What do you think?
Rate this book
Rekindling Inner Fire
You Set My Spirit Free: A 40-Day Journey in the Company of John of the Cross
Rekindling the Inner FireWritings that touch the pure-flaming heart of God ... from the men and women who walked with Him through the ages ... guiding into a deeper friendship with the "Father of Lights."John of the Cross (1549-1591) was one of the brightest spiritual lights of the dark and tumultuous 1500s. His teaching led thousands to inner freedom from "the dark night of the soul"--the state of spiritual blindness in which most of us live our days, unaware that God is right beside us, in love, in freeing power. Through great opposition and danger, John taught countless men and women how to find freedom in the Spirit.John's words and deep understanding of spiritual truth will also help you find a richer experience of God, leading you fresh infilling of the love of the Father.renewed wonder at the beauty and holiness of Jesus, our Lord and brother.the discovery of the Holy Spirit's presence, helping you daily, with new strength and freedom from within.Treasured and classic writings that have had a profound impact on the church down through the ages.
- GenresSpiritualityDevotional
169 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1994
21 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 9, 2020
From the time we are children, our souls know nothing except what we perceive through the windows of our senses. We grow to adulthood believing what we see and know through our senses is all there is to know.
If you’re seeking after God, you can be sure he is seeking you much more. The longing of your soul is actually his doing. Your desire arises because he is passing near you. He created you the desire to find him and run after him.
He want you to go to him with all your needs and miserable failure. He desires that in every encounter, our spirits become more like he is.
It is life that rises us from spiritual sleep. Love is the transforming power. The more we allow love to enter, the more we grow to love others.
His spirit continually flows into this world through us to overcome the worlds meanness.
Love is the highest aim, the greatest practice you can cultivate in your soul. The more we follow the path of love, the more our old self is consumed and dies and the more God himself will be kindled in us.
Learn how to live free from self.
Love wants to wound us and open us up to life.
Nothing in this life is truly good because it is not lasting.
His greatest work is to free me from things that will always fail me in the end.
Purity and spirit is the freedom that comes as the old nature is consumed and dies and a new life is formed in us. It is the freedom to become self giving.
Spiritual attachments - the demand for only The sweetness we sense in the presence of God.
Follow Christ through all the thorns and learn all it means to deny ourselves and seek God, which will lead us through the death of our old nature and into the light of resurrection life.
When we want God above all, we are willing to follow in spirit, even in the most dry and dark and painful of times. This is the love of God. The cross will become your souls true strength.
Spiritual sight is to live in such a way that you are free from Solish attachments to anything this world has to offer.
Practice spiritual detachment by asking God to reveal to you every taste and desire you have for things of this world.
Our aim is to become so free and spirit that it no longer matters whether or not we have the earthly things we crave. Learn how to quiet your souls natural hungers and demands for the things of this life.
Think on the effects we witness where his presence has passed. In this way we begin to comprehend some aspects of his nature.
God is transcendent, above all things we can think or imagine.
Determine in your heart that you want to reach the highest place in God, learning how to live each day and pure, loving oneness with him. You’ll have to choose it every day many times each day.
Ask him to transform you and flood you with his holy light.
When his love first comes, we perceive it as fire, because his first work is to purify and cleanse the soul of sin. Its purpose is to make us clean in spirit so he may be seen in us. We’re being made ready for his glorious entrance.
The more we allow him to Kendall his burning light within us, the more it will drive out and replace the darkness there, until the light blazes out from within us with greater and greater intensity.
The highest purpose is to be transformed into the spiritual likeness of Christ. Transformation is the change in the souls substance.
His cleansing work in us is truly an act of friendship performed by the hand of the souls one true friend.
By wounding our soul, he destroys and consumes the imperfections and evil habits that think their terrible roots and us. The fire of love that will afterword unite with the soul and bring it glory is the same fire which we began by a sailing yet in order to cleanse and purify.
Fire penetrates into the log itself, until wood and flame are one. Fire transforms wood into fire.
Times of cleansing are full of bitterness and misery.
The dark fire of God is his remedy and medicine he gives to the soul to treat its many diseases, spiritual evils. He will stop at nothing to free us from darkness.
Spiritual greed is believing we should always be experiencing newer and better delights of the soul.
The path of Christ is the way of death and resurrection.
Seek to be filled with the attitude of Christ.
True devotion to God comes when we keep in view our lowly, empty state apart from Christ. Don’t fix your affection on having any praise and glory here below. Make it your goal to become emptied of self.
God’s spirit is a river that issues with graces.
The pure love of God transforms.
We must strip ourselves of desire to be loved and esteemed.
The quality of our spiritual work will be revealed by fire. He will expose motives of the heart.
The world understands through the senses.
Grace gives us the courage, strength, and boldness to let our old way of seeing things and are all passed way of dealing with life to be put to death. Grace opens the eyes of the soul to God. Grace is the touch and movement of gods living power within. The life of grace freeze the Spirit to fly powerfully above all things.
We must bring our fall and soul into the quiet rest of death, trusting and at peace in the hands of God. And so the soul begins to become like God in purity.
I desire to be strong and capable and and of myself keeps me from growing in dependence on God.
He looks on us and compassion, his eyes brimming over with flowing graces.
Help me see the goodness coming to me from you. We must silence the lowly senses that keep us blind to his constant work and movement all around us.
Your soul will live and become stronger as you choose to make it walk steadily, even when your soul is like a wasteland. Walk toward God when all seems black. This journey through dryness and darkness is God‘s chosen way of purging your soul of its need for lower, sensual Joyce, false joys that always fail.
When you feel the disapproval of others this is God revealing how anxious you are to be approved by man.
Perhaps God has sent people who misunderstand you to expose your pride. Disapproval, misunderstanding, rejection have the power to make us more like Christ.
Real liberty comes when we only listen for God’s voice and opinion.
Trials of the soul are measured out by the loving hand of God. He permits them to the degree we need to be purged.
He pours the living water of his spirit on our dryness and our soul softens.
As gods spirit cultivates, the only envy we will experience is to be more like those who exhibit humble obedience to Christ.
Sow acts of goodness and love for a harvest of eternal life.
In times of empty, silent, desert dryness, fix your soul and God alone.
Every spiritual insight is a gift from God.
If God helped some overcome sin, they become prouder and more presumptuous. Knowing your real weakness, you can draw upon his grace and power.
Complete abandonment to God is total humility. They know the darkness within them. They’ve learned to train their eyes on God, not themselves.
Hold a fast on criticalness and judgement.
Can an earthly lover describe in words what occurs in his heart when his beloved is near? Could he if he tried? Would he even want to? In the Souls most delicate communions, there is light and love beyond telling.
Learn to find rest in peace in the ever flowing life of God.
Restful inner prayer and faithful service were never intended to replace the other.
The way to enter into the quiet, flowing waters of God, is to progress daily in opening yourself to the Lord.
We can trust God implicitly and his ability to speak, but we cannot trust in our ability to hear him accurately.
Gods principal intent in speaking to us is conveying the spirit of the matter. When God speaks, we must assume he is referring first to the things that are most profitable and most important, and that is the life of the spirit.
The way of the cross is excepting trials which purify.
When we forget our low estate and think we’ve become spiritual and spiritually gifted, we’ve become wrong spirited and we are in grave danger.
The humble spirit of Christ is abasement.
The sure path is total trust and abandonment to the love of God.
Seek God, not his blessings and gifts.
Wrenching the soul free from desire for lower things will help us make great spiritual progress.
When the soul is restless, send it fleeing into the silent wilderness with God. Labour to get into this rest. Hebrews 4:11.
Make no provision for the flash. This is how you’ll be penetrated to the depths by God’s pure light.
Help me be fully human and by your spirit, how to live above my fall in humanity.
Detach self from things that leave us spiritually thirsty.
We press on and find God by seeking him in the time of absolute dryness, when nothing satisfies the inner man’s thirst.
Let me know myself, Lord. And then I will know you. – Saint Augustine
We must know our inner selves in order to distinguish our own voice from the true voice of God. We must know our secret selfish motives, so that we can set them aside and begin to move in the eternal purposes of God.
Our highest thoughts are utterly low. It must dawn on us that we know nothing at all, and only then are we open to drink from his spirit.
Learn to rise above dark night of natural senses and earthbound ways of thinking.
… Hopeful radiance of a bride who is preparing for union with her lover.
The more clear impure of the divine things are that God wants to show us, the darker and more hidden they appear at first. Consider the sun: the brighter it shines, the more it overwhelms and blind the eye, for the eye is too weak to take in such brightness. In the same way, the divine light that prepares us for greater union with God overwhelms the soul with darkness. And for a time, the soul is pitched in to the terrible state, because God is coming closer to the human soul. The new year God comes to us the greater are the clouds and the darkness that overtake us before his presence is revealed.
We are weak in our own understanding and must first be blinded and darkened by so tremendous a light.
God’s light brings colours beyond the spectrum of earths colors.
What passed before Moses might be described as the bright gleaming facets of God’s nature, his invisible qualities. His light is all his many virtues.
When he is near, the soul feels it’s being lifted and opened, rising as if on a current of pure and worthless joy.
He plant his “seeds of fire,” his attributes within you as he passes so his character will be reproduced in you.
He lives in the highest and best ways, with the love that’s at work to set you apart for himself.
He loves you liberally, with every intention to do good to you.
Show me your glory so what is prideful and we will be driven to its knees, worshipping in the light of you.
The peace that flows into us from the Lord satisfies the soul with full assurance that he is still for us, even as were being taken through fire, in which we can be changed into his likeness.
God sends dryness to wean you from feelings and comforts, so you grow and become mature, helping you learn to live above the souls demands.
Receive all S coming from God. Every challenge is beneficial if it causes us to run to him.
Fortitude, he alone is our everlasting wall of strength.
The humbling process is gods way of raising in your heart and new love for all men.
He may use anyone at all to teach us and direct us on our way.
Hidden in God, no evil word spoken against me has any power.
God gives to us exactly what we and in the way we need to receive it.
When you seek some new word from God, you’re in danger of pushing a side the one perfect word that he’s already given.
Nothing can be as satisfying as seeing Christ with the eyes and understanding of your inner man.
By living in Christ, we find abundant medicine for all our spiritual elements.
His light must infuse our darkness.
Forgive me all the things I asked for that were so senseless, for they were coming from a blind man. Forgive me my impatience as you mould me into the image of your making. Your comforts and blessings, and not you alone. Whatever you desire for me, mould me and make me desire the same thing. whatever you don’t want from me, tear it from my heart.
Discernment: fixing my eyes on his face to read his slightest change of expression, what is meant for me and what is not.
The more he purifies, the more beautifully his brightness burns. he burns inwardly with sweetness.
God is at work to enlarge the capacity of theSoul. He must create this holy space within us little by little.
He is the sweetness for which every soul longs.
This is the transformation: you’ll be so addressed in the hand of God that he’ll be able to teach you anything he desires.
God’s slightest touch could utterly annihilate. Yet his only desire is to embrace us with the love that knows no limits. his presence holds the terrifying power to create worlds and destroy evil… , but he is here to embrace me right now.
His desire is to meet you the way a bride groom is eager to come out of his hidden chamber for the one he loves.
Royal vesture – all the virtues of God with which he wants to clothe you
When blessing fills my days with simple happiness… Let me know it is the fragrance of your goodness as you walk near me.
You never kill except to raise to new life. You have killed in me the very thing that would have killed me. The life I now see in me is the life of God. Galatians 2:20. You lavishly pour on us your streams of grace.
Jesus weaves himself into the fibres of our being. We lose ourselves and lose nothing at all.
If you’re seeking after God, you can be sure he is seeking you much more. The longing of your soul is actually his doing. Your desire arises because he is passing near you. He created you the desire to find him and run after him.
He want you to go to him with all your needs and miserable failure. He desires that in every encounter, our spirits become more like he is.
It is life that rises us from spiritual sleep. Love is the transforming power. The more we allow love to enter, the more we grow to love others.
His spirit continually flows into this world through us to overcome the worlds meanness.
Love is the highest aim, the greatest practice you can cultivate in your soul. The more we follow the path of love, the more our old self is consumed and dies and the more God himself will be kindled in us.
Learn how to live free from self.
Love wants to wound us and open us up to life.
Nothing in this life is truly good because it is not lasting.
His greatest work is to free me from things that will always fail me in the end.
Purity and spirit is the freedom that comes as the old nature is consumed and dies and a new life is formed in us. It is the freedom to become self giving.
Spiritual attachments - the demand for only The sweetness we sense in the presence of God.
Follow Christ through all the thorns and learn all it means to deny ourselves and seek God, which will lead us through the death of our old nature and into the light of resurrection life.
When we want God above all, we are willing to follow in spirit, even in the most dry and dark and painful of times. This is the love of God. The cross will become your souls true strength.
Spiritual sight is to live in such a way that you are free from Solish attachments to anything this world has to offer.
Practice spiritual detachment by asking God to reveal to you every taste and desire you have for things of this world.
Our aim is to become so free and spirit that it no longer matters whether or not we have the earthly things we crave. Learn how to quiet your souls natural hungers and demands for the things of this life.
Think on the effects we witness where his presence has passed. In this way we begin to comprehend some aspects of his nature.
God is transcendent, above all things we can think or imagine.
Determine in your heart that you want to reach the highest place in God, learning how to live each day and pure, loving oneness with him. You’ll have to choose it every day many times each day.
Ask him to transform you and flood you with his holy light.
When his love first comes, we perceive it as fire, because his first work is to purify and cleanse the soul of sin. Its purpose is to make us clean in spirit so he may be seen in us. We’re being made ready for his glorious entrance.
The more we allow him to Kendall his burning light within us, the more it will drive out and replace the darkness there, until the light blazes out from within us with greater and greater intensity.
The highest purpose is to be transformed into the spiritual likeness of Christ. Transformation is the change in the souls substance.
His cleansing work in us is truly an act of friendship performed by the hand of the souls one true friend.
By wounding our soul, he destroys and consumes the imperfections and evil habits that think their terrible roots and us. The fire of love that will afterword unite with the soul and bring it glory is the same fire which we began by a sailing yet in order to cleanse and purify.
Fire penetrates into the log itself, until wood and flame are one. Fire transforms wood into fire.
Times of cleansing are full of bitterness and misery.
The dark fire of God is his remedy and medicine he gives to the soul to treat its many diseases, spiritual evils. He will stop at nothing to free us from darkness.
Spiritual greed is believing we should always be experiencing newer and better delights of the soul.
The path of Christ is the way of death and resurrection.
Seek to be filled with the attitude of Christ.
True devotion to God comes when we keep in view our lowly, empty state apart from Christ. Don’t fix your affection on having any praise and glory here below. Make it your goal to become emptied of self.
God’s spirit is a river that issues with graces.
The pure love of God transforms.
We must strip ourselves of desire to be loved and esteemed.
The quality of our spiritual work will be revealed by fire. He will expose motives of the heart.
The world understands through the senses.
Grace gives us the courage, strength, and boldness to let our old way of seeing things and are all passed way of dealing with life to be put to death. Grace opens the eyes of the soul to God. Grace is the touch and movement of gods living power within. The life of grace freeze the Spirit to fly powerfully above all things.
We must bring our fall and soul into the quiet rest of death, trusting and at peace in the hands of God. And so the soul begins to become like God in purity.
I desire to be strong and capable and and of myself keeps me from growing in dependence on God.
He looks on us and compassion, his eyes brimming over with flowing graces.
Help me see the goodness coming to me from you. We must silence the lowly senses that keep us blind to his constant work and movement all around us.
Your soul will live and become stronger as you choose to make it walk steadily, even when your soul is like a wasteland. Walk toward God when all seems black. This journey through dryness and darkness is God‘s chosen way of purging your soul of its need for lower, sensual Joyce, false joys that always fail.
When you feel the disapproval of others this is God revealing how anxious you are to be approved by man.
Perhaps God has sent people who misunderstand you to expose your pride. Disapproval, misunderstanding, rejection have the power to make us more like Christ.
Real liberty comes when we only listen for God’s voice and opinion.
Trials of the soul are measured out by the loving hand of God. He permits them to the degree we need to be purged.
He pours the living water of his spirit on our dryness and our soul softens.
As gods spirit cultivates, the only envy we will experience is to be more like those who exhibit humble obedience to Christ.
Sow acts of goodness and love for a harvest of eternal life.
In times of empty, silent, desert dryness, fix your soul and God alone.
Every spiritual insight is a gift from God.
If God helped some overcome sin, they become prouder and more presumptuous. Knowing your real weakness, you can draw upon his grace and power.
Complete abandonment to God is total humility. They know the darkness within them. They’ve learned to train their eyes on God, not themselves.
Hold a fast on criticalness and judgement.
Can an earthly lover describe in words what occurs in his heart when his beloved is near? Could he if he tried? Would he even want to? In the Souls most delicate communions, there is light and love beyond telling.
Learn to find rest in peace in the ever flowing life of God.
Restful inner prayer and faithful service were never intended to replace the other.
The way to enter into the quiet, flowing waters of God, is to progress daily in opening yourself to the Lord.
We can trust God implicitly and his ability to speak, but we cannot trust in our ability to hear him accurately.
Gods principal intent in speaking to us is conveying the spirit of the matter. When God speaks, we must assume he is referring first to the things that are most profitable and most important, and that is the life of the spirit.
The way of the cross is excepting trials which purify.
When we forget our low estate and think we’ve become spiritual and spiritually gifted, we’ve become wrong spirited and we are in grave danger.
The humble spirit of Christ is abasement.
The sure path is total trust and abandonment to the love of God.
Seek God, not his blessings and gifts.
Wrenching the soul free from desire for lower things will help us make great spiritual progress.
When the soul is restless, send it fleeing into the silent wilderness with God. Labour to get into this rest. Hebrews 4:11.
Make no provision for the flash. This is how you’ll be penetrated to the depths by God’s pure light.
Help me be fully human and by your spirit, how to live above my fall in humanity.
Detach self from things that leave us spiritually thirsty.
We press on and find God by seeking him in the time of absolute dryness, when nothing satisfies the inner man’s thirst.
Let me know myself, Lord. And then I will know you. – Saint Augustine
We must know our inner selves in order to distinguish our own voice from the true voice of God. We must know our secret selfish motives, so that we can set them aside and begin to move in the eternal purposes of God.
Our highest thoughts are utterly low. It must dawn on us that we know nothing at all, and only then are we open to drink from his spirit.
Learn to rise above dark night of natural senses and earthbound ways of thinking.
… Hopeful radiance of a bride who is preparing for union with her lover.
The more clear impure of the divine things are that God wants to show us, the darker and more hidden they appear at first. Consider the sun: the brighter it shines, the more it overwhelms and blind the eye, for the eye is too weak to take in such brightness. In the same way, the divine light that prepares us for greater union with God overwhelms the soul with darkness. And for a time, the soul is pitched in to the terrible state, because God is coming closer to the human soul. The new year God comes to us the greater are the clouds and the darkness that overtake us before his presence is revealed.
We are weak in our own understanding and must first be blinded and darkened by so tremendous a light.
God’s light brings colours beyond the spectrum of earths colors.
What passed before Moses might be described as the bright gleaming facets of God’s nature, his invisible qualities. His light is all his many virtues.
When he is near, the soul feels it’s being lifted and opened, rising as if on a current of pure and worthless joy.
He plant his “seeds of fire,” his attributes within you as he passes so his character will be reproduced in you.
He lives in the highest and best ways, with the love that’s at work to set you apart for himself.
He loves you liberally, with every intention to do good to you.
Show me your glory so what is prideful and we will be driven to its knees, worshipping in the light of you.
The peace that flows into us from the Lord satisfies the soul with full assurance that he is still for us, even as were being taken through fire, in which we can be changed into his likeness.
God sends dryness to wean you from feelings and comforts, so you grow and become mature, helping you learn to live above the souls demands.
Receive all S coming from God. Every challenge is beneficial if it causes us to run to him.
Fortitude, he alone is our everlasting wall of strength.
The humbling process is gods way of raising in your heart and new love for all men.
He may use anyone at all to teach us and direct us on our way.
Hidden in God, no evil word spoken against me has any power.
God gives to us exactly what we and in the way we need to receive it.
When you seek some new word from God, you’re in danger of pushing a side the one perfect word that he’s already given.
Nothing can be as satisfying as seeing Christ with the eyes and understanding of your inner man.
By living in Christ, we find abundant medicine for all our spiritual elements.
His light must infuse our darkness.
Forgive me all the things I asked for that were so senseless, for they were coming from a blind man. Forgive me my impatience as you mould me into the image of your making. Your comforts and blessings, and not you alone. Whatever you desire for me, mould me and make me desire the same thing. whatever you don’t want from me, tear it from my heart.
Discernment: fixing my eyes on his face to read his slightest change of expression, what is meant for me and what is not.
The more he purifies, the more beautifully his brightness burns. he burns inwardly with sweetness.
God is at work to enlarge the capacity of theSoul. He must create this holy space within us little by little.
He is the sweetness for which every soul longs.
This is the transformation: you’ll be so addressed in the hand of God that he’ll be able to teach you anything he desires.
God’s slightest touch could utterly annihilate. Yet his only desire is to embrace us with the love that knows no limits. his presence holds the terrifying power to create worlds and destroy evil… , but he is here to embrace me right now.
His desire is to meet you the way a bride groom is eager to come out of his hidden chamber for the one he loves.
Royal vesture – all the virtues of God with which he wants to clothe you
When blessing fills my days with simple happiness… Let me know it is the fragrance of your goodness as you walk near me.
You never kill except to raise to new life. You have killed in me the very thing that would have killed me. The life I now see in me is the life of God. Galatians 2:20. You lavishly pour on us your streams of grace.
Jesus weaves himself into the fibres of our being. We lose ourselves and lose nothing at all.
July 11, 2023
This is another one of those books that has sat on my shelf for a long time. It’s one that I picked up years ago and decided it was an “NRN–not right now” kind of book. Feeling a bit spiritually dry, I dusted it off and finally finished it last month. While there were a few very good devotions, particularly on spiritual dryness and approval, not as many of them landed the way I had hoped. There was a disjointedness to this work for me. It seems like most of the material that did land was from John of the Cross’s work, Dark Night of the Soul, and I think perhaps I would be better off reading that in its translated entirety. I’m not writing off this author, but I think this series of devotions–Rekindling the Inner Fire–is a no for me from here on.
November 17, 2025
I hadn't spent a lot of time with St John of the Cross's words and these 40 devotionals were a great introduction to the depth of his intimacy with the Lord!
Each day's reading is typically 2 pages and closes with a very short prayer (perhaps too short). There were a few days where the reading was replaced by a prayer which I found particularly beneficial.
I think to gain the greatest benefit from these words requires a second or even third reading to allow them to truly sink in. Accordingly, I've decided to read it through again.
Each day's reading is typically 2 pages and closes with a very short prayer (perhaps too short). There were a few days where the reading was replaced by a prayer which I found particularly beneficial.
I think to gain the greatest benefit from these words requires a second or even third reading to allow them to truly sink in. Accordingly, I've decided to read it through again.
August 25, 2020
This book is beautiful and a great nightly read to end your day with thoughts and feelings of the love of Christ. It truly did set my spirit free.
December 16, 2023
Essential readings of the sixteenth-century Spanish "mystical doctor."
Arranged as a forty-day course of devotional readings in a modern paraphrase.
Arranged as a forty-day course of devotional readings in a modern paraphrase.
January 22, 2014
Wow! David Hazard has done a great job compiling excerpts from the writings of St. John of the Cross. The result, a 40 day devotional guide to point one deeper into the spiritual life of Christianity. Where many books trail off into a mysticism that is essentially universalism, this books maintains a strong Christian identity.
Each of the 40 entries begins with one or two Scriptures related to the topic, a selection from John of the Cross and then a closing prayer.
The book is imminently readable, goes deep, and will require more than one reading for the reader to gain the most possible from the content.
I highly recommend this book to everyone who is looking to go deeper in his or her spiritual life!
Each of the 40 entries begins with one or two Scriptures related to the topic, a selection from John of the Cross and then a closing prayer.
The book is imminently readable, goes deep, and will require more than one reading for the reader to gain the most possible from the content.
I highly recommend this book to everyone who is looking to go deeper in his or her spiritual life!
March 28, 2010
An excellent selection of excerpts from John of the Cross' writings, with Bible verses and prayers. A wonderful Christian devotional book. My favorite so far from the Rekindling the Inner Fire series.
November 5, 2011
A powerful experience!
December 21, 2013
Always something new each time I read it..
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews