I am very grateful to you, my dear sir, for your sympathy in my apparent ills. God has not permitted that I should consider them otherwise than blessings. I trust what appears to destroy the truth will, in the end, establish it.
Those who maintain the inward reign of the Holy Spirit will yet suffer many persecutions. There is nothing of any value but the love of God, and the accomplishment of His will. This is pure and substantial happiness. This joy no man takes from us.
✦ Blessings in Disguise — Not Sentiment, but Experience
Guyon is writing these words while being persecuted — and she calls her persecutions blessings. Not in the abstract. Not from the safety of retrospect. Not as a theological position held at arm's length. In the middle of them. This is not denial. This is not spiritual performance. This is a woman who has found something so deep inside — the inward reign of the Holy Spirit — that the external circumstances cannot reach it. The Bastille can imprison her body. It cannot touch the joy.
I trust what appears to destroy the truth will, in the end, establish it. What faith is compressed into that single sentence. She is watching her own work condemned, her teaching suppressed, her freedom taken — and she says: this will establish the truth, not destroy it. Three centuries later, in a motorhome in the Vendée, a pilgrim from Portugal is reading her words. Guyon was right. What appeared to destroy has established. Her persecutors are forgotten. Her words endure. 🙏
I can imagine the narrow road she walked on, and the persecutions she endured. 🙏
✦ The Narrow Road — Recognized by One Who Knows
Le can imagine it — because she knows something about narrow roads. Not the Bastille — but the youthful atheism that was full of pain to be passed through. The tight road in the foreign city. The temptation to judge that was turned into intercession. The morning devotions kept faithfully for years when no one was watching and no audience was applauding. The narrow road is where the joy is — not despite its narrowness, but because of what is found there that the wide road never offers.
Pure and substantial happiness. Not the sensible confidence Guyon warned against earlier this week. Not the feeling of happiness. Substantial happiness — happiness with weight, with foundation, with structure that holds when the persecution comes. Resting on the love of God and the accomplishment of His will — and on nothing else. 🙏
"I trust what appears to destroy the truth will, in the end, establish it."
Madame Guyon · Three centuries later — establishedIt is my only desire to abandon myself into the hands of God, without scruples, without fears, without any agitating thoughts.
Since I am there, O Lord, how can I be otherwise than happy? When divine Love has enfranchised the soul, what power can fetter it? How small the world appears to a heart that God fills with Himself!
I love you, my Lord, not only with a sovereign love, but it seems to me I love you alone, and all creatures only for your sake. You are so much the soul of my soul, and the life of my life, that I have no other life than yours.
Let all the world forsake me; my Lord, my Lover lives, and I live in Him. This is the deep abyss where I hide myself in these many persecutions.
O, abandonment! Blessed abandonment! Happy the soul who lives no more in itself, but in God.
What can separate my soul from God? Surely, none can pluck me from my Father's hands.
All is well, when the soul is in union with Him.
This is a woman's heart and prayer. 🙏
✦ A Woman's Heart — Across Three Centuries
Le's words — this is a woman's heart and prayer — say something that no commentary can improve upon. Guyon did not pray with borrowed authority. She did not wait for permission. She did not speak in the measured language of the theologians who condemned her. She prayed from the inside of a love so total that persecution could not reach it — the deep abyss where she hid herself.
How small the world appears to a heart that God fills with Himself! This is yesterday's vacuum — now seen from the other side. The soul emptied of self has been filled with God, and from inside that fullness, the entire world — its persecutions, its opinions, its prisons — has shrunk to insignificance. Not because the world is unreal. But because what fills the heart is so much larger than what surrounds the body.
What can separate my soul from God? This is Romans 8:35 — who shall separate us from the love of Christ? — prayed from a prison cell. And none can pluck me from my Father's hands — John 10:29 — spoken not as doctrine but as lived experience. Paul and Jesus and Guyon and Le — all arriving at the same unshakeable place. Held by what cannot change. Filled by what cannot be taken. Hidden in the deep abyss of His love. 🙏
Joy No Man Takes
Pure and substantial happiness — not the feeling of happiness but happiness with foundation. Resting on the love of God and the accomplishment of His will. The Bastille cannot touch what the Holy Spirit has established within.
The Deep Abyss
Where Guyon hides in her persecutions — not escape but depth. The soul that lives no more in itself but in God. How small the world appears to a heart that God fills with Himself. Blessed abandonment.
A Woman's Heart
Guyon prayed without borrowed authority, without permission, without measured language. A woman's heart — recognizing a sister across three centuries. Being a woman does not make you weak. It makes you fearless when you love without reserve.
Five days with Madame Guyon. Five entries. A complete theology of the interior life — and today, she closes with the prayer that holds it all together.
Day One — The Religion of the Heart: External religion has usurped the interior. The ancient saints lived interiorly with God. Four things: enter the closet, retire within the heart, speak few words, receive the Holy Spirit.
Day Two — Walk by Faith: Not by sight, not by the feeling of faith, not by the sensible confidence. The walk itself is the faith. The Eymet market — eyes on Jesus, surrounded by distractions.
Day Three — Assurance: The work of God upon the heart partakes of His own immutability. Not her grip on God — His grip on her. The greatest wrong is to doubt His love.
Day Four — Divine Communications: As the air rushes to a vacuum, so God fills the soul emptied of self. Blessed freedom. The little rills — fullness overflows. In proportion as we are prepared to receive.
Day Five — Joy in Persecutions: This joy no man takes from us. What appears to destroy the truth will establish it. And the prayer of abandonment — what can separate my soul from God? The deep abyss where she hides. A woman's heart and prayer.
Five days. And every thread in this journal — from Nahum 1:12 where it began, through Proverbs 10:11 and the fountain of life, through the 500 denari soul and the passing through of the youthful atheist, through James Smith and George Bowen and Selwyn Hughes, through the Beatitudes and Hebrews 11 and the pilgrim road — every thread leads here. To the soul emptied of self, filled with God, hidden in the deep abyss of His love, holding a joy that no man can take.
C.S. Lewis said: "To love at all is to be vulnerable." Guyon's prayer is the proof. She loved without reserve — and was imprisoned for it. But the vulnerability was not weakness. It was the open door through which God entered fully. The soul that will not be vulnerable will not be filled. The soul that abandons itself into His hands — without scruples, without fears, without agitating thoughts — finds the deep abyss that no persecution can reach.
And Le — recognizing Guyon's heart as a woman's heart — closes the circle. From the first pastor to Pastor Cleopas, from Caldas da Rainha to the Vendée, from the 500 denari debt to the prayer of abandonment: one road, one burning heart, one God who fills what He has emptied. 🙏