Preparation

But it may be asked, "How shall this preparation be obtained?"  I answer, by waiting patiently, yet watchfully and intently, upon God.  Here thou must not think thy own thoughts, nor speak thy own words, which indeed is the silence of the holy cross, but be sequestered from all the confused imaginations that are apt to throng and press upon the mind in those holy retirements.  It is not for thee to think to overcome the Almighty by the most composed matter, cast into the aptest phrase.  No, no.  One groan, one sigh from a wounded soul, a heart touched with true remorse, excels and prevails with God.  Wherefore, stand still in thy mind, wait to feel something that is divine to prepare and dispose thee to worship truly and acceptably.  And thus taking up the cross, and shutting the doors and windows of the soul against everything that would interrupt this attendance upon God, how pleasant soever the object be in itself, how lawful or needful at another season, the power of the Almighty will break in, his spirit will work and prepare the heart.  'Tis he that discovers and presses wants upon the soul, and when it cries it is he alone that supplies them.  Petitions not springing from such a sense and preparation are formal and fictitious. 

from No Cross No Crown,  by William Penn.