Holy first impulses

Sometimes I dream dreams where I do immoral or cowardly things I would not do in real life. This is not good, and I find no comfort in the notion that "a dream is just a dream." Or that I am not responsible for my dreams. My view of the matter is that if I am upright in my waking state but reprobate in my REM state, then my waking righteousness is just a veneer stretched over deep, fetid waters. "Will the real Andrée please stand up?"

God's Word says, "Be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). I want to be so filled with the Spirit that his hegemony extends to the extremities of my being, in body, mind, and spirit. So filled with the Spirit that my most spontaneous ejaculations, those emitted when I am caught off guard, or injured, or insulted, or threatened, are little sudden oozings of the Spirit's famed fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

I will consider that I have arrived at some new shore of sanctification-at the aspired state of being "filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19)-when at last my dreams, my daydreams, and my first impulses are like Christ's. No more "divided heart" (Hosea 10:2). Just the freedom of being slave to Christ. Death of the old man and "reigning in life" of the new (Romans 5:17). Christ being all and in all.