They experienced God.

Brother Lawrence wrote a book, called, Practicing the Presence of God.  It is a devotional book that warms and challenges the heart.  It helps Christians live in the conscious presence of God. 

It is this that alone explains the prophets and saints of God in past times.  They experienced God.  It was this that accounts for their amazing power that has impacted over many generations. These believers walked in conscious communion with Christ, and felt His real presence close to them.  When they prayed, they were addressing Someone Who was actually there.

The church today could not be more different from those olden days.  Without doubt, she has experienced, not God, but the loss of God from her midst.  She has tried all the mod cons there are to try to keep the young people especially within her doors, but to no avail.  She has tried to woo the world by being increasingly like the world, but has failed here too. She thought that by modernising the Scriptures and making them easier to understand, the multitudes would respond positively; but they haven't.  In fact, the church in the wealthy west is poorer today than at any time in the past 2000 years.  There is a real dearth of true spirituality within her doors that is impossible to miss.

Yet, there are few who seem to notice the blindingly obvious, and who want to put matters right. Few see the need to come to the Fountainhead, and drink from there.  Few know what it means to prevail with God in prayer, but multitudes know how to say their prayers.  The church has forgotten that knowing God is eternal life.  Not knowing about God, but knowing God.  Experiencing God.  Nothing but this explains the powerful progress of the Gospel in the early days of the Christian Church - the apostles knew God.

We are stumbling about from one ecclesiastical crisis to another, not knowing where to turn or what to do.  But is it just possible that the church's rejection of God's Word has resulted in His rejection of her, and His withdrawal from her? Yes, we can theologise all we like, but realities must be faced!  God is not in the midst of her, therefore she is being rocketed by every circumstance.  The only discipline she exercises is against Gospel ministers, the liberals and ecumenicals getting away with murder.

If, as Ps. 46:5 says, "God is in the midst of her," why is she doing what she is doing?  Why is she being tossed about by every wind of doctrine?  Just because she has a confessional standard means nothing, because this is flouted at will by ministers.  There is no defence against careless indifference to the truth of the Gospel by saying that those who flout the church's teaching will have only themselves to answer for on the last day. But when large tracts of the church no longer believe in a Day of reckoning, this will count for nothing with them.