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
No comments:
Post a Comment