Spread the Sails

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. ROMANS 8:14

No part of Madame Guyon’s teaching caused more alarm than her language of passivity. She spoke of the soul ceasing its own action, of letting God act alone, of a passive consent and a passive state. To her critics this sounded like the teaching of Miguel de Molinos, condemned at Rome in 1687, which was widely understood to encourage a lazy, careless inwardness that despised effort, prayer for particular things and even the struggle against sin. The question matters, because it goes to the heart of what the Christian life is. Does God do everything and we nothing? Or do we do our part and God His? Or is there a better answer than either?

Not idleness but dependence

The first thing to say is that she saw the objection coming and answered it directly. Her chapter in A Short and Easy Method of Prayer on prayer as noble action begins by naming it: some people, hearing of the prayer of silence, have wrongly imagined that the soul remains inactive, lifeless and without movement. Not so, she replies. Its action is more noble than ever, because it is moved by God’s Spirit. “I do not say that there must be no action, but that we must act in dependence upon the divine movement.”

She returns to the point in the next chapter, even more plainly. If we believe that we must do nothing, she says, we are mistaken, for we are always acting; each one must act according to his degree. Beginners must act with effort and distinctly; those further on act in a quieter, steadier way, but they act. It is incorrect, she concludes, to say that no actions are done.

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. GALATIANS 5:25

So whatever her critics feared, her own claim was not that the soul does nothing. It was that the soul’s action should flow from God’s Spirit rather than from its own restless energy.

The wheels and the wind

Her illustrations make this vivid. She points to Ezekiel’s vision of the living creatures and the wheels, which went wherever the spirit went, because the spirit of life was in them.

Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. EZEKIEL 1:20

A wheel turning slowly, she adds, can be seen clearly; a wheel turning fast is a blur. So the soul moved by God may not be able to see its own action, not because it is still but because it is moving so fast.

Her finest picture is a ship. When a vessel is in harbour, she says, the sailors must work hard to bring it out into the open sea; the ropes must be loosed and the oars pulled. So the soul in sin needs strong effort to be drawn out. But once the ship is at sea and the wind is fair, the pilot does not keep rowing. He spreads the sails and sits at the helm. “Spreading the sails is simply laying ourselves before God, to be moved by His Spirit.” Sitting at the helm is keeping the heart from leaving the right way, and steering gently as the Spirit moves. The sailors rest from rowing, she says, and go further in an hour than they could in much longer by their own effort.

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. JOHN 3:8

And when the wind is contrary and the storm violent? Then, she says, the anchor must be dropped. “This anchor is trust in God and hope in His goodness,” waiting patiently for the storm to pass.

Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil. HEBREWS 6:19

Martha and Mary

She draws, as many before her had, on the story of Martha and Mary. Martha did good things, she says, but because she did them in her own restless spirit, Christ reproved her. Mary chose the good part: stillness at the Lord’s feet.

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. LUKE 10:41–42

The lesson is sound so long as we notice what the Lord actually reproved. He did not rebuke Martha for serving; He rebuked her for being careful and troubled. The problem was not her work but her anxiety, and her resentment of her sister. Service done in quiet dependence is not Martha’s fault but Mary’s spirit at work.

Where the balance tipped

Even so, honest readers must admit that her language sometimes tips too far. She says that every movement of our own hinders the Heavenly Sculptor, as a statue that moved would spoil the sculptor’s work. She speaks of the soul ceasing its own action so that God may act alone. Pressed hard, such words can suggest that Christian effort is itself the problem. That is where Quietism, in its condemned forms, went wrong, and where some of her readers went with it: neglecting Scripture reading, prayer for particular needs, the sacraments, discipline, and the plain struggle against temptation, all in the name of passivity.

Scripture does not set God’s working against ours. It sets them together.

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. PHILIPPIANS 2:12–13

Paul does not tell the Philippians to be still because God is working. He tells them to work because God is working. Peter tells his readers to give all diligence to add virtue to faith. The early church did not float on a mystical wind; it continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers.

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. ACTS 2:42

The truth her ship picture captures is real: the Christian life is powered by the Spirit, not by straining. But the sailor who spreads the sails still keeps watch, trims the canvas, holds the helm and mends the ropes. Dependence on the wind is not the same as doing nothing.

The better answer

So the answer to our opening question is neither that God does everything and we nothing, nor that we do our part and He His, as if we were partners on equal terms. It is that God works, and therefore we work; that His Spirit moves us, and we move. At her best, that is what Madame Guyon meant. Our part is to spread the sails and hold the helm; the wind is His.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Are you more inclined to strain in your own strength or to drift, calling it trust? Name your tendency honestly.

2. Before your next task, pause and ask the Spirit to move you in it; then do it diligently.

3. If you are in a storm, drop the anchor of trust: wait on God, and do not make rash decisions.

4. Check whether any habit of grace — Bible reading, prayer for others, fellowship, the Lord’s Supper — has lapsed in the name of spirituality. Take it up again.

5. Read Philippians 2:12–13 slowly and ask how both halves apply to you this week.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, I have rowed hard in my own strength, and I have drifted and called it faith.

Teach me to spread the sails and hold the helm, depending on You and working because You work.

When the wind is contrary, let me cast the anchor of trust and wait for You.

Keep me faithful in the means You have given, and let all my doing be Your doing in me. Amen.