Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 066. Preoccupation

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 066. Preoccupation



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 066. Preoccupation

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II.

PREOCCUPATION.

1. This is often found a very serious hindrance to prayer. Take such a case as a young mother with her little child. Her intense absorbing love for it fills her soul. She kneels down to pray. She can pray for her little one. She can thank God for it. But when she tries to pray for other things, straightway her thoughts fly back to it. She cannot banish the remembrance of it even for a few minutes. She is frightened at the discovery. “Is not this idolatry?” she asks in terror. Surely she loves her child far better than she loves God. Yes; in one way. She does love her child with the wonderful power and intensity of a mother’s love. She would die for it. But she cannot love God with that wonderful mother’s love. God gave it her not for Himself but for her child. So let her not be frightened at it. But let her none the less pray that she may not make her child her God. Let her seek very earnestly from God the power to turn her soul from her child to Him in simple, lowly devotion, or there may be peril in her beautiful mother love. Look again at one who has some scheme which fills his thoughts and interests.

A man is building a new house, and planning his garden. He can think of little else. It is natural enough he should be greatly interested in his plans. But then they will come into his mind when he is at his prayers. This is a great snare, and needs much resolution and many struggles. It matters not what the care or the interest is, it must not be allowed to get between the soul and God. It must be made a subject of special prayer that it may not do so.

And my life is filled with such things, and my sole hope is in Thy great mercy. For if our heart becomes occupied with things of this kind, by a whole host of vanities, then our prayers are often interrupted and disturbed by such thoughts, and when we are in Thy presence, when we are directing the voice of the heart to Thine ear, that great business is suddenly broken in upon by an inrush of trifling imaginations. [Note: St. Augustine.]

If you would guard against wandering in prayer, you must practise yourself in keeping a check upon your thoughts at other times. If, as Scripture saith of the fool, our “eyes are in the ends of the earth,” if we let our senses wander after everything which presents itself to them, we are forming in ourselves a habit of distraction, which will oppress us in our prayers too. It is not a light matter that we be gazing on everything which we can see, that we listen to all we may hear, that we keep all the avenues of our senses open, and let what will enter in. Rather Holy Scripture so often says, “They lift up their eyes,” as if we should not for ever be gazing around us, but keep them rather staid, until we need them. The compass of our mind is narrow at best, and cannot hold many things; one thing thrusts out another; and if we admit these manifold things into our mind, we shall have small room for its true and rightful Owner and Inmate, God. If we let thoughts chase each other through our minds at will, they will find their accustomed entrance there in our prayers too; if we close not the doors of our minds against them at other times, they will stand wide open then. [Note: E. B. Pusey, Occasional Sermons, 127.]

2. Yet prayer offered to God is wholly without meaning unless distractions are kept from the mind. Our experience testifies to this. Nothing is so difficult as to secure the mind from distracting thoughts during prayer, but no one tries to pray without trying to do this difficult and discouraging thing all the time, evidently under the conviction that thoughts which interrupt communion with God utterly destroy prayer; and if men fail in keeping free from distractions, sooner or later they cease to try to pray.

And let him never give over because of evil thoughts, even if they are sprung upon him in the middle of his prayer, for the devil so vexed the holy Jerome even in the wilderness. But all these toils of soul have their sure reward, and their just recompense set out for them. And I can assure you, as one who knows what she is saying, that one single drop of water out of God’s living well will both sustain you and reward you for another day and another night of your life of life-long prayer. [Note: Santa Teresa.]