Week 1: Healing through Our Suffering

If you’re looking for a book that will offer a challenge to seek the deeper spiritual life with God and to make prayer a higher priority, 100 Days in the Secret Place is at the top of my list.

Gene Edwards, author of Divine Romance, has gathered together key writings from three notable Christian mystics from the seventeenth century: Miguel de Molinos, Madame Jeanne Guyon, and Francois Fenelon: 100 Days in the Secret Place: Classic Writings from Madame Guyon, Francois Fenelon, and Michael Molinos on the Deeper Christian Life by Gene Edwards.

This week I’m highlighting a series of quotes on the ways that God works with us in the midst of suffering, failure, and disappointment.

*****

Do you want to experience true happiness? Submit yourself peacefully and simply to the will of God, and bear your sufferings without struggle. Nothing so shortens and soothes your pain as the spirit of nonresistance to your Lord.

*****

Let God use trials to help you grow. Do not try to measure your progress, your strength, or what God is doing. His work is not less efficient because what He is doing is invisible.

*****

With people you love you do not need to continually say, “I love you with all my heart.” Even if you do not think about how much you love Him, you still love God every bit as much. True love is deep down in the spirit—simple, peaceful, and silent.

*****

Do not disturb yourself by trying to manufacture an artificial sense of God’s presence. Slowly you will learn that all the troubles in your life—your job, your health, your inward failings—are really cures to the poison of your old nature. Learn to bear these sufferings in patience and meekness.

*****

God wants to build a relationship with you that is based on faith and trust and not on glamorous miracles.

*****

These mystics don’t suggest that God intentionally brings suffering to us. Rather, God remains with us in the midst of our sufferings, bears our burdens, and ministers to and through us as we bear hardships.

Keep in Touch

Get our latest blog posts delivered to your inbox or sign up for the weekly contemplative email and receive a free eBook: The Contemplative Writer.

 

For Reflection or Sharing

How is God reaching out to you today?