Waking Up 2

There are so many thoughts being stirred up in me with regard to what I have shared in the previous post along with other reading and writings I am doing.
Funny, these words just popped into my consciousness...Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Who the Son sets free, is free indeed!
Rich

The spiritual life is something which goes altogether beyond the range of man's mind. It is a very blessed thing to have that settled - provided there has really taken place that new birth, and there has been no positive, deliberate, conscious violation of the law of the new life, by which that life has been paralyzed, and shut up, and rendered for the time being inoperative because of disobedience; providing that we are going on in the light as we have it, and in obedience to the Lord. There will be times when the SENSE of the Lord will have disappeared from the realm of our souls, and when everything in the realm of our minds seems to be confusion and contradiction. Nevertheless the fact abides, the union is there. He is more faithful than our feelings.

It is a great comfort to know that, when our feelings vary, and our sensations change, when perhaps by reason of physical and mental weariness those stronger spiritual sensations, as we would call them, disappear, and for a time we seem to drop down out of the realm of the higher ecstasies of the spiritual life, and things get flat. But after a little while it passes, and we find the Lord is still there and we go on again. We come to understand that it was not the Lord who changed, but we were just having a bad time, and our bad time brought no basic change. We can cripple God by disobedience; we can paralyze Divine life by sinning against light; but even then "...if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father..." John puts that in his letter in connection with fellowship, and it is a comfort. It simply says this: "...our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son..." We are to "...walk in the light, as He is in the light." As we do so "...the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth [Greek: keeps on cleansing] us from all sin."

The union is right deep down there in our spirit, deeper than the soul life in its variations, deeper than thought, deeper than feeling, yes, deeper than consciousness. In this matter our consciousness may not reach to the depths of God's work. You ask: "What do you mean by that?" We mean exactly what the Book of Leviticus means, when we find there a distinct provision for someone who sins unconsciously. Is there such a thing as sinning unconsciously? That means that you have no consciousness about it, and yet it is sin. Consciousness is not the final rule. The final rule is God's standard, not our consciousness. Our consciousness, after all, is limited. God's standard is unlimited. God has provided in relation to His own standard, and not to the measure of our consciousness. That ought to help us. God has made provision right to the end of His demands, and not just to the measure of how much we are awake to those demands. God's work is deeper than anything that belongs to us.