This past summer I got to know Tom Ashbrook, one of the founders of an evangelical monastic order called Imago Christi, a ministry of spiritual formation within Church Resource Ministries http://www.imagochristi.org/default.aspx. He later gave me a copy of his doctoral dissertation on Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle and I was deeply impacted. I reread the Interior Castle as a result and found his work immensely helpful in my own prayer journey as well as our work in helping others to pray. Most evangelicals, he argues (rightly in my opinion), do not get beyond the 3rd mansion to the 4th and beyond. There are seven mansions. He writes: “As the believer enters the 4th Mansion, there develops a divinely bestowed absorption in knowing, loving, and seeking God. God has now enflamed the heart. The motivates are driven by love rather than by obligation, personal gain, blessing others, or even doing the right thing The beloved has heard the call of the Lover and a hunger and thirst are created, that were hardly known to the Christian formally.” He quotes another author, Dubay, who says of the 4th Mansion: “Key to St. Teresa’s explanation of the 4th Mansion is the occupation of the will with God. At the moment when this prayer is given, the soul is captive, she remarks, and I am not free to love anything but God. Teresa explains that this experience begins in prayer but then transcends all of life… Relationship with God has grown to the point where, as Teresa says, Mary and Martha now work together. There is an integration and balance of active ministry and life with the inner world of prayer and reflection. … the beloved becomes more interested in the “words” of the Lover than his or her own. Prayer is now about one’s relationship with God than obtaining specific favors. Intercession continues, but is now more responsive to the leading of the Holy Spirit than telling God what, when, and how to accomplish the desired act.” Good stuff. Worth pondering. I did a sermon on it Sept. 28, 2008 called Prayer: Walking on Water. Check it out. �
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