The Practice of the Presence of God: Prayer
Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite lay monk from the 1600s on prayer:
“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. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord. If your mind sometimes wanders, and withdraws itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that. Trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it. The will must bring it back in 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 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 have told you already of the advantages we may draw from this practice of the presence of God. Let us set about it seriously and pray for one another.”
“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.”
Wandering is a constant state for my mind. Sifting through the Internet, E-mails, various work concerns, various ministry concerns, now back to my family and needs to be attended to there… rarely do I let it NOT wander.
This is a discipline I must engage in. I have been feeling the need for it very pressingly lately. To be honest, I feel I’m on the verge of a melt-down: my mind racing faster and faster over different topics, and several large ones which are burning to be spoken about (you may have caught a glimpse of one a few days ago if you follow my blog.)
Pray that I will take the time to seek this sort of stillness of mind.
I’ll be praying that God gives you an understanding of your heart.
Also if you feel it is very difficult to deal with these feelings I’d recommend that you come check out Theophostic Ministry on Tuesday nights (http://www.theophostic.com/displaycommon.cfm?an=3).
Love you bro.
Yeah, too much going on. Too many things to do. Too many needs, issues, problems…
But I know that God has but one will for us to walk in. May He give you the grace to find it and walk in it.
Steve - This is not a deep, buried wounding from my past that Christ needs to show me. It is a circumstance of my life the has been made very clear to me: I’m too frickin busy, and it needs to slow down. Figuring out what to drop, that’s the issue. I’m hoping that with a pending career move (yup, here’s the first mention of it on my blog), a lot of that will be taken care of.
Thanks for posting this quote Matt. It was one of the things from the Selah service that stood out to me.
Sorry if I offended. One of the thoughts behind Theophostic is that we engage in sinful behavior to avoid feeling pain from some lie we believe about ourselves (not necessarily deep/burried). I had assumed that you were getting frustrated with lust and could use a more focused look at the emotions/pain that turns each of us to these things.
Steve - no offense taken, bro. I understand theophostic ministry, though I believe they are trying to get away from the term “theophostic”?
Yeah I was thinking along those lines a week ago or so. I felt that I had to have the process or I would never get cured, but the truth is that any one of us can go to him now with a humble heart and find his every need supplied by the grace of God. As soon as I realized that I felt the peace of God wash over me. Still its good to do some heavy duty working of the soil to get out the illusive/tricky weeds.
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