Nearer to God

r I HERE is many a one who can sing A “Nearer, my God, to Thee/7 and yet never makes that the daily prayer of the heart and the daily endeavor of the life. Yet God is constantly saying to every one of us: “Draw nigh unto me, and I will draw nigh unto you.” This is the inviting command and the commanding invitation to every sinner who is still self-exiled into the far country of impenitence. The first step of the sinner must be to arise and go to his Father. God seeks the sinner, and then, under the drawings of the Holy Spirit, the sinner seeks God. There is a double finding. The seeking Shepherd finds the wanderer, and the wanderer finds Jesus. He becomes the way, the truth, the life. Those who were “afar off are thus made nigh by the blood of Christ.” This is the Bible process of conversion; and what is true of the beginning is equally true of the whole subsequent experience of a genuine Christian life. It is a perpetual drawing nigh unto God.

The eighth verse of the fourth chapter of James is a signal-text that ought to be hoisted very often from every pulpit. It should be kept constantly flying. “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” It is the divine call to prayer, the call to return from backsliding, the call to consecration of ourselves and to a daily communion with our Heavenly Father. The sin and the shame of too many of us who profess and call ourselves Christians is that we live too far from God. Hence our weakness; hence comes the secret declension into a low, formal, juiceless type of religion. Here, too, lies the reason for the fall of hundreds into open disgrace. No man ever falls who lives near to Jesus.

I. If you ask what we gain by drawing nigh to God, I would answer that we gain new strength. The strength of yesterday will not suffice for to-day, any more than yesterday’s food will support me if I neglected my meal this morning. God means that we shall be kept in constant dependence. Therefore, he metes out “strength equal to the day.” No Christian can live on an old experience, or a covenant made in years gone by, or on the divine help that was furnished him when he had his last encounter with the Tempter. A new trial awaits Peter, and, if Peter does not ask and secure the strength for the conflict then waging, he is struck down to the dust. Laodicea’s Christians were once sound. They ceased to live near God, and he “spewed them out of his mouth.”

II. The only place of security is in close heart-connection with God. The soldier who keeps the ranks on the march, or within the citadel during the assault, is commonly safe. The “stragglers” fall into the hands of the enemy. A. lamentable number of those enrolled on our church records belong to this class. Among this class of backsliders are found the victims of Satan — the men who betray fiduciary trusts; the weak-kneed time-servers, who succumb in times of hard pressure, for want of principle; the votaries of fashion, who go from the communion-table to the haunts of revelry, to disgrace their Master. There is no need that a Christian should ever fall, or ever relapse into a cold, worldly, faithless condition for a single day. If we live close to God, all the powers of Hell can not harm us. We shall be ever under his eye. We shall walk in the light and our conscience will never be befogged. God will “hide us in the secret of his pavilion.” He will set our feet upon the rock.

III. We wonder sometimes why certain people of our acquaintance shine with such a steady lustre of piety. Their spiritual influence is far out of proportion to their talents, or mental culture, or social advantages. But the cause of their superior brightness is the same that has made Yen us and Mars so brilliant in the evening heavens. While mighty Saturn and Neptune were almost invisible, through their remoteness from the sun, the two small planets which revolve close to the source of light become luminaries of the first rank. A very humble Christian may become a burning and a shining light in his church and in society if his orbit is very near to Christ. He reflects Christ in his every-day conduct. It is only as he recedes from the Sun of Righteousness that the Christian- becomes either invisible or sheds the baneful influence of a wandering star.

There are many who desire to be useful workers for the salvation of souls, and yet lose sight of the fact that they must draw nigh to God, and live nigh to God, if they would draw others. No parent can do any thing for the conversion of his child if he himself lives away from God. His appeals will disgust his children as mere cant. Power to win souls is derived from close living contact with the Divine Source of all power. When I was a student at Princeton, Professor Henry

had so constructed a huge bar of iron, bent into the form of a horseshoe, that it used to hang suspended from another iron bar above it. Not only did it hang there, but it upheld 4,000 pounds weight attached to it! That horseshoe magnet was not welded or glued to the metal above it; but through the iron wire coiled around it there ran a subtle current of electricity from a galvanic battery. Stop the flow of the current one instant, and the huge horseshoe dropped. So does all the lifting power of a Christian come from the currents of spiritual influence which flow into his heart from the Living Jesus. The strength of the Almighty One enters into the believer. If his connection with Christ is cut off, in an instant he becomes as weak as any other man.

Charles Gr. Finney used to discover that sometimes his preaching was mighty in its influence to convict and convert sinners. At other times he seemed to be firing only blank cartridges. The results depended entirely upon his own spiritual condition, upon his nearness to or his absence from God. When he was in close communion with God the currents of power were mighty and irresistible. When his connection with the Lord ceased, either through unbelief or unworthy living, his lifting power was gone. Drawing nigh to God was invariably the most effectual way to draw the impenitent.

The concentrating and culminating act of drawing nigh to the Lord is prayer. To this especial exercise of the soul James refers, and what a happy description of prayer it is. The longing soul lays hold on God, clings to him, and “will not let him go,” except the blessing come. So Jacob wrestled. So the Canaanitish woman grasped the Saviour and would not be shaken off. While listening to George Muller, it has seemed to me that his prayers are of this simple, sincere, clinging character. He holds on to God. The old Scotch doorkeeper used to say; “There’s nae gude done, John, till ye get into the close grups.”

Not only successful prayer comes from close approaches to God (through Jesus, the Intercessor); but all godly living likewise. The world is a powerful magnet, and we can not serve two masters. The demand of the hour is for a Christ-like Church, honest, truthful, fearless, living near to God, and keeping his commandments. To such a Church God will “draw nigh” in wonderful blessings. He will reveal himself as he does not to the world.

I have heard of a monk who, in his cell, had a glorious vision of Jesus revealed to him. Just then a bell rang, which called him away to distribute loaves of bread among the poor beggars at the gate. He was sorely tried as to whether he should lose a scene so inspiring. He went to his act of mercy; and when he came back the vision remained, more glorious than ever. Brethren, the bell that calls us to duty and to the loving service of our Lord is the bell that calls us to the most joyful views of his countenance. When we draw nigh to him in humble obedience, he draws nigh to us in the full-orbed brightness of his favor.