NOTE: This is my own modern English translation of this classic work. I give no guarantee in regards to accuracy or faithfulness to the original work.
B. Lawrence found that since his conversion, his motivations had only come from love without any selfishness. He implemented methods (which worked quite well) to make the love of God the goal of everything he did. Soon, B. Lawrence found that he could do anything for the love of God, even picking up a piece of straw from the ground, all while desiring only God alone (not even God’s gifts)!
It wasn’t always this way…There was a season in the life of B. Lawrence (that lasted 4 painful years) where his mind was consumed with the belief that he was condemned to hell. All the arguments from those in the church could not persuade him otherwise. B. Lawrence finally reached a breaking point and made up his mind:
I am living this religious life ONLY for the love of God, and all my actions are purposed only for Him. Regardless of what becomes of me – whether I am lost or saved – I will always continue to live for the love of God. When I die, at least I can say “I have done everything that is in me to love Him.”
It was later that B. Lawrence realized that he had put his sin between him and God, essentially telling God he was not worthy of his favor. Amazingly, God decided to bestow his favor anyway!
So, we come to the big question: How does one form the habit of talking with God continually, focusing everything on Him? Well, the first thing you must first consider is that you will need to initially apply yourself to the practice with focus and persistence. However, after working at it for some time, you will find God’s love will excite you to do it without any difficulty! When you reach this place, you may find yourself enjoying pleasant days or going through times of pain and suffering. But don’t fear or be concerned! Even if you must endure pain and suffering, God will always give you the strength to bear it.
So how did B. Lawrence start conversing with God continually? He looked for opportunities to involve God. If there came an opportunity to gain or practice a desirable quality (virtue), he would say to God, “There’s no way I can do this unless You empower me to do so.” And God would always give him more than enough strength. If he ever sinned or failed in what God had told him to do, he would simply confess his issue by saying, “I’m going to keep failing like this if you leave me to myself; it is you who you must keep me from falling and fix any damage that I’ve done.” After he did one of these two things, he didn’t think about it anymore and trusted God to take care of it.
Our spiritual life and relationship with God should be characterized by simplicity. When we talk with God, our conversation should be open and ordinary – asking for assistance in day to day events as they happen. God will never fail to grant that assistance. For example, B. Lawrence was once tasked with purchasing some wine for his monastery from Burgundy (and later Auvergne). This was typically a miserable experience for him because he was extremely inexperienced in buying and selling goods and also because he was handicapped – he would have to roll himself on top of barrels to get into the boat and travel to the city. Rather than worry about all these things, he simply said to God, “It’s your business I’m handling here…” and afterwards, he would find everything worked out just fine.
Similarly, B. Lawrence used to work in the kitchen (a task he despised). Rather than being miserable and “pushing through it,” he learned the habit of doing everything in that kitchen for the love of God, praying all the time for God’s grace to do his work well. For the 15 years he worked in the kitchen, he found everything easy! Even after he stopped working in the kitchen, B. Lawrence was happy anywhere he went. He was ready to leave any job at any time because he was always happy in whatever position he was in since he did every little thing for the love of God.
Because B. Lawrence lived at a monastery, there were certain times of the day where he specifically had to take time out and pray. In his eyes, these times were not necessary at all because there was no work or events that distracted him from continually talking with God. Why sit idle and talk with God when you could be getting something done at the same time?
B. Lawrence knew the direction God gave us was simple: love Him in all things. He worked to do this and didn’t need anyone to lead him or teach him how. However, what he DID need from God was forgiveness. B. Lawrence knew his faults well but he wasn’t discouraged by them. If he ever faltered, he would confess them to God and then resume his normal practice of love and worship of Him! Even when his mind was troubled, he wouldn’t ask anyone for help; knowing by faith that God was present, he would simply try to please him in all of his actions and see what came of them.
A word of warning: When trying to live in continual communion with God, useless thoughts (a wandering mind) will ruin everything! All sin and deception begins with those. As soon as we realize our mind has drifted away from what we are currently focused on doing or our salvation, we should immediately reject the thoughts and return back to our communion with God. This was one of the most difficult challenges B. Lawrence had to handle early on: he spent most of his time for dedicated prayer rejecting wandering thoughts and then falling back into them. Eventually he was able to overcome this, but wasn’t quite sure how he did it.
Remember – the point of all this is maintaining union with God through love. There are all kinds of methods of self-denial and disciplines you can put into place, but if the end result is not arriving at that love-union, it’s all completely worthless. For B. Lawrence, the shortest path to God was to practice loving by do all things for his sake. Isn’t this really our calling? Our only focus should be loving and delighting ourselves in God. It’s one thing to understand this and quite another to actually do it.
Once we are full of the love of God, we can expect our sins to be forgiven. Even more so – we should, without any anxiety, expect the pardon of our sins from the because of the blood of Jesus Christ. We should simply be attempting to love him with all our hearts. If you read scripture, God seemed to grant the greatest blessings on the greatest sinners just to show us how awesome his mercy really is.
Once you gain that love relationship with God, the greatest pain or pleasures of this world don’t really matter. You can throw caution and fear out the window and desire just one thing: God (and how you might not offend him!). Just keep it simple: if you fail in your Christian duty, acknowledge it before yourself and God and say, “I am used to failing…and I will never do anything else but fail if I’m left to myself.” If you don’t fail, thank God for it acknowledging that all your strength comes from Him.