Thirteenth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence
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.
Eleventh Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence
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.
Ninth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence
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.
Eighth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence
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.
Sixth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence
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.
Fifth Letter – THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD – Brother Lawrence
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.