**Another great encouragement for persevering in prayer!
You tell me nothing new: you are not the only one that is troubled with wandering thoughts during prayer. Our mind is extremely roving, but as the will is mistress of all our faculties, she must recall them and carry them to God as their last end. When the mind for want of being sufficiently reduced by recollection at our first engaging in devotion, has contradicted certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation, they are difficult to overcome. They commonly draw us, even against our wills, to the things of the earth.
I believe one remedy for this is to confess our faults, and to humble ourselves before God. I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer--many words and long discourses being often the occasion of wandering. Rather, hold yourself in prayer before God like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the Presence of the Lord. If it sometimes wander, and withdraw itself from Him, do not disquiet yourself for that; trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it. The will must bring it back into tranquility. If you persevere in this manner, God will have pity on you.
One way to re-collect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and to preserve it more in tranquility, is not to let it wander too far in other times. You should keep your thoughts strictly in the presence of God. And being accustomed to think of Him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from it's wanderings.
I have told you at large in my former letters of the advantages we may draw from this practice of the presence of God. Let is set about it seriously and pray for one another.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Autobiography of Madame Guyon - Madame Guyon
**I have felt this same yearning to know prayer as I have seen in those such as Tozer, Muller, Ravinhill, Washer. This is the marked difference between those who would know the Lord and those who would know about Him only. May we press on to take hold of a relationship with our Lord and Savior...may we know the assurance and love of this Friend and King.
A lady, an exile, came to my father's house. He offered her an apartment which she accepted, and she stayed a long time. She was one of true piety and inward devotion. She had great esteem for me because I desired to love God. She remarked that I had the virtues of an active and bustling life, but I had not yet attained the simplicity of prayer which she experienced. Sometimes she dropped a word to me on that subject. As my time had not yet come, I did not understand her. Her example instructed me more than her words. I observed on her countenance something which marked a great enjoyment of the presence of God. By the exertion of studied reflection and thoughts I tried to attain but to little purpose. I wanted to have, by my own efforts, what I could not acquire except by ceasing from all efforts.
My father's nephew, of whom I have made mention of before, was returned from Cochin, China, to take over some priests from Europe. I was exceedingly glad to see him, and remembered what good he had done me. The lady mentioned was no less rejoiced than I. They understood each other immediately and conversed in a spiritual language. The virtue of this excellent relation charmed me. I admired his continual prayer without being able to comprehend it. I endeavored to meditate and think on God without intermission, to utter prayers and ejaculations. I could not acquire, by all my toil, what God at length gave me Himself, and which is experienced only in simplicity. My cousin did all he could to attach me more strongly to God. He conceived great affection for me. The purity he observed in me from the corruption of the age, the abhorrence of sin at a time of life when others are beginning to relish the pleasures of it, (I was not yet eighteen), gave him a great tenderness for me. I complained to him all my faults ingenuously. These I saw clearly. He cheered and exhorted me to support myself, and to persevere in my good endeavors. He would fain have introduced me into a more simple manner of prayer, but I was not yet ready for it. I believe his prayers were more effectual than his words.
No sooner was he gone out of my father's house than You, O Divine Love, manifested Your favor. The desire I had to please You, the tears I shed, the manifold pains I underwent, the labours I sustained, and the little fruit I reaped from them moved You with compassion. This was the state of my soul when Your goodness, surpassing all my vileness and infidelities, and abounding in proportion to my wretchedness, granted me in a moment what all my own efforts could never procure. Beholding me rowing with laborious toil, the breath of Your divine operations turned in my favor and carried me full sail over this sea of affliction.
A lady, an exile, came to my father's house. He offered her an apartment which she accepted, and she stayed a long time. She was one of true piety and inward devotion. She had great esteem for me because I desired to love God. She remarked that I had the virtues of an active and bustling life, but I had not yet attained the simplicity of prayer which she experienced. Sometimes she dropped a word to me on that subject. As my time had not yet come, I did not understand her. Her example instructed me more than her words. I observed on her countenance something which marked a great enjoyment of the presence of God. By the exertion of studied reflection and thoughts I tried to attain but to little purpose. I wanted to have, by my own efforts, what I could not acquire except by ceasing from all efforts.
My father's nephew, of whom I have made mention of before, was returned from Cochin, China, to take over some priests from Europe. I was exceedingly glad to see him, and remembered what good he had done me. The lady mentioned was no less rejoiced than I. They understood each other immediately and conversed in a spiritual language. The virtue of this excellent relation charmed me. I admired his continual prayer without being able to comprehend it. I endeavored to meditate and think on God without intermission, to utter prayers and ejaculations. I could not acquire, by all my toil, what God at length gave me Himself, and which is experienced only in simplicity. My cousin did all he could to attach me more strongly to God. He conceived great affection for me. The purity he observed in me from the corruption of the age, the abhorrence of sin at a time of life when others are beginning to relish the pleasures of it, (I was not yet eighteen), gave him a great tenderness for me. I complained to him all my faults ingenuously. These I saw clearly. He cheered and exhorted me to support myself, and to persevere in my good endeavors. He would fain have introduced me into a more simple manner of prayer, but I was not yet ready for it. I believe his prayers were more effectual than his words.
No sooner was he gone out of my father's house than You, O Divine Love, manifested Your favor. The desire I had to please You, the tears I shed, the manifold pains I underwent, the labours I sustained, and the little fruit I reaped from them moved You with compassion. This was the state of my soul when Your goodness, surpassing all my vileness and infidelities, and abounding in proportion to my wretchedness, granted me in a moment what all my own efforts could never procure. Beholding me rowing with laborious toil, the breath of Your divine operations turned in my favor and carried me full sail over this sea of affliction.
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