. Paul was “always of good courage,” as the Revision puts it in 2 Cor. 5:6, because he could say, “I know whom I have believed.”
Devotion to Jesus, as a daily Saviour, is the one thing that will keep the soul fresh and the courage invincible.
In the heart of Africa, with no human companionship that could understand, with fever scorching his life, and the knowledge that most of the results of his labors would appear only after he was gone, Livingstone found the courage for holding on in the renewed surrender of his heart to Jesus. So he wrote in his diary:—
My Jesus, my king, my life, my all! I again dedicate my whole soul to thee.
Of the early days in the cannibal island of Tanna, in the New Hebrides, the missionary Paton wrote:—
Without that abiding consciousness of the presence and power of my dear Lord and Saviour, nothing else in all the world could have preserved me from losing my reason and perishing miserably. His words, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” became to me so real that it would not have startled me to behold him, as Stephen did, gazing down upon the scene. I felt his supporting power, as did Paul, when he cried, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” It is the sober truth, and it comes back to me sweetly after twenty years, that I had my nearest and dearest glimpses of the face and smile of my blessed Lord in those dread moments when musket, club, or spear was being leveled at my life. O the bliss of living and enduring, as seeing “him who is invisible”!
It is the same everywhere and always; and just as apostle or prophet, martyr or missionary, found it, so may the lowliest believer know the experience. Come what may, there is victory in knowing that Jesus Christ is ours in self-surrender.
“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed his own blood for my soul.”
This is an old story, this talk of the loving allegiance of the heart to the Lord Jesus, but we shall never get beyond it. Loyalty to the cause is not enough. We must know Jesus. It will keep us from getting discouraged. It will keep the heart from getting crusty and withered. It will bring overcoming and keeping power into the life; for overcoming and keeping power is nothing else than the companionship of Jesus Christ by his Holy Spirit. W. A. S.