After reading Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God", he felt grieved at his failure to abide unceasingly in the presence of God like Brother Lawrence. At that time, he had hourly appointments to pray with someone. Why? Well, the Bible says, "Pray unceasingly," so they changed it to "Pray every hour." Every time they heard the clock strike the hour, they would pray. They exerted their utmost effort to retreat into God because they felt they could not maintain themselves in the continuous presence of God.
They prayed often, spending whole days on [Sunday] and half-days on Saturday in prayer. Nevertheless, the trouble remained: in withdrawing they enjoyed God's presence, but in going forth they lost it. Of course this is not their experience alone; such is the experience of many Christians. It indicates we are trying to maintain God's presence by our memory. The sense of His presence fluctuates according to our memory. When we remember, there is a consciousness of His presence; otherwise there is none. This is sheer foolishness, for God's presence is in the spirit and not the memory.
To solve this problem, we must first settle the question of the breaking of the outward man. Since neither our emotion nor our thought has the same nature as God, it cannot be joined with Him.
If we try to get the presence of God by directing our thought, then when we are not concentrating, His presence seems to be lost. Again, if we seek to use our emotion to summon the presence of God, then as soon as our emotion relaxes, His presence seems to be gone. Both our thoughts and our emotions are human energies. All activity must come to an end. If we try to maintain God's presence with activity, then when the activity ceases, His presence ends.
Our spirit (inward man) alone is of the same nature as God (God is spirit; John 4); therefore it can be eternally united with Him.
Our spirit is given to us by God to enable us to respond to Him. But the outward man is ever responding to things without, hence depriving us of the presence of God. We cannot destroy all the things without, but we can break down the outward man. We cannot put a stop to all the things without; these millions and billions of things in the world are utterly beyond our control. Whenever anything happens, our outward man will respond; thus we are not able to enjoy God's presence in peace.
When our outward man is broken, no matter how many things crowd upon us, our inward man remains unmoved, the presence of God unchanged, and our inner peace unruffled.
Once the outward man is broken, one no longer needs to retreat Godward, for he is always in the presence of God. Not so with one whose outward man is still intact. After running an errand, he needs to return, for he assumes he has moved away from God. Even in doing the work of the Lord, he slips away from the One whom he serves. However, those who know God do not need to return to Him, for they have never been away.
Perhaps it is our common experience that in drawing near to God, we sense His presence; while if we are engaged in some activity, in spite of our vigilance, we feel that somehow we have drifted away.
Suppose, for example, we are preaching the gospel or trying to edify people. After a while, we feel like kneeling down to pray. But we have a sense that we must first retreat into God. Somehow, our conversation with people has led us a little away from God, so in prayer we must first draw closer to Him. We have lost God's presence, so now we must have it restored to us. We feel as if we have taken a long journey and now must return. The breaking of the outward man makes such returns unnecessary.
//from "The Release of the Spirit by Watchman Nee"
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