All that we’ve shared so far has been shared to help you get to the point where God, manifesting as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, can break through to you and become infused in you and then live through you. For the ultimate glory of prayer is this letting God live through you in every circumstance and with every person.

Very few of us are taught the truth that we’re to live our lives in union with God, with Jesus. We’ve somehow taken the words. “I am the vine, you are the branches, . .. apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), that Jesus spoke the night before he died, and we’ve seen them as beautiful literature but not really as the last great lesson he taught his disciples.

But the disciples soon learned, didn’t they, that his words weren’t just beauty-filled, they were also reality? For when the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised them came and infused them with power, they began to become like Jesus and to do the things he’d done. The very life of power and healing which flowed through him, flowed through them. And a later disciple, Paul, was even known to have cried. “It isn’t I who lives, but Christ in me!”

What a far cry from that which he uttered earlier, when he said he was wretched because he did the very things he didn’t want to do and left undone the things he did want to do. Surely he went through a growing, learning process until he experienced the oneness, the union of his life with that of Christ Jesus. And we, too, must go through a growing, learning process before we come to union, the ultimate glory of prayer.

Many of us are so geared to instant potatoes, instant cement, instant service, and instant this, that, and the other, that we think we can have instant union with God.

We’re very much like one of my daughters who wants to be a singer but who won’t go through the disciplines which will give her control of her voice. She wants instant success in singing. As far as I know, she’ll never have it.

What she has at the present is a good voice, but she doesn’t control it; therefore, really, it’s useless, for it won’t do what she wants it to do.

But if she’ll learn to control it by accepting and practicing the disciplines which her singing teacher is trying to teach her, the sky’s the limit.

If you want to come into a life of power and peace, joy and creativity, and a life of union where all that’s in the Vine can flow through you, there are certain disciplines which must be accepted and practiced.

Relaxation is essential.

Visualization is essential.

Relinquishment is essential.

Praying for others in many different ways is essential.

Listening is essential.

There was a time when I spent three hours in prayer every day, one hour in the morning, one hour after lunch, and one hour before I went to bed. I read, I prayed, I was immersed in the consciousness of God’s presence during those hours. Everything I did in the way of discipline was like putting money into a bank.

As I needed to draw strength or inner peace or power or whatever, it was there for me to draw from. And there came a day when I badly needed to draw from it, and there it was, treasure I’d stored years and months and days before, ready to pour into me to meet my need.

Since that time, I’ve been kept in an almost constant state of union with God, with Jesus, which is unbelievable to most people who haven’t experienced it themselves but which is understood by those who’ve experienced it. And I believe that it could never have happened to me if I hadn’t had years of discipline in the area of prayer.

I had a foretaste of the glory of union at the time of my husband’s death. When I was told that his plane was missing, I knew the power and peace and presence of God immediately.

There was no having to turn in prayer to him and ask for help. He was there. And during those days of waiting, I experienced an inner strength that I wouldn’t have dreamed of earlier in my life. It was powerful, sustaining. I experienced angels ministering to me, succoring me. This was something I wouldn’t have believed possible. Later when I learned that the plane had crashed and burned and all in it had died, the strength and power and presence only intensified. I knew in the depths of me what Jesus meant when he said, “I am with you always.” His presence within me was an almost constant reality as the days passed.

A missionary friend, in whom I confided concerning the power and presence of God, told me that the strength was given me so that the shock of Ted’s death wouldn’t be more than I could stand, but that I wasn’t to be disappointed when it left, for it couldn’t remain. I’d eventually feel the letdown and I’d have to resume normal life.

Today I carry with me the sense of presence and strength and power. Rather than its lessening with the days and weeks and months and years, it’s increased, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is really the normal way to live and what I’d known before was a subnormal way to live. Because I hadn’t known any better, I’d thought that the way I was living was normal. But I now know a state of being in which all tragedy, all suffering, all impatience, all anger — before they become those things — are turned into triumphant, creative living.

In the subnormal state I’d called on God, on Jesus, as a separate, outside being, but after an experience of knowing union with God, I know that he’s within, always has been and always will be, totally identified with me as me.

Shortly after we’d returned to the States following Ted’s death, my daughters and I attended a prayer retreat in Ohio. We’d talked all week about Jesus being the same yesterday, today, and forever and how he heals today.

We drove to North Manchester, Indiana, where I was to teach in the fall, to choose a home for the coming school year. We stayed overnight in a girls’ dorm on the campus. Fran and I slept in one room and Susan and Kay in the one next door.

During the night, I was awakened by something. I listened and then realized that someone next door was whimpering. I ran to the girls’ room and there was Susan in a heap on the floor, whimpering pitiably. She’d fallen from the top bunk, had hit the big, heavy door on the way down and lay in a pool of blood on the floor. I scooped her up and took her across the hall to the bathroom. I set her on her feet and examined her. Her nose was bleeding and there was blood coming from her mouth.

Usually I stop a nosebleed by pressing the nostrils together, but when I tried this, the blood backed up and caused Susan to choke. I knew I couldn’t help her. It flashed into my mind that at the retreat we’d talked about Jesus’ power to heal today. I knew that he alone could help her. I turned and left her. I walked to my room and picked up a washcloth and towel, knowing within that Jesus was healing Susan. When I returned to the bathroom, the bleeding had stopped, and I thankfully dampened the washcloth, slipped Susan’s nightie off, and began to clean her face and body.

I think that if I were the most gifted poetess alive, I’d be unable to find words to describe what I next experienced as I washed Susan. It was as though the whole world around me were alight with all the beauty and glory of a magnificent sunrise. It was as though I could see the far reaches of land and sea and sky — and I was a part of it all. The realization came to me that God and I were one, that we always had been and we always would be. It was as though time were suspended and past, present, and future merged into a sense of continuity, of eternity. There was no separation but a reality of the immediate now which always had been and always would be. The sense of oneness is indescribable. You who’ve experienced it know, without my having to try to find an analogy, what I mean. You who don’t understand can yet experience it. It is complete union with everything, past, present, future.

Sometimes today, I become so aware of this union that I want to fall on my knees in praise and thanksgiving and at the same time stand tall and straight and power-filled. Even now, as I write these words, such a wave of joy wells up within and washes over me from without, that the ecstasy is almost more than I can bear and I wait for it to subside, to grow gentler, until I can endure it.

Since that initial experience, this sense of union, support, power is almost continually with me. I seem to have an inveterate optimism about everything. It isn’t, I believe, a sickening pollyannaism, but a way of seeing what is to be seen of pain and suffering and grimness, yet going beyond it to Reality which swallows up and transmutes the outer into peace and patience and power within.

Let me assure you that what I’ve tried to express so inadequately has been experienced by many people throughout the ages. It isn’t just a lot of empty talk; it’s a reality which I believe we’re meant to experience, everyone of

sus, taking the life which flows through the Vine and living on it.

I knew a man, a psychiatrist from another country, who’d induced the union experience with a hallucinogenic drug. What he wanted to know from me was how to sustain the experi-ence. I had to tell him that there are no short cuts. Discipline in prayer is the prerequisite.

Learning how to relax, to clear the channel, then to make ourselves available to God to be used or not used in whatever way he wants, can bring us to the point of readiness for union which is sustained.

Martha, in the New Testament, fretted and stewed around, trying to do things for Jesus, but Mary sat at his feet and learned from him.

He said that Mary had chosen the better part, to be teachable. But the great thing is that when we do discipline ourselves in prayer, it isn’t long before it’s possible to talk, to work, to do anything, and yet inwardly be listening to and praising God.

So be patient with yourself and your spiritual growth. As the farmer tills the soil, plants the best seeds he can buy and waters and cultivates until the harvest comes, so you, by living a disciplined prayer life can prepare for the har-vest, the ultimate glory of prayer, union.

The farmer doesn’t go around bemoaning that he doesn’t yet have his harvest when his plants are at the shoot stage or the blossom stage, but he’s grateful for the present stage of growth, and he holds anticipation in his heart for what’s to come. You too, rather than us.

I’ve talked with many people who feel their lives must be relevant to the world we live in.

I couldn’t agree with them more. A life of discipline and prayer can be lived in the midst of a busy schedule. It doesn’t have to be accompanied by a withdrawal from the world.

Some people have the erroneous idea that to lead a life of prayer you must withdraw and stay withdrawn from the world. Have you read the life of Jesus? Have you read the lives of the saints? Haven’t you seen that their lives were relevant? You may be called to take several hours each day, as I was, to immerse yourself in God, in Jesus, or you may find that you need a week or more at a retreat where you can spend that time listening to God, to Jesus. But I believe that you’re needed in the world, and you’ll only be called to that which will fit you the best in your particular situation.

One woman I know made arrangements to have her family cared for while she spent almost a month in study and quiet and prayer.

Another person I know sets his alarm for five o’clock so that he can have time alone before the rest of the family awakens. You’ll be led, and you’ll find that in the very midst of the pressures of life, in the middle of pain and suffering, how to become more than conqueror through an inward feeding of your mind and spirit on Jesus, taking the life which flows through the Vine and living on it.

I knew a man, a psychiatrist from another country, who’d induced the union experience with a hallucinogenic drug. What he wanted to know from me was how to sustain the experience. I had to tell him that there are no short cuts. Discipline in prayer is the prerequisite.

Learning how to relax, to clear the channel, then to make ourselves available to God to be used or not used in whatever way he wants, can bring us to the point of readiness for union which is sustained.

Martha, in the New Testament, fretted and stewed around, trying to do things for Jesus, but Mary sat at his feet and learned from him.

He said that Mary had chosen the better part, to be teachable. But the great thing is that when we do discipline ourselves in prayer, it isn’t long before it’s possible to talk, to work, to do anything, and yet inwardly be listening to and praising God.

So be patient with yourself and your spiritual growth. As the farmer tills the soil, plants the best seeds he can buy and waters and cultivates until the harvest comes, so you, by living a disciplined prayer life can prepare for the harvest, the ultimate glory of prayer, union.

The farmer doesn’t go around bemoaning that he doesn’t yet have his harvest when his plants are at the shoot stage or the blossom stage, but he’s grateful for the present stage of growth, and he holds anticipation in his heart for what’s to come. You too, rather than bemoaning, can begin to be grateful for the stage of growth you’re in now, anticipating the harvest of union which will inevitably come, the fruit which will bless many.

The quickest way to speed the process of growth along is revealed by Paul. “In all things give thanks.” For when you begin to make your attitude one of gratitude and thanksgiving, your spiritual life receives an infusion of power which thrusts the growth forward. Even though your first reaction to something may be despair or disappointment or a giving in to pain, make your action of thanksgiving and gratitude immediately. “I don’t see how in the world, Father, you can bring good out of this, but I thank you that that’s exactly what you’re doing, whether I see it now or not. Thanks for being in charge and for letting your perfect will be done. Thank you.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve said such a prayer, even when I didn’t feel like saying it, even when I felt nothing good could come. But determined to voice gratitude, I’ve said such a prayer aloud or silently and I’ve watched in amazement how God worked through the situation to bring good to all concerned. My gratitude, even grudgingly given, was a channel through which God was able to flow to work his wonders. Turning your eyes on Jesus, on God, and thanking him somehow opens the gate within for joy and love to flow in. Whereas centering on the problem or anything else, no matter how good it may be, closes the gate within and joy and love can’t flow.

I’ve talked with many people who’ve had some absolutely marvelous spiritual experiences but who’ve become so enamored with the experiences that they don’t manifest joy and love, two of the prime evidences of the Spirit of God at work in a person.

A woman I know had come into an experience in the baptism of the Holy Spirit where she spoke in tongues, yet there was fear and unforgiveness in her and little evidence of a flowing joy and love. She needed help and knew it. Because I speak in tongues, she was willing to listen to what I had to say about her need to grow spiritually. She’d become so enthused about speaking in tongues that she didn’t realize it’s only one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and that he had many more gifts for her and many fruits for her. She’d also become so convinced that everyone should speak in tongues that she’d spent her time trying to convince people they should have the gift. And consequently she was so busy majoring on a minor, as a friend put it, joy and love couldn’t flow in her.

Now I don’t condemn in any way the gift of tongues. My own experience indicates to me that it’s an authentic gift, but my own experience also indicates that the Holy Spirit baptizes you in many ways. There are some who believe that if you don’t speak in tongues, you haven’t received the Holy Spirit. They try to get other persons to string some syllables together, thinking that this will start the flow of tongues. Or they try to work the person up emotionally so that in the emotion, he will start speaking in tongues. I know that some have been alienated by such insistence on using the gift of speaking in tongues as the only criterion for having received the Holy Spirit.

Rufus Moseley was one of the most delightful people I’ve ever met. The first time I heard him speak I was in college, and I thought he was the most joyful person I’d ever seen. When he spoke what he said was pure wisdom interspersed with such words and phrases as, “Glory” — “Praise you, Lord” — “Hallelujah” — “Thank you, Jesus” — “Have thine own way, Lord.”

I wanted whatever it was that he had. And, according to him, what he had was union with Jesus. He got it through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I was determined to have what he had, and I began to try to find out how to receive the Holy Spirit.

One night, several months later, I attended an E. Stanley Jones talk. Stanley Jones spoke on receiving the Holy Spirit. He made it sound so simple that I determined I wouldn’t go to bed that night until I’d experienced the baptism.

When I returned to the dorm, my roommate was in tears. As we got ready for bed, she told me what was wrong. She said that she didn’t like the job she had which helped pay her expenses at college and that she couldn’t just quit it for she needed the money. We got into our beds and I said, “God has the perfect job just waiting for you and he’ll lead you to it. Let’s thank him that he’s doing just that,” and we took hands between our beds and began to thank God that he had the perfect job for her, when suddenly it was as though a great, glorious cloud which had been above and in front of me swooped down and flowed into me. I broke off the prayer and began to laugh with joy. I felt Jesus in my body, out to my fingertips and toes, and up to the top of my head. I said,

“Oh, I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” And I knew he’d live through me if I’d let him. It was a tremendous experience. Whereas when I’d walked to class or work or anywhere, I’d imagined Jesus walking beside me, talking with me, from then on, he was within.

Months went by and I heard that the receiving of the Holy Spirit is only the initial experience for the Christian, that there was more, much more. and I heard about speaking in tongues. I confess, I’m greedy. I wanted everything God would give me. I began to try to find out how I could receive the gift of tongues.

A small group of us from the college heard about a church where people spoke in tongues.

We decided one night to go to it. There was a lovely service. During it, someone stood up and spoke in tongues, then sat down. Another person stood up and interpreted. At the end of the service, the pastor invited anyone who wanted to receive tongues to come to the front of the sanctuary and be prayed for. All of us went forward, and I knelt between two people who placed their hands on me and began to pray. The longer they prayed, the more uneasy I became. They started to shake my shoulders, and the sounds they made were harsh and gutteral. It seemed as though they were trying to shake me into speaking in tongues. Yet nothing was happening in me except that I was getting more and more disgusted with the whole situation. All I wanted to do was get out of there as fast as I could. I thought, “If this is a gift, why does it seem to be so hard to receive it? Isn’t it right here? Why are they shaking me? I want to get out of here.” Then it entered my mind to praise God in French. I was minoring in French at the university, and it would be easy to pray a bit in French and maybe the people standing over me would let me get up and go.

I said a few words in French, and the people above me rejoiced that I was speaking in tongues and they let me go. I headed outside to wait for the other young people. As I sat waiting for them I became angry that what I’d thought would be a great experience had turned out to be a flop. I thought that tongues was an emotionally induced experience and I wanted none of it.

Several days later I related my experience to an older friend of mine who led a prayer group.

She said she’d experienced a similar thing, but that she’d finally gone to her bathroom, which was the only room in the house which had a lock. She locked the door, put the lid down on the commode, and sat on it. She’d said, “Lord, if there’s anything to this speaking in tongues, I want to know it,” and she waited. After a while she began quietly to speak in tongues.

Then she knew there was something to it.

I thought, “If she can do it, so can I,” and I went back to the dorm, locked the door of my room, pulled a chair out in front of the little prayer altar and picture of Jesus that my roommate and I had put up, and said, “OK, Lord, if there’s anything to this, I want to know it.” I waited, determined I wouldn’t utter a sound.

Anything that was to be said had to well up from within and flow out on its own. Slowly the room took on a feeling of warmth and I felt God’s presence with me. Then I heard sounds coming out of my mouth. The syllables which came out were lovely. They sounded like an American Indian language. Finally I heard myself say, in English, “That’s all.” And as I sat quietly, the feeling of God’s presence diminished. I knew, then, that there really was such an experience as speaking in tongues.

Since that time, I’ve often spoken in tongues, but I’ve been led not to do so with other people.

The gift is for my own edification, as Paul says it is. I find that in deep moments of gratitude, when I’m praising God and just can’t find enough words in the English language to tell him how much I love him, then it is that I go into tongues and feel a release inside which seems to say that I’m really telling God how I feel about him.

The gift of tongues has never been the most important thing in my life. Certainly it has made me feel closer to God, but I’d never insist that everybody should have this particular gift.

I think it’s best to open to God, to Jesus, the giver and keep your mind on him and then simply take whatever gifts come, remembering that it’s more important to be one with the giver than to demonstrate the gifts.

Anything which takes our eyes off God, off Jesus, can turn out to be a side road in our spiritual journey. It doesn’t matter how good it is, tongues, prophecy, discernment, healing, or any other gift or fruit of the Spirit, if made central it pushes God to the periphery where he’s unable to move in us and through us as he wants to do. But resolving to keep careful watch on ourselves and making sure that we place ourselves under the disciplines of prayer — above all practicing daily, hourly if need be, the rejoicing in God, in Jesus–and turning to him in thankfulness and praise, we can stay centered in him and can’t be tempted to stay long on a side road.

As we live in the conscious presence of God, of Jesus, we begin to realize that love is working in and through us, love which draws us to the needs of the world. Perhaps the needs are in our own family or our church or our com-munity, our nation, or the world. But we’ll be led to them, and we’ll discover God flowing through us in ways we didn’t dream possible to meet those needs.

Right now, wherever you are, with whatever situation you are faced, begin to meet it with thanksgiving and gratitude. Offer it to Jesus, to God, and praise him that he’s already begun to work it out. Each time you think of it, thank him again for taking care of it. Then ask him to help you see life from his perspective and thank him that he’s beginning to do that for you. Praise and thank him for every little and big thing you can think of, and I can guarantee that there will come a time when your praise and thanksgiving won’t be forced, but will begin to well up within you and flow from you in a well-nigh unbroken stream and then, union will come, union that will be a life-changing experience for you. There will come to you the resources of the vast universe to be channeled through you so that you know beyond a shadow of doubt that God and you are one and that in him you live creatively, joyously, and triumphantly. The ultimate glory of prayer can be yours — union with the Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, Enabler.

Loving Father, Beloved Jesus, Blessed Holy Spirit, thank you for letting us share this time together through this book. You know the heart of this one who reads these words now. Open up the storehouse of heaven and let your blessings pour into them and let them find a warm reception. Help this person realize that you are as eager for union as they are and that at every step of their spiritual growth in prayer you’ll be helping them. And bring them to that final, that ultimate, glory which is union with you. Amen.