The only way to heaven…. by Jeanne Guyon

Jeanne Guyon 1648-1717
Quoted from “Jeanne Guyon An Autobiography”

The only way to heaven is prayer, a prayer of the heart, of which everyone is capable, and not by reasoning, which is the fruit of study, or by exercise of the imagination, which, in filling the mind with wandering objects, rarely settles it; instead of warming the heart with love to God, they leave it cold and languishing. Let the poor come; let the ignorant and carnal come; let the children without reason or knowledge come; let the dull or hard hearts that can retain nothing come to the practice of prayer, and they shall become wise.

Oh you who are great, wise, and rich. Do you not have a heart capable of loving what is proper for you and of hating what is destructive? Love the sovereign good, hate all evil, and you will be truly wise. When you love anyone, is it because you know the reasons of love and its definitions? No, certainly….
None can exempt himself from loving, for none can live without a heart, nor the heart without love.

Why should any amuse themselves in seeking reasons for loving love itself? Let us love without reasoning about it, and we will find ourselves filled with love before the others have learned the reasons that let to it. Make a trial of this love and you will be wiser in it than the most skilled philosophers. In love, as in everything else, experience instructs better than reasoning. Come, then, drink at this Fountain of living waters instead of the broken cisterns of created beings, which, far from allaying your thirst, only tend to continually augment it. IF you could drink once at this Fountain, you would not seek elsewhere for anything to quench your thirst. While you still continue to draw from this Source, you will thrist no longer after the world. But if you quit it, alas! The Enemy has the dominance. He will give you a portion of his poisoned drink, which may have an apparent sweetness, but will assuredly rob you of life.

I forsook the Fountain of living water when I left off prayer. I became like a vineyard exposed to pillage, hedges torn down with liberty for all the passengers to ravage it. I began to seek the creature what I had found in God. He left me to myself, because I first left Him. It was His will, by permitting me to sink into the horrible pit, to make me feel the necessity of approaching Him in prayer.

Nouwen "Out of Solitude"

Quoted from Out of Solitude by Nouwen:

quote:

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As a community of faith, we remind one another that we form a fellowship of the weak, transparent to Him who speaks to us in the lonely places of our existence and says: Do not be afraid, you are accepted..

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It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared…

In solitude we discover that our worth is not the same as our usefulness…

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The love of Solitude

The Following of Christ
The love of Solitude
an early-15th-century devotional tract by Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471)

A soul, which is separated from all the amusements of the senses,
seeks and finds in God
that pure satisfaction
which it can never meet with in creatures.
A respectful and frequent remembrance of the presence of God
occupies the mind,
and,
an ardent desire of pleasing Him
and of becoming worthy of His love
engages the heart.
It is absorbed in Him alone:
all things else dwindle into nothing.
It buries itself and all things in God:
it breathes only His love,
it forgets all to remember only Him

Beth Moore on Solitude

from Beth Moore’s “Beloved Disciple” pg 79-80

…we are each on our own before God. Every life is separate and distinct. We may think we have partnerships in life or ministry without which we cannot exist or operate. We may think that everything in the Christian experience is about body life, but it’s not. Yes, we’re all parts of the body of Christ, and we function in each generation as parts of a whole; but until we each stand before God with a shocking awareness of our solitary standing, I’m not sure we have a clue about our part.

I don’t believe that one of us who is serious about God will forego this test. It’s no 30 minute quiz; it’s a lifelong essay test written in blood. Will we loose our hold on anything and anyone else as a prerequisite to following Christ in the intensity of aloneness? If you can answer quickly, I’m not sure you grasp the question’s seriousness….

moments come when the awareness of my solitary estate before God so radically overwhelms me that I fall to my knees and weep. Bitterly. Frighteningly. The feeling is so intense that at times I can hardly bear it…

How much of your life you’ve invested in Jesus Christ is the issue. Have we held some back for ourselves- just in case He’s not as real, as powerful, as active as we thought? Just in case He doesn’t come through? Just in case He really can’t be taken at His Word? Or have we banked everything we have and everything we are on the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord of all the earth? We will never fulfill our destinies until our hope is built on nothing less.

We can lock arms with fellow servants just as the disciples did. We will experience a measure of God’s anointing and perform some significant works. For the parts of a whole to work as God intended them, however, each part must stand on its own before a highly personal God. If we insist on a boat full of company, we’ll miss the waves where we ride only one at a time. When a wave of loneliness suddenly erupts, ride it. Let your stomach rise and fall with fear and peculiar excitement. Don’t fight the feeling. Don’t just busy yourself. Ride the wave straight into the presence of God and experience the adventure of feeling you’re the only one there.

The intensity of your solitary estate is often most obvious when you fight to reconcile the facts of life with the words of faith. Do you grapple with questions like, Why did God let my brother die but perform a miracle for my best friend? I’m not sure if John ever figured this one out…

Solitude is not so much the place we find answers as the place we decide if we’re going on, possibly alone- without them. Many of us will. Why? Because the privilege of wrestling with such a holy and majestic God still beats the numbness and pitiful mediocrity of life otherwise. Sometimes we don’t realize how real He is until we’ve experienced the awesomeness of His answerless presence. He knows that what we crave far more than explanations is the unshakable conviction that He is utterly and supremely God.

On Solitude

from Beth Moore “Beloved Disciple”

…we are each on our own before God.  Every life is separate and distinct. We may think we have partnerships in life or ministry without which we cannot exist or operate.  We may think that everything in the Christian experience is about body life, but it’s not.  Yes, we’re all parts of the body of Christ, and we function in each generation as parts of a whole; but until we each stand before God with a shocking awareness of our solitary standing, I’m not sure we have a clue about our part.

I don’t believe that one of us who is serious about God will forego this test.  It’s no 30 minute quiz; it’s a lifelong essay test written in blood.  Will we loose our hold on anything and anyone else as a prerequisite to following Christ in the intensity of aloneness?  If you can answer quickly, I’m not sure you grasp the question’s seriousness….

moments come when the awareness of my solitary estate before God so radically overwhelms me that I fall to my knees and weep.  Bitterly.  Frighteningly.  The feeling is so intense that at times I can hardly bear it…

How much of your life you’ve invested in Jesus Christ is the issue.  Have we held some back for ourselves- just in case He’s not as real, as powerful, as active as we thought?  Just in case He doesn’t come through?  Just in case He really can’t be taken at His Word?  Or have we banked everything we have and everything we are on the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord of all the earth?  We will never fulfill our destinies until our hope is built on nothing less.

We can lock arms with fellow servants just as the disciples did.  We will experience a measure of God’s anointing and perform some significant works.  For the parts of a whole to work as God intended them, however, each part must stand on its own before a highly personal God.  If we insist on a boat full of company, we’ll miss the waves where we ride only one at a time.  When a wave of loneliness suddenly erupts, ride it.  Let your stomach rise and fall with fear and peculiar excitement.  Don’t fight the feeling.  Don’t just busy yourself.  Ride the wave straight into the presence of God and experience the adventure of feeling you’re the only one there.

The intensity of your solitary estate is often most obvious when you fight to reconcile the facts of life with the words of faith.  Do you grapple with questions like, Why did God let my brother die but perform a miracle for my best friend?  I’m not sure if John ever figured this one out…

Solitude is not so much the place we find answers as the place we decide if we’re going on, possibly alone- without them.  Many of us will.  Why?  Because the privilege of wrestling with such a holy and majestic God still beats the numbness and pitiful mediocrity of life otherwise.  Sometimes we don’t realize how real He is until we’ve experienced the awesomeness of His answerless presence.  He knows that what we crave far more than explanations is the unshakable conviction that He is utterly and supremely God.