What can be the reason that so many of God’s beloved children complain continually:  “My circumstances separate me from God; my trials, my temptations, my character, my temper, my friends, my enemies, anything can come between my God and me?” Is God not able so to take possession that He can be nearer to me than anything in the world?  Must riches or poverty, joy or sorrow, have a power over me that my God has not?  No.  But why, then, do God’s children so often complain that their circumstances separate them from Him?  There can be but one answer, “They do not know their God.”  If there is trouble or feebleness in the Church of God, it is because of this.  We do not know the God we have.  That is why in addition to the promise, “I will be thy God,” the promise is so often added, “And ye shall know that I am your God.”  If I know that, not through man’s teaching, not with my mind or my imagination; but if I know that, in the living evidence which God gives in my heart, then I know that the divine presence of my God will be so wonderful, and my God Himself will be so beautiful, and so near, that I can live all my days and years a conqueror through Him that loved me.  Is not that the life which we need?

The question comes again:  Why is it that God’s people do not know their God?  And the answer is:  They take anything rather than God,—­ministers, and preaching, and books, and prayers, and work, and efforts, any exertion of human nature, instead of waiting, and waiting long if need be, until God reveals Himself.  No teaching that we may get, and no effort that we may put forth, can put us in possession of this blessed light of God, all in all to our souls.  But still it is attainable, it is within reach, if God will reveal Himself.  That is the one necessity.  I would to God that every one would ask his heart whether he has said, and is saying every day:  “I want more of God.  Do not speak to me only of the beautiful truth there is in the Bible.  That can not satisfy me.  I want God.”  In our inner Christian life, in our every-day prayers, in our Christian living, in our churches, in our prayer-meetings, in our fellowship, it must come to that—­that God always has the first place; and if that be given Him, He will take possession.  Oh, if in our lives as individuals every eye were set upon God, upon the living God, every heart were crying, “My soul thirsteth for God,” what power, what blessing and what presence of the everlasting God would be revealed to us!  Let me use an illustration.  When a man is giving an illustrated lecture he often uses a long pointer to indicate places on a map or chart.  Do the people look at that pointer?  No, that only helps to show them the place on the map, and they do not think of it,—­it might be of fine gold; but the pointer can not satisfy them.  They want to see what the pointer points at.  And this Bible is nothing but a pointer, pointing to God; and,—­may I say it with reverence—­Jesus Christ came to point us, to show us the way, to bring us to God.  I am afraid there are many people who love Christ and who trust in Him, but who fail of the one great object of His work; they have never learned to understand what the Scripture saith:  “He died, that He might bring us unto God.”