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Exercising Our Spirit "There is a tide in the affairs of men. You and I are caught in the greatest tide ever to rise upon this earth, God revealing Himself through us in judgment and in glory. Let us ride this flood as God carries us; let us take the current as it serves. These are Waters in which to swim. I need to correct a statement I made in my last letter; I used the phrase, "our redeemed spirit." To redeem something is to buy back that which was lost or kidnapped and held captive by another. God redeems our body, our soul, and our mind, but He does not redeem the human spirit. God killed our old spirit; He put it to death on the cross of Christ. Then He birthed a new spirit within us. Our new spirit has no connection to Adam. Adam's spirit and our former spirit were not like our new spirit. Adam was not one spirit with the Lord in the way that we are because he had not eaten of the tree of life. Our new spirit has no connection to Adam. "Having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever. 1 Peter 1:23 "Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God." 1 John 3:9 "And that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." Ephesians 4:24 Now here is a most extraordinary thing! Peter says that the seed by which our new spirit was created came out of the loins of Father God, an incorruptible seed. John says that what is conceived of God cannot sin, that is, it is incorruptible. Paul says that our new man, the new spirit God birthed within us, is created in TRUE righteousness and holiness. Paul also says that our spirit and God's Spirit are one. There is only one Being in the universe who is incorruptible. God. All created creatures are corruptible. Even Michael and Gabriel could have chosen to turn their backs on God. Only God is incapable of sinning or of even considering the shadow of sin. God cannot be tempted with evil. Jesus, when He walked this earth, was tempted in all points just like we are tempted, that is, Jesus was carried away by His own lusts and enticed - though He did not connect with the sin that offered itself to Him through His mind and through His body. Do we dare to suggest or to believe that our own re-generated human spirit, conceived of an incorruptible seed, conceived of God, living in a fused union with God's Spirit, is incorruptible? Is a partaker of the divine nature, as Peter said? This is, of course, too much for us to comprehend. We know that Paul said, "Let this same mind be in you that was also in Christ, who, being found in the form of God did not count equality with God to be something to grip tightly, but rather emptied Himself and became a servant." (I paraphrase) People have always argued about what Jesus' emptying Himself meant; few see the words, "Let this same mind be in you." To be like God is to be meek and lowly of heart, always to be thinking about the other guy as better than one's self, always giving Himself away for others. The New Covenant we signed with God when we entered the waters of baptism commands us, over and over to be just like God, to love as He loves, to forgive as He forgives, to serve as He serves, to be holy as He is holy, to overcome as He overcame. How could God expect us to be like Him unless we are? Paul said, "Since we already live in the Spirit, let's walk in the Spirit as well." Always in the past it was presented as, "Get out of your flesh, brother, and get in the Spirit." But we are always in our re-generated spirit. There is never a moment when we are not. We are always in God; there is never a shadow of separation, except in our own wrong thinking. Does anyone ever say, "You're out of the body, brother, you need to get in it?" Yes, there is a group of people who say something similar all the time. They are called teachers. "Wake up, Johnny, come back into the classroom, please." What was Johnny's problem? Was he actually departed from his body? No. His problem was that his mind was somewhere else. And so our problem as believers in Christ was not that we were not "in the Spirit," we were. Our problem was that we forgot, and our forgetting was reinforced by anti-gospel theology. Instead of being reminded, "Hey, brother, be encouraged, Jesus carries you in Himself, and He is in you with tenderness and joy right now," we were taught to condemn ourselves. So what am I getting at? As people in this world, we spend at least a quarter of our time in these bodies being trained to use our bodies and our minds efficiently and productively. Then we spend at least half of our lifetime in these bodies, using our trained minds and trained bodies to produce value and profit that will benefit other people. We consider it perfectly normal and right to devote a huge block of earthly time and resources to the training of our children's minds and bodies. And it is right that we should do so. But a child growing up into an increased ability to use his or her physical body to accomplish wonderful things for others cannot be any different than our growing up into an increased ability to use our spiritual body to accomplish wonderful things for others. Why would we think it was otherwise? Why would we devote 20 years of a child's life to training the physical body and mind and pay no attention to training the spiritual body and mind? Why would we assume that the spirit will just come along all by itself? What can an untrained body accomplish? Not much. I love to listen to my daughter play the piano. Her skill is a beautiful combination of trained body and trained mind, connecting together in her fingers to create great pleasure for others. Were I to try to do the same thing, I would produce only discord. Training and learning to use our spiritual body, our spirit is NO DIFFERENT. There are a lot of similarities between being trained to walk in and function through our spirits, to move in spiritual productivity that brings profit and benefit to other people, and being trained to use the physical body and mind. There are a lot of similarities, but there are great differences as well. Most of what is called "spiritual" training is nothing of the sort; it's just more training of the mind and body, calling that "spiritual." And so much of "spiritual" training given to children is little more than religious condemnation. Children are treated with such disrespect, especially in a religious context. As are those who are young in Christ. Treating someone with disrespect, not honoring the integrity of their person, produces death in them, not life. The New Testament is filled with directions and advice to us on how to train ourselves and each other to function in our spiritual body. Much of that instruction, however, has been neutered, short-circuited, by the incredible idea that "heaven" is some place or location we go to after we die where we will then enjoy "salvation." This non-Biblical definition of the heavens has done more damage to the church of Christ than anything else in history. But when we understand that heaven is a realm of being in which we walk and live fully right now in our spiritual body; that we are in heaven right now as much as we will ever be; that salvation has nothing to do with going somewhere, but everything to do with becoming what we already are, and revealing what we already are fully upon this earth, then, so many, many things in the New Testament that just did not fit before, now make perfect sense inside the present reality of Christ in us. But the primary Scriptural focus on how we exercise our spiritual body is found in 1 Corinthian 12-14. And the place in which we are supposed to learn how to live and walk and bring benefit to others through our spirits is the local church. The word that is preached under the anointing certainly has a place, but it is easy to see how almost no training of the spirit ever takes place in that environment that is called "church." For the most part, it is nothing more than a training of our physical bodies to hold still for a period of time and our minds to learn some things about God or the Bible. On the other hand, much of what is attempted as a training of the spirit ends up being filled with nonsense because so much of it is babes training babes and so little of it is centered on the true purpose of God with us. But it is not my place or purpose to explore the various things the Bible teaches us about training our spirits and learning to function in and to bless others through our spirits. There are others who are more gifted in that direction than I. The only thing I will say here is - if you want to train your physical body and mind to play the piano what do you do? You practice. If you want to train your spirit to heal the sick and raise the dead what do you do? You practice. There is no difference. What I want to do in the rest of this letter is to look at the role of the mind in our make up as a human soul sandwiched between two bodies. Then I want to cast a vision of what it would be like to live and walk in a fully trained and functioning spirit. We have to be careful with that, because just as a fully trained baseball player is going to function completely differently from a fully trained concert pianist or from a fully trained construction foreman, so there are as many variations of gifts and workings in the spiritual realms as there are in the physical. Just as some parents try to force their children to look a certain way outwardly and to become what the parents want them to be, so many religious leaders in the church try to impose an outward definition of "Christ" on other believers. In both cases the results are never good. Neither are the results good when we try to force our own definition of "Christ" on our spirits. But it is more right and natural for us to train our spirits and to relate with other people and the heavens of God through our spirits than it is for us to train our bodies and to relate with other people and the earth through our physical bodies. Spending a morning workout of the spirit is more normal than spending twenty minutes working out with the physical body. It is wrong thinking that makes the "spiritual" things religious and unnatural. And that's where the mind comes into the picture. Everything we are in body and in spirit, in heart and in soul, processes through the mind. The mind does not originate anything. It is a central processing unit, just like a computer. In the computer, everything is stored in the hard drive. In order for the CPU to operate, it must draw out what is already in the hard drive. It then runs the data from the hard drive using the programs stored in the hard drive and it processes new information coming in from the keyboard or the Internet according to the programs coming out of the hard drive. The hard drive is like the heart. "Out of the heart the mouth speaks." Out of the hard drive, the CPU operates. The CPU cannot do anything unless it draws first out of the hard drive. What is important is what's in the hard drive, that is, what's in the heart. Nevertheless, no matter what goes into a computer or comes out of a computer, all of it is processed by the CPU on its way in and on its way out. So it is with our minds. This central pivot role played by the mind is God's deliberate intention. "Mindlessness" for the sake of being "spiritual" is ungodly; it is demonic. "For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints." 1 Corinthians 14: 31-33 Everything that moves through me must be subject to my own mind. This is God's order. To remove the human mind from this central pivot role is to subject everything to confusion and not to peace. However, we take the metaphor of the computer one step further. The CPU of a computer is simply an electrical mechanism that has two settings, off and on. Everything that passes through it is nothing more than a series of offs and ons in various arrangements similar to Morse Code. So many offs and so many ons constitutes one letter or number or some other unit. That's it. What makes a computer useful to us is that it reads those offs and ons very, very fast. But the CPU can do nothing unless there is installed in it a specialized program called an operating system. Once that operating system is installed, everything that takes place in the CPU, coming in and going out, is completely controlled and regulated by that operating system. In the computer world there are a number of different operating systems one could choose from, including Windows, Linux, and Mac. But in the reality of the human makeup, our minds have only two basic operating systems by which they can operate. So here is what we come down to. Our human mind processes everything that passes through us coming in and going out in both the physical realms of earth through the body and the spiritual realms of heaven through the spirit. The human mind is itself neutral and serves the critical role of gatekeeper in our lives. A violation of the mind in its function is a violation of our very person. But the mind can only operate with an installed "operating system." And the human mind has two different operating systems by which it can work. A human mind that follows the operating system of the physicality of this world, judging and processing everything by what it sees with the physical eyes and hears with the physical ears, according to the reasoning of this world, turns everything that passes through it to death. This mind gets its "electrical" power or anointing from demons and draws its information out of a heart that is hardened against God. Now, before we go on, we have this distinction - there are many things that the mind does process by the physicality of the body, that is, all those things that rightly pertain to the earth. It is right and proper that my mind uses my physical eyes and the "knowing" that is in my physical fingers to type these letters on this page. Yet the processing of my mind is anointed by the Holy Spirit and the information that it is processing onto the page comes out of a heart filled with God's word and a knowledge of His ways. But knowing which keys to hit has nothing to do with my spirit, that knowledge is completely natural. And so a human mind that follows the operating system of the Spirit of Christ, judging and processing everything by what it sees through the eyes and ears of Christ, through the capacities of the Spirit, according to the reasoning of God turns everything that passes through it to life. But don't be mistaken. If I try to build a house using only my spirit and my ability to hear the anointing of God, the house will fall down. (I knew a brother whose fellowship tried just that. They knew nothing about construction, so they followed the anointing of God upon their spirits to build a barn. It fell down. It was a hilarious story that the brother used to bring balance into our understanding.) And so the seeing of the natural eye is for the functioning of the natural body and not the spirit; and the seeing of the eyes of the spirit is for the functioning of the spiritual body and all those things related to the heavens. When we are in proper balance our spirit and its capacity, our body and its capacity, and our mind in its functions all work together in a seamless harmony. In our world today, we have the image of the "superhero" presented to us from every angle. Some people may imagine that there is a correlation between the power of the Spirit and the power of a superhero. Not really. If I am sitting in my chair and the remote for the TV is across the room, it would be a violation of God's nature for me to try to use my spirit to bring that remote across the room to my hand. That's what God gave me a body for (or, at least, that's what He gave me kids with energetic bodies for). God gave us the physical body to relate with and function in the earth, and He gave us the spiritual body to relate with and function in the heavens. On the other hand, my spirit does have the capacity to project the power to heal into the faith of another person. That power to heal does move physical organs and cells into a right balance. The difference is motive and purpose, serving self versus serving others. And yes, your spirit does have the power to heal. The problem is we don't believe it. And faith does not mean hunkering down and trying to drum something up. Faith is the simple practice of the obvious. God fills us; what could be more obvious? So what is it that we need as humans to learn to walk in and to bless others through our spirits? Simple. We need a new operating system by which our minds can function properly in the way God intended. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds. We change the way we think. And it's not "Stop using your carnal mind, brother." No, it's "You have the mind of Christ." There is a carnality of thinking, but nowhere does God ever say that I have a carnal mind. Fellow believers have been more than ready to say that, but God does not. God says only that I have the mind of Christ. Speaking what God speaks and not making up stuff He does not say is how we change our thinking to reflect His. Saying "You (or I) have a carnal mind" is carnality, the only thing it has every produced in anyone is death. Saying "You (or I) have the mind of Christ" is the mind of the Spirit, it is life and peace and such great joy. But of course, most of us as Christians have tried to use both operating systems at the same time, without understanding anything, really, about either one, trying also to bring in a third program called "the Law," thus producing the travesty called "Christianity" and all the religious nonsense that goes with it. All of this is just simple teaching; but I believe that it gives us a framework of reality inside of which the Spirit of God can make so many things that He says in the New Testament alive and real inside of us. So what does it look like not only to live in the Spirit, but to walk in and to function through all the power and life of a fully functioning, fully trained spirit as a son of God in this world? We start with 1 Corinthians 13. Paul is developing a teaching on training and moving through our spirits to strengthen one another in the life of Christ in the church. He teaches some pretty wonderful and powerful stuff in Chapter 12; then he stops and inserts an entire chapter on LOVE before continuing on with a further unfolding of how we practice life through our spirits in the church. Spiritual power, as man sees it, is power over something else. This way of thinking comes from a Satanic definition of God. God's spiritual power is power alongside, power that encourages and lifts up, power that strengthens and supports, power that gives life to another and sets them free to move in the integrity of their own person. The whole motive and purpose and thinking of spiritual life and power that is Godly are completely other than the human conception of power to manipulate and control. Yet the power of God that is in our spirits is incredibly powerful! And it is completely at our disposal. So it begins with the love of God manifesting through us, but that takes us to the next critical point. You and I are upon the earth as the image and likeness of God. We are supposed to be just like God; that's why He created us. It is our function and role upon this earth to reveal in the physical realms in this age upon this sinful and cursed planet the nature and person of Almighty God. "But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all:" 1 Corinthians 12:7 There is a difference now in the fullness of the Spirit through us in the proving of God upon the earth from the manifestation of the Spirit in the building up of the church in love. The manifestation of the Spirit that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12 is given to function inside the church for the purpose of preparing us to be the revelation of Jesus Christ upon the earth. That time of preparation is over; the time of fullness is now. The difference between the fullness of the Spirit that is upon us now and the manifestation of the Spirit in the building up of the Church is one of purpose. The purpose of the manifestation of the Spirit in the building up of the Church was to prepare us as the body of Christ for the fullness of the Spirit. The purpose of the fullness of the Spirit that is upon us now is the revelation of Jesus Christ as the proof and vindication of all that God speaks from the beginning. Now, if you're anything like me, you're thinking at this point, "Dear God, I certainly have not learned to walk in my spirit sufficiently to be ready for the Spirit without measure." And that is completely true. However that is not where salvation is found. It is clear that salvation comes entirely by the arm of the Lord Jesus Christ. No one is ready. And yet we are. He is salvation and our unreadiness is simply the background by which the Lord Jesus brings salvation by His own arm. So what does our spirit do as it functions in all of its capacity under the anointing of all the fullness of the Spirit of God? Our spirit discerns and understands all the workings of evil and of demon spirits and it drives them towards full exposure and judgment. Our spirit convicts the people of the world of sin and judgment. Our spirit heals the sick and raises the dead as a testimony of the love and person of God. Our spirit sees God in all things and knows His purposes and His ways. Our spirit turns the lights on so that darkness is judged and destroyed. Our spirit connects with that portion of the body of Christ that is right now pressing out of the heavens back to earth. Our spirit reveals the tender love and invincible power of our Father. Our spirit releases the glorious liberty of Christ into every dark and hurting crevice upon this planet. Our spirit does all of this in conjunction with and through our mind and body. Our spirit brings heaven to earth. Our spirit reveals God in the flesh. Blessings, Daniel Yordy |
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