'Two years after a certain brother trusted in the lord, he read “The Practice of the Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence. After reading it, he felt grieved at his failure to abide unceasingly in the presence of God like Brother Lawrence. At that time he had hourly appointments to pray with someone. Why? Well, the Bible says, “Pray unceasingly,” so they changed it to “Pray every hour.” Every time they heard the clock strike the hour, they would pray. They exerted their utmost effort to retreat into God because they felt they could not maintain themselves in the continuous presence of God. It was as if they had slipped away while working and thus needed to retreat quickly back to God. Or they had projected themselves out while studying, and now they must withdraw swiftly to God. Otherwise they would find themselves away the whole day. They prayed often spending whole days in prayer on the Lord’s day and half days on Saturday. Thus they continued for two or three years. Nevertheless, the trouble remained: in withdrawing they enjoyed God’s presence, but in going forth they lost it. Of course this is not their problem alone; such is the experience of many Christians. It indicates we are trying to maintain God’s presence by our memory. The sense of his presence fluctuates according to our memory. When we remember there is the consciousness of his presence; otherwise there is not. This is pure foolishness, for God’s presence is in the spirit, not the memory.'
He goes on to explain that this problem stems from the unbrokeness of the outward man. I have thought often of this statement since I reread it a few months ago. It seems to me that the idea of the breaking of the outer man relates to daily taking up our crosses and following Him. At times I have thought that taking up my cross daily meant to reaffirm my commitment to Him daily. This has been as simple as just acknowledging my past commitments and relationship. Over time it dilutes down to a tepid sort of, "Well we both know what this is about God so why don't we get this day started." And when it gets to that point it seems easy to neglect. But it seems that as I study and pray the true concept is more to intentionally put my desires for self aside and submit to His command, or to put it more bluntly, to die to self and commit myself to fulfilling His commandments. And are those commandments too difficult or too onerous? Well, yes they are if I have to try to maintain my commitment to those things by sheer willpower. The only way to rightly die to self and fulfill His commandments is to practice the presence of God finding both the ability to commit and fulfill in that proper spiritual state.
And what is His command, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." How many of our daily activities are motivated by the essence of this command? If this command motivated us we would find time to pray for one another, we would see our private walk impacting our brothers in the Lord both negatively and positively, we would be driven to our knees to find God's wisdom in our conduct and speech so that we would always be encouraging to one another and never a stumbling block.
I think if I could just keep typing the things that would flow naturally from us if we strove to truly die to self and serve God daily. They would flow from us like springs of living water springing up to eternal life. You can find that in John 4 I think. Give it some thought.
