Your ShelfYour Projects

LIVING CLOSE TO GOD

25%

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 20, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 3.

Read the full edition

LIVING CLOSE TO GOD.

By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

CONVERSION is a twofold process; God seeks the sinner, and then, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the sinner seeks God. The Shepherd finds the wanderer, and the wanderer finds Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life. Though once afar off, he is made nigh by the blood of Christ. As conversion is the return of the penitent soul to God, the joy, the sweetness, and the vigor of the Christian life depend upon keeping close to God. "Draw nigh unto me, and I will draw nigh unto you."
If you ask what we gain by living close to God, I would answer, that we gain fresh supplies of strength. The strength of yesterday will not suffice for to-day, any more than yesterday's food will sustain me if I neglect to eat my breakfast this morning. God means that we shall be kept in constant dependence; therefore he metes out strength equal to the day. The manna must fall fresh every morning. Lord, give us day by day our daily bread. No Christian can live on an old experience, or an old promise made to God in years gone by, or on the divine help that was furnished to him in a past emergency. A new conflict requires a new and immediate interposition of the divine aid.
Security depends upon living close to Jesus. The soldier who keeps the ranks on the march, and behind the ramparts during the assault, is commonly safe; the stragglers are apt to be picked up by the enemy. To this latter class in our churches belong the casualties and the disgraceful desertions which so often shock and shame us. Among this class of back-sliders are the ready victims of the tempter—the men who betray pecuniary trusts, and the weak-kneed time-servers who succumb in times of hard pressure, and the deserters who slip away from God's worship through broken Sabbaths, and all the votaries of self-indulgence who keep their names on church rolls and yet are mostly found in the haunts of "Vanity Fair." Drifting away from God, they fall into the hands of the adversary. Need a Christian ever slip or stumble? Need he ever walk in the dark, or lose the roll of his assurance? No; not if he lives close to Christ, so close that the Shepherd's eye is ever on him, and the light of Christ's countenance illumines his path, and the Almighty arm is ever within reach.—T. L. Cuyler, D. D., in the Evangelist.