The primary function, the first function of our spirit is to be in touch with God. Our spirit has the ability to connect with God, to tune into God, to be aware of God.
God’s Spirit is able to communicate with our spirit, particularly as it grows to maturity. We need to grow in spirit so that we can receive the full impartation of God’s Spirit. We can receive things our natural senses are unable to perceive. The Spirit teaches us with spiritual words. We are judged by nobody, we judge all things, we have the mind of Christ, because our spirit is able to communicate with God’s Spirit.
The mind of Christ was a mind that was totally spiritual as a result he could receive from his father by human means the tremendous revelation that he moved in. All that Jesus received from the father was through his spirit being totally open and totally in tune with the Spirit of God. Otherwise he would not be a normal man and he couldn’t be our example, because it was not a normal humanity. His humanity would not be like ours.
All that Jesus was able to receive from God he received by a highly developed spirit completely in touch with the Spirit of God. We have the mind of Christ. We are as capable as Jesus of receiving truth from the Father, but our spirit has to grow and develop so that the mind of Christ can flow into it.
We can see the amazing change that took place in a man like Peter who was hard headed before Pentecost. And afterwards he moved in a dimension of incredible spiritual perception. It was not simply bible training of the mind. It wasn’t natural intellect. It was a tremendous ability that he developed in his spirit to hear from God.
The second function of our spirit is to rule over the soul and body and to develop them as instruments for God’s use. As a result all of our triune man can function in true spiritual service. That means every natural gift and every natural ability and every attribute in our body and our soul is capable of serving God when it is brought under the rule of the spirit. None of it has to be tucked away as useless; it is all useful once it is under the rule of the spirit, once it has become truly spiritual.
If all of our natural gifting and abilities could come into this dimension, what a mighty force we would be for God. We are not to be just a spirit where we detach ourselves from body and soul in order to be in the spirit.
The outflow of spiritual life is essentially practical. May the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely, may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved complete-perfect; the word for perfection is to come to maturity. May your spirit, soul and body be preserved perfect without blame at the coming of the lord Jesus, faithful is he who calls you and he also will bring it to pass.
There is to be balance, we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. Then we see the partnership, the power assisted steering that is working. We are to work it out and God works it in. It is God who works in us, he provides the power, and we provide the willingness. And then together we can come to this kind of maturity.
The spirit, the soul and the body are to be sanctified. Sanctified is to be set apart exclusively for the use of God. Our body and our soul can be set apart, exclusively for the use of God.
We are to present our bodies a living and a holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is our spiritual service of worship.
Don’t be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so our mind can be transformed so that it becomes a tremendous vehicle for God to use, provided that it becomes spiritual that is all that is necessary. It means that it becomes ruled over by the spirit.
All our thinking processes are delivered from carnality and become spiritual but we still continue to think and reason. We use every faculty of our mind, but it is under the rule of the spirit so that we start to think in a totally new way. But it is still the same mind doing it, but it is being used in a totally different way by the Spirit of God, or by our spirit. It is really our spirit that uses our mind, although it is energized and enabled to do this by the Spirit of God.
1corn 6:19 do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit finds its residence in our spirit; the body is also the temple of the Holy Spirit because the body is the container for our spirit. It is not a clean spirit living in a dirty body, but the body itself becomes holy when it is sanctified by the Holy Spirit. We are to glorify God in our body. We can see how the body becomes a servant of the Lord. How the body serves God. The second function of the human spirit is to rule over the soul and body.
The third function of our spirit is to discern and enter into the spiritual realm and exercise authority in Jesus’ name. Our spirit has access to heaven and we need to learn how to step into it. We need to learn how to sit down upon our throne in the heavenly places in Christ.
We need to learn how to enter into the spiritual realm where the real battle is, where we can take dominion. Everything that takes place in the natural realm, first takes place in the spiritual real. This is where the real realities actually are.
We look upon the things which are not seen and not upon the things which are seen because the things which are not seen are eternal but the things which are seen are temporal.
True spiritual sight sees the unseen spiritual realities in all the reality in which they really are. They are more real than anything physical, tangible and touchable. Once we begin to see things clearly then we can begin to make proper judgments.
The function of our spirit is to enable us to perceive in the spirit the real realities of the spirit realm. And discern in the spirit so that we can wage effective warfare, we can lay hold of things which God has spoken in the spirit realm; this is the dimension of faith which really works.
If our spirit is not quickened and alive and made mature there is no way that we can begin to move any meaningful way in faith, it is a spiritual thing. And we cannot wage effective spiritual warfare because this also is totally a thing of the spirit. We cannot pray effectively unless we are in the Holy Spirit, unless we learn how to enter the spirit realm.
To move in faith we have to live on a spirit level, because moving in faith is a spiritual exercise. If we are not spiritual there is no way we can receive faith from God, there is no way we can reach into the spiritual realm and get hold of things that are real in the spiritual realm, and bring them by our faith into the natural realm.
Once we are alive in the spirit then praying is as natural to us as it was to Jesus. Until we become a spiritual person we are not really going to know how to pray.
The forth function of our spirit is to be a channel for God’s Spirit to work powerfully through us.
The Holy Spirit is the one who comes alongside to help. If we are waiting for the Holy Spirit to come and touch a certain physical area, he will not do it, because He comes to people not to geographical locations.
There are doors over cities, that have to be opened up for the outpouring of God’s Spirit, but the outpouring of the Spirit comes through us.
If we are going to see the power of God work in the area that we live in, he has got to have a channel through us. Because this is the only way that God can righteously come and intervene in human affairs. He has to have a human channel to work through.
We see clearly that when He has come to us, not when He has come, but when he has come to us, then he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they don’t believe on me, and judgment because the ruler of this world has already been judged, not the judgment at the end of the age. But the fact that Satan has already been judged. He is already conquered, defeated, and we can already exercise authority over him. When the Spirit has come to us we can demonstrate to the world that that is true.
The fourth function of our spirit is so that the fullness of God’s Spirit can now flow through us to bring His powerful ministry to bear upon the needs of the world and that is what is going to transform our society.