“What you desire deep within your heart is inconsistent with what the world is offering. The reason you feel such an inward struggle is because your innermost being wants something but your flesh is pulling you into something else. This is the Great War that you are faced with every day. Every waking moment, the flesh is inviting you to consider some ‘legitimate’ means of earthly relaxation: nothing sinful, nothing immoral. It’s presented as just another way of taking off steam. And everyone is doing it. But whenever you consider this, something deep within you revolts and says NO! I can’t fully understand why but whenever I do practice this ‘ordinarily-acceptable-practices’, I feel defiled. I feel sinful. I feel wasted. I feel drawn back, pulled away from the progress I had made in touching the Holy of Holies.

Don’t get me wrong; through Christ, I have already entered into the Holy of Holies. I am already in the presence of the Most High God. I am not ‘doing’ so as to enter into the salvation that has been purchased already for me by Christ. And herein is the paradox. I am already in the Holy Presence, but I desire to touch, to see, to experience, that which I already have. So, certain ‘normal practices’ are not okay for those who are in the Holy of Holies. Others can play around as they like and watch what they like and roam the earth as they please, but I can’t allow any of these pleasures to soak into my spirit. Even if I see and enter into the pleasures of the earth, I must be careful not to let them satisfy me for it is in this earthly satisfaction that my greatest undoing happens. It is in this personal pleasure seeking or pleasure finding that my hunger for the Great Reality of God begins to wane. I am on a lonely journey that not many can understand. Truth be told, I don’t often understand myself. But I know I am on the right path; I am seeking a celestial transcendental. I know the Kingdom of God is here, and I am in it. I just need to taste it more and more and see it more and more clearly. I need to touch it and embrace it and experience it and dwell in it more tangibly, even while I am in this flesh.’

‘O Lord, can You not have mercy on me and have my mortal body grasp and enter into this, which my soul so gravely desire?’”