What do I know experientially about searching for and finding God. My experience is that of over 35 years in being a Seventh-day Adventist Christian. I sought for the answers to this question all my adult life. I read and studied the Bible and Sister Ellen G White for answers.
How could I find God like the great men and women of God found God? Men who walked and talked with God like the song Mario Lanza sang, "I"ll walk with God from this day on.' Men and women who knew God intimately, personally, who had a sterling piety, who knew Bible holiness? Many wish they too could have an experience like Saul on the road to Damascus; or like Isaiah, see the King in glory.
I wanted to know the great things of God. Like Ellen White, I too hungered for an abundant salvation. I wanted to find the sure path that leads to eternal life, to walk in the old safe pathways. I would find the keys of the kingdom, keys that would unlock the secrets of knowledge.
Though I studied I could not find a sure path to God. Others set out to find God and salvation and yet still lost their way, what hope could I have? I thought grimly. Many have given up in utter discomfiture. How could this common man find God, and have a first love for Christ?
The more I studied, the more fragmented the answers came. Sister Ellen White must have the answers I determined. Surprisingly I still did not find a satisfactory answer and my frustration grew. The answers never were clear-cut, they were piecemeal. I wanted a clear path that I could see that leads all the way "to the city of lights beyond the stars" and there never was such a clear path cast up for the redeemed.
I read in Ecclesiastes 9:11 “that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…”. This was not so for me. I read in Zechariah 4:6 that it is “Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” Yet, I knew not how to find God's Spirit.
I read the autobiographies and biographies of men of God, men like Martin Luther, John Bunyan, and John Wesley. I read of Ellen Whites search for God in the Testimonies volume 1, yet my confusion and frustration steadily grew. No matter what I read, no matter what answers I found, it never satisfied. I was missing something.
I struggled with the concept that I might give up the search in exasperation, or that I was predestined to be lost. God showed me I was lost in a dream of the Second Advent. Until then I had accepted the standard line that if you accept Jesus into your heart you are saved.
I claimed promises but never did I get the answer that would satisfy my thirst for a clearer path. I seemed to walk in shadows as Ellen White says the disciples did.
I read in the Great Controversy of Martin Luther. He was of great force of character, honest, resolute, straightforward, true to his convictions of duty, let the consequences be what they may. Luther entered the gloomy, superstitious world of the monastery with ideas of religion that filled him with fear. He had a sorrowful
heart, was looking forward with trembling to a dark future, and was in terror of the thought of God as a stern, unrelenting judge, a cruel tyrant, rather than a kind heavenly Father. Yet, despite his discouragements, Luther pressed resolutely to the high standard of moral and intellectual excellence, which attracted his soul He was deeply convicted of his lost condition as a sinner. It took hold of him as never before, his convictions of sin deepened, he sought peace by works. She remarks that if he had continued his bodily mortification floggings and whippings he said he would have died of his monkery.
Angels of God enlightened his mind, yet he was driven to the verge of despair. A godly advisor, Staupitz, told him to look away from self, cease the contemplation of the punishment of the lost and look to Jesus, his sin pardoning Saviour. He had many a struggle with long cherished errors but he found God, or rather God found him.
John Wesley was convinced of the necessity of holiness of heart as well as a correctness of outward deportment. John formed the “Holy Club” and they set out to subdue the evils of the natural heart. They lived a life of self-denial, charity and humiliation, observing with great rigour and exactness every measure to secure that holiness of heart and secure the favour of God. Sister Ellen White says, “It was the same struggle which Luther had experienced. It was the same question that had tortured his soul. Job 9:2 "How should man be just before God?" That question tortured me.
