Josh Bailey’s Blog

Excerpts from A Testament of Devotion April 8, 2008

Below is a selection of quotes from the book, A Testament of Devotion. It is an inspiring book that gives practical wisdom on entering into the disciplines of the spiritual life. The author, Thomas Kelly, is widely considered one of the great devotional masters of the twentieth century.

“Deep within us all there is an inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking voice to which we may continuously return.”

“There is a way of life so hid with Christ in God that in the midst of the day’s business one is inwardly lifting brief prayers, short uprisings of praise, subdued whispers of adoration and tender love to the Beyond that is within. No one need know about it.”

“There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs…But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.”

“A life of little whispered words of adoration, of praise, of prayer, of worship can be breathed all through the day…We can carry the recreating silence within oneself well nigh all the time.”

“Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your whole selves utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to Him who is within.”

“Listen outwardly to these words, but within, behind the scenes, in the deeper levels of our lives where you are all alone with God, keep up a silent prayer, ‘Open thou my life, O God. Open thou my life…Thy will be done, thy will be done.”

“In the early weeks, being with simple whispered words. Formulate them spontaneously, ‘Your will, O God, Your will,’ or seize a fragment of the Psalms, ‘I praise you, I praise you…Repeat them inwardly, over and over again. For the conscious cooperation of the surface is needed at first, before prayer sinks into the second level as habitual divine orientation.”

“Change the phrases as you feel led, from hour to hour, from morning to afternoon. If you wander, return and begin again…The first days and weeks and months are awkward, but enormously rewarding. Awkward, because it takes constant vigilance and effort and reassertion of the will, at the first level. Painful, because our lapses are so frequent, the intervals when we forget Him so long. Rewarding, because we have begun to live.”

“And if you slip and stumble and forget God for an hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely upon your own clever wisdom, don’t spend too much time in anguished regret and self-accusation but begin again, just where you are.”

“An inner, secret turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months and years of practice and lapses and failures and returns. Yet another consideration is this: Don’t grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, ‘I will! I will!’ Relax. Take your hands off. Submit yourself to God. Learn to live in passive voice and let life be willed through you.”