Losing a Sense of God’s Presence

What good is all our busy religion if God is not in it? What good is it if we’ve lost majesty, reverence, worship – an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we’ve lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our hearts and meet God in the garden?

If we’ve lost that, why build another church? Why make more converts to an effete Christianity? Why bring people to follow after a Savior so far off that He doesn’t own them?

We need to improve the quality of our Christianity, and we never will until we raise out concept of God back to that held by apostle, sage, prophet, saint and reformer. When we put God back where He belongs, wee will instinctively and automatically move up again; the whole spiral of our religious direction will be upward. But we try to work it out by methods; we try to produce it by technology; we try to create revivals by publicity stunts.

We try to promote religion, forgetting that it rests upon the character of God. If we have a low concept of God, my religion can only be a cheap, watery affair. But if my concept of God is worthy of God then it can be noble and dignified; it can be reverent, profound, beautiful. This is what I want to see once more among men. Pray that way, won’t you?

Oh, restore again, we cry, restore again to Thy Church her vision of Thee. Restore again to Thy Church her sight of the great God. Show us Thy face, Thy lovely face, a permanent view of Majesty. We will not ask for a transient beam; we want a permanent sight of Thee in all Thy wonder.