Secret to peace & quiet?

The advice found in Thomas à Kempis is very good as an antidote to improper sensitivity: Choose evermore rather to have less than more. Seek ever the lower place and to be under all. Desire ever to pray that the will of God be all and wholly done. So, such a one enters the land of peace and quiet. 

Mueller of Bristol, England, said, “There was a day when I died: died to George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends, and since then, I have studied only to show myself ‘approved unto God.’” Small wonder that one said of Mueller that he “had the twenty-third psalm written in his face.”

However, if we are dead to self to any significant degree, these rebuffs will not take control of us, not even to the point of disturbing our feelings or peace of mind. We will, as St. Francis of Assisi said, “wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly.”

The issue is not just feeling or desire, but right feeling or desire, or being controlled by feeling and desire.

Apprentices of Jesus will be deeply disturbed about many things and will passionately desire many things, but they will be largely indifferent to the fulfillment of their own desires as such. Merely getting their way has no significance for them, does not disturb them. ENCOURAGING SOURCE




 

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