For too long, the Church has taught you religion when God gave you relationship. You've been told about God when Jesus died to give you a Father. You've developed your mind when you should have been developing your spirit. You know your rights but you've never taken your place. You've might heard a lot of sermons but the Word has never increased in you.
You've been working on the wrong part of yourself your whole life. Think about it. How much time have you spent trying to improve your body? The diets, the workouts, the supplements. How much money have you poured into developing your mind, the books, the courses, the degrees. You've invested everything into the parts of you that are going to decay and die. But there's a part of you that you've completely ignored. A part that never grows old. A part that's eternal.
A part that's in the same class as God himself.
Man was created in the image and likeness of God. You are in the same class with God. God is aspirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Psychology has called this inward man a subconscious mind. They've recognized that conscience is a voice from an inward personality.
But the natural man doesn't understand the things of the spirit. Here's the problem. The natural man can't know himself or know God. So the student of psychology, unless he's received eternal life, can't understand himself. He's studying something he doesn't have the equipment to comprehend. This hidden man of the heart is the real you. Your spirit is like God. It never grows old.
It's neither mortal nor immortal. It's eternal. Your body is mortal and will become immortal at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The senses that convey all knowledge to your human reason belong to the body and they will grow old with the body. But your spirit, that's the part that gets recreated when you're born again.
Apostle Paul tells Timothy that life and immortality came to light through Jesus Christ. Life here is Zoe, the nature of God. No one knew anything about that until Jesus came and unveiled himself to man. Apostle Paul gives us a glimpse of the three-fold man, spirit, soul, and body.
The spirit is the part that knows God. This knowing is an intimate relationship as one.
The soul is the intellect that knows the sensuous things. The physical body is the house in which we live.
God says that this three-fold man is to be preserved entire without blame at the coming of the Lord. Before man fell in the garden of Eden, his spirit dominated his reasoning faculties. After he fell, the ffive senses gained the ascendancy.
Before he sinned, his body was eternal like his spirit. But when he sinned, his body became mortal, and his spirit became a partaker of spiritual death. Man not only died spiritually, but his mind became darkened, subjected to the adversary.
Apostle Paul gives us a graphic picture. The invisible things of God since the beginning of creation were clearly seen.
Man lived in that realm before he fell.
But then knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings. Apostle Paul prays that God might give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, illuminated, that the eyes of your spirit shall be so illumined that you may know the riches of the inheritance in Christ.
He's speaking here of the new creation, man, the man who has received eternal life into his spirit. You see, the senses have blinded man's reasoning faculties.
Believers are described as children of God, but they walk in the senses.
They've never developed a spiritual life. They may have been Christians for years, but they've never developed or grown. Since knowledge governs them, when their recreated spirits should have the ascendancy, the new birth is the recreation of the spirit of man. That recreated spirit is supposed to gain the ascendancy over the reasoning faculties and govern them. But in the undeveloped believer, the reasoning faculties govern the spirit instead. When by reason of time the recreated spirit should have gained the ascendancy, they're still living under the dominion of their bodies. Apostle Paul talks about presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice and being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Here is a believer whose mind has never been renewed. His body is governing him. His mind can't be renewed until he begins to practice and live the Word. He won't know the will of the Father. He won't know how to walk in the will of God.
If you're starting to see yourself in this and you want more truth like this, read on, what I'm about to show you will completely transform how you approach your walk with God.
Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life". This is not a light that comes to the human reason, but a light that comes to the human spirit, this hidden man of the heart. Apostle Paul calls him the inner man. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. You need to understand that the human spirit can be developed. The human spirit is capable of marvelous development before it's recreated as well as after. After we're recreated, the Holy Spirit through the Word can lead us into marvelous development. And here's a strange fact.
The main stream church has never sought to develop the human spirit, the recreated human spirit. It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on developing the mind that receives all its impulses from the senses. It has spent vast fortunes developing the physical body. But the real man, this hidden man of the heart, has never been developed.
Apostle Peter says, "But let it be the hidden man of the heart in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price. "
This hidden man of the heart is as capable of development along spiritual lines as the reasoning faculties are along intellectual lines. What we call conscience is the voice of the hidden man of the heart."
Apostle Paul says, "Herein I also exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense toward God and men always." Here is real spiritual development. He says, "I exercise myself to have a conscience that is always in harmony with the will of my Father." The conscience is the voice of the human spirit. It is governed by human reasonings and environment before it's recreated. But after it receives eternal life, it can become the voice of God. There is no limit to the development of the human spirit.
Apostle Paul says, "For our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we behaved ourselves in the world." The fleshly wisdom he speaks of is sense knowledge. We must develop our recreated spirits and let them govern us. I have found this true.
A believer can so develop his spirit that in every crisis of his life, his spirit can get the will of the Father instantly. And if he follows the leading of His Spirit instead of the reasoning faculties, he never makes a mistake in the investment of his money or in the choosing of his companions. He would practically never step out of the love walk.
Right now, I want you to speak these words. "My spirit is being renewed day by day." Don't just read it and move on. Write it out on a piece of paper. Declare it. My spirit is being renewed day by day. Because when you declare this, you're making a commitment to start developing the part of you that matters most. The war is between your senses and your recreated human spirit. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." In short, I am reality. If a man develops his spirit, he can walk in this reality of truth and he can enjoy all the fruits of eternal life.
Apostle Paul says, "Wherefore we faint not though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. The physical decays grows old and feeble. But the inner man can receive continual strength and health from eternal life, the nature of God, so that it's renewed day by day.
This inward man never grows old. And if we learn to take advantage of our rights in Christ, there's no doubt that we would live to a great age. Apostle Paul suggests that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life. The physical body is mortal, subject to death. Here is the suggestion that this mortal body be swallowed up of Zoe, the nature of God. Now, he that wrought us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us the earnest of the spirit. The earnest of the spirit is the recreation.
He's given us this taste, this sample of the life of God in our spirits. Now, he says, "I want your body swallowed up of of this life." Jesus said how we, I am come that you might have life and have it abundantly. There is offered to us an abundance of the nature of God imparted to our spirits so that they will utterly dominate our mortal bodies. That would suggest a perfect physical body with no disease. Satan's power and influence eliminated.
What if there could be groups of believers who would develop this hidden man of the heart until it actually dominated the physical, until mortality would be swallowed up of life, Zoe, God's life. We would be spirit ruled. The hidden man of the heart would govern the reasoning faculties. The five senses would be under the dominion of the spirit. The new creation would rule the physical body. The name of Jesus would become a living reality. Its authority over diseases and over demons, a part of our daily walk, just as eating and drinking are part of our daily experience.
Apostle John says, "You are of God, my little children, and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world."
We've never given place to that fact.
Apostle Paul says, "For though we walk in the senses, our warfare is not according to the senses. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the senses, but they are of the spirit, and they are mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds. Our spirits should cast down reasonings born of the senses and bring them all into captivity to the lordship of Christ."
In part two, next I'm going to show you exactly how to develop this hidden man of the heart and let your spirit take its rightful place of dominance in your life. Because once your spirit starts ruling instead of your senses, everything changes.
You need to understand some facts that will completely transform how you see yourself.
Man is in God's class of being. Your spirit is capable of receiving God's nature so that you may be dominated by God's revelation.
The spirit of the natural man is in union with Satan. He's ruled by his physical body. The senses dominate him. His reasoning faculties can't know God or understand God. They can't know the hidden man of the heart. The hidden man that lives in the physical body. He's a total stranger to sense knowledge. So only the psychologist who is born again, who has given place to his own spirit can know himself his own nature. Then God renews the mind brings it into subjection to the recreated spirit through obedience to the Word. There can be no renewing of the mind without practicing living doing the Word. The natural human spirit has been governed and ruled by the senses. So it will be difficult for the recreated spirit to gain the ascendancy over the sense-led mind. But this must be done. We've never recognized that faith is a product of the recreated human spirit. That dominating faith means a dominating recreated spirit. Love is the fruit of the recreated human spirit. Consequently, natural man can't love in the New Testament sense. His love is dominated by his senses. The recreated human spirit's love gains the ascendancy over the senses. Love is not a product of the reasoning faculties. The spirit alone can love, can develop faith, and the other beautiful fruits apostle Paul talks about. Here's what most people don't understand.
You've been trying to develop faith in your mind. You've been trying to manufacture love through willpower. You've been reading books and listening to sermons, trying to get your brain to believe harder, to love better, to have more faith. And you wonder why it never works, why you keep failing, why you can't sustain it. It is because you're working on the wrong part of yourself. Faith doesn't come from your mind. So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Love doesn't come from your emotions. These are fruits of your recreated spirit. And your spirit has been sitting there undeveloped, untrained, ignored while you've been pouring all your energy into your physical body and your natural mind.
Think about the last time you tried to have faith for something. You probably sat there and tried to convince yourself. You repeated positive affirmations. You quoted scriptures at yourself. You worked yourself up emotionally. And when the pressure came, when the symptoms got worse, when the situation got darker, all that mental faith collapsed like a house of cards.
Why? Because it was coming from your reasoning faculties, not from your spirit. Your mind was trying to do a job it was never designed to do.
Your recreated spirit is where God lives. Your recreated spirit is where faith is produced. Your recreated spirit is where love flows from. And you've been starving it while feeding your mind and your body.
Apostle Paul says,"Though we walk in the flesh, we don't war according to the flesh." Let me put it this way. Though we walk in these physical bodies with senses that are constantly screaming at us, our warfare isn't fought with sense knowledge. The weapons of our warfare aren't physical.
They're spiritual and they're mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds.
What are these strongholds? They're reasonings born of the senses. They're the thoughts and beliefs that your physical body and your natural mind have built up over years of being dominated by what you can see, hear, taste, touch, smell and feel inside. They're every high thing that the senses have erected against the knowledge of God. And you're supposed to be bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, not with your mind. With your spirit, your recreated spirit casts down those sense-based reasonings and brings them under the lordship of Christ. If you're getting revelation right now about why you've been struggling so much, read on, because what I'm about to show you is going to give you the practical steps to develop your spirit and let it take dominance. Here's what needs to happen. Your recreated spirit needs to gain ascendancy over your sensuled mind. Before the fall, Adam's spirit dominated his reasoning faculties.
After the fall, the senses gained the ascendancy. And when you got born again, your spirit was recreated, but nobody taught you how to develop it. Nobody taught you how to let it rule. So, you're walking around as a new creation with an undeveloped spirit that's being bossed around by your five senses and your carnal mind. Your body tells you you're sick and your mind agrees and your spirit sits there knowing the truth but unable to speak up because it's weak and undeveloped. Your bank account tells you you're broke and your mind panics and your spirit knows that all your needs are supplied but can't override the fear because it has not been trained to dominate. Someone offends you and your emotions flare up and your mind starts rehearsing all the ways you've been wronged and your spirit knows you're supposed to walk in love, but it's been so neglected that it can't govern your response.
This is why believers live defeated lives. Not because they're not saved, not because God has not given them everything they need, but because their spirits have never been developed to the point where they can actually rule their minds and bodies. Now, confess this truth right now. My spirit rules over my senses. Declare it. My spirit rules over my senses.
Because you need to start establishing this truth in your consciousness.
19:51 So, how do you develop your spirit? How do you train it to take dominance? You practice the word. You live the word.
20:00 You do the word. There's no other way.
20:04 Your mind gets renewed through obedience to the word. Your spirit gets strong through practicing what God says. When 20:12 your body screams that you're sick, your spirit speaks. 20:16 By his stripes, I was healed. And you don't just say it once and hope for the best. You say it until your spirit's voice becomes louder than your body's symptoms. You say it until your recreated spirit dominates your sense knowledge. When fear tries to grip you, your spirit declares, "God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind." You speak it. You live it. You refuse to let your senses and emotions dictate your response. When someone wrongs you, your spirit rises up in the love nature of God and responds with forgiveness and grace instead of bitterness and revenge.
Not because you feel like it, but because your developed spirit is governing your undeveloped emotions.
This is what apostle Paul means when he says to exercise yourself. He exercised himself to have a conscience void of offense toward God and men. He trained his spirit. He developed it. He let it gain the ascendancy until it became the dominant force in his life.
And here's what happens when your spirit is developed and ruling. You can get the will of the father instantly in every crisis.
Your spirit becomes so sensitive to God's voice that you don't have to agonize and wonder and second guessess.
You just know because your spirit which is one with God's spirit tells you. You make right decisions about your money because your spirit is guiding you, not your greed or your fear.
You choose right relationships because your spirit discerns, not your emotions or your loneliness.
22:11 You walk in the love walk consistently because your spirit is governing, not your wounded feelings or your pride.
Apostle Paul says, "Our outward man is decaying, but our inward man is renewed day by day. Your body is getting older. Your mind might not be as sharp as it used to be. But your spirit can be renewed every single day. It can receive continual strength and health from eternal life, the nature of God. And here's the incredible part. Apostle Paul suggests that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.
Your physical body, which is subject to death and disease, can be swallowed up, drowned in a sea of Zoe, the life of God. Jesus said he came that you might have life and have it abundantly. An abundance of the nature of God imparted to your spirit so that your spirit utterly dominates your mortal body.
Imagine groups of believers who developed this hidden man of the heart until it actually dominated the physical until mortality was swallowed up of life. spirit ruled people whose recreated spirits governed their reasoning faculties whose senses were under the dominion of the spirit whose new creation ruled the the physical body. The name of Jesus Christ would become a living reality in their lives. Its authority over diseases and demons would be part of their daily walk as natural as eating and drinking. Apostle John says, "Greater is HE that is in you than he that is in the world." But we've never become God inside-minded.
We've never given place to that fact. So here's what you do starting today. Stop trying to develop faith in your mind. Stop trying to work up love in your emotions. Start developing your spirit.
Spend time in the Word. Not just reading it with your mind, but letting it penetrate your spirit.
Speak the word out loud. Obey the word immediately when you know what to do. When your senses try to dominate you, speak from your spirit. When your mind tries to reason you out of God's promises, bring those thoughts into captivity with the authority of your recreated spirit. When your body tries to dictate how you feel and what you can do, let your spirit filled with the nature of God rule over it. This is the life God intended for you. Not sense ruled, spirit ruled, not dominated by what you see and feel. Dominated by the nature of God, living in your recreated spirit. Your spirit is in God's class. Your spirit has received his nature.
Your spirit is capable of unlimited development. Stop neglecting it. Stop feeding your mind and starving your spirit. Start letting the hidden man of the heart take its rightful place of dominance in your life. Because when your spirit rules, you walk in victory. When your spirit rules, faith is natural. When your spirit rules, love flows.
When your spirit rules, you're more than a conqueror. Live like it.
You've been to church for years. You've heard sermons. You've listened to teachings. You've sat through Bible studies. But here's a question that might sting a little. When was the last time you actually heard the Word of God? I don't mean when was the last time someone quoted a verse or used the Bible to make a point. I mean, when was the last time the living, breathing Word of God hit your heart so hard that it actually changed something in your life?
Look at what happened in the early church.
When they preached, something was different. The book of Acts tells us that those who received the Word were baptized and about 3,000 souls were added in one day.
Not those who heard a good message. Not those who enjoyed the preaching. 26:44 Those who received the word. A little later it says many of them that heard the word believed. And the number came to about 5,000.
Notice it doesn't say they heard the apostles. It says they heard the Word. There's a difference. You can listen to a preacher and walk away entertained.
But when you hear the Word, something happens inside you that you can't explain. The twelve apostles, these ordinary fishermen who had no formal education, said something that should shake us. It is not fit that we should forsake the Word of God to serve tables. They were being asked to do good things, necessary things, practical things. But they said no. Why?
Because they understood something most churches today have forgotten. The Word holds a place that nothing else can fill. They said, "We will continue steadfastly in prayer and in the ministry of the Word." And here's what happened next. That's absolutely stunning. The Word of God increased, and the number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. Did you catch that? The Word increased. Not the church programs, not the ministries, not the buildings. The Word itself increased. It grew. It multiplied in the hearts of people. And when the word increases, everything else follows. Think about your own life right now. Is the Word increasing in you? Or has it been the same stale verses you've been reading for years without them ever really penetrating your heart?
When's the last time the Word actually grew in you, expanded in you, took over more territory in your thinking and your living? Here's what's tragic. They didn't even have the full Bible yet. The Pauline Revelation hadn't been written. 28:55 The four gospels hadn't been written.
All they had was the Old Testament and the living testimony about Jesus Christ. And with just that, the Word was increasing and changing entire cities.
Then persecution hit. Steven was stoned to death. Saul of Tarsus was dragging men and women out of their houses and throwing them in prison. The church was being torn apart. And what did they do?
They that were scattered abroad went about preaching the Word. Not their opinions, not their experiences, not their theories about what might help people feel better. The Word. In the middle of the worst crisis the early church had faced, the Word was what they carried with them.
I heard a well-known evangelist recently. In his entire message, he quoted two passages of scripture. Two. The rest was stories, anecdotes, things that kept the audience entertained. And people walked away feeling good but unchanged. God had no real place in it.
Compare that to what we see in Acts of the Holy Spirit in the disciples. When Phillip went to Samaria and revival broke out, the report that went back to Jerusalem wasn't Phillip did an amazing job. It was Samaria has received the Word of God. When Peter went to the Gentiles for the first time and the Holy Spirit fell on them, it says the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the Word.
If this is opening your eyes to something you've been missing, read on now, because in part two, I'm going to show you exactly what happens when the Word gets its rightful place in your life. The Word was doing the work. Not clever preaching, not emotional appeals, not entertaining programs, it is the Word. And when Peter had to explain what happened to the Jewish believers who were upset that he'd gone to Gentiles, he said, "As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, even as on us at the beginning." You see two elements at work here. Peter preached the Word. The Gentiles accepted Christ. The Holy Spirit fell on them. Simple, powerful, effective. Preach the Word.
But notice something. The Jewish believers were stil governed by their five-sense knowledge. They were still ruled by the old covenant with its laws and rituals and traditions. They could not understand how God could work outside their system. Sound familiar?
We do the same thing today. We create our systems and our methods and our programs. And then we wonder why the Word is not increasing like it did back then. When persecution scattered the believers, they traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch speaking the Word, not organizing committees, not developing strategies, only speaking the Word. And even though there was a huge struggle between those who wanted to make Christianity just an improved version of Judaism and those who saw it was something completely new. The Word kept spreading. They did not have seminaries yet. They did not have the full revelation. Apostle Paul would later write about the new creation, the new covenant, the substitutionary work of Jesus, the body of Christ. They were living largely in the realm of the senses, believing because they saw miracles. But they honored the Word above everything. When Paul and Barnabas were sent out, a proconsul who had been entertained by a sorcerer called for them. But notice what he wanted. He didn't say, "I want to hear these famous preachers." He sought to hear the Word of God. That's what drew him. Not the messenger, but the message. Paul later said in one of his addresses to us is the Word of the salvation sent forth. And when he preached, almost the whole city gathered together to hear the Word of God, not to hear Paul, but to hear the Word. That stirred up persecution from the religious people, the Word. That stirred up persecution from the religious people just like it does today. But in the midst of persecution, hunger, and hardship, the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit, as they went from village to village, preaching the Word.
For the first time in Acts, the Word is called the Word of Grace. And all the equipment apostle Paul had on his first missionary journey was the Word. That's it. No professional training, no support team, no marketing plan, just the Word.
And he planted churches in every community he visited. We spend generations in some countries trying to establish a church. They did it in weeks. Why?
Not because they were smarter. Not because the crucifixion was fresh in people's minds. But because the Word held a place in their ministry that we've never given it. The name of Jesus held a place we've never given it. And the Holy Spirit was the guide and director in a way he has not been allowed
