God's designs regarding you, and His methods of bringing about these designs, are infinitely wise.

In your occupations, try to possess your soul in peace. It is not a good plan to be in haste to perform any action that it may be sooner over. On the contrary, you should accustom yourself to do whatever you have to do with tranquility, in order that you may retain the possession of yourself and of settled peace.

Oh, that we fully understood how very opposite our self-righteousness is to the designs of God!

To rob God of nothing; to refuse Him nothing; to require of Him nothing; this is great perfection.

Self-seeking is the gate by which a soul departs from peace; and total abandonment to the will of God, that by which it returns.

The soul seeks God by faith, not by the reasonings of the mind and labored efforts, but by the drawings of love; to which inclinations God responds, and instructs the soul, which co-operates actively. God then puts the soul in a passive state where He accomplishes all, causing great progress, first by way of enjoyment, then by privation, and finally by pure love.

The more wants we have, the further we are from God, and the nearer we approach him, the better can we dispense with everything that is not Himself.