I trust God is keeping you very near Himself and that He maintains the freshness of His grace and love in your soul. We need to be constantly renewed — “they shall renew their strength,” it is said, “like eagles”; without that, spiritual energy does not keep up. And it is not progress in knowledge that effects that, although this is profitable for helping others in the truth. What is important is the keeping oneself near God. There love maintains itself and grows. His love in our souls finds its activity and comfort in exercising itself towards poor sinners and towards the saints; one seeks the glory of the Lord in them and their own well-being. God gives you to enjoy Himself, but God reveals Himself not only as infinite blessedness in Himself, but also in the activities of His love in which He finds His delight. And when His love is shed abroad in our hearts, we enjoy assuredly what He is, but this love is active towards us by His grace. Activity, unless renewing itself in communion with Him, may be sincere, but will degenerate into routine and into a habit of acting, and this is dangerous, for the soul gets far from God without knowing it. But abiding in His love in Jesus and His Word abiding in us, we can count on an answer to the requests we address to Him in our hearts.
J. N. Darby (extract from a letter)