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Psalm 51:11:
11Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
The Holy Scripture makes mention of a seeking of God's Face. "Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance" (Psalm 89:15).
There is mention in Scripture of a something yet more intimate, namely, that there is a mutual fellowship, so that not only the light of God's Countenance shines on us, but that our soul likewise lifts itself up to God. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant" (Psalm 25:14).
But Holy Writ mentions a stage that is yet higher, and that is when God Almighty not only makes His Face shine on us, and admits us into His secret walk, but when He enters into our heart, transforms our heart into His temple, and as the Holy Ghost takes up His abode within us. "The Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which can not be uttered, and He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints" (Romans 8:26-27).
These three stages of fellowship should be carefully distinguished.
He who is in the first stage has indeed turned his back upon the vanities of this world and has accustomed himself to the light that shines upon us from above. He trusts himself no longer to his own light but walks in the light of God's Countenance. The darkness is past. He knows in whom he believes. And the people who not merely at times enjoy the light of God's Countenance, but who walk in it continually, Scripture pronounces blessed.
Then of itself the second stage of fellowship is reached, which is an entering into God's hidden walk. And here it is not merely that the light of God's Countenance shines upon us all, but that, with it also, the soul has become a mirror from which this light is reflected. Even in this way, that God shines on us and that our soul shines out toward God. This is the secret of Salvation that is inwardly disclosed to us.
Even this is not the end.
The inward preciousness of being near to God extends still farther, penetrates still more deeply, until it comes to that unspeakable, indescribable, unfathomable reality, that the Lord God Himself in the Holy Ghost unites Himself so closely with our spirit, that He is not only above and around us, but that He is also in us, that He takes up His abode with us, makes our heart His dwelling place, and that conversational communion between God and our soul takes place in our own inmost self.
This highest blessedness is not reached at once. There is progression here, a blessed development and a deepening, which not every one obtains, and in which they who have obtained it provisionally continue only now and then.
To them these are moments of highest blessedness, even as the peace of God which comes and goes, and which when lost is sought again anew.
This breach can be occasioned by lack of spiritual discipline. It can come about by an invasion from without. It comes mostly through our sin.
The latter was the case with David, and so from his desolate (because God-forsaken) heart arose at once the prayer: "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11).
When mention is made of the Holy Spirit, we feel that we walk among mysteries. Our language has no words for it. Our understanding here stops all analysis. We can believe, we are susceptible to impressions, we have the capacity of enjoyment, but at least not here on earth and in our sinful state can the mystery of God's Triune Being be unveiled to us.
We worship.
We worship God Almighty as our Father Who is in heaven. We worship the God of all grace in the Only-begotten Son, Whom He gave unto us and sent and sacrificed for us.
And still more ardently we worship the thrice Holy in the Holy Ghost Whom as Comforter we have in our own heart.
Wherever our thinking and pondering turns itself, whether to the world round about us, whether in the world of our own heart, it is always God Whom we meet, in God that our searching look finds its point of rest, to God that our worship and holy admiration uplifts itself.
It is always God Who overshadows us, God Who inwardly penetrates us with His holy love.
One and the same God, one glorious and most blessed Being; Almightiness that carries us, quickens us.
But it remains a mystery. A mystery, tender for our heart, rich in blessed enjoyment, ever more intimately revealing itself to the seeking soul, but it stands high above all our thinking, all our understanding, all our musing and pondering.
It is the most real of all realities. It is the one thing that will stay by you, when once the world shall sink away from you and your consciousness shall darken itself in the haziness of death.
It is the secret of the Lord, which the scorner laughs at, which leaves the world cold, which awes and terrifies the sinner, but which according to the covenant of peace is shown to God's child in the stillness of solitude.
It is the Holy Ghost Himself Who, entering into the heart of God's child, sets the seal of this Triune mystery upon it.
But for this very reason, fellowship with this Spirit within us is so extremely sensitive and tender.
There must nothing come in between, or it will vanish.
It can bear no resistance without being lost.
It can suffer no disturbance, for then it will flee away.
Not that the Holy Spirit therefore took His departure and left you to yourself. On the contrary, He remains in the heart that He has chosen for His dwelling place. Neither Satan nor the world can expel Him from His temple.
And herein is His Divine love, that He continues to dwell in you, while He allows Himself to be grieved, allows Himself to be affronted, to be wounded and spitefully entreated by you in your sin.
But to your dull sense this is not so.
In your feeling, in your inner perception, the moment you have sinned the Holy Spirit has become a stranger to you. He has removed Himself far from you. He is scarcely reachable any more by your earnest supplication.
He maintained His dwelling place in your heart, but in that heart itself a wall of separation was reared between your spirit and the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. The door of the temple within you was locked by your own self. You went down in your own being to the deeper underground above which this temple raises itself. In this temple the Holy Spirit was still enthroned, but you had no more access to it. All fellowship is then broken off. All secret communion is then cut off. Your sin has enveloped you as a spider the fly. And while the Holy Spirit Whom you have grieved, in tender compassion turns Himself toward you again, you draw yourself back within your sense of guilt.
And yet, even in such moments, the faith, though not understood, continues to shine through.
David after his deep fall felt the anxious estrangement. He felt that as long as God looked upon his sin no restoration of fellowship was possible, and therefore he prayed: "Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities" (Psalm 51:9). He became inwardly aware that his sullied heart was bound to estrange him from his God, and that is why he pleaded in such touching and beautiful terms: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." He walked in deep darknesses, and so he prayed that the light of God's Countenance might again pour down its beams upon him. But though he beat his guilty head against the wall of separation, yet in that striking moment the sense of faith glimmered through the dark, that, from the other side of this wall of separation the Holy Spirit still reached out with deep yearnings towards him to comfort him. And so he did not pray: "Give me thy Holy Spirit again," but altogether differently: "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me."
This is the holding fast of self to faith on the part of the soul that is troubled and in itself is lost.
The soul does not understand this, it does not fathom this, but it feels that grace does not let go, that grace is in God, that God with His grace still operates within. And the one anxious fear that now takes hold of it, is that this grace which is present in God alone may depart from it.
And against this fear the soul prays, supplicates, cries: "O God, abide with me, abide in me. Let not go Thy hold on me forever."
And this supplication keeps on, this crying deepens in fervency and in sincerity, until finally the door of the temple in infinite mercy unlocks itself again. And then comes the joy of salvation again. The meeting again between the soul which had so deeply grieved the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit, Who, rather than let go the soul of God's child, suffered Himself to be grieved.
Blessed is he who in his sin has experienced this for himself.
He understands what it is to know the Holy Spirit as his Comforter.
* * * * * * *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.
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