Practice of the presence of God
by Brother Lawrence
2nd installment

"What we need is to make our faith come alive."

"The goal of all his (Brother Lawrence's) actions was to do them for the love of God."

"We must give ourselves entirely and in complete abandonment to God, both in temporal and in spiritual matters. We must find our contentment in the execution of His will, whether He leads us by sufferings or by consolations, so that everything should seem the same to a person who has truly abandoned himself. We must remain faithful in the dry periods by which God proves our love for Him. In this way we make fruitful acts of surrender and abandonment. A single act of this kind enables us to make much progress along the pathway."

"Find our contentment in the execution of His will" not in getting what I want or what I believe I need or deserve (how unamerican of me) but in this carrying out process of doing what it is the Father would have me do. This reminds me of John Piper and his passion, that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." The longer I walk this road called life, the more I see that I am nothing without Jesus Christ. I want to cry out and be in the place of Thy Will, not mine be done. Strangely enough, I find myself there more often than not especially in these days living as a very mobile American in a very non tradition way. In the material sense you could say that my life is unstable but in the spiritual sense the foundation stones are becoming more settled and secured than ever before in my life.