Assimilated Into Christ

Madame Jeanne Guyon was a noble Frenchwoman whom her contemporaries harassed and imprisoned.  Yet she rested joyfully in God's will--even in the shadow of dungeon walls--and her writings went so far as to touch even the scandalous court of King Louis XIV and they continue to speak to us today.  The following is from her  Spiritual Torrents:

"You will observe that though the bread has been eaten by the king, which is the greatest honour it can receive, and is its end, yet it cannot be changed into his substance unless it be annihilated by digestion, losing all its natural form and quality.

"Oh, how well this sets forth all the conditions of the soul; that of union being very different to that of transformation,  in  which  the  soul, in  order  to  become  one  with  God,  transformed  and  changed  into  Him, must  not only be eaten, but digested, that, after having lost all that was its own, it may become one with God Himself: 'That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in us, I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.' (John xvii. 21, 23). 'He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit"'(1 Cor. vi. 17).

". . . But the capacity of which I speak here is a capacity to extend and to lose itself more and more in God, after the soul has lost its appropriation, which confined it to itself; and this capacity being no longer restricted nor limited, because its annihilation has deprived it of all form, disposes the soul to flow into God, so that it loses itself, and flows into Him  who  is  beyond  comprehension.  The  more  it  is  lost  in  Him,  the  more  it  develops  and  becomes  immense, participating in His perfections, and being more and more transformed in Him, as water in communication with its source  continually  mingles  with  it.  God,  being  our original  source,  has  created  us  with  a  nature  fit  to  be  united, transformed, and made one with Himself."