Sinful Man:
Uncomfortable in God's Presence
By A. W. Tozer

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him.
Where art thou?                            -  -  Genesis 3:9

    Sin never feels comfortable in the divine presence!

    Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence
of the Lord among  the trees of the garden.  Their fear
and chagrin for the moment overcame their conscious
need of God.  Jonah, in his determined refusal to obey
God's command, rose up to flee to Tarshish from the
presence of the Lord.

    Peter, with a sudden acute consciousness of personal
guilt, sought not to flee from the Lord's presence, but
begged the Lord instead to depart from him!

    Men need God above everything else, yet are uncom-
fortable in His presence.  This is the self-contradictory
moral situation sin has brought us into.

    The  notion  that  there  is  a  God  but  that  He  is
comfortably far away is not embodied in the doctrinal
statement of any Christian church.  Anyone who dared
admit that he held such a creed would be  considered a
heretic  and  avoided  by  respectable  religious people;
but  our  actions,  and  especially  our  spontaneous
utterances,  reveal  our  true  beliefs  better  than any
conventional creed can do.

    If  we are to judge  by these,  I think it can hardly be
denied that the average Christian thinks of God as being
at a safe distance, looking the other way!
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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.