All bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless

All bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless but as they serve to arrive at the union with God by love. He had well considered this, and found it the shortest way to go straight to Him by a continual exercise of love, and doing all things for His sake.

The most excellent method he had found of going to God was that of doing our common business (as far as we are capable) purely for the love of God. . . . That our sanctification did not depend on our changing our works, but in doing for God’s sake what we commonly do for our own.

Knowing by the light of faith that God was present, he contented himself with directing all his actions to Him, doing them with a desire to please Him, let what would come of it.

-from the account of Brother Lawrence given in “ The Practice of the Presence of God ”