In order to walk with God we need to understand the difference between our spirit, soul and body.
The body is easy to discern. Our soul is basically our personality, our distinct individuality; it is the self part of us that wills and desires the things that make us human.
Our soul is the part of us that gets us in trouble, self is the root of all our problems.
In order to walk with God we have to learn how to deny self daily. There are hundreds of manifestations of self. And the moment we recognize self manifesting we have to disconnect with it, and look to the lord.
Our spirit is hard to discern until it becomes alive unto God and begins to develop and grow in the attributes of God.
Our spirit has certain senses that become active when the life of God is flowing into it. These senses then become gateways for the life of God to flow into our soul, in order to bring it into submission to the life of God in our spirit.
Our spirit came out of eternity and has to grow and develop. As the life of God flows into our spirit, our spirit senses become aware of it. We have to exercise our spirit, through its awareness of God so that it begins to get strong, grow and expand.
Our soul has to be transformed, so that it no longer acts independently of God, but receives its life from our spirit in fellowship with Gods Spirit.
There are certain thought patterns in our soul that have to be denied until they die. There are desires in our soul that have to be laid aside, so that they no longer distract us from seeking first the kingdom.
Our soul goes through a death, burial and resurrection so that it comes into submission to the lordship of Jesus over our spirit. Then the life of God flows into our spirit activating its senses, and then flows through the senses of our soul and body, out into the atmosphere around us.
The first gateway of our spirit is God’s love, where the fruit of the Spirit flows into it. The fruit of the Spirit is love and we have a list of eight other attributes that flow with it in Galatians 5: 22. As the river of God’s life flows into our spirit, our spirit experiences divine life, divine love, joy, peace and all the fruit of God’s Spirit.
Our spirit has other senses, like the fear of the lord and reverence, so that our spirit is aware of the holiness of God, and we keep that awareness flowing into it.
Our spirit can intuitively sense and perceive the will of God and we keep this gateway flowing so that the life of God is flowing into it. Our spirit intuitively knows the mind of God and experiences the attributes, qualities, characteristics, traits, features, aspects of God’s life
Our spirit has a prayer language, and we keep this gateway open so that we have a two way communication with God.
As we lean the different senses and gateways of our spirit and keep them open and active, we become aware of the life of God flowing into our spirit.
In order to walk in the spirit we need to learn how to live in the Spirit, this is called abiding in the Lord, where we become aware of the life and presence of God within us.
A walk with God is a flow of the Spirit, the life of God is continually active, it is continually flowing, and we are learning how to stay in the flow of the Spirit.
We are learning how to be aware of the different senses of our spirit, so that we can tune into the life of God so that it can flow through those gateways.
The divine attributes of God are on a higher level than human attributes. Our soul is our ego, self-life, or our human nature. Our soul is our self, it is the human part of us and our spirit is the God part of us.
In our journey of transformation we need to develop an internal spirituality, when we experience contrary external circumstances. The life of God flows from the inside out. It flows into our spirit, causing our spiritual senses to become aware of it. It then flows into our soul, causing our soulish senses to come into line with it, and then out through our body into the atmosphere.
When we are filled with the Spirit to overflowing, then we can be aware of the life of the Spirit in the atmosphere around us. This produces a kingdom atmosphere around us.
God has a destiny for our life. We are to grow up into Him in all things. He has a predetermined plan and a goal for each of us that we have to participate in for it to be realized. God wants to do a deep work within us.
Once we surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our spirit, we need to accept in our spirit that God is constantly and consistently working in our life, and then we can appropriate His peace for whatever we may be going through.
The peace of God flows into our spirit, and we can sense it in our spirit even if our soul is troubled.
As we allow the Spirit of God to search our heart, He reveals different areas of our soul that He wants us to bring under the control of the flow of life in our spirit.
The Holy Spirit focuses on a particular area of our life (soul). God will deal with our emotions. It’s easy to allow our emotions to get out of control.
The Holy Spirit will deal with our mindset. Some have an analytical mindset that wants to understand everything logically before they commit themselves to trusting the Lord.
The Holy Spirit will deal with our will. Our spirit wills to do God’s will, but our soul sometimes desires other things. Through our will, we have to stir up our spirit, so that the desire of our spirit is stronger than the desire of our soul. Our will is the chief means for cooperating with the Holy Spirit.
Our soul can be an obstacle keeping us from experiencing the life of God in our spirit. Our soul has a will that doesn’t feel like acting on the will of God. Our emotions are influenced by our ego, the world, and contrary circumstances so that they work against the will of God coming to pass in our life.
The will of God is first of all a state of spirit or heart that is in fellowship with God, and then the manifestation of His will in the natural realm or in our circumstances.
Our mind can be influenced by the God of this world, Satan who is the spirit of the air, or the thought waves and vibrations of the world around us. Until our mind is renewed with the word of God, it is the main problem, and the root of the problem is in the will, self-will is the root of all our problems.
The Holy Spirit will zero in on an area of our soul, and whatever His Spirit is revealing is what He wants us to bring under His rule.
When we learn how to zero in on a specific area of our soul, through the power of God in our spirit, we can bring it into submission to the Holy Spirit so that He can seal us up in that area, that area of our soul becomes transformed.
Our spirit has to grow through exercise, and our soul has to be transformed, which means a new life form. Our soul is yielded, so that it comes into submission to the life of God flowing into our spirit.
The work of the Holy Spirit in our soul does not have to be a painful process. Overcoming some addictions are painful, but only for a moment, if we learn how to appropriate God’s Presence in the process. Once our body is healed and our mind is renewed it no longer hurts. It is a repentance that we will never regret.
We need to learn how to die to our self quietly (the areas of our soul that desire things that are contrary to the Spirit of God). The pain we experience depends upon how we approach the task. For the joy set before us we endure the cross. We have to have our spiritual eyes open to see the glory that we are going to partake of when our soul is delivered. God delivers us by pulling us out of the gravitational pull of the world and lifting us into the heavenly places in Christ in our experience.
The Holy Spirit is a perfect gentleman and He will comfort us as He heals our heart, but we have to be open to His gentle touch. We have to lay down our own personal agendas and let Him work.
We can focus on the idea that we have to die to everything, we have to lose our life (soul) in order to keep it unto eternal life, but then the focus is on ourselves and our own desires. We are to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
By our focus we are to see ourselves as already dead, and alive to the Spirit of God working in us. This way we are working with the Holy Spirit, God must do the work in us, so that we give Him all the glory.
Instead of trying to die to ourselves, we allow the Spirit to live in that area that needs His indwelling. Our well being and happiness depends on how we respond to God’s influence. The things that we die to are displaced by the glory of God.
The glory of God is the perfection of His power and His nature. We are growing in the divine nature; His Spirit is coming alive in our spirit and soul. We become a habitation of God in the Spirit, and this causes the atmosphere to change around us and the circumstances, we become a part of His kingdom, which no unclean thing or evil spirit has access to.
Our soul is religious by nature, so we have to work with the Holy Spirit, we cannot do what only the Holy Spirit can do. Our soul or ego does not want to die quietly and it will focus on the pain or try to glory in the overcoming of something. Our ego is subtle and will talk us into believing that we have died to something, when the seed of it is still in our heart. This is why we work out our soul salvation with fear and trembling, we have no confidence in our self, but total dependence upon the Holy Spirit until He witness to our spirit that we are free through His displacing the problem with Himself.
When we try to overcome something in our self, we become preoccupied with what we are not. When we learn how to live in Christ we become preoccupied with Him. The more we become alive unto God, the more we are automatically dead to self.
To walk in the spirit, we have to deny our self. We have to bring our will, mind and emotions under submission to our spirit. Our spirit has a voice, our spirit will have to say no to our soul from time to time, and the soul will have to submit to it.
Our spirit must be disciplined to take our thoughts captive: our spirit says no I am not thinking that, and we tell our mind what the word of God says concerning it. No, I am not thinking that, I’m thinking about this. By our spirit we set our minds on the word of God. We have to set our minds on the word until it becomes a mindset-our mind naturally tends toward it.
Phil 4: 8Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Rom 8: 6For to be carnally (flesh) minded (result of thinking, the result of the thought) is death (absence of the life of God); but to be spiritually minded (the result of thinking, the tendency or inclination of the mind, its bent-the will follows or obeys the dominant interest of the mind) is life (experiencing His life) and peace (no warfare in the heart).
By our spirit we have to discipline our emotions, sometimes we become aware of contrary emotions in us, when we are not consciously thinking about anything. So we worship God through our spirit, to get the life of God flowing into our emotions.
When our spirit is communing with God then our emotions come under its influence. We want the purity of the Spirit of God in our emotions.
Our mind and emotions are to help support our spirit. We cannot allow our emotions to control our life. We are to keep our mind focused upon the Lord, so that our emotions can come under His control.
Through our will we submit our feelings and thoughts about something to the Holy Spirit before acting upon them.
When our thought life and emotions are more active than our spirit, they will tend towards carnality instead of spirituality.
We have to activate our spirit through our will so that it is communing with God, and His life starts flowing through it, influencing our soul.
The Holy Spirit offers us His comfort for our grief; His mercy and compassion for our anger; the grace of His forgiveness rather than resentment; the joy of His Spirit to overwhelm sadness; His wisdom to replace confusion; and acceptance in our spirit life, instead of loneliness in our soul-life. A beautiful spirit attracts the right people into our life.
Abiding in the Spirit eliminates self-condemnation. The mercies of God are new every morning. Until we become strong in our spirit, we will keep falling short of God’s glory. As long as we are on the right path we just keep getting up until we learn how to stand.
The Holy Spirit is the greatest encourager alive, He doesn’t want us to beat ourselves up over missing it, He knows the struggle we are having and is called alongside to help us. We have to learn how to depend upon Him, to learn how to be aware of Him, so that we can draw upon His strength. We need to careful that we do not grieve or quench His Spirit.
God is the God of the fresh start; every morning is a new day, a day to experience His Spirit. We do not want to carry into the new day, any past failure of yesterday. The Holy Spirit does not want us to focus on our past but to forget the things that lie behind and press toward the goal.
We need to understand the difference between our soul and our spirit. When our spirit is quickened and we start out in a walk with God we are actually at war with ourselves. Inside each of us are basically two parts in conflict: a soul and a spirit. We now have two lives, our soul-flesh and our spirit, our human desires and our spirit or divine desires. Our spirit and our soul strive for complete control of who we are. Each desperately wants to run the show, but only one can. Either self is on the throne of Jesus is Lord of our lives.
God has called us to be ruled by the life flow of God into our spirit, to submit our soul to our spirit. We find our flesh warring against our spirit, but we keep our body under and bring it into submission. We must be subjecting our soul, our mind, our emotions, and our self-will – to our spirit, that part of us which connects with God.
Before our spirit was quickened, we did what we wanted, we went where we wanted, and we ruled our own life. But with salvation comes a call from a different king: our soul or self must now bow its knee to the government of God. Our spirit, which hears the still small voice of God, which intuitively knows the will of God, has to exert pressure on the soulish will to change its behavior.
Our soul, conversely, is more in love with the idea of God than with God Himself, with the idea of change, than change itself. Our soul drags its feet, trying desperately to avoid surrendering to the spirit. It manifests itself in willful displays, deluded thinking, and odd emotional behavior.
Our soul refuses to surrender easily to our spirit because it wants to be number one. It will rule us to the point of driving us. The soul believes in self gratification: it resists God. The spirit, desires after God and finds it’s pleasure in Him.
Our soul does not understand the ways of God. It cannot fathom why He does what He does. Our minds are just too limited to see the glory of the Lord’s ways. When we find ourselves in trouble, our soul knows what it wants from God: ‘‘get me out of here!’’ It tries its best to avoid entering into the process of submitting to the spirit.
Our Soul hates being weak; it glories in its own strength; it leans to its own understanding and is proud. Our soul does not want to surrender control because it is limited in its understanding.
Our soul power must be broken or we cannot serve God effectively. Our soul needs to recognize that it will only be truly happy when it has no authority, when it no longer acts independently, but becomes a servant of our spirit.
Our soul will only find peace and fulfillment and full expression when it is a vehicle for our spirit to operate. Left unconquered, the soul keeps us open and vulnerable to external pressures and attacks.