In honor of the Feast Day of my prayer hero St Teresa of Avila, I’m writing on 4 things that Teresa has taught me that I would love to offer as encouragements to help us grow in prayer.

So far, we have suggested that Teresa encourages us that:

1. Growing in Prayer is Possible (read here)

2. It Starts and Ends with Jesus (read here)

3. If You Don’t Quit, You Win (read here)

This week, I want to suggest that, for Teresa:

Loving God is a Worthy Ambition.

By this, I mean that seeking to have one’s heart fully in love with God — with nothing else competing for our attention and affection — is worth spending time and effort pursuing.

Listen to how Teresa describes her awareness of God towards the end of her life:

Teresa redefines success. Instead of external accomplishments, the prize of her life is an internal awareness of God — unbroken communion with her Friend, Lord, and Spouse — what Paul might call praying without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). What would it look like to be continually aware of God’s presence — to literally never forget that He is near?

In the beginning of building a prayer life, it often feels like we are attempting to bring God to mind and to remember His nearness — and probably succeeding less than we would like. For Teresa, the end of building a prayer life is an effortless, continual awareness of God.

I don’t know about you, but I am continually enamored by external accomplishments. I love to set career goals, I have financial aspirations, and I love the thrill of accomplishing both big and small tasks. I have said before that my two biggest distractions when trying to set time aside for prayer are either my to-do list or a daydream about some future ambition. Can anyone relate to this? I’m embarrassed to admit that my prayer time was cut short this morning by putting some finishing touches on this very email!

It’s not that Teresa was unsuccessful by external markers. In fact, by contemporary measures, she would be considered incredibly successful! She wrote six books during her life, reformed a monastery in decline, and then planted numerous other monasteries that replicated her reforms. She was a sought-after teacher and spiritual director. All of this is remarkable considering the prejudice she had to face as a woman in 16th-century Spain who’s life whose life offered a prophetic challenge to what she saw as complacency in the men around her and a lack of holiness in much of the religion of her day.

If Teresa was alive today, we might call her an author, speaker, church planter, and consultant. Yet, the prize of her life was not her outward achievement, it was her inward sense of nearness to her Lord. Her very life redefines success.

According to Pope Benedict XVI, Teresa’s last words were:

I want the goal of my life to be a heart that is fully in love with God — with nothing in the way. And more than that, I actually want this to be my ambition. Instead of reaching for exterior accomplishments (as important as those are), I want to reach for interior breakthroughs. I want to love God more. I want to be more in love with God at age 90 than at age 29. I want everything in me that gets in the way of my heart being fully in love with God to be melted away by His nearness and His kindness. I want this to be my “one thing” like David prays in Psalm 27:4. I want to “consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). I want this to be my ache, my reach, the thing that I am aiming for in my life more than money, fame, or attention.

How is your connection to God today? Do you feel like He is near or distant? Have you been more discontent with your lack of accomplishment or more discontent with your lack of a sense of God’s nearness? When was the last time you pictured the face of Jesus as you talked to Him? Have you let other things get in the way of a continual conversation with your “Lord and Spouse?”

In honor of dear Teresa, let us set aside time, picture Jesus, and keep doing it without quitting until our very definition of success is redefined. I want to keep doing these things, day in and day out, decade after decade so that by God’s grace my heart can be as fully in love with God as Teresa’s was.

Lord, make us more aware of your presence today!

P.S. I hope that you have enjoyed these four reflections on the life of St Teresa of Avila. As always, I am so grateful to hear your comments, feedback, and suggestions on how I can make these devotionals better. As much as we can build community over email, let’s do it! I sincerely hope that these are a small way that you are coming more alive and living more in love with God.

P.S.S. Next week, to swing the pendulum away from the contemplative leanings of the last month and reclaim some of my charismatic heritage, I’m going to start a two-part series on two things Welsh early Pentecostal coal miner Rees Howells has taught me about intercession 😎