September 17 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Psalm 119:67:

⁶⁷Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.

Devotional:

There is also a knowledge of God which is altogether personal, and which comes to us through the ebb and flow of the tide of life's joys and of its sorrows.

This, however, should not be exaggerated.

The idea that disappointment and sorrow, as a rule, open the soul to God, and that suffering always makes perfect, is all too loudly contradicted by experience. Undoubtedly, a great disaster which strikes heavily and suddenly, a pestilence that breaks out, a storm that threatens shipwreck, a destructive earthquake, and, likewise, unexpected danger of death in personal sickness, make the thoughtless world, and those who have part therein, mindful for a moment of the fact that there is a God with Whom we have to do; but when the danger is past, it takes but a few days for the weak impression received to wear away, and it has not infrequently been seen, that after a deliverance from pestilence, for instance, unblushing worldiness showed itself more godless than before. Things were all right again. They were almost ashamed for a moment that at heart they had been afraid; and now they were themselves again the masters of their lot, and would improve their chance to enjoy life, before the possible return of similar ill luck. Or, where they did not take so wide a swing as this, and dissipation was carefully avoided, the return after disaster to former self-sufficiency was almost automatic, and life was lived again, if not directly opposed to, yet without God.

Not infrequently it did not stop with this. The cases are by no means rare, that a great adversity in life brought the soul, that formerly had shared a general belief, into positive Atheism. Thus far, one had lived under the conviction, that in the hour of need one had but to call upon God, and be certain of deliverance from trouble. At the sickbed of husband or child one prayed: "O, God, save them." But when it became evident that this prayer brought no relief, and inexorable death dragged the loved one into the grave, the whole soul rose up in rebellion. "When, in time of trouble, I pray, and it brings no help, then there is no God; or if there yet can be a God, He cannot be a God of love," and the embittered soul curses God, and life is lived in rebellion against God.

Suffering makes perfect, very true, but only when there was previous knowledge of grace in the heart, and not with the unregenerate child of the world. It is true, suffering too can be a means in the hand of God to bring one who wandered away, to a halt and to conversion; but even then, this conversion is effected by God's work of grace in the soul, and suffering in connection with this is merely an auxiliary means.

As Job sat among the ashes, his wife did not hesitate to say to him: "Curse God and die;" and it is only a soul, which, like that of the Psalmist, is a subject of heavenly grace, that is able, after deliverance from trouble, to confess before God: "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now, being instructed, I keep thy word" (Psalm 119:67).

In pleasure and prosperity matters are still worse.

Taken in general, the ranks of society which can live at ease, are farther estranged from God, than they who have to labor hard for daily sustenance.

The sharply drawn contrast between the rich Dives and the poor Lazarus, has been abroad in all ages and among all peoples. Radiant beauty, abounding health, unbroken prosperity in one's career or business, great happiness at home, and likewise abundance of material wealth, so that care and worry were unknown, have almost never seemed able to foster true piety. All this, rather, nerved a man in his self-sufficiency, in the exalted estimate of his own self, and, in so doing drew the soul away from God, rather than drew it to Him.

Such has been the case with individuals, such has been the case with families through many generations, and such has been the case with whole nations. When peace was permanent with a people, when its national power increased, when it could bathe itself in its wealth, almost always with equal pace it went spiritually backward. When the Dutch people had to fight hard and long for spiritual liberty, religion and public morals stood high; but how far they sank away in wantonness and propensity to sensual pleasure when, in the eighteenth century, gold streamed in from every side and wealth became the law of life. It went with us as once it did with the world-empire of mighty Rome, which by sobriety and self-restraint had become great and remained so until luxury and love of pleasure began that national decadence from within, which barbaric invasions from without brought to a finish.

Truly there are individuals, there are families and generations which, from warm gratitude for material blessings, have become more tenderly united to God; but this was purely because grace preceded, and because grace accompanied this prosperity in life.

Solomon remains the historic type of how even with God's children, prosperity can work a spiritual decline.

"They are strong legs," says the proverb, "that can carry wealth;" and the exception is rare, when Satan does not succeed in turning prosperity into a weapon to be used against Him from Whom it comes.

And yet the child of God is offered, both in joy and in sorrow, a most helpful means, by which to enter more deeply into the knowledge of his God; negatively in joy, positively in sorrow.

When in examining his ways, the child of God discerns the danger he incurs in days of joy and plenty of becoming mechanical in prayer, of fostering pride, of trusting more in himself than in God, and of becoming less constant in his hidden walk with God, it will, if he is sincere, turn the trend of his mind and heart. As strongly as his heart inclined at times toward the good things of this world, he will now begin to be equally afraid of them. It now becomes clear to him, that God and this world's wealth do not harmonize, but rather antagonize each other. He feels that wealth itself is not at fault, for there was wealth in Paradise and there is nothing but wealth in the Father-house above, but that sin in our heart poisons wealth for us and turns it into a power that is hostile to God.

Thus God becomes to him ever more spiritual; and it is in God, Who is a Spirit, that he learns by contrast to understand better than before, the price, the significance and the worth of the treasures of the spiritual life.

And so there have indeed been men and women among God's saints, who in the midst of their wealth have become richer toward God, and have merely been stewards of the goods entrusted to them in His Name, for the good of His' Church and of His poor. The impulse to do good sprang not infrequently from the fear that their wealth should draw them away from God.

More profound is the knowledge of God, which is learned in times of great sorrow, when one who, overwhelmed by grief, already had spiritual knowledge of his God.

Grievous affliction breaks down self-elation. It makes us realize that there are powers which we have not in our own hand which can violently attack us in our strength, in our state in life, in our family, in our prospects of the future, or in the affection of our heart. Call these powers death, sickness, slander, anger, hatred, or what you like, but when they come upon you and succeed in threatening or in breaking up the happiness of your life, then you feel that they stand as powers before you, that they are independent of you, and that they have more power over you, than you over them. And the revelation of these powers becomes to you a revelation of the real power which God has over you and over the world.

As long as life runs a smooth course, you truly know about God, you worship Him, and you discern His spiritual power in the inner life of your soul; but it is still something altogether different, when you observe the presence of the power of God in what you actually experience in your outward life.

In this life, affliction makes a breach; it breaks your life, and you see, taste and feel the power that comes into your life from without, working havoc and distress. You have no power that you can pit against this, and now it is in this powerlessness of yours that you discover, that in God alone is power, which alone is able to deliver you and to repulse the forces of evil that are arrayed against you.

Thus your life becomes an arena in which this destructive power fights against you and against your God, and the saving power of God enters into the combat on your side. First you continue to take part yourself, but when it becomes too fierce, all your strength fails you, at length you become altogether passive, and you feel and realize, that God alone with His angels fights for your salvation.

When they are snares of sin by which Satan seeks to foil you, this struggle is most exalted, most holy, so that at length you have a feeling, as though all angels and all devils stand by to watch with strained eyes what will gain the day in your soul, the power of sin or the power of God.

But also with outward sorrow this struggle can bear an exalted character when by means of this affliction Satan seeks to do you harm, but in the end, by God's appointment this very trial brings a psalm of victory to your lips. For then, through this outward struggle, the soul reaches the still richer knowledge, that in whatever Satan brings upon you, nothing is worked out save by the appointment of God's Love; that it is nothing but the purifying of yourself in the crucible, the separating process of the winnowing fan, the unfolding process of the power of your faith, the inspiring process of your spiritual heroism, a loosening of bands which you prized more highly than the tie that bound you to God, the fortifying process against still greater temptations to come, the anchoring of your soul to a higher world, the humbling of your own self within you, so that even in your heart God alone may be great.

And then the main question is no longer whether you shall be delivered from your trouble or whether you shall succumb to it. If God delivers you from it, then there is an outward triumph, which at times is necessary in order that the supreme power of your Lord over death and pestilence, over slander and anger, over Satan and fortune, may be gloriously exhibited.

But this deliverance is not the main thing.

It must suffice you, if this exhibition of God's supremacy is deferred to the life to come. The main interest at stake is, that the gold, which was darkened in you, may be brought to glisten again; that you emerge from your fiery trial richer in spiritual treasures than when you entered it; that Satan shall be the loser by you, and that God shall be the gainer; that God in His reality shall be revealed to your soul more clearly and more intimately; and that in the end, even as from David's soul, so likewise from your own, may arise the word of testimony: Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word. To Thy Name alone be glory.

This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."

The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit

Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.