Joy in Christ's Presence (Spurgeon)

Beloved, if God has ever visited you, you also will marvel at it, will carry it in your memory, will speak of it to your friends, and will record it in your diary as one of the notable events of your life. Above all, you will speak of it to God Himself and say with adoring gratitude, "Thou hast visited me in the night." (7)

To you, my dear readers, I will write of my own experience, not doubting at all that it is also yours.... The glance of the eye of Jesus was very searching, for it revealed my sin and caused me to go out and weep bitterly. As when the Lord visited Adam and called him to stand naked before Him, so I was stripped of all my righteousness before the face of the Most High. Yet the visit did not end there, for just as the Lord God clothed our first parents in coats of skins, He covered me with the righteousness of the Great Sacrifice and gave me songs in the night. It was night, but the visit was no dream. In fact, there and then I ceased to dream and I began to deal with the reality of things. (8-9)

My first discovery of Christ's injured love was overpowering, and its very hopefulness increased my anguish, for then I saw that I had slain the Lord who had come to save me. (10)

No sinner was ever half as eager for Christ as Christ is eager for the sinner; no saint was ever one-tenth as anxious to behold his Lord as his Lord is to behold him. If you are running to Christ, He is already near you. If you sigh for His presence, that sigh is the evidence that He is with you. He is with you even now; therefore, be glad. (15)