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In the past 12 episodes – that’s Part One of this series – we’ve journeyed through four milestones – represented by Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho and Jordan. Each milestone reveals facets of our lives which must be engaged and dealt with before we can progress to the next stage.
Today, we begin Part Two which provides practical applications to prepare to ‘run with horses’, that is, strengthen our spirit, restore our soul, build our capacity to serve God in our spheres of influence, and to eventually finish well.
It sounds daunting! How do we even begin?
Well, first, we have to start with some understanding of ourselves. The Bible reminds us that the human person has three parts. In 1 Thesslonians 5:23. Paul writes,
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So that means we are spirit beings. We have a soul (our minds, emotions, will – our personality) and we are held together by a physical body. But when we function, we do so as a coordinated whole of the three parts of body, soul and spirit.
What is particularly enlightening for me is that Pastor Daniel Foo points out God’s order or sequence of Christian Living. The order is firstly spirit, then the soul and lastly the body: The Holy Spirit guides our spirit, which in turn governs our soul; then our soul controls the actions of our body; and this manifests in all our responses and actions.
So let’s put first things first. In Episode 13 today, we will look at “Strengthening our Spirit Man” and “Enlarging our Spiritual Capacity”.
Our spirit man is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and is the seat of our spiritual life. The Apostle Paul tells us that our spirit man has to be strengthened to be filled with the fullness of God. This refers to our spiritual capacity. Paul calls us to be strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit so that our spirit man can experience first and foremost, God’s love. If our spirit man is weak, all we experience is just a few ‘droplets’ of His love. We need to grow our spirit man to receive and experience increasing dimensions and measures of His love, until it surpasses our mental capacities to grasp.
Paul prays,
that He [the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ] would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. - Ephesians 3:16-19
When we are filled with the fullness of God, we experience His presence and everything that is of Him, including His power.
Then through His power, we overcome the evil one, who is not only a liar and accuser (John 8:44 and Revelation 12:10) but who is seeking to destroy us (1 Peter 5:8). We also overcome the world, which is the pull of worldly pleasure and its temptations (1 John 2:15-16). Finally, we overcome our self-life when we experience victory over besetting sins and addictions. The overcomer is one who has the capacity to run with horses.
In order for our spirit to be strengthened, we must know the three main functions of our spirit:
1. Our spirit man forms our communion with God.
2 Corinthians 13:14 shows how the entire Trinity relates to us:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Our spirit connects with the Holy Spirit in our relationship with God. To have a relationship with God is to have a constant and close communion with all three members of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
To relate to God the Father, we must first grasp the principle that it is He who first loved us (1 John 4:10), and we must personally experience the love of the Father God for us, before we are able to love Him and others (1 John 4:19). We relate to Jesus who is full of grace and truth (John 1:14) and who is our Saviour (14:6), and sustains us by His grace and His truth (John 1:17 and Acts 20:32a). Faith is the key to receive His grace for us (Romans 5:2).
Lastly, we fellowship with the Holy Spirit, who is our ‘Alongsider’ and Helper (John 14:16-18), who teaches us how to pray (Romans 8:26-27) and guides us to the truth (John 16:13). When we commune with Him daily, He enables and empowers us to overcome our sinful nature (Romans 8:2).
2. Our spirit man gives us our conscience, our sense of right and wrong.
The conscience is our inner prompting of right and wrong. It is guided by the Holy Spirit. Paul in Romans 9:1 says,
I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit,
How can we have a good conscience? The key is continual obedience, which builds sensitivity in our conscience. It doesn’t mean we will not sin, but when we do and our conscience convicts us, we confess our sins and seek cleansing and forgiveness (1 John 1:9). We are rescued from the damage to our conscience by His purification.
It is important to note that not everyone who sins or behaves wrongly does so out of a bad conscience. Here, we are to distinguish a bad conscience from a weak one—a bad conscience acts out of malice; a weak conscience acts from a lack of knowledge which often leads to superstitious beliefs.
In today’s context, we face similar issues. Should we participate in the traditional mooncake festival, eat at restaurants where idols are set up, or deliberately avoid stepping on ashes from incense burning? To take things further, what about participating in funeral rites? Where does paying respects end and worshipping the dead begin? This is where we need to help each other distinguish between cultural and spiritual issues in our ethnic celebrations and practices.
3. Our spirit man gives us the ability to discern good from evil.
To discern is to sense, perceive or know intuitively. Therefore, our spirit’s function of discernment is to know the source of actions and events—whether they are from God, man or the evil one. We discern what is good (which is everything from God) from what is evil (which is everything from the devil), and more importantly, what lies in between. The challenge lies in discerning things that are partially good and partially evil.
How can we grow this function? We can only have increased discernment to the degree we know God and His Word. This is because His Word provides us handles to do so. Hebrews 5:14 further adds that one sign of mature believers is their exercising discernment to view issues and questions in the light of Scripture, with the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.
How do we enlarge our spiritual capacity?
To strengthen the spirit man is to grow in our capacity to handle the troubles of this life and hold on to God in good times and bad. We do so by applying several spiritual disciplines, which will bring forth God’s work as not simply an idea, but a reality in our lives. In order to strengthen our spiritual capacity, Pastor Daniel believes we must focus on three spiritual disciplines:
1. The Altar of Thanksgiving, Praise and Worship
The first spiritual discipline is to build our altar of thanksgiving, praise and worship. The essence of thanksgiving is a grateful heart. Every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we are grateful for our salvation: that with God there is a multitude of mercies, and with Him there is always forgiveness. God is an awesome God, and yet we can come to Him boldly, confidently.
Why? Because the price has been paid. We always come to God by the blood of the Lamb. We can always come to God as long as we are alive, before the return of the Lord Jesus. Whatever we have done, or whatever failures or mistakes we have encountered, we can always come to God. That is why we are grateful.
2. The Intake of the Word
The second spiritual discipline is the intake of the Word of God. Psalm 119:11 says,
Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.
This refers to the logos Word of God, as revealed in the instructions, commandments and laws of God.
To keep living abundantly, we need to appropriate the Word as spiritual food. Imagine: if the palm of our hand represents the Word of God, then our five fingers represent 5 ways to receive the Word of God. The 5 ways are: to read, hear, study, remember and meditate upon the Word of God.
3. Prayer Communion
The third discipline is prayer. The best way to develop our prayer communion is to develop the spirit of faith and pray the Word of God (2 Corinthians 4:13). Whenever we have trials, or are struggling over an issue, we must look to the Word of God, and not allow the situation to choke the seed of the Word of God in us. Declare what Scripture declares and say what the Bible says.
Reflection
What does the altar of thanksgiving, praise and worship mean to you? How would you put this into practice as a spiritual discipline? What are some bible truths that you can pray aloud to thank the Lord, to praise Him, to worship Him, to pray for yourselves, your family, your community, your nation.
In the next episode, we will explore restoring our soul and expanding our physical capacity. Come and join us! You’ll not regret it!
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