In order to walk with God our spirit must rise up to a level where our spirit is absolutely predominate (to dominate or control something) in a situation, with our soul remaining subordinate (allow something else to dominate or take priority) to it.
The soul is involved with a great deal of emotions and feelings; but in the realm of spirit, there can be an intensity of feeling that goes beyond even the normal emotional expression.
In its reactions, the human soul is the central switchboard of our being. Feelings are expressed through the reaction of our soul to the world around us, to people, or circumstances. We become encouraged or discouraged, angry or pleased. We can see this in animals because they also have souls.
When our spirit is communing with the Lord our soul becomes aware of it. Our soul is our self-consciousness. In our soul is our awareness of self.
We are capable of feeling on many different levels. Our spirit has an awareness of the spirit world, even though it may not always come through to us consciously.
We have a human nature of unbelief. Our soul is naturally filled with worry, doubt and many feelings that are not an expression of faith. We have to learn how to disconnect from it. We have to learn how to get out of the soul-realm.
Many people think they have faith when they are able to ignore their feelings. The highest realm of expression of faith is reached when we move up to the intensity of feelings that only our spirit is capable of.
When our spirit is communing with God, our soul becomes aware of God’s emotions. His emotions are manifesting in our spirit. Our spirit has feelings also, but they are different from the feelings and emotions in the realm of the soul. Mary rejoiced in spirit and magnified the Lord with her soul.
The intensity of feeling in the realm of our spirit brings everything into subordination to it. We should always be able to feel this intensity in our spirit. This intensity will vary in degree, and when the Spirit of God comes upon us it is explosive. Our spirit can make us so intense that we feel as if we can walk up to a building and push it down.
One of the gifts of the Spirit is the gift of faith, when the Spirit of God comes upon us it changes us into a different person. All we can see is victory! This is one of the ways we are enabled to work creative miracles and see the gifts of healing being manifested before our eyes. A surge of strength coming from God can possess our spirit.
This is what we see in the word when we read about the miraculous things the saints of God did. The Spirit of God would come upon Samson and he could kill a thousand philistines. David said, “By my God I fought a troop and leaped over a wall”. This intensity of feeling came surging through his spirit and into his soul and through his body because his spirit was in tune with God.
In order to love God with all our heart we need this intensity in our spirit. We will actually be able to love the Lord our God with all of your heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of our strength. With all of our heart, refers to this intensity that gets a hold of us.
The Word of God comes to us to separate between soul and spirit, to set us free from the fluctuating lower level of emotional reaction. When we are aware of the world around us and circumstances, we tend to become discouraged or encouraged depending upon what is taking place.
When we are living on the spirit level we are on a higher level where the living Word we are hearing looses us from the reactions of the soul and brings us into the intensity of our spirit alone reaching into God. The emotions we are experiencing are born of our spirit and are not soulish emotions. It is the result of our spirits intensity reaching up into God.
The best way to describe this intensity is that it is fierceness (violent in force) within our spirit. It is a violence that demands, everything within our soul to serve the Lord! It is as we draw upon the strength of the Lord and proclaim the Word of God with the intensity of our spirit; we see the fulfillment of that Word springing into view before our very eyes.
Instead of us changing as we look at the situation around us, we will look at the situation and change it. Everything will change because in our spirit we have determined that it has to be so. It is this intensity of spirit that commands the storm and the waves, to be still and they obey us. It is this intensity of spirit that curses the fig tree and it dies. It says to the mountain, be removed and it moves. This is not a faith that is through the soul’s emotion; it comes out of an intensity of spirit. This intensity comes from God, it says, “Thus saith the Lord” and the reality springs forth into being, because it is God confirming the word. We can see this in Elijah saying it shall not rain, but He was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. He was an oracle of God.
It is as we become aware of this intensity in our spirit, that we know our spirit is not asleep. We have to learn how to keep our spirit active pressing into God, or we will not have the strength necessary to live the overcoming life.
We need to be aware of the intensity that the Lord wants in our spirit. He put a yes to the will of God in our spirit. There is a hunger and a drive in our spirit that relentlessly (Steady and persistently) pursues after the Lord. When our spirit is exposed to God, it hungers after Him. If our spirit is not relentlessly pursuing God we have lost contact with Him.
Because we were made in the image of God, we are not only spirit—we are a triune being. Our spirit affects our soul and body. It gives life to our body. But our soul and body should also be giving support to our spirit. We become spiritual when our soul is being influenced or fed by our spirit, a great deal of lawless emotions are immediately brought under control. The confusion in our mind comes under control. Our soul and our body should be serving the objectives and the expression of our spirit before the Lord.