Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #16

Joan Frazerhurst has once again written the blog for this week. Thank you, Joan!

Nita Steiner will be back next week to blog on the next chapter - Chapter 23.

Chapter 22

Relating Spirit and Soul

The author has indicated that the Holy Spirit communicates to our spirit and that our spirit communicates to the soul, which in turn, affects our body as well. The word of God speaks to the spirit through direct intuitive knowledge, and to the conscience regarding good and evil, and in our worship and communication in response to His word.

I keep asking, “how do we encourage our spirit to be in a place to receive that word from God?” Which then leads to “how does this relationship between my spirit and my soul take place?” The author states if the human spirit is the means to pass on the knowledge that the Lord speaks to us, to our soul then it must be able to relate to the soul in some way.

There are characteristics of living in the spirit. The knowledge received in our spirit is meant to rule over the reasoning of the mind, and conscience is to direct and control the decisions of the will, and the communion of our spirit rules the emotions.

An interesting note is the author is reminding us that even as the Holy Spirit lives in our spirit, He will not go against our consent and desires; that this is how quenching the Holy Spirit takes place. The closed areas of our life would have to be opened to be able to access the help, knowledge, and wisdom that would be accessible by our spirit from the Holy Spirit. The author also points out that the Holy Spirit, with His vulnerable love, can be grieved, provoked, joyful, inhibited, and have freedom to act depending on our response to Him.

So how does all this happen? The author gives us some principles: One principle would be that as the knowledge from God comes to us, it is a revelation…it is received intuitively in the spirit. As this happens, we are faced with stepping forward with faith, or backing off in unbelief. Faith links our spirit and our mind.

Often, I have thought that faith is out of nothing…just blind faith…but even in the words of Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But, as I looked at this verse again, substance and evidence usually means that something is there; it is this direct intuitive knowledge from God…yes, unseen, but there all the same.

The author again goes on to say that as we do respond in faith and we trust that intuitive knowledge, “the power of the Holy Spirit is released from our spirit into our mind and beyond.” When we respond in unbelief, it is a rejection of that knowledge and we really stop the flow of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It seems we all could make quite a list of times when we “heard” God but, seemingly, could not step out in knowing and faith that it was true. Seems we could use a little experience in being able to respond in faith to what we “know” is God’s word. What is the phrase we all heard some time or another, “Obedience precedes revelation.”

Spiritual intuition is another principle that is at work. The author explains how a child can sum up a person intuitively because he does not have much intellectual knowledge as yet, and he reacts and responds by what his intuition tells him. The walk in the Spirit in the realm of the mind is to be like children…to trust the divine knowledge we receive, or it seems, we cannot understand the ways of the kingdom of God.

Actually, I remember a time my children displayed this intuitiveness. The intuition in a certain situation that involved other people was a rather negative one, hesitant. At the time, I thought them to be “judgmental”. Years later, their intuition proved to be correct. I have thought of that incident over and over again and hopefully I have learned more about this intuitive nature we have been given.

Or, as the author states, we can reject the knowledge that comes into our spirit and miss an opportunity to pray for someone, or give a word of encouragement and hope to someone. Our mind seems to want to take that intuitive knowledge and rationalize it. But with faith, we can disregard that sense knowledge, because we have had access to a higher knowledge…the knowledge of God’s will and God’s ability in the area of what He has spoken to our spirit.

The principle of the mind is very important to us in that we cannot treat it as a hindrance to the human spirit…the function of the mind is to receive the revelation knowledge from the spirit in words, or propositional statements, so we can use and actually appropriate what we have received and then share it with others. This is what we speak, not in words, taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words (I Cor. 2:13). So often we cannot explain an “illumination” from God. The author states something so very practical: “Whenever inner illumination comes we need to say, ‘Lord, now I want to understand it in words, so I can obey it, and so I can pass it on to others.’

Our mind needs to be in a continual place of renewal for a purity to discern these intuitions of the spirit. As we walk in trusting, in faith, in God's word that comes to us, we develop a habitual response and the mind becomes “controlled by the Spirit.”

Concerning spiritual gifts
“A spiritual gift is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit to the human spirit, then from the human spirit to the mind.” So, we can see again the place of faith in the gifts operating. So often, we become fearful of the gifts of the Spirit in operation…I know that I have faced that many times. But, I think we can understand afresh this need of faith so that we can respond to what the Lord shows us and only to what we have received from the Lord. We can cut the communication of that spiritual gift too short or we can overextend the gift where it becomes just words from our own mind. The author stresses the importance of responding only to the word given us. He uses the prophet Elisha as an example of one who knew when he did not have a revelation from God…. Leave her alone! She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why. (II Kings 4:27)

Let’s pray for the fulfillment of the whole counsel of God being expressed in our lives to an effectiveness of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ to reach those that we are in contact with. The Lord’s richest blessings!