October 16 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Psalm 25:5:

⁵Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.

Devotional:

Not only in the forest and in the desert upon earth, but also in sun, moon and stars it is the Spirit, Who with the Father and the Son maintains all power and causes it to operate. Wherever a creature exists it is the Spirit Who operates therein. Without the working of that Spirit no force of nature is even conceivable. And this Spirit Who operates in every creature is none other than the Holy Spirit Himself Who in the Triune Being is to be worshiped as the third most holy Person.

But this is the distinction: this Spirit is neither known nor worshiped in His holiness as Holy Spirit, save among the creatures which are themselves spiritual of nature, and which have themselves become conscious of their spiritual character. Above, the angels of God; here on earth, the children of men.

A star in the firmament is brute matter and knows of no holiness. A plant is devoid of holy sense. And although in Scripture an animal is conceded to have a soul, and though it exhibits sometimes certain wit and power of will, the animal stands outside of the sphere in which the holiness of the Lord is acknowledged.

A connective sense of the holinesses of the Lord, here on earth is found in man alone.

But not immediately upon birth. The babe in the cradle exists merely physically; it knows no holy emotions as yet. Only with its further development does this sense gradually awaken. And then it often takes many long years before the higher moral sense of the holinesses of God awakens far enough for the conscience to react vigorously against the unholinesses of this world.

But, even so, all this still lies outside the domain of our Pentecost.

Pentecostal grace is something which only the Church knows. It is the high and holy privilege of the ransomed of the Lord. The world does not know this grace and does not see it. It has not even a faint perception of what this grace might be.

But for this very reason it requires great carefulness lest on the ground of this privilege the church should take for granted that the Spirit does not operate in this, as yet, unsaved world; and at any rate is foreign to the forces of nature in the material unconscious creation.

They who are too mystical and hyper-spiritual lean all too often upon this error. And, therefore, it must every time be confessed again and remembered that the Spirit is in every creature, the Holy Spirit operates in every creature that has a rational life; but the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, which the Pentecost-miracle brought, is only known and tasted in the Church of the Lord.

In this mutual relation, the working of the Holy Spirit, the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the communion of that Holy Spirit must be bound together as in one bundle.

Otherwise the child of God leaves without compassion the unconverted world to itself and enters into direct conflict with the prayer of the Lord: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that in the world thou shouldest keep them from the evil" (John 17:15).

And now the second point, which should be carefully considered is this.

The Holy Spirit was poured out at first and once for all on the day of Pentecost, and from that hour on, He has continued to dwell in the Church, will never leave her, and will dwell in and with her forevermore.

But—and this is all too frequently forgotten—what is present in the Church is by no means, therefore, always present in every one who is connected with the Church.

The real Church of the living God is the Body of Christ, the mystical Body of which He is the Head. And in this mystical Body dwells the Holy Ghost, first in the Head, and from thence along all articulations and tissues and veins animates every one that as a living member has been incorporated in this Body and lives his life in connection with this Body.

It is not one here and another there, who each by himself received the Holy Ghost, and who by uniting together now form the Body of Christ. A body does not originate in such a way that first you have members, which are afterwards put together to form a body. The body is conceived and born with the crusts and beginnings in it of every member that at a later period shall come out of it. Even the beard, which only in later years covers the chin, is not brought to it from without, but comes out from a germ which the infant at birth brought with it.

And in this body is the life. Not in a member by itself. An amputated leg is dead. Even an arm that is still joined to the body, by an accident or illness can be rendered as good as dead, and this arm only becomes alive when the blood from the body circulates through it again.

And so it is with the Body of the Lord, which is the Congregation of the Saints. The Head of that Body cannot be touched. Christ is in glory. From Him the Holy Spirit never departs. And while, as the Head, Christ is inseparable from that Body, the Holy Spirit, the life of the Church, is always insured and guaranteed in that sacred Head.

However nearly extinct at a given moment life may be in the members of the Body, it streams with irresistible pressure from the Head to the members again, and presently practises again that wondrously assimilating power which shows itself so gloriously in every reveille.

Of course this Congregation is not identical with the visible Church. But yet the visible Church, also, does not live otherwise than by the Holy Ghost, Who, overflowing from the Head of the invisible Body of the Lord, keeps this Church alive as long as the vital relation with this invisible Body is not abandoned by her.

And this is the effect of this indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Church, that he who in an organic, spiritual way as a living member is united to this Church, knows and tastes a fellowship with the Eternal Being such as does not exist outside of it.

Outside of it, too, among the unconverted there is truly found a certain sense of the existence of God. Also a certain feeling of dependence upon a higher power. The voice of conscience, too, may be overheard in their heart, and, especially with advancing years, they often think upon what shall follow after death.

But not all. Far from it. It may not even be denied that the number steadily increases of those who do not concern themselves either about God, or their sin, or their lot after death.

But this does not take away the fact that in Christian, as well as in heathen, lands there are always many people who still maintain a certain general religiousness.

But what these people lack is not the operation of the Holy Ghost in the conscience, but fellowship with Him. And, of course, fellowship with the Holy Ghost is nothing else than fellowship with God Himself.

Fellowship with God, not taken now as the fellowship of the flock with the Shepherd, not as the outward compliance with God's appointment in our lot of life, nor as a conscious dependence upon God—no, but taken as the immediate meeting between the Ego of God and the Ego of our heart, in the mysticism of grace.

You have heard of the Holy Apostle, and you have certain fellowship with the man of Tarsus as you read his epistles. But it would be something altogether different if you could spend a year in Paul's company.

This same difference applies here.

You may have heard of God, of His miracles, of His virtues, of His powers and mightinesses, and yet this God may still be a stranger to you.

But this is what fellowship of the Spirit imparts: It allows your soul to meet this God in Person, to learn to know this God personally, to have personal dealing with this Eternal Being, and thus as a child with his father to hold converse with this Triune God.

And this is what waiting on the Lord brings you.

A friend meets friend in order presently to part again. But the child expects his father because he belongs to his father and misses him when he is away. And so it is, likewise, in this fellowship with God through the Holy Ghost.

He who has once come to this, that he personally has learned to know God as his Father and has been initiated into secret communion with Him, cannot on this account always remain there. The multiplicity of our labors does not permit this. The distractions of the world oppose this. We ourselves cut this off continually by sinful suggestions from our impure heart: And not infrequently the Lord Himself withdraws this fellowship from us in order to stimulate our desire after this fellowship anew and to strengthen it.

But—and this is its trait—a child of God, a believer, who has once enjoyed this fellowship, and then has lost it, misses it, he feels an emptiness within, he has no rest until it is restored. And on his waking in the morning, the first impulse of his soul is to obtain this fellowship back again.

There must be one of two things: either the child of God has this fellowship, or he longs for it, prays for it, "waits for it all day long" (Psalm 25:5, Dutch Version).

In the hour of conversion it is a seeking after what one did not as yet possess. Afterward it is a seeking to regain what was lost.

And here, too, this applies: "He that seeks shall find; he that knocks, it shall be opened unto him."

* * * * * * *

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.