Would You Like To Sense God’s Presence Every Day?

Vikki Waters • February 13, 2017

Nicholas Herman, better known as Brother Lawrence, was a Carmelite monk in France in the mid to late 1600s. Before coming to the monastery near Paris, he was a soldier, a footman, a cabinet officer, and then finally, a monk. As a large and clumsy man, he was prone to making messes.

At first, his superiors put him to work in the stables, but eventually they moved him to the only job in the monastery he couldn’t mess up—washing pots and pans in the kitchen.

Here, with God as his only companion, Brother Lawrence discovered the tangible and abiding presence of God.

Brother Lawrence loved God with all his heart, and he decided to attempt to practice dialoguing with the Lord in his daily activities all day long. After years of practice, his life was so positively transformed and his friendship with God was so recognizable to those around him that a high-ranking church leader sought out Brother Lawrence to be his spiritual advisor . They shared four conversations, and Nicholas wrote him sixteen letters that contained his insights into living in the manifest presence of God.

 

Simply put, Brother Lawrence had discovered that the way to sense God’s presence all day was to have lots of conversations with Him . His goal was to form the habit of talking and listening to Him all the time. The key was continually loving God and recognizing Him as intimately present, as Immanuel, which means “God with us.”

Brother Lawrence learned to set God always before him, to train his mind to continually turn toward Him. He was about his Father’s heart and business. After his death in 1692, a collection of those letters on the subject of the contemplative lifestyle were published under the title, The Practice of the Presence of God.

That little volume has become one of the bestselling Christian books of all time.

The essence of Brother Lawrence’s book is how to become friends with God, how to develop a deep and ongoing conversational lifestyle with Him. Our relationships can be organized into five stages, based on their intimacy. Every relationship begins as a casual one, and some progress to deeper levels of intimacy.

This is an excerpt from  my new book Loved Like Jesus.

I wrote it because I want you to experience the deep love that your heavenly Father has for you. Living from this reality as a much loved son or daughter, you can rest in a confident connection with Him and experience abundant living and lasting freedom.

Order my book today for yourself and an extra copy for a friend, your pastor and/or your small group.

Be blessed, my friends.

Thanking Him for you,
Vikki

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