The Savior's Abiding Presence with His Redeemed People!

by J.R. Miller in his "The Practical Value of a Promise"

"O LORD, You have searched me and You know me.
 You know when I sit and when I rise;
 You perceive my thoughts from afar.
 You discern my going out and my lying down;
 You are familiar with all my ways!
 Before a word is on my tongue, You know it completely, O LORD!"
​Psalm 139:1-4

     Doctrines are not such cold, lifeless things as some would have us to believe. There is no doctrine of Scripture which is not fitted to affect the life of him who believes it. Consider the proper influence upon us, of the doctrine and promise of the Savior's abiding presence with His redeemed people. If we believe and always recollect that Christ is truly with us always--how will it affect us?
     For one thing it will make us very thoughtful and careful in all our words and acts. Christ is present in His holiness as well as in His love and tenderness. His pure eyes see all our life, and see into our hearts. He is ever beholding us--our real inner life.
​     The thought of the Master's eye upon us should . . .

•  make us holy,
  
•   rebuke our sins, and
•   hold us back from evil.

     We cannot do wicked things in the presence of even a pure and holy human friend. But could we be continually conscious of Christ's perpetual presence with us, of His eye ever resting upon us, then . . .

•   Could we run into sin?
  
•   Could we live carelessly?
  
•   Could we trifle?
  
•   Could we speak sharp, bitter, or unkind words?
  
•   Could we do unholy, unlovely things?

     Surely the realizing of His perpetual abiding presence would make us live reverently, purely, lovingly--so as always to please and never to grieve Him.