Spiritual Life #57 The Mind Aiding the Spirit

The Mind Aiding the Spirit

Now does anybody want to ask any questions about the baptism of the Holy Spirit? I’ll just mention again, what it is. That’s you, believe it or not, or me, and that’s God, and that’s the world. And God’s will is that your friendship with him, just your friendship, your knowing him and loving him, knowing what he wants to do in your work, knowing what he wants to do in your home, just that friendship that you would act from that. That you would do things, and say things, just because you knew God wanted you to say them.

That’s what it is loved ones; it’s as sweet and as clear as that. It’s just your friendship with God, knowing what he wants you to say and he gives that to you and you say it. And really, you know we’ve said it a thousand times, but it’s just gone all the wrong way. We’ve just put a big barrier between ourselves and him, and that’s the way it goes. We’re just playthings of the world. We’re playthings of what our friends want us to do, we’re playthings of what our employers want us to do, we’re playthings of what the commercials on TV want us to do. But, we’re just governed and dominated by that dear world.

What happens when we begin to realize that this was God’s plan up here? Really, many of us attempt to get in touch with God, and we at last tell him that we need him in our lives. The killer is many of us do it for all kinds of strange reasons. Some of us do it just because we’re in real trouble and so it’s just a kind of cry from agony and helplessness, “Lord help me, I’m losing touch with reality.” Some of us that. Some of us because we have no purpose in our lives and we say, “Lord I want to have some purpose in my life.” Some of us are just lonely and we just say, “Lord, I’m lonely. Will you come into my life?” Some of us have just heard that all you have to do is ask Jesus into your lives, so we don’t know anything else, we just ask Jesus, “Lord come into my life.”

Some of us go up to the front with some friends in a church and we have a great feeling of warmth and we don’t know what happened, but we sense that we’re different in some way. Many of us do, at least, begin to get that going you know. We begin to get a little life going from God to us. But the tragedy is that we’re still getting it from the world as well. That’s a position of a person who isn’t baptized with the spirit. They get some friendship from God, and they’re trying to serve him, and they’re trying to do things for him but they are very dependent on the world’s opinions, and they’re still very dependent on the comfort they can get from the world, and they’re very dependent on the things that they can get from the world, and the happiness they can get from the world, and the security.

So they really live a double life and that’s what Jesus meant, that a double minded man can get nothing from the Lord. That’s what most people are like who aren’t baptized with the Holy Spirit. The only way to be baptized with the spirit, that is the only way to have that, the only power and the only life in your life, is to have that crucified. You remember, Paul says in Galatians 6:14 that I was crucified to the world and the world was crucified to me. Loved ones, honestly until you come to that place, God cannot trust you with the fullness of his spirit. See he can’t.

You brothers, you know how ambitious we men are, and how we want to achieve things. Do you see that God can’t trust us with the mighty power of the spirit that is able to raise the dead, and is able to heal people, unless we have ground into the dust any desire we might have to be something, or to be important? You can see what we would do with a mighty power like the Holy Spirit if we were still in this business of getting the applause from the world. We would just be demons let loose with a supernatural power in our lives.

So loved ones, there’s no way until we have that crucified. But ladies, it’s the same with you, you know, while you still have a desire for the worship that only God deserves, he cannot give you his Holy Spirit, because you would simply draw all of us in admiration, and adulation, towards you. And until you die to the right even to be appreciated, until you die to what anybody thinks of you, the Father cannot give you the fullness of his spirit.

So loved ones, it’s vital to come to that place and for most of us it does require some time. For most of us we have to get before God and we have to say, “Holy Spirit, will you show me in what way I am not crucified to the world, and in what way the world is not crucified to me? In what way am I still a prisoner to the world?” There are a thousand ways in which we all are. We all have rights that we will not die to, and that dear man from Nazareth died to every right he had. Of course, with him we died also. The moment we accept that, the moment we are content with what he was content with, that moment we’re free, really.

Oh, I just saw, you know, another thing coming. God is so good because he gives you light then when you enter into this relationship with him. Life is exciting because it doesn’t matter whether you’re a preacher or not, he’s preaching at you all the time. So it’s good, and it’s growing, and I just saw you know, on the way tonight, are you willing to die to the right to have efficiency? Are you willing to die to the right to have efficiency around you and have things done efficiently?

We love, you know, and we love to pride ourselves, “Well, I don’t know if I’m willing to die to efficiency or not.” But really, it’s die to having things done the way we want them done, you know. That’s really what it is. God asks you that “Are you willing to die to the right to have things done as efficiently as you think they should be done?” Of course, you see we’re mighty Gods, we require everybody to do it the way we want them to. That’s where our irritability comes from, that’s where our impatience comes from. That’s why we can’t pour out up building life to somebody who lets us down. That’s it.

You think what happens when somebody lets you down. Think of it, when somebody isn’t there on time and you meet them and there’s that rising up inside you that thinks “What right have they to keep me waiting?” And you try to gather yourself together to love them, but they see the irritability seething underneath. Of course, there’s nothing of life that comes to them at all. Now loved ones, that’s part of what it is to be baptized into Jesus’ death in order to be baptized with the spirit, means a real crucifixion of the world to you.

Now, when that happens loved ones, what then begins to take place is, God of course, has free way with your life. And then there begins to take place the movement of his life through you to the world. Of course, the tragedy is that this poor little soul here, while he’s been operating that way, and then when he’s been operating as a kind of schizophrenic, his whole personality has undergone all kinds of twists and perversions. Oh you know the way we described it in that diagram. We said that that’s the way our soul was meant to work, you remember. Our soul was meant to work that way with our will obeying our conscience, and our mind understanding what God was expressing, and then expressing the joy that God has given us in friendship.

But really, when we begin to get our security, significance, and happiness from the world, our soul becomes all perverted. Our mind, instead of simply understanding what God is saying to us about what we should do in our job, our mind manipulates like mad. And we’re great manipulators, our mind is always manipulating. That’s what you get – that was the problem you remember with Ananias and Sapphira, if you look at it in Acts 5. It really wasn’t simply that they didn’t give all the money to God that they got for the property, but they pretended.

They wanted the Holy Spirit, though that seems so silly, they wanted the Holy Spirit and they wanted Peter, and the rest of the church leaders to think that they had given everything. You see in what Peter says in Acts 5:4, “While it remained unsold,” the land, “Did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” So all you have to say to me was, “Look, we’ve sold this land and we’re giving you part of it.” But, “How is that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” And you find that, that your mind which should work with great clarity simply understanding what God guides you to do through the day, your mind has become a manipulating instrument.

It tries to manipulate the things, and the people, and the circumstances in the world so that you can get from the world what you were meant to get from God. The tragedy is that even though you have gone back to the place where you’ve been baptized with the spirit, and you’re beginning to operate the right way, yet that dear old soul has got used to this kind of activity. Your mind still tends to manipulate. Actually, that’s why some of us still have soul distress. That’s why any of us who are baptized with the Spirit would ever think we needed psychological care, because often our soul has become so twisted that it’s still operating in the old perverted fashion, and it often takes a while for, you remember what God says through Paul, “For the mind to be renewed.”

That’s what, you remember, God means there, “Do not be conformed to the image of this world,” which of course you are when your spirit is dead and you’re being governed by the world. But, don’t be conformed to the image of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that your mind will cease to manipulate and will begin to understand.

Now loved ones, do you see the distinction then between a mind that was once a mind of the flesh, you see. A mind that was governed by your body, and governed by the world, and governed by trying to get from the world what you should get from God. That mind is a manipulating mind, it’s a mind of the flesh, and that mind is enmity against God. Now maybe you should see that in Romans 8:7. It’s necessary to understand this in order to really understand the subject that we’re studying this evening. Romans 8:7, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot.”

Now, that mind you see, that was set on the flesh, that was set on getting from the body, which got from the world, security, significance, and happiness. That mind was absolutely perverted and it’s hostile to God. Actually it’s interesting, you find that is a problem to you, because God often – you face a problem at work. There’s a problem crops up with relationships in the office and you pray about the thing. And before you started to pray you’ve been working out, “How will I get this person to think this, and that person to think that? And then how will I clear myself out of the mess and defend myself if they come at me?”

So your mind is contorted with all the manipulating. And then you pray about the thing, and you spend time before God, and he gives you peace about the thing. And he prompts your mind simply to understand how he sees it all, and to see how he’s going to work in it. Isn’t it interesting, that at that point, you feel, “But I’m supposed to do more than this? I’m not just supposed to understand and have faith.” The mind wants to get some manipulating done. You find that you’ve prayed about the thing and you see how God is going to move, and you see you’ve to exercise faith and simply understand what he’s going to do, but you still feel there’s something left undone.

It’s so hard to go into the office the next day and keep your mouth closed. It’s so hard to go into the office the next day and not try to get your own hands into the mess and try to fix it. Now loved ones, that’s what happens, your mind continues to work in the old way and that’s why many of us are skeptical of using our minds in our spiritual lives. That’s it. Many of us, when we see the title of this evening which is the mind and really the principle of the mind aiding the spirit, we think to ourselves, “No, no that can’t be. The mind is an enemy of God and the mind cannot aid our spirits.”

But loved ones, though the old manipulating mind, the old mind of the flesh cannot, the mind that is being renewed in God’s image is able to be an ally to you. Actually, God wants it to be. I don’t know if you realize, but the whole purpose of God’s action is that through his spirit coming through your spirit, your soul will be redeemed. That’s his will. God is not content simply that your spirit should be renewed, or regenerated, or be filled. But it’s God’s will that your whole personality, that soul that is so perverted and this body that is so weakened, will be wholly redeemed by his spirit. That’s his will.

He doesn’t want a crowd of spirits in heaven who have broken old bodies, and who have perverted souls. He wants a redeemed people for himself. So God is always trying to bring about the redemption of your total personality. That’s why you’ll often find you’ll often wish he would leave the bad things alone. But he won’t, he keeps on working on the bad things, because those things can’t come into heaven without spoiling heaven. So God is always working to, in some way, redeem this soul completely.

That’s the meaning of that verse, you remember, that is translated slightly different in the RSV, “In patience possess your souls.” Or, “In patience you shall possess your souls.” It’s God’s intention that we should possess our souls, not that they should run away from us but that we should possess them. And for that purpose, God at times, will withdraw some life or liveliness from your spirit. That’s right.

So loved ones, let’s look into the areas where this happens. First of all, that’s quiet time, your quiet time, your time of devotions which you have each day with God, a time when you pray to him and when you read the Bible. At times, the Holy Spirit will give you a great liveliness. You’ll get up in a bright morning and your heart will just be singing out to God, and your spirit will be rising, and you’ll have no problem praising. Or, you’ll get out the Bible study and it’ll just be great, and you’ll enjoy it, and you’ll go to prayer with a sense of joy, and thankfulness. And you’ll pray about all kinds of people that you’re burdened for.

Often, that’s the way God will work with you, and probably that is even the normal, that there’ll be a rising up from your spirit of life. But gradually, God will at times, withdraw that liveliness from you. He’ll withdraw it for a specific reason; he’ll want you to exercise your mind, and to exercise your mind in conjunction with the way his Spirit normally works through you. Now, if you don’t realize that, when there’s no liveliness in your spirit and you get down on your knees to pray, you’ll go into TM. You will. That’s what loved ones do. They think, “Well, there’s nothing rising up from inside. I don’t feel or sense any praise of God.” And so they go into transcendental meditation. They do.

They just go passive, and they think to themselves, “Well, I don’t use my mind because my mind is enmity against God.” And that’s just Satan’s deception and trick to trick you into thinking of it that way rather than seeing that the renewed mind is a good servant of God. But you say, “No, the mind I dare not use. I have to do this prayer in the spirit.” So you stay passive and you keep everything quiet waiting or God’s spirit to lift you. Of course, the moment you do that, you release the exercise of your will over your mind and emotions and actually, over your spirit. And you leave the gateway open for elemental spirits of the universe to come in and disturb your spirit with all kinds of experiences, and feelings. Or, allows those spirits to come in and make your own spirit absolutely dead and heavy.

Now loved ones don’t do that. When that happens, when in the mornings or the evenings you sense no liveliness in your spirit, see that God is allowing that to happen and expects you to use your mind to begin to get out your Bible, to read the passage, to study it, to use your intellect to analyze it. And as you do that, the mind begins to prime the pump of the spirit and the Holy Spirit begins to give light and revelation to your spirit. But that’s why God does that at times.

So don’t be cast down in the mornings when you find no liveliness in your spirit, no use your mind, “Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.” It means you have to exercise your will over your mind. Don’t be backward about it, or think you’re doing something that is unspiritual or something that is soulish. As you do that, as you begin to give your mind to God’s word, so the Spirit will begin to give life to your own spirit.

Now loved ones, that’s the matter of the quiet time, but it also takes place in the matter of warfare and witnessing. I’d just remind you of the position that we have in our warfare. The position from which we war against Satan is that stated in Ephesians 2:6 and you might look at it. Ephesians 2:6 and this is the fact, the eternal fact of our present position. Even though we all look physically to be down here in this room, we are in fact in this position spiritually. Ephesians 2:6, “And raised us up with him, and made us sit with him,” that is God, God, “Raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

Of course, the position, the importance of that position in warfare is given back there in verse 21 of the previous chapter, Ephesians 1:21. Where is that position? Oh well, “Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” So that position is above Satan and above all his powers. Now, that is the position of power for warfare when you’re fighting all kinds of opposition at home. There’s a sneaking, seeping irritability and resentment filling the house, that’s the position of power that you take in warfare. You take that position in the heavenly places and you dwell in that position.

Now the Holy Spirit normally gives you a sense of that. I remember when I first came into the reality of that, I remember I had a great sense that I was sitting at God’s right hand far above everything. And these poor little souls down here were like little insects fighting it out and struggling. Really, I was in a position above it all, in a position of power where I could speak to the mountain “Be cast into the sea.” Normally, the Holy Spirit gives you that sense of being ascended with Jesus at God’s right hand. If you’re living free from sin and you’re living in trust and obedience, he’ll give you that sense. But there are times, when the Holy Spirit withdraws that from you.

Now loved ones, when that happens, do not cast away your faith and do not back down and say, “Well, I’m no longer in that position.” God is doing that, because he wants you to use your mind to settle strongly and firmly on his dear word. And that’s what I’ve done a thousand times. I’ve said, “Lord I thank you that according to your word you’ve raised me up who were dead in my trespasses and sins, and you’ve made me sit with you in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus far above every rule, and authority, and dominion, and power. Lord I thank you for that and I fix thy mind on that.”

Loved ones, that’s what God wants you to do so that the mind, you can see what happens, the mind begins to be strong and it begins to be strong enough to be a help mate to your spirit, and begins to be a friend to your spirit and a kind of handmaiden to your spirit so that your spirit begins to have really, strength, and reinforcement from the whole area of the soul. Instead of the spirit trying to work against a soul that is sick, the soul itself becomes an ally to the spirit and they become dear friends because the mind has learned and remembered certain things that the spirit taught it years ago. And it remembers those things, and it practices them.

Now it is important to do that. I don’t know how many of you do, I think I’ve used the expression before, but I know it’s an Irish expression you never catch it, but we would talk about – when we first learned to ride bicycles, it was great to be able to ride your bicycle with no hands. Do you use that expression? It doesn’t mean that you cut your hands off, it just means you don’t hold on to the handlebars. So you thought you were really clever when you were riding your bike with no hands. But it wasn’t as easy to do it. Obviously, if you were coming into some bendy spots in the road then, you used your hands. That was the way to ride the bike.

Now I think sometimes, we think, “Well we ought to ride the bike with no hands. Yeah, yeah I walk this way just in my spirit; just bare spirit, raw spirit. I won’t use my mind I won’t use anything, just the spirit. That’s the way to do it.” Well, don’t be dumb you know, use everything. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. If you can’t beat Satan with the spirit beat him with the mind. If you can’t beat him with the mind, beat him with the emotion. Beat him some way, but use everything but don’t back off into this kind of – it’s really a false kind of spirituality where we think, “No, we ought not to use our minds.”

Do, your mind is a precious little computer that can remember truths that God has made real to you before in your spirit. If you say to me, “Oh but isn’t it God’s will that they should be vividly real to me? Isn’t that the difference between a Holy Spirit memory and a mental memory?” Yes, yes, it is God’s will that you should have a Holy Spirit memory that the whole thing should be as vivid as when you first saw it. But, there are times when it isn’t and at those times be content to let your mind aid your spirit in this business of warfare.

Now, it’s the same in witness. I don’t know how many of you have had to lead Bible studies or have had to speak a little from the Bible. There are the great times when the Holy Spirit just lifts you up, you go to it and it’s easy. Especially, at the beginning when you’re first witnessing, the Holy Spirit just seems to lift you along and you know what to do, you know what to say, you know which verses of scripture to use, you know how to prepare the thing. In fact, it’s as if the spirit prepares it. But do you see that in a way it’s a kind of honeymoon, because God wants your mind to come into an understanding of these things.

So the Holy Spirit will at times withdraw from you in connection with witness, and in connection with preparing speaking, or preparing little sermons for groups. The Holy Spirit will withdraw that and will require you to use your mind. To just use the old mind, to get down to studying God’s word and to preparing as if only your mind was available. Now as you do that, you’ll find that your spirit will begin to stir within you and revelation will come.

So it is important loved ones, to be prepared to do it. It’s true also in the area of intercession. Many of us kneel down to pray to God and we have no trouble with intercession. The spirit does groan within us with groanings that cannot be uttered. And the spirit intercedes according to the will of God for the saints. And there are times where we just sense the rising of our spirits on behalf of our friends, or our relatives, or our colleagues at work and there’s no difficulty. There are other times when it’s just dead.

Now, at those times be sensible. God has told you all kinds of people to pray for through his word. You’ve to pray for those in authority over you. You’ve to pray that others will be fully formed in Jesus. You’ve to pray for the mum and dad he has given you. You’ve to be faithful for the wife and the children he has given you. God tells us in his word many, many things to pray for. We have to pray that he will thrust forth laborers into the harvest field. You can hardly look at any part of God’s word but there aren’t commands there what you should pray for.

Now when that time comes, when you seem to have no idea what to pray for or to intercede for, then go to his word and pray for those things. Do, and don’t be all concerned because it’s not just all living, and all bubbling up inside you. Be faithful and as you pray over certain things, the Holy Spirit will give life to certain of those prayers and he will begin to intercede with groanings that cannot be uttered. But first, God will require you to use your mind. So do that and don’t think it’s something less than the best. That’s the Holy Spirit beginning to bring your mind into obedience.

It is interesting love ones, it’s easy to do things when you feel like it. It’s easy to do things when the spirit is bubbling up inside you and it just carries you along. But it’s a much greater test of obedience and faith in God, if you do the thing cold turkey, just absolutely cold. And God looks down, and he sees a will commanding a mind to do certain things. That brings a delight and glory in heaven such as no amount of tongues will bring, really.

God delights in nothing so much as pure, raw obedience. That is the greatest proof of love to him. And it’s the same you know, in other things that we come upon in our Christian life because the whole business of guidance is involved in this business of the mind aiding spirit. Do you know the normal way God guides? Maybe you’d like to look at it, it’s Psalm 32:8. Psalm 32:8, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” And the King James Version says, you remember, “I will guide you with my eye.” That’s the normal way God guides.

You have your eyes on him all the time and he just that way, and that way, and you see. And as long as you have your eyes on him, there’s no problem you just move and you move through life in order and with peace. But there do come times when he just looks straight ahead. And he does that so you will, at that moment, go on to the general guidance that he has given to all of us, and that general guidance is endless, “Go and preach the gospel to every nation baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the of Holy Spirit. Be my witnesses. Pray without ceasing. Love.”

God’s word is full of clear commandments that are the general purpose that he has for our lives. When you don’t have specific guidance then use your mind to do the things that God has commanded us to do in his word. Do those things with your whole heart. It is true loved ones, as you follow out the general purposes that God has for all of us men and woman, the Holy Spirit then will make the specific purpose that God has for you, in that situation, clear to you. But often there are times of guidance when there seems to be no guidance and you just don’t know which way to turn, then go to his dear word and ask him, “Lord, what are the things that I should be involved in daily? What are your general purposes for my life?” And then be content to do those with all your heart or with all your being.

Use your mind to do them, because as you do it your mind is beginning to soak into this dear word. Of course, you see what’s happening, really you’re beginning to develop not just a mind that is a servant of your spirit, but you’re developing a mind that is a sheet anchor to your spirit. Do you see that? Because the mind is able to get from his word what is his normal will for us so that if your spirit is ever under attack from elemental spirits of the universe or if your spirit is ever going through a time of darkness, your mind is able to hold your spirit right in the middle of the road.

That’s why God wants us loved ones, to develop our minds along the lines of his dear word. The mind is God’s method of studying this word. As the mind grasps this word and understands it, so the spirit is able to take the life in this word and give it to our spirits. So the mind is always the handmaiden or the nurse if you like, of the spirit. The mind nurses your spirit along, keeps it in the main line of God’s word. Now, it’s always your spirit that actually does the work and produces the life. And the mind can never produce life in another person, only the Holy Spirit working through your spirit can do that. But, your mind can be a real friend to your spirit. So when these times comes loved ones, see that the mind can actually aid the spirit and that it is God’s will that you should use it, and you should exercise it.

Now would you like to ask any questions loved ones about that? The real problem of course, with so many of us who have had holiday camps for high schools, that’s a problem because our minds have gone to sleep. And so you’re fighting the old passivity of mind that we’ll try to talk about next year. But the only way, in a way, to begin with that is to exercise your mind and to determine to exercise it and bring it into activity and action.

Question from the audience:

Does God teach you to use your will more over your mind?

Reply from Pastor :

Well, you can see loved ones, that that is the terrible tragedy of course, that has taken place. The will has given up its normal position of kingship in the soul. Normally, the will is the link, between the spirit and your soul. But, the will has given up that kingship and the will is a pour little slave usually, of our minds and emotions. So Cindy, usually the problem is not just that the will needs strength but the will needs to be exercised along the lines of the function that God originally had for it. I think the answer is that by practicing, by exercising the will, by the will telling the mind to think certain thoughts, the will comes into a right relationship with the mind.

Always you have to be trusting the Holy Spirit to be strengthening, but really it’s a matter of exercising it in your soul, exercising the will’s control over the mind. This is the great lie that Satan has persuaded us all, “Oh, I can’t. Free association is the name of the game. Any thought that comes into my mind I must just think it. I must follow it out. Maybe there’s something deep, and mysterious, and truthful about it.” So we’ve got this idea that any thought that comes into our minds from wherever, we ought to follow it out and so this way that God has for us is totally opposite to that.

It’s the will very much exercising iron discipline over the mind and so it is important to direct our mind what we think. Oh loved ones, if you think of it for a moment, your poor mind, it’s more just like a vacuum cleaner that sucks up everything in its path. Isn’t it? I mean it is. It just sucks up all the time, all the things you hear. All the things that come over television and it’s a lie that Satan has laid on us, “That you ought to absorb everything. Absorb everything you can. Don’t miss a thing.” Well really, God’s plan is that we should be very selective and that the will should govern our minds and should govern what comes into our heads.

Oh I think many of us would have less trouble with dreams if we just turned the mind off when Frankenstein came along in the early days. I think a lot of us just opened ourselves to all kinds of ridiculous things because we have this false idea that we can handle anything. No, you can’t, there are a lot of things you can’t handle. And the will is given to us to guard our minds from those things.

The beauty of course, as Schaefer (a Christian philosopher and author) would say, “The beauty of it is we’re made in the image of God so we’re made to operate this way.” So actually, we have a lot going for us. The personality was originally made to operate like this and it will if you exercise it that way.

Question from the audience:

Can you do anything else except memorizing Bible verses?

Reply from Pastor:

I think memorizing the Bible verses is a great help when you come to the beginnings of prayer times. Indeed, “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee”, obviously its great strength as Jesus used it in times of temptation. It seems to me, that the pray reading is something that is very valuable, where you take a Psalm, or a piece of praise in the Bible, and you don’t so much memorize it but you read it, “Blessed the Lord, oh my soul.” And then you close your eyes and you pray that up to God, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul.” And you let your mind think on the very words that God himself originated.

And it seems that as you do that, those words that came from God himself, give your mind such a sense of being in the right way that they are a great help to beginning praise. So I think that that’s an important way too. I think of course, books are great because the mind can get all kinds of sense of God’s order from the inside stuff of writers and saints.

Question from the audience:

The Bible says, “As a man thinketh so is he.”

Reply from Pastor:

It seems loved ones that it is true that we’ve often said, “The spirit cannot get directly to the body.” It can’t. The spirit – the only way the spirit can get to the body and get to the world is through the soul. So unless the mind begins to reflect and express the truth that God has put in our spirits through intuition, really that truth will never get through to our bodies and through to the world. So not only as a man is in his spirit so is he, but as a man as in his mind as he thinks and as his soul is, so that he is. That’s what his outward life is.

So it is true brother, that you can’t have your mind – that’s why the baptism of the spirit is so important. It’s so important to get everything going the right way because if the mind is still at the old manipulating game, then that’s what comes over. And if you remember, that’s what Paul said, “Are you not of the flesh and behaving like ordinary men?” And a carnal person who is not baptized with the spirit tends to be still in the manipulating game, the still getting the joy game. So he’s still thinking as an unregenerate person actually.

I think that’s what the word means, “As a man thinketh so is he.” If he’s still thinking in the old unregenerate way, that’s what he is to the world. That’s what the world sees him as, a Jacob that is involved in sending presents to his brother to try to pacify him. But when he then, gets baptized with the spirit and the soul begins to experience the spirit coming through, then the mind begins to express itself. You can see loved ones, how vital it is to settle this thing of crucifixion to the world. It just is, really.

Question from the audience:

I was wondering how much you should open yourself to the spiritual world.

Reply from Pastor:

Brother, early on, I was kind of a free thinker or liberal in Britain and kind of thought, “Oh, you ought to have experienced everything.” I was a poet, enthusiastic about experiencing everything I could in Paris, and Rome, and all that stuff. And so I thought, “Oh, that’s the way to go.” But soon after I dealt with Jesus on the cross I saw, no, you have to be a slave of Jesus Christ.

[Question inaudible 44:08]

Okay, okay. Well, I think I would hold to my ground brother, because I saw that God wanted me to learn according to his program. And it seems to me the Holy Spirit is our teacher and he leads, you know.

I could give you an example. Soon after I came into the Holy Spirit, ran into some demon possession. And the Holy Spirit just told me, “You’re a little baby, you can’t do a thing. You just keep clear.” And it was good that I had settled that issue that I am nobody, and I’m nothing, and I don’t know anything. It was good that I had settled that because then I could say, “Yes, Lord.” And later on as he prepared me and strengthened me then I was able to deal with it.

So that’s what I mean, it’s important to be lead by the Holy Spirit even in the spiritual world, otherwise you can bite off more than you can chew brother. Well loved ones, shall we pray?