Alone with God | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 19, 1873

Alone with God.

God does not reveal to man the brightest visions of himself in the busy marts of life, but in solitude. The lives which so enrich the pages of sacred history were made to glow in furnace heat, and shine in darkest nights.

Every one of the “forty stripes, save one,” intensified Paul’s character. Every tempest that blew, made him more tempest-proof. Every shipwreck increased his faith in the One strong to deliver. Imprisonment and poverty increased his devotion to Christ, until at last, having endured all things, he could look up, and say, “But none of these things move me.” I have no doubt but in the quiet of his prison, Paul had some of his brightest views of God’s glory. At midnight darkness, within an inner prison, with feet made fast in the stocks, did Paul and Silas, by prayer, link earth and Heaven, till prisons did palaces prove; till songs of praise rang through lonely aisles and cells, and a hand unseen moved massive bars and snapped asunder iron bands.

It was not when preaching a crucified and risen Redeemer that John had his glorious vision, but when on the Isle of Patmos he was enduring the banishment for the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ. It was when far from the sympathy of those of “like precious faith” that this exile on that lonely isle heard a voice saying, “What thou seest, write in a book; the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.” And being taken higher up, he saw a rainbow-circled throne, and Him that sat thereon; and “before the throne, a sea of glass like unto crystal, and a company, ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.”

Yes, it was on this lonely Isle of Patmos that John received the grandest revelation ever made to man—the indescribable vision of the heavenly Jerusalem—the city which needs not the light of the sun, nor moon, nor star; for the Lord God giveth them light.

“The city whose streets are paved with gold, And jasper walls pure and fair to behold.”

In lonely journeyings at sunset, Jacob tarried to rest for the night. With God to guard, the night dews for a cover, and a stone for a pillow, there came to him a vision brighter than ever came to palace sleeper—a vision of a ladder, whose lower round was planted upon the earth, and the topmost one reaching Heaven; and upon it, ascending and descending angel visitants. And above the ladder was the voice of God, making to him glorious promises. Again, in the life of this patriarch, do we read, “And Jacob was left alone.” He had sent his family and possessions across the creek. Now, in solitude, there wrestled with him a man until the break of day, and prevailing in this struggle, he was permitted to see God face to face.

Through the long centuries that have passed away, many a Jacob, alone with God, has wrestled all night long to prove the “promise of the Father,” and hailed the morn, to testify of “the joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Many a Patmos has had its John since then; and to the exile, God has revealed himself more than to most men. Poverty has exiled many a holy soul; has isolated it from Christian fellowship and sympathy; but to such, the Father gives sweet foretastes of the joys of that “land that is fairer than day”—where the many mansions be.

It is when the Christian is alone with God that he holds his sweetest communion, and gets his greatest strength—his grace to endure. It is not in the great congregation, where the anthem of praise ascends to a triune God, from unmeaning hearts; nor yet in the smaller assemblies, where Christians speak often one to another, of joys and sorrows by the way; nor even on those occasions when Zion is specially visited, and souls are being born into the kingdom. At such times there may come upon us wonderful outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but it is generally followed by reaction that leaves us weaker than before. It is when we go into our closet, shut the door and leave the world behind us, and “neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Oh! who can tell the power of lone communion with God? We cannot bring our greatest burdens and our greatest needs to him in public worship, and plead them as we can in our closet.

When the burdened soul of Jesus would pour itself out in supplication to the Father, he was wont to steal away from man, and pray on the mountain-top or in the garden. In his last resort to Gethsemane, he took thither his disciples; but in this culmination of grief laid upon the Man of Sorrows, the intense agony led him to separate from all but three. As he prayed alone with them, his soul began to be sorrowful and very heavy, and he longed for stricter solitude. “He went a little farther,” and there, all alone with God, he received strength to drink the bitter cup, which could not pass away.

Shut up with God! Oh! the inestimable privilege of talking with God, as a friend talks with friend! Who would exchange an hour of such intercourse for the choicest companionship of earth?

As souls are purified in the furnace of trial, and brightened in the night of persecution, so grand spiritual developments grow out of lone night watches and solitary communings with God. Better than all public teachings is that hour, when, calling in the wanderings of our mind, we pass a close introspection, and ascertain the soul’s status, then enter into closer covenant with God.

It is when the high priest alone entered once a year into the holiest of holies that the Lord appeared in the cloud upon the mercy-seat. It is when alone we enter the inner sanctuary of the divine presence that the glorious shekinah shines into the soul with inexpressible brightness.—Methodist Home Journal.