Indescribable Peace and Wild Delight

The great mystics speak about the indescribable with different words describing the same event.  It's called by many names like the beatific vision, the Divine dark, the cloud of unknowing, the portal of heaven to name a few.  The mystic more describes how he feels than what he knows.  Knowing is swallowed up in unknowing.  What is unknown to the intellect is taken hold of by the heart.  What is darkness to the intellect is radiant and bright to the heart. 

God enlarges the heart by deepening the soul.  Some people call this spiritual ecstasy, heavenly raptures, trances, out of body experiences, heavenly visions and transports.  What I call it is being overcome by the Spirit.  None of the categories of the intellect apply to what I refer to as mystic love or Divine love.  This spiritual union of the soul to God will not be known to the heart until we acknowledge that it is unknown to the intellect.

One day when I was in the Spirit, I fully understood what was happening in my mind which continued to reflect, judge, and evaluate everything that was happening.  My body was possessed by another power or force which I had no control over.  My mind could tell my arm or hand to move but it could not respond.  There was a man praying over me who said he could see the Holy Spirit glowing over my whole body except for my mind which was like a dark area.

I originally understood this all to mean that my mind simply could not fathom what was going on spiritually by the natural faculties of the mind.  Although there is truth in this, there was so much more going on than that I now realize.  There is a spiritual darkness to our fallen minds which are so attached to the world that the mind struggles to believe much less interpret correctly the ways of the Spirit and heavenly realities.

God is absolute reality and is ultimately unknowable to our finite minds.  Our intellect is dark in understanding the deepness and depths of the presence of God.  Here was a divine moment and span of time where God anointed and supercharged my body spiritually as God's divine temple.  It was in events like this I encountered God's presence in dimensions I had never experienced before. It was here God began a new work in me that is only now many years later starting to come to fruition.

It was here I felt God's indescribable peace and wild delight.  It was here God stamped on my life, "I am with you always, even to the end of time."  It was here God forever showed me that I am His and I am utterly lost without Him.  It was here God started a new work within me and God always finishes was God starts.

The Cloud of Unknowing and Clouded Thinking

"Examine me, O Lord, and prove me.  Try my mind and my heart.  For Your loving-kindness is before my eyes, and I have walked in Your truth" (Psalm 26:2-3)

What we discover from reading the great mystics to our own life experiences are things like the more we learn, the more we know we don't know.  The more we love, the more we know how little we love.  The more we give, how little we do give.  The Mystics call this the cloud of unknowing where we know we don't know but pursue knowledge and love nevertheless.  But the more we are led by the Spirit of God and listen to God's voice, we learn much about ourselves and what comes from deep within us.  As we listen to God whisper to our spirit, usually through our conscience, it's not our voice but the voice of The Other.  To be filled with the Spirit of God is to be filled with dreams and visions from God.

The more I listen to the inner voice of God's Spirit, the more I realize how clouded and convoluted are my own thoughts.  I discover God wants to get closer even though my own thoughts and mind wants to wander away from God.  My highest desire is to be like God in Christ.  My soul is ablaze by the fire of the Holy Spirit.  I hunger, thirst, pant after the Living God.  My deepest yearnings long for deeper intimacy with my Creator.  God is reshaping me as I become more aware of the nearness of God.  If there is something God is saying to His people and His Bride the church this year of 2015 is "God wants greater intimacy with you."

Without God's grace, I will fall on mine own.  Without God's help I am nothing.  I am lost, asleep, and wandering about in circles.  Directionless and aimless unless the Holy touches me and reorders my steps.  I become one with God and in union with God when Christ through His Spirit leads me into the magnificent presence of the Father of heaven.  When the divine Trinity stares into my soul, I am changed and my spirit leaps for joy.

If I am going to break out of deception and the many ways the world lies to me, it will only happen when I think the very thoughts of God by having the mind of Christ.  When the Holy Spirit penetrates the deepest parts of my soul, everything is laid bare and exposed.  It is then I am able to see myself more clearly and hear God's voice more clearly.  The prophet Isaiah says,

"My thoughts are not your thoughts; nor your ways my ways . . . For my thoughts are above your thoughts." (55:8-9) 

My thoughts are so distant and different than God's thoughts but then God's Spirit of fire comes and changes my thoughts into His thoughts.  Keep your thoughts on God.  Picture yourself in the arms of your loving father.  Sit at Jesus feet and learn from Him.  Say the name of Jesus several times until you enter into another realm, where heaven intersects with earth.  Where the veil is torn away and you smell, taste, and touch heaven.  Cultivate the holy habit of thinking the thoughts of God by having the mind of Christ.

Understand that when you seek the thoughts of God the enemy will attack you.  Never underestimate the Devil who you are at war with.  Think higher thoughts and do things so impossible that unless God is in it, it will fail.  Every day is another opportunity to yield, surrender, and accept God's grace.  Let God's grace fill your cup to overflowing.