Really
Really
“Every soul of us who thus comes into recognition of the life will know that God is present with us. We shall see God. His personal presence "breathes in the air and shines in the light; it streams from the hills and descends to the plain, and sweetly distills in the dew and the rain." You sing it; do you believe it? Now when we see that, we have God before our face, and we shall not be moved. We shall live as in the presence of God, and shall not sin; for it is simply impossible for a man to sin while consciously standing before the face of God, recognizing his presence around him as in him. Sin would take us from God; but when we rejoice in the presence of the face of God, we simply assent to his wish that sin may be washed out of us, that the light of his countenance may consume the sin that is in us, that his body may feed us, and strengthen us against sin.
... "These things I say unto you, that your joy may be full."
How happy I have been as one ray of light after another has come to me. Some time ago, when I was out taking my morning walk, and the soft refreshing breeze was fanning my cheek, I remembered that the breeze that blew was the breath of God's nostrils. He was blowing his own breath upon my face. You have often thought of the wind kissing the cheek, and then that scripture came to my mind, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine." What a grand thing to know that one is in such close connection with it. [Voice: Amen!] This is happiness. To awaken in the morning, and to feel that life through the whole body, and to know that I am in personal connection with it, to know that God is not only in that room, round about me, but that his life is in me.
Just one thing more. We want to see how it is carried out. God has only one life and it is undivided. There are not two lives, there is just one life. That life cleanses us; that life, flowing continually from God, through us, unhindered, cleanses us from all sin.
Do not get the idea that we shall grow into a place where we cannot sin any more in this world. This sinful, mortal body will struggle for the mastery as long as we are in the world, until Christ shall come, and make this corruptible body incorruptible, and this mortal part immortal. But Christ has power over all flesh, and he demonstrated this when he came in the likeness of sinful, flesh, and condemned sin in the flesh; and so when we consciously live by the faith of Christ; when he is in us by his own life, living in us, he represses the sin, and we are masters, instead of the flesh being the master.
Just a thought about this life that comes to us in the air: The Lord used that as an illustration of the Spirit, and we read, "All the while my breath is in me, and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils. My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit." "There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration [breathing in] of the Almighty giveth them understanding." The Spirit of God is to be our spirit, so that the mind of God will be our mind; and there is a possibility of our so recognizing the life that is manifest, and yielding to God, that the Spirit of God will animate our bodies, that God's Spirit will use our brains with which to think. That is what they are made for-the organs by which his Spirit would manifest itself in human intelligence. Our muscles were made as organs by which his Spirit would manifest itself in human activity. Then we will be one with him, drawing the life direct from the throne, as the water of life comes from it, and the breath comes from his treasures.”
April 14, 1901 EJW, GCB 222-223