Note: the following selections were taken for Dennis and Rita Bennett’s, The Trinity of Man; and Watchman Nee’s, The Release of the Spirit, and Journeying Toward the Spiritual, plus my own personal insights revealed to me over the years.
“And He said to them all, ‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily, and follow Me’ (Luke 9:23).
From our birth what is our focus? Self, Self, Self – the only three most important persons in the universe for us is (our trinity): me, myself, and I!!!
Regrettably, much of the focus in the messages heard in today’s Churches is on the believer in order to boost and comfort his/her image, rather than to seek the mind and purposes of the Lord as His Spirit operates in and released through the believer in power and the Gifts of His Church.
Yet we are to walk as our Elder Brother walked, and how did our Lord Jesus do it?:
The “Rock” (see: Matthew 16:15-19) upon which the Lord will build His Church is what He saw when the Father revealed by His Spirit to the apostle Peter to be able to know (through inner revelation) and say, “You are “The Anointed One” (the Christ/Messiah). In short, this is our Lord’s Modus Operandi as the Head of His Church as a Living Person to His disciples – and not as the Pope of Christianity’s first church and as the founder of “apostolic succession”.
Through the Gospel of John, Jesus responds to His disciples on how He implements this process of revelation:
John 5:19-20 (ESV):
“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does that the Son does likewise. 20For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing. And greater works than these will He show him, so that you may marvel’”.
By this sharing, He reveals how He implements the Father’s will here on
earth.
John 5:30:
"I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me”.
Later, He directs His disciples to do the same thing:
John 15:5-7:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. [6] If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. [7] If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you”.
Just as the Spirit abode in our Lord and guided Him, so too is today’s disciple (the born again believer, ambassador, and living stone of a holy priesthood):
1 Cor. 3:16:
Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?
Ephesians. 3:16:
“That according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being….’
My favorite verse is Romans 8:14:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God”.
Thus, in my view, as He walked here on earth as a Son, so too are His disciples made in the same mold and image and are to walk as He walked through revelation:
Galatians 5:25:
“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit”
Colosians 2:6:
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,”
1 John 2:6:
“whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked”.
1 Peter 2:21:
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps”.
And how are we disciples to walk? The following are some of the ways:
Ephesians 5:18-20:
“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but keep on being filled (as in the Greek) with the Spirit, [19] addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, [20] giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,”
Colossians 1:9-14:
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, [10] so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. [11] May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, [12] giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. [13] He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, [14] in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”....
God’s Perfect and Complete Order of Operation:
First, to move in the human spirit; next, to enlighten the mind of the soul, and finally, to execute/be released through the body.
What the Holy Spirit imparts is God’s uncreated life; this other is but man’s created life. The Holy Spirit grants us a supernatural power; this other is merely the natural. The Holy Spirit gives the zoe; this other is the psuche (nephesh in Hebrew, see: Genesis 1:30).
These two natures—old and new, sinful and godly—are fundamentally unalike, irreconcilable and unmixable. The new and the old daily strive for authority over the whole man. During this initial stage the Christian is a “babe in Christ” because he is yet fleshly (Greek: sarx; also see Romans 6:6). Most variable and most painful are his experiences punctuated by both successes and failures. Later on, the believer comes to know the deliverance of the cross and learns how to exercise faith in reckoning the “old man” as crucified with Christ (i.e., the breaking loose the “outer man/soul and body” from the inner man - “the newly regenerated spirit and Spirit”).
He is thereby freed from that sin which has paralyzed the body. With his old man crucified the believer is empowered to overcome and enjoys in actual the promise that “sin will have no dominion over you”.
Yet the spirit Within May Become Suppressed:
Many of God’s children, however, do not perceive the movement of the Holy Spirit. They cannot distinguish between the spiritual and the soulical.
They often construe the soulical to be the spiritual and vice versa, consequently drawing much upon the energy of the soul for their walk and work to the detrimental suppression of the spirit. They assume they are walking according to the spirit while in truth they are walking according to the soul (the flesh)l. Such foolishness throttles their spirit from cooperating with God’s Spirit and thereby interrupts what He is wishing to do in and through their lives.
As long as Christians dwell in the soul, they move according to the thoughts, imaginations, plans and visions of their mind.
They covet joyful sensations and are mastered by their feelings. When they have sensuous experiences they are elated, but when bereft of such experiences they can hardly lift a finger. They are therefore powerless to live in the realm of the spirit. Their feelings become their life, and as their feelings change so do they too. This amounts to nothing more than walking after the sensations of their outward soul and body instead of living out from the center of their being which is the spirit.
Their spiritual sensitivity, overpowered by the body and the soul, grows dull. These believers can only sense matters in the soul or in the body; they have lost the spiritual sense. Their spirit is disabled from cooperating with God and their spiritual growth is arrested.
No longer are they capable of acquiring power and guidance in their spirit for warfare and worship (Cf.: John 4:24: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth”.)
If a person denies to his spirit complete ascendancy over his being or fails to draw upon its power to live, he shall never mature.
The danger of retreating into the “bodily realm”:
The danger of retreating into the body realm. Many fleshly works enumerated in Galatians 5 naturally have their origin in the lusts of the human body, but quite a few others indicate as well the activities of the soul:
“Selfishness, dissension, party spirit” distinctly flow from man’s self or personality. They are the consequence of the numerous diverse thoughts and opinions held on to among saints.
What is important to note here is the fact that these exertions of the soul are listed together with such sins of the body as “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, drunkenness, carousing.” This ought to remind us of how closely entwined are the soul and the body. These two in reality are inseparable, because the body we are now in is a “soulical body” (1 Corinthians 15.44 literal).
Should a believer therefore merely seek to subdue his sinful nature and not his natural life too, he shall find himself, after a short period of experiencing victory over sin, and once again tumbling into the realm of the body of sin. Though he may not return to those uglier forms of sin, nevertheless he remains bound by sin.
Danger from the powers of darkness:
The danger of the power of darkness taking advantage. The Letter of James, written to believers, distinctly delineates the relation between soul life and satanic work:
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual (literally soulish), demonic. (3.13-15)
There is a wisdom that comes from Satan, and it is the same as that which can arise at times out of the human soul. The “flesh” is the devil’s factory; his operation in the soulical part of the flesh is as active as in the bodily part. These verses explain how bitter jealousy springs from the seeking of soulish wisdom. It is through the activity of the devil in the human soul. Christians are aware that the adversary can entice people to sin, but do they equally realize he can inject thoughts into man’s mind? The fall of man was due to the love of knowledge and of wisdom. Satan is employing the same tactic today in order to retain the believer’s soul as his operative center.
The scheme of Satan is to preserve for himself as much of our old creation as possible. If he fails to entangle believers in sin, he will next try to induce them to keep their natural life by taking advantage of their ignorance of his wiles or their unwillingness to yield to the Spirit. For if he does not succeed, all the armies of hell shall soon be totally disemployed.
The more believers choose to unite with the Lord in spirit, the more the life of the Holy Spirit shall flow into their spirit, and the more the cross shall work in them daily (see Luke 9:23). Hence they shall be delivered increasingly from the old creation and shall yield less ground to Satan from which to operate.
Let it be known that all the endeavors of Satan, whether by enticement or by attack, are perpetrated in our old creation. He dare not waste his energy on our “new creation,” God’s Own life. That is the reason he unceasingly attempts to persuade the children of God to retain something of the old creation—be it sin or the beautiful natural life—so that he may continue to operate. How he conspires against believers and confuses them into loving their self-life, despite the fact they have hated sin.
Your Way or His Way:
After the believer is reborn of the Spirit it is difficult for the will to make the transition to the “new and living way” of the New Testament Spiritual principles through which God wants to guide us believers into our fellowship with the indwelling Holy Spirit.
At first after new birth, the will of the new believer still wants to modify its own plans to make them line up with God’s will.
Yet there still remains old patterns of the human will that still wants to do what it wants to do:
It is not direct rebellion at the beginning; it is more subtle than that.
It may turn to legalism, for example: “you tell me what the rules are, Lord, and I’ll obey and fit my plans into them, thus earn your approval”.
Jesus says: “I’ll be with you always. Trust Me, and I’ll guide you by My Spirit”. The will responds saying, “Isn’t that great? Jesus will go with me and help me carry out my plans. Come on now, Lord, I have some great ideas!”
Then, comes the MESS we find ourselves in. Jesus then answers the believer: “Correction – look at the mess we are in; I am on the inside with you, remember?” You have been insisting that I go with you where you wanted to go; and that is just where we are. Now start following Me, and we’ll get things in order.
Many times believers get disillusioned with God because they just expect Him to bless whatever they have decided to do.
Yet God never forces people to do what He wants them to do – that would be taking their freedom away, which He will never do. Always, He is “for us” (Romans 8:31). Man’s will is free, and neither God nor the devil can do anything without first obtaining consent. Without Him, we can’t; without us, He won’t.
When things go bad, don’t panic, just ask Him for Plan B, or C or D or as many as needed. Satan or his demons may try to push you into frustration (“you must make up your mind now, he urges. You must take action or miss the opportunity and that would be stupid.”).
But the Holy Spirit always is a Gentleman and knows the perfect timing and place for His will to be done.
God gave us freedom of will so that we could decide to follow Him – not from fear, or from a desire to earn rewards or merits – but for Love’s sake!
God wants us freely to pattern our wills after His, and to let the Holy Spirit within conform our will to His, so we will want the same thing
Ultimately God not only wants us to want what He wants, but thoroughly to enjoy doing it with Him, because we love Him, and He loves us.
The weakest will in the world is strong enough to turn to Jesus (like the Gadarene demoniac (see: Luke 8:26ff) and come to Him for help.
Remember: your will is more powerful than your feelings or your memories. If you choose to take the first step in obedience to His revealed will saying “Jesus help me”, always will He respond to your call!
The heartcry of “HELP” is probably the most powerful prayer in the world!
