Spiritual Life #50 The Laws of the Spirit No. 1

The Laws of the Spirit No. 1

What I’d like to share, or begin to share with you about tonight is our 'spirits'. And your spirit is the 'real you'. That’s probably the best way to put it. Your spirit is where you really are yourself. And it is really important to know what your spirit is like, because that’s what governs what you do to other people. It’s interesting, but the 'real you' determines what effect your life has on other people. And it just came home to me again today. You remember how God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. You remember how it said in the Bible that he created us out of nothing, and he took the things that were not and made them things that are. Well, really, you will only be able to do that when that is your spirit attitude to other people.

And I think most of us here would admit that the difficulties we find in other people, whether it’s our colleagues, or the people we meet at work, or the people we meet at school, or the people here, our difficulty is they aren’t what we think they should be. And usually, we do nothing to help them. Usually, our spirits are standing off from them with a whip in our hands, whipping them for not being what we want them to be. Usually, that is the attitude of our spirits -- for all kinds of reasons: sometimes we’re afraid of them, sometimes we’re disappointed and depressed about ourselves, and it feels good to be able to whip somebody else and to persuade yourself that you’re a little better than them. But for whatever reason, often, whether it’s our loved ones, or our friends, or our colleagues, our inner spirits, the inner man inside us, is actually standing back and whipping the people we work with, the people we live with, even the people we worship with. And nothing will ever come about in their lives while you and I have spirits that are doing that.

And you must admit, nothing is going to happen in their lives unless some miraculous work of creation takes place, unless God is able to somehow create in them something that isn’t there at all: an insight into him, or a love for other people, or the steadiness and stability in their emotions. Unless that happens, they’re going to be forever people that will be a blot in the world and will be a problem for us to get along with.

And yet, loved ones, nothing is ever going to happen in the lives of your friends, or your relatives, or my friends, or my colleagues, unless our spirits want the very best for them. Unless our spirits are filled with that love that Jesus has for us. Because, you must admit, you and I would be nowhere if it hadn’t been for this dear Savior that kept believing the best about us, and that would not put his eyes on our failures, and would not whip us for our disappointments. But he kept on believing the best about us, and having faith in us when nobody else had faith. And our spirits will be used by God to create life in others when our spirits are like that towards other people.

And so I’d just share with you that it really isn’t at the level of our mind and emotions; it’s at the level of our spirits. It’s deep down in our innermost being, the part of us that is called our inner man in the Bible. It’s there that love dwells. It’s there where you are used by God to affect other people. And, I’d ask you to see it as being as deep and pure as that. In a way, it’s nice to say to other people I love you, but that’s just an outward physical expression. In a way, it’s nice at times to feel an affection for certain people, or a sympathy with certain people, or a sorrow for certain people. But all that lacks any spirit power to create anything in them. Only when you and I love them and want the best for them from the very depths of our being, only then will 'spirit life' be created in them.

And of course, what I saw again today, was the tragedy with you and me is we don’t see the disaster in our friends’ lives. We don’t see the disaster! We don’t see that there’s nothing there! We’re so busy comparing it with the great things we have in our life, or we’re so busy persuading ourselves that we’re superior to them that we don’t see the terrible, deadly disaster that is taking place in their lives. And often it is because they’re managing quite well. They seem to be traveling along quite well. They seem to be managing their jobs, and managing their relationships. But if we could only see the death that is at the center of their lives, if we could only see the desperation that is at the center of their lives, if we could only see the hopelessness that is at the center of their lives, we would see that it requires every good wish that we can have for them to get any life in them at all.

So loved ones, it is important what your spirit is like and what my spirit is like. And, sure, it’s important the words that we say and the actions we do. But actually those physical actions and physical words, all they do is glorify God. They don’t, of themselves, actually affect anything in a person. And it is good to say the right words, and point them to the right books, and say comforting things to them, and things that will help them understand. That’s good, but actually all that does is glorify God by your personality working together in unity. It’s nice similarly, to weep with them at times, and to laugh with them at times. It’s nice to sympathize with them and be sorry for them. It’s good to be emotional in that way with them. But all that does is glorify God by another personality and another soul being possessed by the spirit. But what really changes them, what really does something in the spirits of your friends and my friends is our spirit deep down in purity, loving them, wanting the very best for them -- even if it should mean our own death -- wanting the very best for them. And really, when you begin to want that, God will answer your prayers.

And here is the tragedy, we get our prayers answered. We do! I know; I agree with you; they have free wills. I agree with you that we could do the very best for them and they could still turn against God. But many of our colleagues, many of our friends, many of the people we work with and study with, are as they are, because the deepest prayers of our spirits have been answered. That’s right. And I think it’s a psychologist that once said to a group of parents, “You get the children you deserve and you have the children that you want.” And maybe that has only something of truth in it. Maybe that’s only a partial truth.

But loved ones, in the spiritual realm that is really true; God answers prayer. His spirit brings about in our friends what our spirits want. And really, if you find yourselves surrounded with dear colleagues and friends who are alive, and are moving in God, and are moving more into his sweetness and his fragrance, that is, possibly, a reflection of what your spirit is doing for them. But if you find yourself with deadheads all around you -- they just don’t move. They don’t see anything of God. They aren’t moving towards him at all. It is possible that there is no creation of life in them, because your own spirit doesn’t want the very best for them. Deep down where the 'real you' dwells, there isn’t Jesus’ love for them.

And oh it’ll be so good, if we at our age -- at the age that most of us are at with a lot of years still ahead of us, it would be so good if we could see that. It’s so easy, you know, for a father when he’s 65 or 70, to look at his son whose liver is destroyed by the alcoholism, and the wreck of his marriage is lying there in children living away from home and a wife that is far away -- it’s so easy for a father of 65 or 70, to look at that situation and to want so badly that it would be different, and to have so much love that wants to create life in that son. It’s so easy to see it then! But it’s usually too late to see it then. And oh! It would be so good, if we here would begin to get that kind of love and purity in our spirits where we wanted the very best for our friends -- the very best for our colleagues, where -- even if it meant that they got on better than we did, even if it meant they took our job from us -- we wanted that more than anything else.

Loved ones, I honestly do think that if we could – if suddenly, by a miracle, we could light up this air, and undoubtedly God is able to do it -- if we could light up this air so that the emanation of all our spirits could be seen clearly, it would just be interesting to see what the emanation of your spirit and my spirit is. It would be interesting to see how many of our spirits are wanting what Jesus wants for our friends and for our dear ones.

And so, I just mentioned to you that this question of what our spirits are like is very important because that’s where the real power is. And so, that’s what we’ll be talking about over these next weeks, our spirits. And those of you, who maybe are here for the first time, have gathered, by what I said, that obviously, your spirit is the innermost part. It’s the real you and the 'soul' is just an expression of that. 'Soul' is the mind and emotions. It’s just an expression of what is in our spirit. And then, of course, our body with the hands, and the face, and the eyes, and the tongue, simply expresses what is in our soul. So the heart of the whole matter is our spirits.

As some of you may remember, one of the things we shared was the real difficulty we have of affecting our spirits. Do you remember that? We likened our spirits to the 'Holy of Holies' in the temple. And do you remember, we said that in the outer court of the temple there was daylight? And there all the people came and brought their sacrifices and everything could be seen. And that we likened, you remember, to our bodies. And so if you have a cut in your finger, if there something happens in the outer court, you can put a bandage round it and you can cure it. You can see what is wrong with your body, and you can fix it. So, obviously, there’s no problem with affecting your body.

[Shows diagram here]

Similarly, to a certain extent, in the holy place you can see. There is candlelight, you remember, in the holy place -- in the old temple that Solomon built. There is the light of the candles. It isn’t as clear as daylight, but it is light. So you can see where the showbread is, and you can see where the candles are, and where the laver is. So with our minds and emotions -- with our souls -- you can see a little there -- not as clearly as with your body, but you can. You can think, “What is my mind thinking? What are my emotions feeling? What is my will willing?” And when you see your mind beginning to go in the wrong direction, you can change it. When you see your emotions feeling a resentment that is wrong, you can change it. So, even in the soul, you can in some way affect it.

Do you remember what we said? Everything in the old temple, in the 'outer court' and in the 'holy place', was carried on in response to what went on in the 'Holy of Holies'. And the Holy of Holies was absolutely dark, because God himself was there. And there was no light needed because of his presence. And he was working there by the faith of the people in the outer court and the holy place. And what went on there, went on by God’s activity, or the activity of the Spirit of God in response to the faith that was exercised by the people out in the outer court and in the holy place.

Now loved ones, you remember, we said it was same with our spirits. You can’t actually affect your spirit, because the soul is a lower form of life than your spirit. Your spirit is a higher form of life; it’s deep; it’s more inward. And your soul can’t affect your spirit. That’s why, when we try to affect our spiritual health by the activity of our mind and emotions, we’re trying something that is absolutely impossible. It’s a lower form of life trying to affect a higher form. And you know, we’ve joked about it: It’s like asking a little dog, “Would you psychoanalyze me, and tell me what’s wrong with me?” Well, the little fellow looks at you, and looks, and really wants to help you. But he can’t, because he doesn’t understand your mind. He doesn’t understand your emotions. You’re a higher form of life to him. So it is with our spirits. We can’t actually affect our spirits.

So, how then, do we in fact deal with them? -- Because we must deal with them. You remember the Bible says, “The spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet.” So that means that our spirits are, in some way, subject to us. See, some of us say, “Oh, that’s good. I can’t do anything about my spirit. Okay, it’s just the Lord. It’s whatever the Lord wants to do my spirit, that’s what happens. I have no control over my spirit. I hate you. I have no control over it, it’s just my spirit. There, my spirit may feel differently tomorrow, but at the moment I hate you.” Obviously, God’s word says, “The spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet himself.” And so loved ones, our spirits are subject to us, and yet we can’t affect them directly.

How do we affect them? In the same way as the people affected what went on in the Holy of Holies. The only person who can affect our spirits is the Holy Spirit. That’s why, you remember, we read things like, "The spirit himself," that’s the Holy Spirit, "bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." And it’s the Holy Spirit that makes our spirit alive. And it’s the Holy Spirit that keeps our spirit clean.

Now, how then do we get the Holy Spirit to do those things? Through our faith! Through our faith! You can affect your spirit within you by exercising your faith in the Holy Spirit doing certain things with your spirit. Now, that’s true loved ones. You can actually affect your spirit by exercising faith in the Holy Spirit, by believing him to do certain things to your spirit, and by submitting to him in whatever way he requires you to do -- Because faith is always belief plus obedience. It’s always a promise plus a condition. You believe the Holy Spirit to do something for you, and the Holy Spirit requires you -- in order that he can do that -- to submit to him in some new way. And that’s the way your spirit is affected.

And so it will be important, right at the beginning, that you understand that, because a lot of what we’re going to talk about, concerns you having the right attitude to your own spirit, and knowing what your spirit is to be like. Because, you see, you can’t exercise faith unless you have an object for that faith -- unless you have a purpose for that faith. You remember, Jesus said, “Be it unto you according to your faith.” Now, if you just pray, “Oh Holy Spirit, I believe that you’ll make all things well with my spirit,” well, the Holy Spirit can’t do anything with that kind of a vague belief -- because the belief has to be tied up with a submission and an obedience. So it’s vital for us to know what we are to believe about our spirits.

And what we’re going to talk during these evenings is the 'laws of our spirit' -- the way our spirits are meant to be, so that we can actually exercise faith in the Holy Spirit at the right moment, when we sense our spirits are not like that. So loved ones, do you see the way our spirits operate? -- That you can’t affect your spirit directly by using your mind or your emotions. You understand what happens when people do that? You get that happy-go-lucky, “Heavenly sunshine, heavenly sunshine, flooding my soul with glory divine.” That’s – I used to do that to try to get my spirit up. Well you see, what you’re doing is you’re just raising your emotions. You’re just raising your soul. You’re not affecting your spirit at all! And if loved ones don’t understand that only the Holy Spirit can affect their spirit, and if they don’t understand how to get the Holy Spirit to do that through exercising their faith, then what they do is they end up with these "rah-rah" kind of fests that they run with their own souls, where they try to buoy themselves up emotionally and mentally.

Now loved ones, the answer is, the Holy Spirit can affect the depths of your being in response to your faith. But therefore, you need to know the kind of life that your spirit is meant to have. And so one of the first facts I’d like to bring before you about your spirit is one that you’ll find, if you’d like to look at it, in Hebrews 12:1. And we may be able only to deal with this one tonight, loved ones, because of the time we had to spend on introducing. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And you see the words, “Let us also lay aside every weight.”

Now often, Satan will inflict, and God will allow him to inflict -- because one thing we need to realize is Satan has no power to do anything that God will not allow him to do. But often Satan will inflict and God will allow him to inflict, weights on our spirits, weights on our spirits. And there are many of us that think, “Oh, well, that’s a natural thing.” And so many of us will sense a weight on our spirits, and we’ll think to ourselves, “Well, it’s a burden from the Lord. I should just bear it.” Or we’ll think, “Well, this is possibly the 'dark night of the soul' that St. John of the Cross talked about, which proves that I am a very deep saint, and that’s why I’m experiencing this.” Or some will say, “Well, your spirit does receive weights at times. You can’t help it, but sooner or later the weight will lift, and I’ll be all right.”

Now loved ones, the truth is a weight on your spirit is not God’s will for you.

God’s will for you is the attitude of the spirit that is expressed so often in those psalms of praise, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all its benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.” That’s the normal attitude of the spirit. That’s what Jesus’ Spirit is doing at this very moment. Praising God! Loving him! Expressing joy to him! Delighting in his presence! Delighting in the all power that he has over every other power in the universe! And you and I are in Jesus, and the normal activity of our spirit is one of praise, and rejoicing, and gladness.

And, loved ones, if you ever lose that, your whole spirit loses its sense of discernment. And that’s why many of us get into real problems at times. Suddenly, we lose all sense of discernment of what is good and evil in the spiritual life. We lose all sense of our direction, because there’s a weight on our spirits so that our spirit is not doing what it normally does when it’s dwelling in the presence of Jesus at the right hand of God. And so often we get up in the morning and there’ll be just a heaviness on our spirits. And this is, of course, different from the heaviness that comes through false accusation. The heaviness that comes from false accusation is dealt with very simply, you simply confess any sins that you see, and you accept God’s forgiveness. Then, if there’s still a weight, you know it’s false accusation; you simply answer Satan with the blood of Jesus. And you look to God, and see what the blood of Jesus means to him and you thank him for accepting you. So it’s different from the heaviness that comes through false accusation, which is dealt with by simple confession of sin, and then taking our position behind the blood of Jesus offered to God on our behalf.

But these weights of the spirit are inexplicable heavinesses that come upon us. Now loved ones, if you get up in the morning with that kind of heaviness, and you regard it as natural, the tragedy is that you will not be fit for what God has for you to do that day. And, indeed, you yourself will be very vulnerable to other temptations. So it is God’s will for you never to go out with a heaviness of spirit. If you do, really the day will be just miserable for you, but worse than that, you will miss many, many things that God has planned for you to minister to others that day.

So it’s important, first of all, for you to see weights on your spirit are to be laid aside. That’s what God’s word says, “Let us lay aside every weight.” You’re to lay aside weights from your spirit, and you’re to go out with a spirit that is light, and that is flying high, and that is glorifying God. And that is the normal, healthy spirit of a person who dwells in Jesus.

Now loved ones, you can see how far we often are from that. But loved ones, honestly that’s God’s will for us, and we should never be satisfied with anything less. We should immediately go to the Holy Spirit and say, “Holy Spirit, will you reveal to me if I’ve done anything that has yielded ground to Satan here? And will you show me if there’s any ground that I have yielded that I need to take back? And then, Holy Spirit, I trust you now to lift my spirit into God’s presence and to make it light.” And then loved ones, it’s vital to bring your will, and your mind, and your emotions into line with what you’re believing the Holy Spirit to do in your spirit. You see that? That’s the difference between the old emotional rah-rah stuff and really bringing your soul into line with what you’re believing the Holy Spirit is doing in your spirit. But you need to do that.

That’s why there is a place for praising God outwardly with your lips, because you’re bringing your soul and your lips into line with what you’re believing the Holy Spirit to do in your spirit. And at times it is vital to do that. You know, at times, you’ll find it’s necessary to even speak openly against Satan and to speak in Jesus’ name. At times you’ll have to praise him aloud, because the faith that you’re exercising for the Holy Spirit to operate requires expression in your soul. And so, it is important when that comes upon you, that you deal with it, and certainly not that you lie down under it and let it burden you.

And you can see how often you and I do that. How often we go out with spirits that are heavy, spirits that are dead and dark. And you know what happens: you go to the office and there’s just no rising of life within you. You don’t sense any rising of life. And, in fact, there are times when you wonder, “Am I a child of God at all? I don’t feel any desire to help this person.” Well, that’s because you’ve allowed your spirit to be burdened like that and to be weighted down. But, loved ones, you need to resist it, and to resist it with all your being.

Now, here’s the way old Watchmen Nee talks about it in regard to the battle that you have to engage in at that time. And it’s just good, I think, to use his words, because often God can use him to speak to you in a way that my words mightn’t. “It is also indispensable to deal with the cause of such heaviness, because the oppressive load shall remain as long as the cause goes unresolved.” And usually you see, the heaviness that comes upon your spirit comes because you’ve yielded some ground to Satan. Sometimes it is because God has wanted you to cooperate with him in some way, and you have stepped back from it. And so of course, he allows that heaviness to come upon you to make you aware that you have missed something of his best for you.

So it is important not simply to stand against Satan, not simply to believe the Holy Spirit to raise your spirit but also to ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, is there any way in which I have failed to cooperate with God today, or last night, or earlier yesterday afternoon? Is there any way in which I have not cooperated with you and your movements in my life?” And often the Holy Spirit will be able to explain to you something fine and sensitive that, none of the rest of us would know about. But you’ll recognize it immediately he tells you. And so it is important, loved ones, to ask the Holy Spirit to uncover the cause or the ground that you’ve yielded.

And then, of course, what you do is take your position again, in Ephesians 2:6 at the right hand of God. You take that position by faith. And you need to learn that verse off, so that you can exercise your faith for it -- that God has raised us up and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And then thank the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, thank you that I am at God’s right hand and I’m in Jesus there above any rule, and authority, and dominion, and power, and certainly above any weight that Satan can put on my spirit. So Holy Spirit, will you make my spirit’s condition meet and match that position that I have now? And if there’s any way in which I’m not dwelling there in my own will, will you reveal it to me?”

So loved ones, if I could just maybe, leave it there with you tonight, that one of the laws of your spirit is that it is as happy as the seagulls. That’s right. When you look at the seagulls soaring in the sky, when you look at the birds and listen to them on a spring morning, when you even look at a happy little puppy running around on the grass, when you look at a little baby laughing, that’s the Spirit of God. And that’s the way the Spirit of God is moving in you. And if your spirit is not moving like that, it’s because in some way Satan has put a weight upon it. And it’s up to you to find out what way you’ve yielded ground to him so that he’s been able to do that, by asking the Holy Spirit to show that to you, and then by taking your position by faith at God's right hand.

Now loved ones, are there any questions anyone has? Because I think, maybe we should not cover too much on these things because they are kind of heavy, and that's not meant to be funny.

Question from Audience:

Is it possible that when you go to bed everything’s okay and you waken up with that heaviness?

Response from Pastor O’Neill:

I think it is, because the thing we all know happens when we go to sleep is that you -- your will is often not exercising itself. At times it can actually, but usually it isn’t. And your will of course, is the gate that bars the way to Satan touching your spirit. And often with the spiritual world being so active and so evil in the world, and often with many of us catching a little 'dirt on our feet' as we pass through the day’s business, we can have something down there that we aren’t even aware we’ve absorbed from someone else. And so of course, often Satan can use the obvious – it’s virtually passivity of our wills at that moment to bring things into us during the night.

I think, in ways we can guard against it, loved ones, because you can and you ought always, I think it’s just good sense -- our dear mums and dads were so good, with saying the Lord’s Prayer and then saying, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” and a few other little prayers at our bedside before we went to bed, because that’s good. It’s good practice that you should always pray before you go to sleep. And you should usually have some verse of scripture that you’ve just taken from your Bible at the bedside, and just memorize it as you go to sleep because that is true that, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I may not sin against thee." There is a sense in which you can hide God’s word in your mind. So the last thing that you sense when you go to sleep is, Jesus blessing the children, or the words of one of the verses of scripture in your heart and your head. And that can often guard you through the night. But it is possible even so, despite that to have Satan do things.

And of course, there are – we still have these old personalities that have been used for years to wrong habits. And so you have all that working against you at times through the night. So yes, it is, it is possible that it would come upon you through the night.

But I think often, we just don’t help ourselves, loved ones. I just think you’re asking -- I enjoy the late night shows as much as any of you. But I think you’re just dumb. I think you’re just asking for trouble if you watch the 'World at War' or something, and then you hit the pillow immediately after the World at War, or the 'Streets of San Francisco', or something else, and then you hit the pillow. Then you actually expect that mind to suddenly stop. Now, it doesn’t. The poor mind is just careering madly on. And you’ve programmed it and brainwashed it by images that are very vivid -- both visual images and oral images that are very vivid and are stirring up your soul. They, of course, leave your spirit an almost insurmountable task to begin to pacify the soul, because usually after that is -- your soul goes absolutely dead. And really, it has no more action except what has been imprinted upon it. So your spirit hasn’t affected it any way. So it carries that into the subconscious sleep-life. And I would advise you to be wise about the – if you watch those shows, okay, then have a break. Then have 15 minutes break and then seek God in prayer, or read a verse of scripture. But in some way quieten your heart, and prepare yourself for a good night’s sleep.

I think we bring sleeplessness upon ourselves, you know. I think we’re just stupid: we go out of an argument or a battle, and we go right to bed. That’s silly. And that’s why -- God’s word is so good, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." But many of us go to bed with things unsettled, with apologies not made, with things not fixed between ourselves and another person. And of course, we’re just asking for Satan’s activity in us.

So it is important when you go to bed to quieten your mind and your spirit by using a verse of scripture or reading. I have "My Utmost for His Highest" at my bedside, and every night I read something from that. And you need to have some book that prepares your mind for a quiet rest.

Question from Audience:

I want to understand more clearly how my spirit affects other people’s spirits.

Response from Pastor O’Neill:

So would I. But God has just shown me that boy, we need – we need to realize that this is – this spiritual ministry is carried on by faith, and we do not understand everything about it. It does seem to me that the Holy Spirit not only affects our spirit but is affected and enabled to do certain things through our spirits. It does seem to me too, that the Holy Spirit -- you remember, we said, “When the Holy Spirit comes he will convict the world of sin.” He in fact, convicts the world of sin, not so much directly from heaven, striking down and saying to someone, “You’re doing that wrong,” so much as he creates in each of us a beauty of Jesus. That, then speaks to a person in our office, or our home and exposes to them themselves, without our knowing it, their own ugliness and their own un-Christlikeness.

It seems to me, that that’s part of it, that the Holy Spirit deals with other people through our spirits. And that there’s a deep sense in which – that’s true, you know, the myth that we talk about, that Jesus went back to heaven, and of course, Gabriel asked him, “What arrangements have you made for carrying on your work?” And he said, “I have chosen 12 men.” And Gabriel said, “What if they fail?” and Jesus said, “I have made no other arrangements.” And it does seem that the Holy Spirit, and the Lord Jesus, and our Father have committed to us, here, the gospel. And unless we are faithful, he cannot do any more than what he has done. Otherwise he overrules the free will of mankind.

So loved ones, will you begin – I would say begin to live like this. That’s it. Begin to live like this. And for Jesus’ sake and for your own sake, this is not something to get down about. You know, don’t say, “Oh, I have to do this and if I don’t do it, I’m lost forever.” We’ve dealt with salvation: salvation is wrought for us with Jesus’ death for us on the cross. God has nothing more against us. He’s worked out the wrath against our sin upon Jesus. He doesn’t want to kill us! So let’s accept that and accept that we’re God’s children.

Let’s not twist these things up with salvation. These things concern the walk that God’s children carry on in order to please their Father, and to be used by the Father. So please, don’t start beating yourself over the head about these things. These are great privileges that are offered to us. These are not demands that God is putting upon us. These are privileges of warfare, and successful warfare that we can enter into. This is service that we can do our Lord. So, don’t get back into that thing, “Oh, I’m not living this way every day so I’m not saved.” We’re not talking about salvation here. We’re talking about what willing hearts are able to do in order to be used by Jesus in ministry. So it’s the motive of love that governs all that we do.

So I would say to you, if you really love Jesus, and if you really the love the brothers and sisters that you work with, and you live with, and you study with, then it is important for you to go out of your house every day with a spirit that is living, and buoyant, and light, and glorifying God, and praising him. And you’ll see of course, in your own life, that temptations will be easy to deal with if your spirits are in that state.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the things that you’ve set down in your word. And we thank you for the Holy Spirit, who is able to make all these things real to us. And so Holy Spirit, we thank you for the good and the buoyant message that we are meant to have spirits that will be light and lively. And that we are not meant to lie under weights that Satan may put upon our spirits, and that it is not normal to live in darkness and heaviness of spirit.

And we thank you most of all, Holy Spirit, that we are able to do something about that -- that we are able to exercise faith in you, and that we can ask you to show us where we have yielded ground to Satan. And then we are able to stand against that satanic power. And we are able to take our position at God’s right hand, the position he has given us. And we are able to dwell there by our belief and by our obedience to you. And then you, out of your great grace, will lift our spirits up and make them light, and airy, and praising God.

We thank you, Holy Spirit. Thank you that that’s your will for us and that we can live in that this day and every day of our lives. We trust you, Holy Spirit, to be able to be the 'joyful Jesus' in us tomorrow morning and throughout the days of this week.

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with each one of us now and throughout this week. Amen.