Our human nature is unacceptable to God. We were born in sin, we inherited a fallen nature. We can’t bring to God what we are as a human being and say, Lord I am doing the best I can, will You please accept this old nature. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. The flesh refers to our self-nature. Our soul is directly related to our blood stream, and the body is dead because of sin.
It is not what we bring of ourselves that pleases God. It is what we appropriate of Him and give back to Him that is acceptable to Him. When He looks down on us and sees His own workmanship it pleases Him. It is what He puts in us that reflects back to him that is acceptable.
Our own human love is unacceptable. We can strive to love Him, but in a crisis we would fail. We love him, because he first loved us. I John 4:19. But this is His love shed abroad in our heart that reflects back to Him.
When we are filled with His Spirit, our spirit reflects God. The light that enters our spirit comes back to him. His light is the impartation of His life. Our hearts become a sounding board echoing back all that He sends to us, this is acceptable in the sight of the Lord. It is what we have appropriated of His grace that is acceptable in His Sight. When we are filled with His Spirit, we are filled with His nature, His attributes and this is what is acceptable in His sight. It is the inflow of His Spirit into us that then flows back to Him.
When we understand this principle, we will be set free from trying to live a life that acceptable to God, and seek first to be filled with His Spirit and then everything that we do will reflect His glory.
Our human nature has a religious instinct. The efforts which are generated by our own religious instincts are not pleasing to God. That which pleases God is what we do by the Holy Spirit.
God is seeking those who will worship Him in spirit and truth. The worship that is acceptable to God is that worship which comes forth by the Holy Spirit Himself. It is when we begin to worship God, and in our worship when we become aware of the presence of God, then out of our spirit flows a worship that is acceptable to God and at the same time we are being blessed because we are partaking of His Spirit in it. Our soul becomes aware of God’s Joy, His love, His nature.
We can go to church and sing songs and never meet God in it. We have to discipline ourselves to have a meeting with God. It is when our spirit connects to God’s Spirit that the result or fruit is originating in God. We are commanded to be continually filled with the Spirit. And as we learn how to tune into God, we can begin to learn how to abide in Him.
Until we have a walk with God we are not going to always manifest the spirit but also the flesh. We will manifest both or a mixture of both until we learn how to walk in the Spirit.
A walk in the Spirit is a flow in the Spirit. We look continually to the Lord, drawing Him into us and releasing Him through us.
When our spirit was born again we received a measure of His Spirit, which will continually increase as we learn how to walk or exercise in the Spirit.
We have to learn how to feed upon God, how to receive from God and how to flow in it, how to release His Spirit, how to minister to other’s in His Spirit.
To walk in the Spirit, is learning how to move in the Spirit, all our activities in God. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. It is God in us desiring and doing. He has to put in us the desire and then the power to do of His good pleasure.
Rom 8: 26Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
Only what God does in us produces fruit. A lot of our praying is not fruitful because it is filled with self. But when we are first filled with the Spirit, then the Holy Spirit prays through us. The prayer that is acceptable to God is the prayer that the Spirit Himself makes.
We are co-laborers with God, co-creators. When our spirit is connecting with God, communing with God, fellowshipping with God we are entering into a oneness with the Spirit, it is a flow, our thoughts, feelings, and words that are anointed.
There is an inflow of the Spirit and an outflow. We are in motion, we are flowing in the Spirit. It is like priming a pump, we have to keep pumping and then the water starts flowing, but if we stop pumping, the water stops. The life I now live, I live by faith. Faith has to come, and then it has to work. It works by love, by being led by the Spirit.
Eph2: 8For (signifies “and in fact,”) by grace (the divine influence of His Spirit, His Ability and His Nature.) are ye saved (the spiritual state brought about by the finished result of the action or process, restoration to the image God intended)through (by means of, instrument, intermediate cause-that which intervenes between the act of the will and the effect, through which the effect proceeds) faith (conviction of the truth imparted through contact with God’s Spirit); and that not (full negation) of yourselves: it is the gift (gift, present)of God:
God looks down as He ministers to us and He sees the faith that He Himself has generated within our heart coming up to Him. This faith is the substance of things hoped for; this is the faith that brings down the will of God into manifestation upon the earth. It is not human effort, but the moving of the Spirit that accomplishes the will of God in the earth.
The Holy Spirit is called the helper; He only has the ability to bring forth in us what is acceptable in God’s sight. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us through the Spirit of God in us. The Holy Spirit takes of the provision of Christ and ministers it to us and through us.
When we take communion we do not want it to be a human effort, then we are searching our heart, and reasoning in our mind if we are worthy or not to take communion. We judge ourselves, we are not worthy or else we wouldn’t need to take communion. We partake of His body and His blood (soul) confessing, agreeing with God that all that He reveals to us by His Spirit that is wrong is wrong. We are letting the Spirit be the searchlight that reveals the deep hidden things in our heart that are unacceptable so that we can reckon them dead as we partake of the Holy Passover of the Lord, the provision for our cleansing. We drink of His blood and eat His flesh so that we can reflect back His righteousness.
Nothing will please the Lord but a new creation, which is His faith working by His love. It is partaking of Him that changes our life. We are partaking of that which feeds the new creation, Christ in us the hope of glory.
Jesus would say to all the good moral people that would come to him, you must be born again. It all starts with what God does in our life, what He becomes to us. We are not striving to be a superior specimen of the human race; we strive to be found in Christ.
Without the Spirit all human effort falls short of God’s glory. We may be able to put off certain things, but the flesh will just manifest itself in a different way. The old nature will always be the old nature, all we can do is reckon it dead, and put on the new nature. We need to be clothed with Christ, aware of His Spirit working in our life.
All the things that Paul accomplished in his zeal for God in his religious life before he met the Lord, he counted as dung. Our human righteousness is as filthy rags. The best the old nature can produce is manure in God’s sight. Our body is dead because of sin, so we offer it a living sacrifice. We stir up the gift of God in us, and we reflect back to God the new spirit He put in us.