I was made for intimacy. In the place of intimacy and the simple practice of His Presence, other forms of prayer lose their necessity. Requests and petitions are the prayers of hope. Proclamations and declarations are the prayers of faith. Praise and worship are the prayers of love. Love Prayer is far more effective than faith prayer. Delight yourself in The Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4). In this place of delighting in God, you become a magnet for blessing because Gods favor spills over you. If you have needs, you are unaware of them in the place of bliss. Many spend hours in successful intercession and this is noble. But it is never sustainable without a deep-seated enjoyment of Gods tangible glory. The deeper we venture into His glory, the more words often fade away. The most effective prayer is to spend hours getting blasted in His presence. I have quitted all forms of set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to God...which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great, that I am forced to use means to moderate them, and prevent their appearance to others... The King, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastising me, embraces me with love, makes me eat at His table, serves me with His own hands, gives me the key of His treasures; He converses and delights Himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as His favourite. It is this I consider myself from time to time in His holy Presence. My most useful method is this simple attention, and such a general passionate regard to God, to whom I find myself often attached with greater sweetness and delight than that of an infant at the mothers breast; so that, if I dare use the expression, I should choose to call this state the bosom of God, for the inexpressible sweetness which I taste and experience there... At other times, when I apply myself to prayer, I feel all my spirit and all my soul lift itself up without any care or effort of mine, and it continues as it were suspended and firmly fixed in God, as in its centre and place of rest. Brother Lawrence explains that this state of encountering and abiding in Gods Presence is the very essence of prayer, for it is the state of being in God, verses a mere exercise of rhetoric with God. It is also the state in which God pours out through us. When we arrive at ecstasy in the Spirit, we simply stand under the fountainhead and God pours out through us. Thomas Aquinas says that we have most fully come into true mysticism the more we lend ourselves to passivity in this state. We are merely a valve or a hose for His love to channel through to the world. You really dont do much, except love Him. We never read of Adam working in Eden. He simply walked with God, and the garden was tended. When we live in the place of intimate union with God, living the love prayer, we find the faith prayer much easier.... Rather than vainly trying to name and claim a thing through our proclamation, we simply speak out of the cloud of glory and things happen. This realm of glory is far higher than approaching God through mental prayer. Many people are very religious in their prayer routines, but we must be moved by the cloud of His Presence. Saint Ignatius, like Brother Lawrence, recommends not forcing ourselves into various acts of mental prayer.... - John Crowder The Ecstasy of loving God: Trances, Raptures, and the Supernatural Pleasures of Jesus Christ pp. 112, 113, 114
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 21:06:18 +0000
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