TO BE NEAR UNTO GOD

(Extracts from the first chapter of the book of the same name by Dr Abraham Kuyper)

 

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To have love for God is something altogether different and something far weaker than to be able to say: “I love God.”

You have love for your native land, you have love for the beauty and grandeur of nature, you have love for the creations of art, from the sense of compassion you have love for suffering humanity, you are conscious of love for what is noble, true and of good report, and thus in all honesty almost every man can say that he also has love for God, and that his love for God even exceeds all other loves, since all good that inspires love is from God, and that God Himself is the highest good.

And yet while this love for God can be a lofty sentiment, can be deeply serious, and can even be able to ignite a spark of enthusiasm, the soul may have no fellowship with the Eternal, and have no knowledge of the secret walk with God; the great God may not have become his God, and the soul may never have exclaimed in passionate delight: “I love God!”

But when there echoes in the soul the words “I love God!” then the idea, the sense and the reality of the Eternal Being becomes personified. Then God becomes a Shepherd Who leads us, a Father Who spiritually begat us, a Covenant-God with Whom we are in league, a Friend Who offers us His friendship, a Lord in Whose service we stand, the God of our confidence, Who is no longer merely God but our God.

Thus for many years you may have had a general love for God and yet never come to know God.
This knowledge of God only comes when love for Him begins to take a personal character; when on the pathway of life for the first time you have met Him; the Lord has become a Personal Presence by the side of your own self; when God and you have entered into a conscious, vital, personal, particular relationship ―He is your Father, you His child.

Not merely one of His children, no, but His child in an individual way, in a personal relation different from that of the other children of God, the most intimate fellowship conceivable in heaven and on earth ― He your Father, your Shepherd, your bosom Friend and your God!

For when it comes to a meeting with God, the action proceeds from both sides. God comes to him, and he comes to God. First from afar, then ever closer, until at length all distance falls away, and the meeting takes place ― a moment of such blessedness as can never be expressed in words.

He also who has not entered into this secret, may say with others, “it is good for me to be near unto God” (Psalm 73:27), but as yet he does not grasp it. He says it without thought.

To be “near” is to be so close to God that your eye sees, your heart is aware of, and your ear hears Him, and every cause of separation has been removed; near in one of two ways: either that you feel yourself, as it were, drawn up into heaven, or that God has come down from heaven to you, and seeks you out in your loneliness, in that which constitutes your particular cross, or in the joy that falls to your lot.

But this blessedness may be tasted only at rare moments in this life. And then there remains the blessedness in the life that is eternal, when that nearness to your God shall continue for ever. Eternally near Him in the Fatherhouse. Cruel is the way in which the world thwarts you in this.

Nearness to God here on earth yields its sweetest blessedness when it is cultivated in the face of sin and the world, as an oasis in the wilderness of life. And they against whom the world has turned most cruelly in order to turn them away from God, have attained the highest and the best, when in spite of every obstacle, and in the face of worldly opposition that have continued to hold tryst with God ― like Jacob at Penuel, Moses in Mount Moreb, David when Shimei cursed him, and Paul when the people rose in uproar against him.

His blessed nearness is enjoyed more in sorrow than in gladness. Not when in luxury and plenty David pleased himself, but when Saul persecuted him unto the death, did he sing his sweetest song for God.

God knows it, and in His eternal compassion He will come nearer, closer, and more quickly to you and to your dear ones, in order that even amidst these trying conditions of modern life you and they may be near to Him. But then there must be no peace by compromise, or more than ever will a vague love for a far distant God desert you.

That which alone can save is taking part in that life of secret fellowship, which enables you to say “I love God,” and then you will not remain standing afar off, but press on to ever closer nearness to God, in the personal meeting of your soul with the Eternal.

[Translated from the Dutch by Dr John Hendrik de Vries]

 

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