Rest from Desire

How many persons are the subjugated slaves of those inordinate appetites, which have their origin in our physical nature! How many are not merely agitated, but consumed, as it were, by the desire of accumulating property! How general and strong is the desire of reputation! Many, in whom other desires are perhaps comparatively feeble, spend anxious days and toilsome nights in seeking for power. But the truly holy person, whose great and only desire is that the will of the Lord may be done, has no desire of these things, or of any other things, except so far as God may see fit to inspire them. And all desires which harmonize with God's arrangements, and have their origin in a divine inspiration, are peaceful and happy.

"Love, pure love," says Mr. Fletcher, in some remarks addressed to Christians professing holiness, "is satisfied with the supreme good, with God. Beware, then, of desiring  anything but Him. Now you desire nothing else. Every other desire is driven out; see that none enter in again. Keep thyself pure; let your eye remain single, and your whole body shall remain full of light. Admit no desire of pleasing food, or any other pleasure of sense; no desire of pleasing the eye or the imagination; no desire of money, of praise, or esteem; of happiness in any creature. You may bring these desires back; but you need not. You may feel them no more. Oh, stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free!"

This passage, written by a man of deep religious experience, clearly involves and sanctions the doctrine that holy souls rest from all desires, except such as are from a divine source. There are, then, two classes of desires; — those which are the product of a fallen and unsanctified nature, and those which are from God. Agitation and sorrow always attend the one class. True peace, the peace of Christ and of angels, is the characteristic of the other.

And we proceed now to say, that the ground of difference between them is this: Desires which are from God are attended with faith; and those which are not from him are without faith. The man of the world is full of desires; but being constantly in doubt whether his desires will be accomplished or not, he is constantly the subject of agitation and grief. But the holy man, being the subject of those desires only which God has inspired within him, cannot doubt that God, who is never disappointed, will fulfill them in his own time and way.  Having  thus two facts in his mental experience at the same time, namely, desire and a belief in the fulfillment of desire, the element of uneasiness, which is involved in the wants of the one, is annulled by the pleasure which is involved in the supply or fullness of the other. In other words, faith stops the cravings of desire, by being itself the "substance" or fulfillment of its object; so that constant desire, supposing it to be constantly existing, is changed into constancy of fruition, constancy of peace.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 8, Chapter 3.

How Does the Spirit Work?

In what manner does the Holy Spirit operate in individual hearts?

It does not appear, that any specific and certain rule can be laid down. The methods of the divine operation appear to be one of the secret things, which are hidden with God. Accordingly the Holy Spirit, so far as his method or manner of his influences is concerned, operates differently in different cases. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell, whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit."  He sometimes comes with sudden and almost visible efficacy, and produces his results with "observation." But still more frequently, as it seems to us, he comes as a "still small voice," and operates in a secret and silent manner; but with no diminution of effective power and of inward purification.

Says Mr. Fletcher:

If the Lord be pleased to come softly to thy help; if he make an end of thy corruption by helping thee gently to sink to unknown depths of meekness; if he drown the indwelling man of sin, by baptizing, by plunging him into an abyss of humility; do not find fault with the simplicity of his method, the plainness of his appearing, and the commonness of his prescription. Nature, like Naaman, is full of prejudices. She expects that Christ will come to make her clean with as much ado, pomp, and bustle, as the Syrian general looked for when he was wroth and said, 'Behold, I thought he will surely come out to me and stand and call on his God and strike his hand over the place and recover the leper.' Christ frequently goes a much plainer way to work and by this means he disconcerts all our preconceived notions and schemes of deliverance. 'Learn of me to be meek and lowly of heart, and thou shalt find rest to thy soul.' Instead therefore of going away from a plain Jesus in a rage, welcome him in his lowest appearance, and be persuaded that he can as easily make an end of thy sin, by gently coming in 'a still small voice,' as by rushing in upon thee in a 'storm, a fire, or an earthquake.' [John Fletcher's Works, Vol. II, p. 650.] 

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (2nd Edition, 1844) Part 3, Chapter 1.