Because our spirit is born from above we now have access to the spiritual realms.
That realm of the spirit is in us, because God is within us. The kingdom is within us, around us and in the heavenly realms outside of us.
First we learn how to engage in the realm of the spirit that is within us, and then we can engage in the heavenly realms that are outside of us.
There are two pathways that we can follow to engage the spiritual realm, the pathway of relationship and the pathway of responsibility.
The pathway of responsibility has to do with going into the kingdom realms outside of us, in order to bring the manifestation of the rule of God down upon the earth.
The first pathway is a pathway of relationship and that leads to a deeper intimacy with God. It is a pathway that flows from the inside out.
So the presence of God in us wants to flow through us and around us to touch the world around us. Just like when Jesus was here physically he touched people all around him every day with healing and deliverance, now he has gone back into heaven and He has released the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come to live in us and though us when we open up our spirit to Him.
God does not want His eternal life to stay locked up in us, He wants His life to flow out of us and it flows out through the gateways of our spirit, soul and body to the world around us. We need to learn how-to be filled with the Spirit, so that His life can flow though us to the world around us.
When we are talking about the gateways of our spirit, soul and body we are talking about the senses they have. We call them gateways because the Spirit of God in us flows through them.
Our spirit has eyes, our soul has eyes and our body has eyes. We may have heard the phrase; our eyes are the windows of the soul. People can look into the eyes of our body and see what is going on in our soul.
Our soul has been conditioned from the outside in. What we have seen with the eyes of our body, have gone into our soul, into our mind and imagination. We may have some pictures in our mind that we need to be cleansed of, this is why we need to be careful what we look at.
The eyes of our heart are different from the eyes of our spirit. When it talks about the heart in the bible it is usually about our soul.
When we talk about the eyes of our heart, we are talking about the eyes of our soul, our imagination. Our imagination is not a bad thing, all though it has worked against in the past, through the conditioning and programming of the world. The eternal life of God needs to flow into our soul so that it can cleanse and heal our mind and imagination.
We need to learn how to activate the eyes of our heart, our imagination. God has given us our imagination to communicate with Him and uses our imagination to project things that we can see on it. God uses our emotions so that we can feel Him. He uses our mind so that we can understand the things that we perceive in our spirit and the things that He speaks in our spirit.
The heart speaks of our inner being, what is happening on the inside of us, in our spirit and soul. Our heart is like a garden, we need to learn how to tend and cultivate our garden.
In Genesis 2 the river of life flowed from the throne of God in Eden, and then it went into the garden that God created for man and then flowed out from there to water the earth. That garden is now in our heart.
In Ezekiel 47 it talks about healing waters flowing from the temple (we are now a temple of the Holy Spirit) and as it flowed out it started ankle-deep then deeper to the knees and then to the loins and then it was so deep that it became a river and brought life wherever it went. We have to get the river flowing in us so that we are filled with the Spirit and overflow. This is God’s desire for us, that we would bring life wherever we go. That people would be able to engage with God through us wherever we go.
In John 4 it talks about the living water, when we drink it, it becomes in us a source of life, a fountain, a flow and if we continually engage in that source then that source according to John seven becomes a river flowing.
It is great to have a drinking fountain that we can drink and get the source of life to help us every day through the difficulties of life. But the fountain needs to become a river and this happens through understanding the gateways of our spirit, soul and body, learning how to open them , cleanse them and see that river flowing out through them.
The river of life flows from the throne of God. In our spirit there is a seat of government or a throne. Who’s in charge of our life? Either our soul, our self is upon that seat or we can learn how to surrender our spirit to the presence of God inside us, and let the flow of His Spirit govern our life.
In the new birth of our spirit we have been given a choice of who is going to rule in our life, of who is in charge. The old man or the new man. Our old man was crucified with Christ, but we have to reckon it dead-Rom 6:11. There is nothing good in our old man, in our flesh, that union of soul and body acting independent of the Lord.
The new man (Christ in our spirit) we have to learn how to put on. Our spirit has a built in yes to the will of God, so all we have to do is to learn how the river of life flows into our spirit, and then our soul and out through our body. This is called the pathway of relationship or intimacy. It is a pathway into experiences and encounters with God that become a way of life.
When we lived on the human level, our own soul was in charge. We have been in charge of our own life and not made too good of a job of it, so the best thing we can do, is to learn how to surrender to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
What we want to do is first of all make Jesus the lord of the gateways of our spirit.
The gateways of our spirit, the gateways of hope, faith, revelation, intuition, prayer, the fear of God and reverence are all summed up in one major thing and that is worship. We tend to think of worship as singing to God and that is a part of it. But actually worship is about being obedient to God and surrendering to God.
Worship is what they did when they came before a King and they knelt down. So we need to learn to kneel down before God in our spirit and soul and say God I surrender to you and I surrender all these gateways to you, and then the flow of life can come through us to engage the world around us.
We need to have all of these gateways active and flowing. Our spirit has the ability to sense the Lord. As our spirit senses the Lord, then the life of God can flow through the gateways of our spirit.
One of these gateways is the fear of the Lord. Before our spirit was born again, self was on the throne. Our soul has been conditioned from the outside in. Through the pressures of life on the outside our soul responded by murmuring and complaining, getting upset and mad. We got fearful and afraid.
We have soul desires that we tried to meet through the things of the world. We got involved in relationships and got hurt. We have all experienced the manifestations of self and all the manifestations of self fall short of the glory of God.
God is holy, and as our spirit senses the fear of the lord, we surrender our soul to the Lordship of Christ over our spirit. In our spirits awareness of the holiness of God, we experience the essence of God and surrender our soul to our spirit.
The fear of the Lord is our spirits awareness of the holiness, the majesty, the awesomeness of God. The fear of the lord is an experience where our spirit is partaking of God’s Spirit in His holiness. And it is the holiness of God that sanctifies us.
So the fear of the Lord is not being scared of God, because we are partaking of God, and it is something our spirit wants. But in that awareness we also see the things in our soul life that falls short of His glory, and this causes our body to tremble in a good way.
In our spirit we will to know the fear of the Lord, the holiness of God, and then it flows into our soul, into our imagination, into our emotions into our will. We see how we have fallen short of His glory and we ask God to cleanse our soul and restore it, so that it becomes a servant of our spirit.
Once our spirit senses the fear of the lord then that gateway of our spirit is open and active.
We can keep the fear of God active in our life daily. We have control over our spirit, and can direct it by our will. We can tune into the fear of the Lord, we can tune into the fruit of the Spirit, and sense the flow of Gods life into us.
Our will has direct control over our spirit; it is a function of our soul. Our spirit is willing but our flesh is weak. Our flesh is that union of soul and body that acts independent of the Lord. Our soul has to be transformed, so that it no longer acts independently, but it becomes a servant to our spirit.
The functions of our soul are mind, emotions, reason, imagination, conscious, choice and will. In the new birth of our spirit we have a yes in our will to God, so that we can surrender our will to the Lord. As long as we keep our will surrendered, then the other functions of our soul can also be renewed.
By our will we put on the new man, which is Christ in our spirit. We live by a new life source where our soul no longer acts independently of our spirit. Our soul goes through a transformation process, it has to be renewed or reprogrammed.
Our soul has been programmed from the outside in. Through the senses of our body our soul has been conformed. Our soul must now be renewed through the senses of our spirit in tune with the Lord.
Repentance is a gift of God and we have to learn how to maintain a steadfast spirit.
Psalm 51:10 create in me a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Through a steadfast spirit our heart or soul can be cleansed. Our soul must be purified, If our soul is not purified it will continue to block our spirit.
Our soul and body veil us from the spiritual realm. This veil is removed in Christ, so that we can be transformed.
2 corn 3; 16 when one turns to the lord, the veil is taken away. We turn our spirit to the Lord, our spirit tunes into the Lord and the transformation begins.
We activate our spirit through focus, through speaking, and we become aware of it. Our spirit has a heavenly language; we speak in tongues and become aware of it. This is called the baptism of the Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Our spirit speaks; through the activation of our spirit we can begin to become aware of its senses.