I. In the enjoying of God there is implied a sense of His love and favour. These feelings are not congenial to the mind of fallen man; for he neither loves God, nor places confidence in Him as really interested in the happiness of His creatures. On the contrary, the natural tendency of the human heart is to distrust God and to regard Him as an Enemy. It is only when the soul is enlightened in the knowledge of Christ that the sense of God's love and favour is shed abroad in the heart and truly realised. The soul, freed from that slavish terror under the influence of which it could only look up to God with suspicion, now rises in affection and desire toward heaven, and the believer regards God as his Father and his Friend.
II. Another element in the enjoying of God is the delightful feeling which His people cherish of His presence with them. The believer not only acknowledges, in the language of the Psalmist, that God compasses his path and is acquainted with all his ways, that there is no escaping from His spirit or fleeing from His presence, but he delights to contemplate Him as present with himself personally, and feels a positive satisfaction in the thought of His presence with him. And the reason is obvious. The presence of God is to him the presence of a Friend.
III. Another element is our being made partakers of a Divine nature. God by His Holy Spirit imparts to His people a resemblance to Himself, working in them all the graces that form the ornament of the Christian character, and bringing their will into a state of conformity to His own blessed will. That is what is usually called having communion with God, and it is the highest glory and happiness of which our nature is susceptible in the present life. In these things lies the chief happiness of man; in these only can the soul find a portion suitable to its immortal nature and its imperishable faculties.
A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons,p. 29.
With God is the well of life; and in His light we shall see light. The first is the answer to man's hunger after righteousness; the second answers to his thirst after truth.
I. With God is the well of life. In Him is the life thou wishest for. He alone can quicken thee, and give thee spirit and power to fulfil thy duty in thy generation.
II. And so, again, with the thirst after truth. Not by the reading of books, however true, not by listening to sermons, however clever, can we see light, but only in the light of God. Know God. Know that He is justice itself, order itself, love itself, patience itself, pity itself. The true knowledge of God will be the key to all other true knowledge in heaven and earth. As the Maker is, so is His work; if therefore thou wouldest judge rightly of the work, acquaint thyself with the Maker of it, and know first, and know for ever, that His name is love.
C. Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons,No. 2.
References: Psalms 36:8. C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets,p. 306; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 64.