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ACTS 29 TODAY

coming to the knowledge of the TRUTH

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The Channel Through Which The Holy Spirit Speaks

 

We can never receive enough teaching on an

intellectual level to make us victorious in

life. Therefore, if we don’t learn to fellowship with the

Godhead in the realm of the Spirit, we will never

progress very far in fulfilling our divine call.

We’ve seen that it’s our awesome privilege to have the

third Person of the Godhead living inside us to oversee

God’s plan for our personal lives. But in order to take

advantage of the Holy Spirit’s expert leadership, we

have to understand how He communicates with us as

we pray in other tongues.

You see, the Holy Spirit always speaks through the same

channel. We need to become familiar with that channel

so we can differentiate His voice from every other

voice, thought,and impression.

First, we must understand that God always communes

with our spirit. If we don’t know how to identify the

difference between God communing with our spirit and

the devil fooling with our mind, we will walk in the

wrong direction most of the time. Why? Because the

devil has studied mankind for six thousand years, and

he has learned some unique ways to set us up and keep

us walking around in circles in our lives.

—————-The Spirit, Soul, and Body of Man——————-

In order to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in your

daily life, you first have to understand the operation of

the spirit, soul, and body of man.

I have sat under many teachers on this subject. Most

isolate all the verses they can pertaining to the spirit,

the soul, and the body. Then they may draw three little

circles on a chalk-board and outline the characteristics

of the three parts of man, saying, “This is your

spirit.This is your soul. And this is your body.

I didn’t have too much trouble understanding the

operation and characteristics of the body. But I had a

hard time grasping the difference between the soul and

the spirit.

According to the great Bible teachers of our day, the

soul consists of a person’s mind or intellect, his will,

and his emotional faculties. It is the part of man that

needs to be renewed by the Word. I totally agreed with

this. And I knew that when man’s spirit departs from

his body, his soul goes with him. But beyond that, I

couldn’t quite understand how man’s spirit fit into the

picture.

 

So as I tried to understand this subject, I asked God,

“Lord, what is the difference between me and a dog?”

Now, I like dogs, but they don’t have a spirit. They don’t

go to Heaven the way people do.

Animals do exist in Heaven, but they didn’t go from

here to there. They were created in Heaven. They live

there. As far as anyone knows, animals born here on

earth just return back to the dust after they die. But

evidently, dogs do have a soul, because they have

intellect, emotions, and a will. So what is the difference

between a dog’s soul and mine? It is this: My soul finds

immortality within an immortal spirit.

When God created my emotions, my will, and my

intellect, He held these forces in His hand and said,

“This is the soul of man.” But within what confines

would He house these forces that make up the essence

of who I am?

This is where the operation of the spirit came in. God

created these forces that make up the soul and placed

them in an eternal substance called the spirit. It is the

immortal spirit encompassing the soul that gives the

soul its eternal nature.

—————-Characteristics of Man’s Spirit———————

We can gain some insight into the spirit of man by

looking at what Jesus said in Luke16:19-22:

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in

purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every

day:

And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which

was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed

with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table:

more-over the dogs came and licked his sores.

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was

carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich

man also died, and was buried.

Even though the rich man died and was buried — even

though his flesh or his body was in the grave — in verse

23 it says that his spirit went somewhere else:

And IN HELL he lift up HIS EYES, being in torments, and

SEETH Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his

bosom.

There it is in black and white — the spirit man has

eyes!

Notice it also says that the rich man was “in torments.”

That is speaking of strong emotions. So the rich man’s

spirit man also had emotions.

Now look at verse 24:

And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on

me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his

finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am

tormented in this flame.

My goodness, people in Heaven have fingers, and

people in hell have tongues! We better think about this

for a moment. Either our spirit man possesses all the

rest of the body parts as well, or there is a bunch of

spiritual tongues and eyeballs lying around in hell

while spiritual fingers float around Heaven!

It stands to reason that if my spirit man has a spiritual

finger, tongue, and a pair of eyes, he also has every

other body part as well. That is basic.

In fact, let’s take it a step further. If I were to separate

my inner man from my outer man and leave the two

standing next to each other, my physical body and my

spirit man would look a lot alike  except for the fact

that my spirit would be without defects. In fact, all the

defects that were programmed into the human race

when Adam fell would be gone.

Now, if my outer man were to hold up his finger and

say, “What is my finger made out of?”you would say,

“It’s made out of flesh.” If you answered in more detail,

you’d say, “It’s made of cells, blood, bone, and many

small compounds.”

Well, if my physical man is made out of physical

material that you can name, what about my spirit man?

What if my inner man held up his finger — which the

passage in Luke 16 proves the spirit man has — and

asked, “What is my finger made out of?” You would

say,“Well, uh, a heavenly substance. Hmmm, let’s see

—spirit.” You wouldn’t be able to break it down any

further.

So my inner man fills my outer man finger for finger,

hand for hand, arm for arm, leg for leg. I have physical

eyes and spiritual eyes. My spiritual eyeball fills my

physical eyeball.

Let’s take this a step further. Within my inner man is

the nature of the new creation, containing such

spiritual forces as love, peace, joy, and dominion. The

inner man is my stabilizer in life. He never fluctuates

up and down. His only inclination is to go up higher in

the realm of God.

The part of me that fluctuates between up and down is

the emotional make-up of my soul through which my

spirit man operates. My emotions want to go to the

highs of extreme happiness one day and to the lows of

deep depression the next. But my spirit man never

wants to go anywhere but up into the high places with

God.

My inner man fits into my outer man, and one day my

old outer man is going to say, “I quit.” At that moment, I

— my spirit man — will step out of my body and go

home to Heaven. It will be glorious!So I have a spiritual

brain that fits into and operates through my natural

brain in this physical body. It is within my spiritual

brain that the soul is housed.

from the book THE WALK OF THE SPIRIT THE WALK OF POWER–DAVE ROBERSON

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NEXT WEEK—-IDENTIFYING THE CHANNEL OF COMMUNICATION

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UNTIL NEXT TIME

LARRY