Absent from Flesh! O Blissful Thought!

I often think about this day, saints. The moment my spirit sheds this canopy of flesh and is released incoruptible and immortal into the presence of blissful glory forever. Oh! Hallelujah for ever and ever and ever and ever! This day will come soon, saints! Let us be good, faithful, obedient soldiers meanwhile, wearing the armor for this fleeting vapor of time - and then step into everlasting glory and holiness!

Absent from flesh! O blissful thought!
What unknown joys this moment brings!
Freed from the mischiefs sin has brought,
From pains, and fears, and all their springs.

Absent from flesh! Illustrious day!
Surprising scene! triumphant stroke
That rends the prison of my clay;
And I can feel my fetters broke.

Absent from flesh! then rise, my soul,
Where feet nor wings could never climb,
Beyond the heav’ns, where planets roll,
Measuring the cares and joys of time.

I go where God and glory shine,
His presence makes eternal day:
My all that’s mortal I resign,
For angels wait and point my way.

- Isaac Watts

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/b/s/absentff.htm

Wholeheartedly Paul,

How felt is;

[i]For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed ... For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. ... whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:... We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.[/i] 2Co 5:1-8

[i]For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.[/i]
Rom 8:22,23

([i]Ravenhill noting Livingstone[/i])

[i]In Scotland, nine miles out of Glasgow, there’s a great big house, a national memorial to David Livingstone. In it there is a model that shows the room where he died, where for years and years he prayed. It’s like some of those houses in India that are made of bamboo and leaves woven in. And there he is, kneeling over a bed, if you can call it that—two bamboo rods with some leaves on it—and a candle flickering there. They said every night he would kneel at that bed and you would hear him crying with his hands raised, "God, when will the wound of this world’s sin be healed?"[/i]

"But as it is written, [b]Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."[/b]

Oh, dear brother, this verse makes my soul leap in ecstasy! We can't even fathom. This bloody sea is so worth sailing! The beauty and riches and bliss of Heaven's shore cannot be fathomed by our mortal understanding. There are no adequate superlatives in the English language. If abiding in a measured, temporal presence of the Holy Spirit here on earth brings such rapturous bliss in the flesh - oh, it overwhelms me to think I shall abide in the unrestricted blaze of His eternal majesty in an unspeakably glorious paradise for all eternity. A trillion, billion years will not even be a grain of sand! In light of this, what are a few sea battles en route to the shore? Pirates and Armadas waged bloody, terrible warfare for Caesar's gold. How much more should a Spirit-indwelled, fire-baptized child of God wage war to gain Jehovah's treasury?

Brother Paul

Brother!

If abiding in a measured, temporal presence of the Holy Spirit here on earth brings such rapturous bliss in the flesh - oh, it overwhelms me to think I shall abide in the unrestricted blaze of His eternal majesty in an unspeakably glorious paradise for all eternity.

May God hasten the day we fall at His feet at seeing His face.