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1 Chronicles 29:17:
17I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart I have willingly offered all these things: and now have I seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee.
Disturbances in the hidden walk with God can have more than one cause.
The most mysterious to your devout feeling is when God's Face withdraws itself, in order by the deprivation to make you thirst more truly after Him. The most common is, when earthly interests so occupy and exercise you, that your soul, as it were, is ensnared by them. And the one that most offends your soul is, when a newly committed sin came in the way, which not only broke the fellowship with God, but also remained a hindrance to your return into the nearness of the Holy One.
Only of a committed sin is mention made here, of a word, a deed, which you felt, when you faced it, would be a sin to you, and which yet you failed to evade.
A sinful inclination, a sinful mood, especially a sinful desire, can also very seriously affect your fellowship with God, but thereby the working is of another sort. For on this side of the grave this sinful intermingling will ever continue with you, and this by itself, provided you do not cherish it, does not prevent your hidden walk with Him. Your hidden walk with God is always in Christ, and this itself is the avowal that you do not come to Him as a saint, but as one who is in himself a sinner.
But with a sin that you have consciously committed it is altogether different. Then there was compliance, yielding, the doing of it; and then at once the light of God's benign Countenance is dimmed; then it becomes dark to you from His side, and there rather comes up in you an inclination to flee from Him than to be near unto Him.
We perceive this turn in the disposition of our soul at once clearly and most painfully when it was a sin that suddenly laid hold on us; a sin which, once committed, overwhelmed us, and for which we would sacrifice anything if we could immediately remove the stain of it from our soul. When, to say it plainly, it was a grievous sin.
For in nothing is our degraded moral viewpoint so pitifully evident as in the fact that we have scarcely any knowledge of our minor daily sins. Neglected duties; unloveliness; assertions of egotism, of pride, of vanity; tiny untruths, trifling dishonesties, and more.
This is still something altogether different from what David calls the "secret sins." These are faults that leave a stain upon our garment, but yet too trifling for our lustful eye to discover it to us.
This refers to sins of which we have no knowledge yet, and the sinfulness of which will only be realized with a more advanced development of the life of the soul.
But of our sins which we call "not so very bad" we have this knowledge. Only, we became accustomed to them. They trouble us no more. Our soul no more reacts against them.
And also of this sort of sins it is certainly true that they hinder your hidden walk with your God, but do not prevent it. They do not break off what existed, but they make your hidden walk with God very defective, so that it remains a fellowship from a distance, which keeps you from the deeper enjoyment of this communion.
Interruptions in this fellowship with God through your sin only occur when ordinarily you live near to God, know Him in all your ways, and have been initiated into the secret of salvation, and all unforeseen you commit a sin that overwhelms and lays hold on you, and brings it to pass that a dark cloud draws over your sky, and you are thrown back upon yourself, and you feel that you have lost your part in the satisfying walk with God.
Of such an interruption David speaks in the thirty-second Psalm, and he confesses that this cessation continued because he kept silence.
"When I kept silence thy hand was heavy upon me day and night."
But finally he breaks that silence.
"I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord."
This he does, and now at once the disturbance is removed. Now he seeks and finds his God again, and now he jubilantly sings: "For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found. Thou compassest me with joyful songs of deliverance." Yea, now he meets God again, and this God does not repel him, nor put him back, but he hears it sweetly whispered in his soul: "I will instruct thee, I will guide thee with mine eye."
And in truth there lies in this Davidic experience of soul the only correct diagnosis, and the only effective medicine.
When we are so weak, nay so wicked, as willingly and knowingly to commit a sin, the first impression it makes upon us is, that we want to hide ourselves from God, that we are afraid to appear before His presence, and that with the bitter remembrance of our sin we draw back within ourselves.
Not from enmity, but from fear. Not from lack of will, but from shame. We then know well that we must get back to God, but we postpone it. We would like to pray, but we rather allow some time to intervene.
We keep silence.
And it is in this heavy, this soul-distressing silence that we get ever farther away from God.
This is the diagnosis, the correct explanation of the wound from which at such a moment our soul bleeds.
And the only proper medicine is that you immediately break your silence, that you allow no time to be lost, that without delay you seek solitude, and in this retirement you fall upon your knees, and, without sparing yourself, candidly and openly confess before God the sin that you committed, and call upon Him for forgiveness, yea, implore Him not to take away his Holy Spirit from you.
Truly, this costs pain, for which at such a time you must do violence to yourself; you then feel the sting of God's anger, and across this anger you must reach out after the mercy.
But the effect of this is always surprising. It is just as David said. It breaks at once the ban which your sin put upon your heart.
Something melts within your soul, and in this melting comes the liberation, comes the redemption, comes the reconciliation, and God approaches you in His faithfulness, even as Jesus pictured it to us as the shepherd with the lost sheep. Yea, it seems as though God in such a moment comes nearer to you than ever, in order to cause you to believe in His infinite compassion.
Satan whispered in your heart: "Stay away from God." But your Father in heaven called out to you: "No, come to Me, my child."
And in this mutual approach of your guilt-confessing heart to your God and of your God to your soul, the interruption that intervened comes to naught.
And then it is good for you, so unspeakably good, again to be near unto your God.
And what now is the secret of this work of healing the soul?
Is it not in what Jeremiah exclaimed: "Lord, thou knowest me, Thou seest me, Thou triest my heart that it is with Thee" (12:3).
What with Psalmist and Prophet makes the outpouring of soul so touching is that their whole life and their whole existence is interpreted within the scope of a conflict for or against God.
A conflict between God and Satan, a conflict between God and the unholy powers of the world, a conflict with God in every sin. With them is never heard the weak, cowardly language of a self-developing and degenerating moral life. No, everything is put into immediate, vital relationship with God, as the center of all things.
A conflict between all sin and unrighteousness and God, and a conflict on the part of God with all sin and all unrighteousness.
A conflict of the ages, from paradise on, and continuing until the end of time when God in Christ over the last enemy shall triumph.
And in this conflict every one of us is involved and concerned. If we sin we battle on the side of Satan against God. When we live by faith, we battle on the side of God, against Satan.
Such is the interpretation of life on the part of Prophets and Apostles, and such, also, must be ours, even the profound and striking interpretation of life on the part of every child of God.
And what now is a sin that we commit? What other can it be, than that in an evil moment we lend our support to the power of evil against God, and with Satan militate against Him ?
And if this is so, what is to make confession of your sin other than that, realizing this, you immediately desert again the ranks of Satan, in order to return to the ranks of God, beseeching Him that you may be counted worthy to fight in His ranks, and to be found again on His side.
And now comes the appeal of your heart to the omniscient knowledge of the God of all compassions.
Did you mean to run away from the ranks of God to join the ranks of Satan?
No, thrice no.
You did not intend to do it; the thought of such an evil did not rise up within you. You allowed yourself to be taken unawares. You slipped without realizing the dreadful wickedness of your deed.
And now that you realize that this is what you did, you make your appeal to God Himself.
In the deepest depth of your heart you did not will to desert God; and the sorrow of your soul, your remorse, your self-reproach is that in the face of it you have nevertheless incurred the guilt of an act of enmity against Him.
And therefore you now plead with Him, the Knower of your heart, and ask, whether: as He tries your heart He does not see, that, notwithstanding all, in its deepest depth it is still with Him and not with Satan.
* * * * * * *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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