Ministries
Resources
Isaiah 44:20:
20He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?
The world, our environment, our business, yea, and what not, lead us, as a rule, away from God. By this is meant that it costs us a positive exertion in the midst of our daily avocation and recreation to keep our thoughts and outpourings of soul directed toward God. There must have been days in your life when at night on bended knee, with shame to yourself you have had to confess that that whole day you had scarcely once lifted up your heart and mind to God. To make this seem more beautiful than it is will not do. So and not otherwise is the sad reality. With many whole days of their lives have been spent in which they have not so much as once thought of God. One was too busy, too much overwhelmed, too much abstracted, too much diverted the whole day long, to learn anything of the blessedness of being near unto God.
This is, of course, exclusively a result of the sinful character of our earthly life, for of itself nothing needed to draw us away from God. God does not stand by the side of things, but He is in all things—from Him, through Him, and to Him.
Diversion is necessary for our spirit, when it has been exercised too one-sidedly and too exclusively by one thing. This is noticed by the staring eye, by the expressionless face, and the constant return to the same subject. When soul and mind are directed too one-sidedly and too continuously to one thing, so that one thinks of nothing else, forgets everything, and whether one would or no, is always exercised again by the same thought, then there is the beginning of mental disorder, and diversion is the proper medicine.
But it is not so with thinking on God. In the creaturely world a number of things stand side by side, each with its own claim, and our mind is normal when in just proportion we pay due attention to them all. If this order is disturbed by too much thought of the one and too little of the other, then the equilibrium is broken and our spirit totters at length in its own confusion.
God, on the other hand, never stands alongside of created things. Hence it should never be ninety parts of your attention for the creature and ten parts for your God. Neither yet ten parts for the world and ninety parts for God. In everything, in the full one hundred parts, God is to be worshiped. Jesus says it with so much emphasis: "God thou shalt love with all thy strength, all thy soul and all thy mind." And in the same way, you should let the one hundred parts of your strength operate in created things. But the two should so act as to enter into one another, penetrate each other, and together form one blessed life.
So it is in the Father-house. So it was in paradise. So it is sometimes here for one short passing moment. But as a rule it is so no more. There is division. There is what diverts. And the whole battle of our godliness is to work against this division, against this abstraction, against this diversion, and yet, at least parts of the day and parts of the night be near unto God.
But then it is important that with this we should have a correct view of what distracts. And in this matter, Adam is ever yet inclined to put it upon Eve, and Eve to shift it upon the serpent. Our wanderings away from and our life without God, are then explained by the world, the busy life, the many distractions. One is occupied from early morn till late at night and then from sheer exhaustion falls asleep, sometimes before he has prayed. There is no time left for God and for His service. Sometimes there is for one who can quietly remain at home, but, anyway, not for the man of business. And so one continues to put the fault upon life, upon the bustle and noise of the street, upon the ever enticing world.
Or one complains about his body. It is a feeling of being unwell, it is a headache, fever or other indisposition that keeps the spirit bound. Only this, it does not become a complaint about one's own soul. And it is against this that Isaiah (44:20) enters his striking charge: "Your deceived heart hath turned you aside."
Assuredly the world has come in with its enticements, life with its many activities. Thereby you have allowed your heart to be deceived. And yet, it is not the world nor its busy demands upon your time, but your deceived heart, that has turned you aside from God; so turned you aside, Isaiah adds, that your soul can no longer save itself, can no longer escape from its own intoxication.
This Isaiah says of the man, who makes an idol for himself. A tree is dragged into the house. The knotty parts are sawn out and chopped off, and of the best part that remains the poor man makes himself an idol. And now it is not that idol that does the wrong, but it is the idolatrous thought that was in this man's soul and that took possession of his heart before he made his idol. That piece of wood, that image, is merely the expression of what went on in his heart. Not that image, but his deceived heart turns him aside, yea, it does this so strongly, that at length he sees no longer any difference between a piece of wood and God. Or as the Prophet puts it: "He is turned aside so far that he cannot come to discover that there is a lie in his right hand."
And this same evil is at work today, not alone among the heathen, but equally as much, though in another way, among Mohammedans, Jews and Christians.
It is a human wrong.
The direct outcome of our sinful nature.
And how does this show itself?
Very promptly and clearly, just as soon as some object of desire makes its one-sided appeal to your heart, which attracts, arrests and holds your attention and which, involuntarily, of itself every time again excites your soul and senses, crowds your mind with thoughts, enlivens your conversation, and brings you into a fanatical state of mind.
Of course this does not mean the lively interest and activity of your spirit when your duty, your work, the course of conversation claims your full attention. On the contrary, then lack of attention, neglect of due examination of the matter in hand are a fault; can even be a sin.
No, the idolatrous turning aside of your inner self only becomes apparent when this special attraction continuously claims your attention and when the drawing power does not work from without but from one's own heart.
So there are people of whom, instinctively and by anticipation, you know when they meet you what they will talk about. There is but one thing of which they are always full, but one interest to which they are always awake. With one it is money, the idea of getting rich, of gain in every way. With another it is pleasure; sensual delight under all sorts of forms; passion to shine. With a third it is art, music, a concert, a piece of literature, a museum, anything as long as it is art and shows itself in an artistic way. Again with some one else it is the scientific problems which restlessly pursue him. For another still it is politics, or society gossip, or the hunt, or sport. And in all this, spiritual sickness is symptomatically present as soon as you observe that this one interest, even without any particular occasion, keeps him engaged, enthuses and captures him, and makes him dense and unsympathetic with respect to everything else.
Then there is a one-sided concentration of his mind upon one given point. Then this one matter becomes to him supreme, something to which all the rest is made subservient. And this means that with him this one thing begins to usurp the place which in a normal mind and heart is accorded to God alone.
And so it becomes idolatrous.
He is full of it. He is never done talking about it. He deems no sacrifice too great in its behalf. He devotes himself to it with heart and soul. He knows and honors nothing higher.
He even forms a brotherhood for its sake as he is interested only in those who live for the same cause and whose minds are filled with the same interest.
With all those who so live, the equilibrium is broken, and in the highest place, which belongs to God alone, this other thing is put which they love with all their heart and all their mind and to which they devote themselves with all their strength.
Now it is self-evident that subjection to this idolatrous influence in this literal sense does not occur with Christians. This cannot be, and in fact is not so. He with whom it has come to this pass may still claim to be a Christian, but a Christian he is not.
But from this it by no means follows that the child of God should not be exposed to a like danger. Even they who sought most earnestly after the hidden walk with God have confessed that no sin lies more constantly at the door of their heart than this very inclination to allow themselves by the working of their own heart, soul and mind to be drawn away from God to earthly things and to vain thoughts.
To be full of the Holy Ghost is to feel the rise inwardly from the heart of a constant, urgent desire that goes out after God and after things that are holy. He who has come to this never needs to repress other things from his thoughts in order to think of God, but instinctively he thinks of God, and of other things only by intentional application.
But what constantly happens, even with Christians, is the very opposite. Involuntarily he thinks of all sorts of other things, and not, except by an act of the will, does his soul engage itself with God.
If these are different things every time, the danger is not so great, because then it is not one special thing that engages the heart, and the worship of God then always far exceeds every other interest.
On the other hand, this danger becomes great when the heart allows itself to be attracted to one particular thing, or to a particular sort of thing, which fills us with enthusiasm and lays claim upon our heart, because then this is bound to take the place in our heart which belongs alone to God.
You can not be near to your God and in His hidden walk when unwittingly and as it were magnetically, ever and anon, you are turned away to something worldly.
Then your heart has deceived itself and the deceived heart has turned you aside from God.
And, therefore, when you are troubled, and feel that your life is not lived in nearness to God, then cease one-sidedly to enter your complaint against the world and your environment and your busy life as though it were these alone that turn you aside from God.
Rather turn in upon yourself, watch your thoughts, your conversations, your perceptions, study your heart, and when you realize that not only, not even mostly, from without, but from within arises the diverting workings which interrupt your fellowship with God, and prevent your living near to Him, then cast down this idol within and destroy it.
For Christ and Belial both, there is no room in one selfsame human heart.
Do you not know your own selves, in the words of Paul, the mighty Apostle, how that Jesus Christ is in you? (2 Corinthians 13:5)
* * * * * * *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.
© 2025 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
