“Indeed nothing can interrupt this prayer but irregular and
disordered affections, and when once we have tasted of God, and the sweetness
of His love, we shall find it impossible to relish anything but Himself.”
— Madame
Guyon (1648–1717)
Is life worthy of anything other
than God; him first… and everything
hence ordered unto him? And whereby things find no place in the Presence of
God, do they find any rightful place in us?
The loving delights of God are to
be tasted and savoured on the palate; ruminations of which take us far away
from darksome thoughts and senseless pleasures. Such contemplative milestones
are quietness of soul, stillness of spirit, and perfect God-designed-and-anointed
sensuality for the senses — dependent on nothing but the salacious delicacies
of his creation.
Nothing, literally nothing, is to
be compared with the light God brings a being swept up in his loving Presence
by prayer.
Prayer is unadorned focus on God to
the exclusion of all interruption; although, by interruption, there’s further
invitation, an impelling, to re-join him in his holy of holies.
Prayer is hence about Presence.
Prayer is more about him than it could ever be about us. And the beneficence of
prayer is that God gives such perfection of love in his Presence that we’d
hardly want of anything else.
This is when prayer approaches worship — as we ascribe,
though our worthiest, most sacrilegious attentions, the honour due God for our
sole attentions alone.
Having succeeded in bringing
ourselves before his plate, having experienced even once the multiplicity and
depth of the delights of his Presence, we’re addicted to the only healthy,
healing addiction in all creation: God, and him alone, all of him that we can
manage, and all of him, by prayer.
We become dependent on God and we come to depend
on experiencing his Presence by prayer. And such, as it is, we’re blessed of
his love in order that we might love!
Nothing anyone can do could ever
sway us, for we’re now the most evangelical converts — a ‘conversion’ well subsequent
to conversion. And whether or not we’re introverted matters such little. If
we’re extroverts it matters nothing more. We wait on God and have an answer
poised on and pressed through our lips, of what exactly gives us the indelibly
pervasive hope we have. This hope lights us.
We experience no distress or
constraint, for we’re won to the Kingdom. As subjects we find ourselves more
perfectly fitted for each moment of our existence, in spite of pleasure or
pain.
Having been won to the Kingdom that
decimates all unworthy kingdoms — (this is not
terrorising language — for these are the matters of love that are bespoken) —
we therefore exist to do God’s irrepressibly acceptable will.
Disordered affections that come
irregularly, as Guyon puts it, merely become bases of measure for the
attainment of longer seasons in the glory of God. We constantly want to outdo
our previous personal best. Of course, these disordered affections can hold no
lasting allure in us or for us. They simply cannot compete with what we see as
an inalienable perfection to be ever experienced in the Presence of the Lord.
So, where does this exposé end?
Here: When God
delights himself in us as we experience him in his Presence, we’re compelled to
feel the perfection of his love. Such
perfections are voluminous as they are unfathomable. We cannot get enough
goodness, when, in life, we’ve come to get used to a lack of goodness
everywhere.
Without God, there’s an absence of
goodness. With God, goodness is everywhere.
With God we have all the delights
of life at our fingertips. Without God we claw in the dark, never sensing
meaning in anything.
By prayer we have the Presence of
God. Without prayer God is as much absent as he was when we never knew him.
With prayer love’s goodness is
within reach. But without prayer we’re cut off from his prevailing goodness of
love.
When we’ve tasted the pregnant glories
manifest by prayer we could never return to shutting God out of our world.
Having drunk of the delights of the
Lord’s Presence all ‘worldly delight’ is vanquished as myriad sadistic folly.
The delights of the Lord’s Presence convert the world’s delights, which were
created for good, and arranges them only for blessing.
Yes, the delights of God are known
by prayer. And by prayer the delights of life are entreated. But where delights
known elsewhere are entreated, Satan will make God look impotent. And vast is
the reach of the enemy’s accusatory deceit when prayer has become annulled.
So, delight in the silences of the
simplicity of prayer. These contemplative milestones will be added to your shaky
belief so that belief upon the power of God’s Presence in prayer will be
bolstered. It becomes an irrevocable reality that every cell in us will esteem!
© 2015 Steve Wickham.
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