Newsletter 10 - September 2008

There is a place in our inner man where we can hear Gods voice. The more time we spend listening to Him, the more we will hear Him. The Holy Spirit speaks through bible texts, words in your inner man, images in your inner man, dreams, visions. Some visions can be so strong that the difference between vision and reality is hard to tell. Let us look to our inner man to understand the hearing of His voice in a better way. The bible speaks about three different aspects of a person: (human) spirit, soul and body (1 Thess. 5:23).

THE SOUL
The soul is our selfconciousness. It is the seat of our personality. The aspects that make us human and form our personality can be found in the soul. This is how God made us. There are three separate parts in our soul:
1. our mind; we have the ability to reason, a world of thoughts and a place of making decisions
2. Our emotions or feelings; this can be anything like: gladness, love, anger, cheerfulness, bitterness, longings, feeling, temperament etc.
3. Our willingness; with our willingness we have the ability to make choices. All these aspects are parts of our soul.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT
When we want to make sure to understand the Lord it is important to be aware of the human spirit. Our spirit is a place where the Holy Spirit speaks to us. Our spirit tells us. In the human spirit there are also three aspects:
1. Our conciousness; as soon as we do wrong or sin our consiousness speaks.
2. Our intuition; we have knowledge without someone telling us. We could describe intuitin as "knowing without a doubt".
3. place of intimacy; our relationship with God in our human spirit. Rom. 8:16 (KJV) The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit... Now let us concentrate on the third part of our spirit: the place of intimacy. The place of intimacy in the spirit of a reborn christian is where our relationship and our worship of the Lord occurs. Is is the place where the Holy Spirit lives in us. 1 Corinth. 6:17: But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. We can worship Him with our human spirit. Joh. 4:23 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Notice the word spirit written with a capital which refers to Holy Spirit and with a normal letter, referring to the human spirit.

THE BODY
The body is a material home that came alive when God blew His life breath over us. Our body is a home for the Holy Spirit. The bible speaks about the body as a temple, a place of worshipping the Lord. The body is a creation that mirrors our spirit, our soul (personality). It lives because God gave us a spirit and the body of a Spiritfilled Christian bears the Holy Spirit with him or her everwhere they go. The soul, the human spirit and the body are connected to each other. When there is tension or stress the body shows reactions (tiredness, transpiring, pain in the muscles etc.). Everything we do influences every one of these parts of man. A person who is filled with the Holy Spirit will show it through his/her actions because body, soul and spirit are one. When we have a problem with our soul to speak in tongues you won't speak in tongues: God gave us our own will and respects it. We may make and should make our own choices. God made this to our responsibility. If we make the wrong choices our spiritual growth can be limited and with that also the working of the Holy Spirit in us). The soul often has a greater influence than the human spirit. With the soul man can block listening to the Holy Spirit, soul and spirit influence each other. But with the soul we can take a decision to let the Holy Spirit have His way. Let The Holy Spirit sit on the throne of your life! Please keep repeating the exercise from Newsletter no. 9 and train you spirit, develop your relationship with the Lord Jesus and you will learn to understand Him in a clearer way.

If you want to read more about body soul and spirit please read: The spiritual man by Watchman Nee.

The King's HeART