Search
Nothing is so neglected by Christians as their spirit. In fact, most Christians are unaware that they have one. How many know that this is where regeneration transpires?
Regeneration means having another life added to our natural life. It is not merely having our behavior changed or our being renewed; even Confucius taught the need for that. Regeneration is a new birth, bringing the eternal, uncreated life of God into us. It is accomplished by the Spirit of God in our spirit.
Our first birth is a marvel, but the second birth far exceeds it in wonder. Who designed the intricate structure of the eye? Who formed our two ears? We cannot fathom how God forms all the parts of our body in just nine months’ time, so detailed and so well suited to their function. Yet as wonderful as our natural birth is, our second birth is much more wonderful.
Let us answer some questions before we continue the chapter.
Question: I come from a small locality and feel that I should have the habit of functioning in the meetings. But since we have been hearing how the meeting life must come out of our private life, I have had a problem about sharing because my private life is not that glorious. Sometimes I spend my time with the Lord, sleeping on my Bible. Then when I check in the meeting how my time with the Lord was, I feel as though if I say something, it will be empty.
Answer: Your habit of functioning in the meetings should be dropped. We should not function out of habit. The proper church life surely depends upon our proper daily living. Day by day we need to live and walk in our spirit. This will result in some experiences of Christ. Come to the meetings with the riches you have experienced of Christ. In the meeting stay in your spirit. Do not decide to function or not to function. Do not think that you have to function according to your habit. As you stay in your spirit, when the time comes, the Spirit may impress you to function. Then you share in the spirit the riches you have experienced in your daily life. Our Christian life must be a walk in the spirit. The riches in the meetings are the outflow of this daily walk.
Question: In a certain meeting I was trying to sing a hymn with the saints, but the brother sitting next to me kept talking with me about the Lord. I found it very frustrating, because I was trying hard to be in the spirit and to get something out of the hymn. I struggled to will myself to stay in my spirit and to love this brother, but I could not keep it up. How do our mind, emotion, and will interact to get us into the spirit?
Answer: As long as you are endeavoring and thinking how to handle your situation, you are outside the spirit. If you are in your spirit, you will not be bothered by the interrupting brother. You will not even pay that much attention to the singing of the hymn. All your consideration of how to handle this brother is apart from the spirit. When you remain in your spirit, you become the most simple person. Neither the singing nor the bothering brother affect you. In spirit you just join what you should join. This is not to say that problems do not exist. But being in spirit is like being in heaven. The problems do not upset you. I know it is not easy in the beginning to exercise this way, but we need to keep practicing.
Question: How can we stay on the pathway of life when we come to the Word? I have been trying to do this and praying that the Lord will help me to experience life in His Word. But for so many years I came to the Bible for knowledge that even when I am in the midst of seeking the Lord, I find I have turned back to knowledge.
Answer: The most crucial matter is that you need a change in your concept. Yes, you formerly came to the Bible for knowledge, but now you must realize your need of the life supply. When you come to the Bible, do not analyze whether you are coming for knowledge or for life. If you analyze, you are for knowledge. Just come to the Bible for the life supply. Many times this supply comes through the proper knowledge. But do not begin to wonder what the proper knowledge is and how you can get it. Just have a change in your view of the Bible. You are coming for the supply of life. Then whether you read, pray-read, or study, the result will be that life is supplied to you.
Question: Is it accurate to say that the blood cleanses our soul? One of the hymns we sing refers to the “soul-cleansing blood.”
Answer: The redeeming blood cleanses us from any sin or defilement. It is probably better to avoid using this term in ordinary talk, though I would not say that it is wrong. The soul means the self. The blood does cleanse us from our sins, but we do not need to call it the “soul-cleansing” blood. In our writings we try to stay away from any questionable terminology. We do not condemn what others use, but we do not necessarily adopt their terms either.
Question: Could you give us a practical way to deal with our mind when we find we are distracted? I often find that my mind is somewhere else, particularly when I am in the meetings. How can I turn it back and be in my spirit?
Answer: Do not be discouraged that your efforts to stay in your spirit are a failure many times. When you first begin exercising to deduct the feelings in your mind, your will, and your emotions, you will find you are “adding” instead. Keep working on it. At first, you must exercise legally; this practice in the early stage is actually an “addition.” Eventually, however, when your “subtracting” becomes a habit, it will be spontaneous. Then you will have the real “subtraction.”
Once we are saved, we sense that something has happened deep within us. We are not the same as we were. Nonetheless, questions begin to arise: Why have we changed so little? Why is our mentality still so dark? How come our emotions are still impure? How is it that our heart is not really honest?
Regeneration means that a seed has been planted in our spirit. The divine, uncreated, eternal, unlimited life has been sown into our spirit. At first it does not occupy very much even of our spirit. For this reason we may go on in the same way as we did in the past. Even so, because of this seed we can never be the same.
Even those of us in the Lord’s recovery pay very little attention to our spirit. The best exercise in our Christian life is to call our being back to our spirit. Thinking is a distraction; rather than heed your mentality, be tuned in to your spirit. Whenever Christians seek holiness or victory, they invariably fall short. Their morality may improve somewhat, but until they realize that the Christian life is a matter in the spirit, where the life of God is realized and enjoyed, they will not succeed in living victoriously.
On a recent trip to the Northwest I was staying in a couple’s home. They put me in the best room. Everything was fine, except that when it got dark, I could not find the switch to turn on the light. I groped about here and there, but my efforts to locate the switch were all in vain. Finally, I had to ask. The switch turned out to be hidden behind the mirror on the dresser. It never would have occurred to me to look there.
Is not this a picture of Christians, striving to be victorious but groping in the dark because they do not know where the switch is?
We may realize that the spirit is the switch, but throughout our daily life we use our mind, not our spirit. Even while we are sitting in the meeting, our mind may be on other things. Or we may be listening to the message with our mind, checking out the Scripture references and trying to determine if what is being said is right. The outcome of exercising our mind is that invariably questions arise.
Without the exercise of our spirit our experience of Christ will be meager. We are off, even though we are not back in the world or into sin. We may be near but off, even as a lamp may be quite near the plug but not receiving any electric current because it is not plugged in.
God would have us turn away from the considerations in our mind and exercise to touch Him, to taste Him, and to find out His will. For us to have such exercise is well pleasing to Him. It is by this very means that we pray without ceasing.
There are riches in our spirit for us to tap. Paul prayed that we might have “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him” (Eph. 1:17). We should ask the Lord to make our regenerated spirit a spirit of wisdom. If we do, before too long we will find that in our relationship with our parents and others, we are speaking and behaving wisely rather than in our former foolish way. Even others will notice our wisdom. There will not be trickery or cunning wiles but a spirit of wisdom.
We need a spirit of both wisdom and revelation. With revelation the whole universe, both physical and spiritual, is clear to us. When we were unsaved, we were in a dark cell, enclosed by thick walls. But now that we are saved, we should be in a transparent, glass room. Our vision should be as clear as when we are in a car; no matter which direction we look, the see-through glass gives us an unobscured view.
The living creatures in Revelation 4:6 are “full of eyes in front and behind.” Our eyes let the light into us. We need to be full of eyes so that we have a clear view. This clear view is the spirit of revelation.
To understand the view, we need a spirit of wisdom in addition to a spirit of revelation. With our eyes we may be able to see the words on the printed page, but without understanding we will not grasp their meaning.
This may be the case when we read the Bible. We read the words, but the meaning is hidden from us. If we keep praying for a spirit of wisdom and revelation, we will find that the words of the Bible open up to us, and that whenever we read its pages, we have some measure of understanding.
God’s good pleasure is that we walk in this mingled spirit. But this is not our habit. To accustom ourselves to doing this, we need to keep turning to the Lord in prayer during the day. “Lord, make my regenerated spirit one of wisdom and transparency. When I look at the church or at the saints, make everything transparent. When I read the Bible, make every page clear.”
Do not trust in your cleverness. However sharp your mind is, it is too low and small for you to put your confidence in it. If you are involved in a car accident, your cleverness may tell you to drive away quickly, but this is not the voice of wisdom in your spirit.
Pray for this wisdom. Pray that God may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation.
Paul tells us that God has revealed the mystery of Christ to us in spirit (Eph. 3:4-5). In Ephesians it is the church that is referred to as the mystery of Christ. Christ is the mystery of God (Col. 2:2), since God is embodied in Him. Because Christ is realized in the church, the church is the mystery of Christ. Without a revelation in our spirit, we cannot know the church. There are countless Christians to whom the church remains a mystery; they do not know how to look to the Lord through their spirit. The mystery is revealed only in spirit.
Our heart is like an envelope, containing the spirit (1 Pet. 3:4). To have a transparent spirit to see God’s revelation, we must have our heart thoroughly dealt with. “Lord, purify my heart. Not only cleanse it, but purify it from any covering. Make my motive single, that my only concern may be to see You, to see Your recovery, and to see the mystery.”
Without a pure heart and a single motive, our view of things is foggy. Our vision of the church may be like a rainbow, disappearing from sight after a while. The problem with seeing is not in our spirit. The problem has to do with the “envelope” in which our spirit is wrapped. Our heart may not be pure; we may be motivated by hidden desires for rank or status.
Pray that the Lord may do this purifying work in you. Then you will be steady in seeing the revelation. The mystery of Christ, which is the church, will be revealed to your spirit.
Christians are not secular, worldly people. As children of God and members of Christ, we must learn to “subtract” how we feel in our mind, emotion, will, and heart and take care of our spirit. When we are all set to quarrel with a brother, do these four subtractions. The wish to quarrel will be gone, and the spirit will come out. We should not be people in our mind, emotion, or will. Our mind may be shrewd, but subtract it. Our emotions may be strong, but do not live in them. Our will may be set, but turn from it.
Whatever confronts us — things great or small, good or bad, right or wrong — we need to be in our spirit. Remain there. “Abide in Me” (John 15:4). This wonderful “Me” is right in our spirit. We must abide in Him. Stay there. If you have moved out, move back in.
God is happy when He sees that we remain in our spirit. Our spirit is our hope. It is our home. It is our country. There is no place else that we should be. Hallelujah for this wonderful home in which we can stay! If we want to please the Lord, we must be sure that He always finds us here.
