“I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” Psalm 16:8.

I believe the emphasis here is placed on ‘set’ and ‘always.’ God is always by our side, but we may be very far away from Him! Even though He is near, if we are to have a clear and unobscured view of Him, we need continual effort in order to keep Him in our sight. ‘I have set the Lord’-He PERMITS me to put out my hand, as it were, and station Him where I want Him, that I may always have Him in my sight, and be able to look at Him and be calm and blessed.

You cannot do that, if you let the world, and wealth, and business, and anxieties, and ambitions, and cares, and sorrows, and duties, and family responsibilities, crowd Him out of your minds and hearts.

The heavens declare the glory of God, but how many of us ever take time to even look up to see it? God is blazing there in front of us, but unless we “set him in front of us”, we shall never see Him. You have to look, by a conscious effort, over and away from the things that are ‘seen and temporal’ if you want to see the things that are ‘unseen and eternal.’

The heart must be pure, and the heart must be still, and the mind must be detached from earth, and glued to Heaven, and the glasses of the telescope must be thoroughly cleansed from dust, if we are to be blessed with the vision of God continuously before our face.

Though it takes effort on our part, it is only through his power that this can be done. “Lord, capture my heart so that I can have the blessing of setting You, and You only, before me!”