ARE YOU TRYING TO HAVE ANOTHER'S EXPERIENCE?
By W. S. Sadler
W. S. SADLER.
(San Francisco, Cal.) Why is it that men and women, especially young Christians, have such unsatisfactory seasons in their Christian experience? A consideration of the causes that produce these deplorable results, may be helpful. If I have a headache and take morphine, that may cure the symptoms, but not the headache itself. So when you get your feelings changed,—if it is merely a matter of feeling,—you may think you are all right. But what difference does feeling make? Satan knows how to play upon feelings, but he cannot manipulate “the faith of Jesus.” We should take pains to find out the cause of our moral difficulties. We can treat spiritual symptoms till the end of the world, but we shall never obtain relief till we get the cause out of the way. Merely changing our feelings will do no good. We should study to be sensible and rational in dealing with the soul, and help people to find the cause of their difficulty. Of course unbelief is at the bottom of all our spiritual troubles, but generally the immediate cause is simply a misunderstanding. The trouble with many Christians to-day is that they are trying to experience theology instead of religion. They have read in books, or heard in sermons, or perhaps in social meetings, accounts of what some persons think a Christian experience ought to be. Suppose a man forty years old writes a book, giving an account of his conversion, in which he says that the next day thereafter he seemed to have a definite experience in receiving the Holy Ghost; that he went to a missionary field, and raised up a church, etc., etc. You read that book, and lay it down with a sigh, saying, “Well, I guess I have never been converted. I never had such an experience as that.” Then you try to experience that man's experience; but you can never do it. Just as God never made two leaves alike, He never made two men alike, and there never will be two men or women who will have a Christian experience just alike. The majority of young people have some ideal, and will not feel satisfied until they attain to that ideal. But we are to walk by faith, not by ambition, neither by feeling. However beautiful another person's experience, it will not fit you. David could not wear Saul's armor. Do not think you can wear another's armor. The Lord Jesus Christ has made a helmet of salvation especially for you. Our garments of spiritual warfare and righteousness are made to order in the looms of heaven. Therefore it is written, “Looking unto Jesus,” for there is where the Christian's armor and his righteousness are; for our armor and garments were made for us individually. Do not make the mistake of trying to experience some other person's experience. You read in the Bible that the steps in becoming a Christian are, first, sorrow for sin (repentance); second, forsaking of sin (forgiveness); and third, deliverance from sin. You ask yourself, “Am I sorry for sin?” Perhaps you do not cry easily; and yet, in the depths of your heart, you are truly repentant. Some individuals cry at every turn in their experience. Your forgiveness and acceptance is not a question of temperament , but one of believing that Jesus Christ is your sin-bearer,—a question of believing God. A man can believe God, even if he cannot cry. The one thing is, Do you believe? Or perhaps you try to repent according to some other person's repentance. You will never succeed. You must repent according to the light you have received. If the Lord shows you that a certain thing is wrong, repent of that thing just as soon as you see it, and all the powers of heaven will help you. Many have a Christian experience that goes no further than the head. Such an experience is the theory of religion; but if it gets into the life and heart, it is Christianity indeed. We may know all our doctrines in our minds; we may be able to give chapter and verse for everything we believe; but unless we have the truth further than merely in our heads, we are simply trying to meet an intellectual ideal; whereas we ought to look to Christ, and there would come a transforming power into our lives. There is no transforming power in mere theology, but there is a transforming power in pure religion, in true Christianity. Some professed Christians have the truth in their heads. They are theoretically justified by faith, but in their hearts they are not living a life of justification,—freedom from condemnation. They can tell you many precious truths about justification by faith; they can tell you most beautiful things about the Holy Spirit; but many times they are miserable and unhappy, not believing that their own sins are forgiven. Theory is but an ingenious apology for the real thing. Scores of people are having an unsatisfactory Christian experience, who, if they would simply cast themselves at the feet of Jesus, and say, “Take me as I am,” would find relief from all these worries. The Lord is not trying to keep us out of heaven. He is a Saviour, and He came not only to save the lost, but to seek for them. When you rise in the morning, you feel as wicked as you ever did. What difference does that make? The Saviour is alive, the Bible is true, and “God is love.” The cloud that is hanging over our head in the morning will bring refreshing showers in a little while. Even droppings of the latter rain will come out of some of the clouds of discouragement that hang over our heads. Let us have the Christian experience that Christ has designed for us. He knows all about us; and if we cannot have much feeling, let us go on and serve God just the same. It matters little whether we can shed tears or not. We need to learn to distinguish the voice of the Master from the voice of the enemy, so that when the One speaks, we can obey Him, and when the other speaks, we can turn our backs. How can we tell the voice of God? Do you think a man has any difficulty in distinguishing the voice of his best friend? Let us get acquainted with the voice of the Spirit of God, that we may know it. When the Spirit says, “Go forward,” even though a dozen enemies say we shall fail if we do, let us go. All this advice to stand still, to give up and be discouraged, is of the devil. The voice of God says, “Lo, I am with you alway.” Let us cultivate the acquaintance of the voice of the Spirit of God, and learn to follow His advice in every conflict. I once heard a gospel worker give a most convincing argument on justification by faith, and it did me much good. Afterward he told me that all through his Christian experience he had never yet had a full and complete assurance that his sins were forgiven. He had the theory, but not the reality, of justification by faith. True religion is a matter of experience, and not of theory or theology. We have had so much of Christianity in our minds; let us get some of it into our experience. You can read, “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations,” and be able to give a Bible reading on it; but the first time anything goes wrong in your experience see what happens. Let us try to put these things into our experience. Would you know how it is done? How do we get things into our heads?—By thinking about them. And this is how we get them into our hearts, into our experience,—by living them. Do not be discouraged with your experience, if you are really honest. “If there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.” If you have a willing mind to serve God, and to do your duty, do not be discouraged by anything that may come to you. Never give up. Suppose I take an iron weight which I am not strong enough, physically, to lift. I go to the instructor of a gymnasium, and he says I am to lift it three times a day. He further says, “You follow my directions, and I will look after you.” So when we come to Christ, He says, “Follow me, and I will take the responsibility of your moral development.” He knows as much about your moral condition as the gymnasium teacher knows about my physical state. I try my best, but cannot lift the weight. He tells me to do my best. He asks me if I really want to lift it, and I say that I do. I have a “willing mind” to lift it. So I keep on trying, but I cannot lift it. I am not what I ought to be, therefore I cannot do what I ought to do. Yet I still keep trying until I begin to think it is useless to try any longer. Apparently, I fail every time I try. But I go over that thing every day because I have faith in the gymnasium instructor. So if you have a “willing mind,” just continue to do what Jesus tells you. Just continue to work at the weight every day; and every time you endeavor to lift the weight, you strengthen yourself. So I go right on, following the directions of the gymnasium instructor, until one day, to my surprise and supreme delight, I lift the weight. Did something happen all of a sudden that enabled me to lift it?—No; no. These many times I had apparently failed have not been altogether lost; for each time I tried to lift the weight, I developed another fiber of muscle, and thus, by and by, I was able to lift the burden. In your Christian experience, study, work, and pray; do your best. Do not give up. Every apparent failure has been a step in the development of the moral muscle which will some day enable you, by His grace, to lift the whole burden of sin. Then you can sing the song of victory. These struggles are all a part of our experience. If I believe I can lift that weight, and I try every time, expecting I am going to lift it, every effort I make assists in developing the muscle that will enable me some day actually to accomplish the task. So in every struggle of life; expect a complete victory. Ask God to qualify you, as far as consistent, to gain that victory; and you will surely succeed.