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Thoughts of God

Love Mercy, Do Justice, and Walk Humbly with God

  • Welcome
    • Jesus and the Jewish Festivals
      • Jesus and Shalosh Regalim – Three Jewish Pilgrimage Festivals
      • Palm Sunday
      • Observing the Pascal Lamb
      • Pesach – Passover – Crucifixion – Unleavened Bread
      • Bikkurim – “First Fruits”
      • S’firat HaOmer – “Counting The Omer”
      • Shavuot – “Weeks” – A Week of Weeks
    • Select Reading
      • THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Table of Content
      • The Holy Spirit or Power from on High – Vol 2 by A.B. Simpson
      • Day of Heaven on Earth – AB Simpson
      • The Book of Prive Counseling – Author Unknown
      • The Cloud of Unknowing
      • William James – The Varieties of Religious Experience
    • My Purpose
      • Journal
      • Relational Theology
    • Prayer
      • Addressing God
      • Biblical Words Related to Prayer
      • Prayer, Living the Stations of the Tabernacle
    • Thoughts vs Sin

Thirteenth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence

Have courage. Make a virtue of necessity. Do not ask God for deliverance from your pain. Instead, out of love for Him, ask for the strength to resolutely bear all that He pleases, and as long as He pleases. Such prayers are hard at first, but they are very pleasing to God, and become sweet to those that love Him.

Love sweetens pains. And when one loves God, one suffers for His sake with joy and courage. Do so, I beseech you. Comfort yourself with Him. He is the only physician for all our illnesses.

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Eleventh Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence

Be satisfied with the condition in which God places you. However happy you may think me, I envy you. Pain and suffering would be a paradise to me, if I could suffer with my God. The greatest pleasures would be hell if I relished them without Him. My only consolation would be to suffer something for His sake.

I do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains; but I pray earnestly that God gives you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases. Comfort yourself with Him who holds you fastened to the cross. He will loose you when He thinks fit.

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Ninth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence

How can we pray to Him without being with Him? How can we be with Him but in thinking of Him often? And how can we often think of Him, but by a holy habit which we should form of it?

We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him. And when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.

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Eighth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence

One way to re-collect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquility, is not to let it wander too far at other times. Keep your mind strictly in the presence of God. Then 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 its wanderings.

I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer. Many words and long discourses are often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man’s gate.

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Sixth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence

I do not say we must put any violent constraint upon ourselves. No, we must serve God in a holy freedom. We must work faithfully without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to God mildly and with tranquility as often as we find it wandering from Him. It is, however, necessary to put our whole trust in God.

I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the presence of God. For my part I keep myself retired with Him in the depth and center of my soul as much as I can.

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Fifth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence

Were I a preacher, I would above all other things preach the practice of the presence of God. Were I a director, I would advise all the world to do it, so necessary do I think it, and so easy too. Ah! knew we but the want we have of the grace and assistance of God, we would never lose sight of Him, no, not for a moment.

I know that for the right practice of it, the heart must be empty of all other things; because God will possess the heart alone. As He cannot possess it alone, without emptying it of all besides, so neither can He act there and do in it what He pleases unless it be left vacant to Him.

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