When your children talk about their Father, he is a real Person to them; that is what God wants to be to us, a real personal God. He says, "I will be to them a God." [Footnote: Heb. viii. 10.] I know a little boy who whispered to his aunt one night when she was giving him the goodnight kiss, "Oh, Auntie, I sometimes wonder whether there is a God. Are you quite sure?" "Yes," said the aunt very earnestly, "I am quite sure. You see, I have known Him so long and He is so much to me, I am quite sure." The child was satisfied.
If you will turn again to Psalm cxvi. you will see a wonderful unfolding of the secret feelings of David's heart, and as we read it we cannot help saying to ourselves, the man who wrote this experience had very close dealings with some One about his soul. Who is this Some One? Do you know? Perhaps you think your religion is good enough to take you to heaven when you die, but alas! it begins and ends with the "Unknown God." How different to David's experience when he says out of a full heart, "I love the Lord," or as the word means, "I am full of love," and then he tells of his confidence in God; "I believed, therefore I have spoken," as if he had said, "God is so real to me now, I must tell others"; and he adds, "I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living." We can walk with God in our daily life just as Enoch did.
A good man said a short time ago, If ever I pass any one in the street with a careworn, anxious face, I long to say to them, "There is God," "Have faith in God." St. John said, "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us and in us—God is love." [Footnote: 1 John iv. 16.] This is the central fact, the one great reality in life, and when once it is grasped there is nothing to compare with it. Why is there so much unrest, so much ungodliness, and lawlessness in our midst? We are forgetting God. The only remedy is coming back to God.
A poor woman who has been a Christian for many years was telling me about her mother's sudden death the week before, and then she added, "I have never known God as I do now. The future used to look so dark, but now that I know Him as the Living God, I can only see life. I cannot tell you what He is to me." Her face, which bore traces of her recent sorrow, shone with a new peace and a new joy, which made me rejoice. I was sure that God had revealed Himself to her in her time of need. Those precious words had come true in her case, "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." [Footnote: St. Luke x. 21.]
Are you saying, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God"? Then you will have a Personal revelation of God Himself, for that is the only way the life of God can enter into your soul and mine. Are you longing to find God? It is not that we find Him, but that He finds us, making Himself to us the great Reality. We may know wonderful things about Him, but that is not enough. We must really know Him in our hearts!
The very longing which you have for this personal revelation of God comes from the loving Father Himself, and He says, "I will give them a heart to know Me": [Footnote: Jer. xxiv. 7.] so we need never think, ah! it is beyond me, for He promises to give us the heart to know Him.
I had a striking instance of this some years ago. A working man who could not read or write told me that he had been converted at our meeting. He died in the Union Infirmary, and I heard afterwards that he had been a blessing to many in the ward. He said to me one day, "I want to tell you what God is to me." In very simple words he described how he could see it all plainly. How in the beginning, sin came into the Garden of Eden and then God revealed Himself to the sinner so as to bring him back to Himself. Again and again his simple testimony was, I must tell every one what God is to me. This man had learnt to know God personally through his own need as a sinner, so it is not by earthly education that we find God, but through the Holy Spirit's teaching, and then in the Word He reveals Himself more fully.
It is "through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord that grace and peace are multiplied to us," [Footnote: 2 Pet. i. 2.] so if we have not more and more grace and peace coming into our souls it is because we do not really know God.
It makes all the difference in our life when we can say, God is now my living Father; for it means God in His infinite love has taken my life into His, and by this personal link of love I take His life into mine. When He assures us that He is the Living God, it means that He lives and cares for us. All things, great and small, are under His control. We have an illustration of this in the present war. Think of our Navy, scattered over seven oceans, yet all under the control of the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John Jellicoe. Not one vessel can move without his orders, no ship can be attacked without his knowledge; the wireless apparatus is at work night and day communicating every detail. It brings Sir John word of any submarine sighted, or of any movement in all the seas round our country, and it carries his orders far and near.
When God tells us that He is the living God, we know that He cares for us in the same way as a mother cares for her children. We had a touching illustration of this about a year ago.