E. Stanley Jones' Testimony of the Exchanged Life

E. Stanley Jones was a missionary, a theologian, and a prolific writer. In his devotional book Victorious Living he describes his own experience of discovering Christ as his life:

"Perhaps a personal word might help. I was a Christian for a year or more when one day I looked at a library shelf and was struck with the title of a book, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life.

"As I read it my heart was set on fire to find this life of freedom and fullness. I reached page forty-two when the Inner Voice said very distinctly, 'Now is the time to find.' I pleaded that I did not know what I wanted, that when I finished it, I would seek. But the Inner Voice was imperious, 'Now is the time to seek.' I tried to read on, but the words seemed blurred. I was up against a divine insistence, so closed the book, dropped on my knees and asked, 'What shall I do?' The Voice replied, 'Will you give me your all--your very all?' After a moment's hesitation I replied, 'I will.' 'Then take my all, you are cleansed,' the Voice said with a strange, inviting firmness. 'I believe it,' I said and arose from my knees. I walked around the room affirming it over and over, and pushing my hands away from me as if to push away my doubt. This I did for ten minutes, when suddenly I was filled with a strange refining fire that seemed to course through every portion of my being in cleansing waves. It was all very quiet and I had hold of myself--and yet the divine waves could be felt from the inmost center of my being to my fingertips. My whole being was being fused into one, and through the whole there was a sense of sacredness and awe--and the most exquisite joy.

"Very emotional? So be it! But I knew then, and I know now, that I was not being merely emotionally stirred, but the very sources of my life were being cleansed and were taken possession of by Life itself. My will was just as much involved in my emotion. The fact is the whole of life was on a permanently higher level.

"I hesitate . . . to write . . . what I [do] . . ., for there may be those who feel that they must find exactly that experience or else they are not united and released and filled. This is a mistake. I have never known two experiences exactly alike in emotional tone. They differ widely, and yet there is the same sense of inner release and unity, and thereby heightened power to live creatively. Don't seek the experience of another, seek Christ, and let Him give you the kind of experience suited to you and which will make you more useful.

"Christ said to a friend of mine who is really alive with God, 'I won't stir your emotions, but I will give you mine.' He did. And His emotions were for her exactly right. His emotions were always healthy and always under the control of the purposes of the Kingdom.

"I know the modern reaction against emotion in religion. But it often takes a real emotional upheaval to shift the center of life from self to Christ, and when emotion does that, it is redemptive and releasing and not merely for selfish enjoyment.

"That such a profound change could take place without emotion is unthinkable. And yet the emotion is a by-product of the facts that are taking place. We do not depend on them. We depend on Him. And He comes in to abide permanently amid the flux and change of emotion. But if my soul takes its tambourine and dances at His coming, don't be astonished. I should be astonished at myself if I didn't do just that! Such a Guest, bearing such a Gift, into such a heart--the wonder is not that one has emotion, but the wonder is that one can be so restrained!

"When Archimedes, after coming suddenly on a mathematical solution, ran out into the street crying, 'Eureka, I've got it,' we understand him. Then it is just as easily understandable, and more so, if we cry out in the same way, not over a mathematical solution, but over a life solution. Life is untangled--we've found the Way!"