Are we sure that we feel with the frequency and intensity which our greater privileges demand the desire to meet with God? Or are we satisfied with that indirect relation to him which our service of him in his kingdom and our daily study of his Word leads us to sustain? I need not tell you that there is a tendency at the present day to make our religious life seek the surface, the periphery; to detach it more or less from its centre which lies in the direct face-to-face communion of the soul with God. The devotional is not so much in evidence as it has been another periods of the church's history...
[One of the causes of this] lies in the stupendous multiplication of the out-going activities which the present practical age makes it incumbent upon every minister of the gospel to pursue. With all the centrifugal forces playing upon us, no wonder if sometimes the one centripetal force which ought to driver us to the heart of God for the cultivation of our own devotional life is less felt in our experience. And yet it is absolutely essential for us that we should not only have our seasons of communion with God, but that all the time we should carry with us into our outward and public work in some degree a living sense of our nearness to God and of his nearness to us, because in this way alone can we make our service in the Lord's Kingdom truly fruitful and spiritual. If the savour of this is wanting in our work, if we do not bring to the world when we come to it the unction and peace acquired in prayer, we cannot hope to impart any permanent blessing or to achieve any lasting results.
Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory, p.179f
