An Individual Experience by F. M. Wilcox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 5, 1914

An Individual Experience

By F. M. Wilcox

THERE will be wrought out in each Christian character an individual experience. To every overcomer there will be given a "white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Rev. 2: 17. The new name stands for the experience of the overcomer, and no one else, not having had that experience, can understand the meaning and significance of the name.

God deals with us as individual units, and not as a great family. Like a wise and discerning physician, he treats every soul as may be demanded by the peculiar temperament, conditions, environment, heredity, and characteristics of each case. Let us not, then, mourn because our experience does not measure up in our judgment with the experience of another. Let us not grieve because there has not come to us some blessing which has descended upon our brethren. There may have come to us even a greater blessing, but in our blindness we fail to recognize it.

We hear of some great revival which has come to some of the people of God. We earnestly pray for the same refreshing to descend upon us, and perhaps we have our minds settled as to just how the blessing will come, and in what way God will reveal himself to our souls. The Lord hears our cry for help, but he recognizes that we need a different experience. In place of seasons of melting, holy joy, perhaps we need to learn trust in the darkness. Instead of being carried along on a wave of feeling, perhaps God sees that we need to come to the place where we shall serve him from principle and conviction, without the feeling. Possibly we look for the blessing to come through human agency. We feel that God must work through certain channels, whereas the Lord wants us to realize that we must reach out by living personal faith, and take hold of him just where we are, independent of human aid.

We may be deprived of the revival service, we may be without the ministry of the living preacher, but nothing can shut us out from the presence of the blessed Master. We may find him wherever we are. He will enter today by his blessed Spirit the humble abode of the poor; he will stand by the bedside of the afflicted; he will fill the open, outstretched hands and satisfy the longing heart as readily as he did two thousand years ago.

Dear reader, wherever you are, recognize this blessed fact.

The REVIEW family takes in believers in every part of the earth, persons living under all manner of conditions. Some are connected with our large churches and enjoy exceptional advantages. Others are associated with little country churches, and still others are isolated and alone, off on the wide prairies, back among the hills and mountains, living oftentimes in the midst of opposition and unbelief. God sees every one just where he is. He takes note of your daily walk, of your desires, of your heart longings. In your loneliness and solitude it is your blessed privilege to reach out and place your hand in the strong and mighty grasp of the blessed Master. He desires to enter into your life, to make up the lack of human Christian fellowship. His blessed promise is, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Lean hard upon him; make him your staff and stay, and believe that if you commit to him your ways, he will work out in your character building that individual experience which will entitle you to the new name which he will bestow at his coming.

F. M. W.