’Tis not enough to save our souls,
To shun the eternal fires;
The thought of God will rouse the heart
To more sublime desires.
How little of that road, my soul!
How little hast thou gone!
Take heart, and let the thought of God
Allure thee further on.
---------Frederick William Faber (two stanzas from The Way of Perfection)
Tozer, Christian Book of Mystical Verse
The simplicity of the idea that you can draw near to God by merely thinking of Him is very attractive. It can't mean that anyone could do this of course, there do have to be some preconditions. You'd have to be born again for starters, and you'd have to know the biblical portrait of God or who knows what "god" you'd be invoking.
But I've experienced the truth of it myself. After much prayer and tears of repentance that God would forgive me for getting so far from Him, and would renew my first love of Him and guide me to a deeper love, now if I just have the thought of God I experience a deep peace, and even a "panting" like the deer of the psalm that pants for the waters. This is not just an emotional thing but something spiritual or supernatural.
Faber must be talking about such an experience, though it would make sense that there would be varieties and deeper versions of it. No complex methodology here, just sincere desire to draw nearer to God, to know God as Jesus prayed His followers would. Lovesick for God is where I want to be for the rest of my life, though there may not be much of my life left. (And of course I use the word "lovesick" to invoke the Song of Songs, which is so frequently misinterpreted to be referring to merely human love.)
Later: In searching for more inspiration at You Tube I kept running into the false mystics, which does make me wish again that Tozer might not have been so casual about his use of the term. Anti-Christian mystics abound, wresting the scriptures to fit some notion of their own that denies the whole history of Christian theology. Even mytics who may have started out pursuing the true God in prayer veer unnervingly off the path into all sorts of false ideas. These ideas can often be identified as focusing on us, the human beings, rather than on God. I may want to write more about this later.
