The implication of Hebrews 4:12 is whether we are living by the spirit or by the naturally good or bad influence of the soul.
The Word of God is what divides our spirit and soul, so we can tell by what energy we are living by. The divine energy of the Spirit, or the human energy of the soul. Our soul is basically our humanity. Our spirit is basically our divinity.
Only God’s sharp Sword can differentiate the source of our living. As a man’s knife cuts and divides joints and marrow, so God’s Sword too pierces and separates the most intimately linked spirit and soul.
This cannot be just a matter of knowledge; we must enter the realm of experience; otherwise, it shall never really be understood.
I can tell by experience when I am living in my spirit, and when I am living in my soul. The manifestations of self are many. But when I respond to things in my soul-flesh, I pause and step back into my spirit, so that it is in the forefront of my consciousness and then respond in my spirit. But this is a process we are commanded to walk in the spirit.
Galatians 5: 16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
The word walk is an imperative which means it is a commandment in the New Covenant. It is in the present tense, which means we are to continually at all times walk in the spirit.
The word not is a double negative. There are three not’s in the bible, a conditional negative, a full negative and a double negative. This is a double negative which in the Greek is translated by two words, the first is a full negative, the second is a conditional negative.
So, it is kind of difficult to translate. The first not would be never, and the second not would be conditional upon the fact that we are walking in the spirit.
I translate it “no, never” because “never, no” does not sound right. I recently started translating it as impossible because that is what it really means. If you continually walk in the spirit, it is impossible to fulfill the lust of the flesh, because you are on a really high level with God, and you want nothing to pull you down, so you do not even consider it.
But in order to walk in the spirit, we must first be filled with the Spirit, which is also an imperative a commandment for the new creation.
God commands us to do something like a father would tell his little child not to do something or to do something. But as we mature in the Lord it becomes a way of life, and we are thankful that we have been practicing it, so that it has become our way of living. This is experiencing the abundant life Jesus came to give us, a life full of continual love, joy, peace, and the rest of Jesus’s divine attributes.
Believers should allow the Lord to introduce this dividing of spirit and soul into their practical walk. Everyone gets in the soul-flesh at times, it is the way our brain has been programed. So this is a process, but it starts by experiencing it, that is why we tell people I am sorry. As we learn how to walk in the spirit, we will not have to apologize to anyone, because it is no longer us who live, but Christ who lives in us.
Our spirit needs to be liberated from the soul’s binding attachment. These two must be completely divided even as the spirit and soul of the Lord Jesus were not one bit mixed.
Once we learn how to walk in the spirit, then our soul will be renewed or saved (the salvation of our soul) and then they will be reinterrogated and we will become a whole person.
I went through all this deliverance ministry and inner healing and it never really helped me.
When I learned how to worship God with all my heart I would become aware of his manifest presence where you can feel him, and then it would overflow to the people around me who were open to God’s fullness, most people in church are, but not everyone.
We are living in the time of transparency, if we repent God will not expose our sin or past, but God is cleansing house, and he will expose people’s motives, who are building their own little kingdoms, who are operating in charismatic witchcraft.
I will give you an example, we don’t have authority over human will. In the 70s, Neville Johnson’s hair used to be shoulder length because it was that era. He had hundreds and hundreds of hippies getting saved in his church.
However, every Sunday morning he would get up and begin to preach and get an incredible headache again and again and He said, Lord, what is this? Show me what is going on.
So, he was praying about this situation. The next Sunday before he went to church, in his study room praying God, I don’t want this thing to come on me today, show me what is happening. And the Lord showed him this nice Christian lady on her knees praying for him. And he asked the Lord to let me hear what she was praying.
You know what she was praying?
In Jesus name I command him to get his hair cut, in the name of Jesus!
This is spiritual manipulation, witchcraft, by praying this way what she did was created substance by the words of her mouth in the spirit realm.
And a demon would use this substance and come upon Neville and give him a headache. So, he confronted the lady after the service and told her what she was praying in her prayer closet, and to stop that. We do not have authority over a human’s will, but only demon spirits. I deal with this in another message. How that people can be praying for us and we get hit by the enemy through their prayers because they are not praying according to God’s will.