If you have ever felt that prayer belongs to holier people than yourself — that it requires the right words, a quiet room, or a spiritual advancement you have not reached — Jeanne Guyon wrote her little book for you. A Short and Easy Method of Prayer is a seventeenth-century classic with one tender, insistent claim: prayer is not the labour of the learned but the birthright of every soul. Guyon calls it the prayer of the heart, and her whole aim is to show that the poor, the busy, and the plainest believer can enter it at once. This guide walks you through what the book teaches, how it is arranged, and how to read it well today — and you can read the full text free here on Ochorus.
What the book is, and Guyon’s aim
Written in 1685 by the French Christian mystic Jeanne Guyon, A Short and Easy Method of Prayer began as private counsel for a handful of Christians who wanted to love God with the whole heart. So many asked for copies that Guyon reluctantly published it, and it has never been out of print since — cherished across the centuries by John Wesley, François Fénelon, and Watchman Nee. Her definition of prayer sets the tone for everything that follows, and it is worth memorizing:
Prayer is nothing else but the application of the heart to God, and the interior exercise of love.
Jeanne Guyon
Notice what that definition leaves out. Prayer, for Guyon, is not primarily thinking, arguing, or reciting; it is the turning of the heart toward a God who is already present. From this she draws a bold conclusion — that Scripture’s command to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) is addressed to everyone, and that everyone is therefore able to obey it. She is emphatic that this is her one purpose:
the design of the writer, which is only to lead others to LOVE God, and to serve Him with greater happiness and success, by enabling them to do it in a simple and easy way, fit for the little ones who are not capable of extraordinary things
Jeanne Guyon
That word “easy” is deliberate and even a little provocative. Guyon is convinced that prayer has been made to seem hard, and reserved for the spiritually advanced, when in truth the way to God is near. Her book is a short manual for closing that distance.
How the book is organized
The book is brief — a series of short chapters that move, in order, from the first steps of prayer to its farthest reaches. It is best read as a gentle progression rather than a system, and it unfolds in roughly four movements.
Praying the Scripture. Guyon begins with what she calls the first degree of prayer, and its most practical form is meditative reading. Take a truth, she says, read only two or three lines, and stay there as long as they nourish you — moving on only when the taste fades. Her image for this unhurried reading is unforgettable:
the bees can only draw the juice from the flowers by resting on them, not by flying round them.
Jeanne Guyon
The prayer of simplicity and quiet. As the heart grows accustomed to God’s presence, Guyon leads the reader into what she names the prayer of simplicity — a resting, wordless attentiveness in which effort gives way to receptivity. Here she warns against straining, and her counsel is as much about restraint as about exertion:
The fire must be blown softly, and as soon as it is lighted, cease to blow it, or you will put it out.
Jeanne Guyon
Abandonment. The middle chapters turn to self-surrender — the glad giving of ourselves, and of every circumstance, into the hands of God. Guyon roots this in the trust of Abraham, who “against hope believed in hope” (Romans 4:18), and in the Lord’s own command not to be anxious for tomorrow (Matthew 6:34). She names abandonment the turning point of the whole inner life.
Dryness, and the way to union. Finally she treats the seasons of distraction, temptation, and spiritual dryness that every praying soul meets, and the deep interior silence she calls the simple presence of God. The closing chapters, on rest in God and the way to divine union, gather up the book’s promise — that prayer becomes not an hour’s exercise but the settled climate of a life.
The central themes
A few threads run through every chapter and hold the book together.
Prayer is for everyone. This is Guyon’s first and loudest note. She reads Christ’s “Watch and pray” (Mark 13:33) as a universal summons, and she throws the doors open wide — inviting the hungry, the sinful, and those who believe themselves incapable. To such readers she offers no technique to master, only an invitation to accept.
The presence of God is within, not far off. Guyon’s counsel is to stop seeking God at a distance and to turn inward, where he already dwells. She leans on the psalmist’s “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) and on the prophet’s “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him” (Habakkuk 2:20). Of the soul that has learned this she writes:
It has only one thing to do in order to find God, which is to retire within itself.
Jeanne Guyon
Love, not performance. For Guyon the goal of prayer is never eloquence or achievement but communion — the losing of our will in God’s. She urges readers not to hew out “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13) by trusting their own effort, but to acknowledge God in all their ways (Proverbs 3:6) and to commit their works to him (Proverbs 16:3), so that his working may quietly overtake their own.
Surrender as the door. Underlying all of this is abandonment — the release of self that opens the way to God. Guyon states it plainly:
Abandonment is the key to the inner life: he who is thoroughly abandoned will soon be perfect.
Jeanne Guyon
Who should read it
This book is for anyone who has found prayer difficult, dry, or discouraging, and who suspects there must be something simpler and deeper than the words they have been managing. It is for the beginner who does not know where to start, and for the seasoned believer who has grown weary of prayer as a duty and longs for it as a friendship. Guyon writes for exactly these people: “Come all without exception; Jesus Christ calls you all.”
A fair word is in order. Guyon belonged to a seventeenth-century movement often labelled Quietism, and her emphasis on passivity, self-abandonment, and “pure” disinterested love drew real controversy in her own day; she was examined, condemned, and imprisoned, and some of her formulations were judged mistaken even by sympathetic readers. It is right to read her with discernment, weighing her language against the fuller counsel of Scripture — she herself submitted her book to “the censure of persons of experience and learning.” But it is only fair to present her teaching charitably, as her own. Guyon consistently insisted that true union with God produces holiness and love in action, not idleness. Read as she meant to be read, she is not urging spiritual laziness but the deepest possible attentiveness to God.
How to read it today
Read the book slowly, and let it change how you read everything else. The most practical thing Guyon can teach a modern reader is her method of meditative reading, and the book rewards being read that way — a page or two at a sitting, pausing wherever a sentence warms the heart. Do not race to finish it; you are not gathering information but learning a way of prayer.
A few suggestions:
- Try her method on Scripture first. Take a single verse — say, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) — read it, and then simply rest in it before God for a few minutes rather than moving on.
- Begin with a short, fixed time. Guyon insists prayer is easy, but she also assumes you will actually stop and be quiet. Guard a few unhurried minutes at the start.
- Expect dryness, and do not be alarmed. Her chapters on distraction and temptation are there precisely because every praying person meets them. Persist gently rather than straining.
- Read her charitably and with an open Bible. Take what feeds your love for God; test what puzzles you against the whole of Scripture.
Guyon promises that this kind of prayer, faithfully practised, becomes almost continual — a quiet turning of the heart to God carried through the ordinary business of the day. That promise is the book’s enduring gift.
For reflection
Whether you are reading alone or with a group, these questions can help you take the book to heart:
- Guyon defines prayer as “the application of the heart to God.” How does that differ from the way you usually think of prayer, and what would change if you took her definition seriously?
- She insists prayer is easy and open to all. What has made prayer feel hard or exclusive to you, and is that difficulty about God or about your own expectations?
- Try Guyon’s meditative reading on a short passage this week — perhaps “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). What happens when you rest in a verse instead of reading past it?
- Guyon calls abandonment “the key to the inner life.” What in your life are you still holding back from God, and what would it mean to entrust it to him as Abraham did, “against hope believing in hope” (Romans 4:18)?
- Where might you need to “cease to blow” the fire — to strive less and receive more of what God is already doing?
When you are ready, read the whole of A Short and Easy Method of Prayer free here, and explore more of Jeanne Guyon’s life and writing. If Guyon’s call to inward, private prayer stirs you, Andrew Murray’s The Inner Chamber is a natural next step — a warm companion volume on meeting God alone in the secret place.
