Chapter 113 of 460

Chapter 23: The Presence Of God

"He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." – John 14:17

THE CONSTANT REALIZATION of the Presence of God has frequently been referred to by men of holy living as one of the most important rules in sanctification. It includes everything. If we could once acquire the habit of living in the sense of the immediate nearness of God, it would restrain us from evil more effectually than it is said the presence of a little child will do, and it will prompt us to all that would be well-pleasing in his sight. But it was easier for those to recognise it habitually who were undistracted by the perpetual rush of modern life than for us, at the doors of whose senses so many impressions and appeals are constantly knocking. And it can only be acquired by careful attention to the temper of our soul. It is our present purpose to show how this habit may be formed.

In the early morning, as soon as you awake to consciousness, remember that you are in the very presence chamber of God, who has been watching beside you through the long dark hours; look up into his face, and thank Him. Consecrate to Him those first few moments before you leave your couch. Look on towards the coming day, through the golden haze of the light that streams from the angel of his presence. You can forecast very largely what your difficulties are likely to be, the quarters from which you may be attacked, the burdens that may need carrying. Take care not to view any of these apart from God. Be sure that He will be between you and them, as the ship is between the traveller and the ocean, be it fair or stormy.

As you gird yourself for the day, putting articles of clothing upon your person, remember that God supplies you with vesture clean and white, with the meekness and gentleness of Christ, with the garments of salvation, the robes of righteousness, and the jewels of Christian virtue. Do not look at these things apart from Him; but remember that they are attributes and graces of his own nature with which to array yourself. And above all put on the armour of light; remembering that God is light. You are to put on Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh, and you are to descend from your room into the arena of daily battle as one who is endued with the beauty of his character. This concentration of thought upon God, during the act of dressing, will prepare the soul for those acts of adoration, thanksgiving, and intercession, which arise to God as the fragrant incense of the Temple.

Amid the pressure of daily life, trust the Holy Spirit, who is emphatically the Divine Remembrancer, to bring all things to your remembrance, and to recall you to the equipoise of your consciousness of God. There is no duty in life, however trivial and commonplace, that may not be dignified by being rendered to God, as our bounden duty and service. This is indeed the secret of lifting all life to a noble and happy elevation. To do all for the Lord Jesus; to see Him standing behind every human relationship; to do the meanest and most irksome things because He takes them as service rendered to Himself, for which He will give a reward - this is Christian life, this makes the presence of God real, this dignifies the sweeping of a room.

"My mother asked me to turn the mangle for her, and I didn't want to," said a girl the other day; "but I thought Jesus was standing against it, saying, 'Do it for Me!' and I was glad. It seemed beautiful to do it for Him."

Your master may be gruff, irritable, and hard to please; but be sure that in obeying and pleasing him, as far as conscience admits, you are serving the Lord Christ. Thus every incident in daily life gives an opportunity of practising the Presence of God.

Equally in our hours of recreation we may set the Lord always before us. Remember that it is said of the elders of Israel that they saw Jehovah, and there was under his feet as it were the paved work of a sapphire stone; they beheld God, and did eat and drink. How many eat and drink without beholding God! How many whose consciences were uneasy might behold God without daring to eat and drink! Happiest are they who are so at rest in Him that they do not hesitate to perform the natural functions of life with perfect ease, though all the while they recognise that He is nearer than hands or feet, nearer than breathing! The sense of God's presence would check immodesty, levity, self-indulgence, excess in eating or drinking, whilst it would give a new zest to all that was natural and innocent.

"Heaven above is softer blue,

Earth around is sweeter green,

Something lives in every hue

Christless eyes have never seen.

Birds with gladder songs 0'erflow,

Flowers with deeper beauties shine,

Since I know, as now I know,

I am His, and He is mine."

Often we have entered a room which we had thought to be filled with strangers. The gathering has presented no special attractions to us in the anticipation. Suddenly through the crowd we have beheld the face of one we love - the centre of the central group, admired, his least word eagerly listened to, his every movement followed. Immediately the room has become filled with that one presence. All fear is dispelled, every object glistens with a new light, there is a charm which neither art nor music could yield. You have the sense that your presence is to him what his is to you. Such is the difference that comes to the soul when it has learnt the practice of the Presence of God.

One prime means of realizing the Presence of God is to recognise that everything beautiful in anything, that everything lovely in anyone, that any radiant gift dropped suddenly into our life, is due to Him - a beam from the Father of Light, a flower cast from his hand on our path, the glint of his smile. It is a blessed habit to look steadfastly away from the things that annoy and irritate in the circumstances and persons around us, to the traits that are pleasing and attractive. Dwell on these; count that in everything and everyone there is something that God can love. Find this out. Look up to God, and thank Him for it. And thus the beautiful and good will be a ladder of gold to climb into his presence. Often a box of flowers coming into my room has startled trifling thoughts from the feeding-grounds of earth, to take flight with the rustle of wing into the blue sky, which is the tabernacle of the Most High.

Similarly, bitter and disagreeable things may help us to remember God. Just because they are so hard to be borne; just because nothing but an infinite love could have permitted them to come, in order to make us partakers of his blessedness; just because they cast so dark a shadow on our lives, we are compelled the more to recognise that God is near. I suppose God never seems so near as in dark days, when we can only live a moment at a time, when the stealthy tread of the nurse is the only sound in the curtained room; when the scenes in which we had played so conspicuous a part have faded, and we have lost our interest in them, and we look out on the ocean that laps against the wall of the room in which we lie. God, God, God only! Our heart cries with a great longing for God-as the hart for the water-brooks; as the babe for its mother; as the watcher for the dawn.

It is a frequent complaint that the spirit of reverence is leaving the world. Listen to a number of tourists admiring the Alps. What adjectives! What exclamations! What a litter of provisions, the paper strewing the delicate beauty of the crystal snow, and the glacier's blue depths! Note the majority of travellers entering some ancient cathedral or church, much more eager to study points of architecture, decoration, or restoration, than to allow the spirit of worship to settle down with its mysterious spell. Too often our religious services lack in dignity, the sense of the Infinite, and sink to the level of a performance or play. All this arises from the deficiency we have been complaining of. All would be altered if once we knew, with the knowledge of the deepest conviction, that we lived, and moved, and had our being in God.

How well I remember when first I visited Switzerland that my bedroom window, perched in Les Avants, looked across the blue of the Lake of Geneva towards that noble line of snow-capped mountains that border its southern shore. It seemed, for the brief fortnight that I lived there, as though the spell of that mighty vision held me enthralled. I slept, and awoke, and wrote, and conversed as one on whom a new dignity had fallen. Could I ever be mean or selfish in the presence of that mystery of purity and solemnity? This and much more shall be the temper of the soul which, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, has learnt habitually to recognise and cultivate the Presence of God as revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord.

It is the special prerogative of the Holy Spirit to impart this to loving and believing souls. He loves to make Jesus real, to bring all things to our remembrance, to open blind eyes.

END

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