The realm of spirit

…eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words.

Now the natural man (the word in Greek is “the soulish man”) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto Him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged (or examined). But he that is spiritual (in contrast to soulish) judgeth all things (or examineth all things), and he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. (Only in the realm of Spirit, not in the realm of soul, can the mind of Christ be conveyed.)

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, (men of spirit) but as unto carnal (men of flesh—there are three realms: fleshly, soulish and spiritual) as unto babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for ye were not yet able to bear it: nay, not even now are ye able; for ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal, and do ye not walk after the manner of men? (or “walk as men”). I Corinthians 2:9–3:3.

This lesson deals with the realm of spirit—not only the realm of God the Spirit, but also the realm of your spirit. You are made in the image of God that God breathed into your body your spirit and your soul came into existence. Jesus is the express image of God and we were made in this image.

When God made man, He made him in His own image, and breathed in him the breath of life. As a result of the inbreathed Spirit of God within him, man became a living soul. So then, we are a triune being: spirit, soul and body.

Paul says in I Thessalonians 5:23 …I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The God of peace …sanctify you wholly—the whole of the man: spirit, soul and body.

Our spirit, soul and body are to be in harmony and this involves a work of transformation in the soul and transfiguration in the body.

We need to become people of spirit, we can give the ascendency to our spirit so that it is enlarged, and then our spirit, soul and body can come into unity.

This lays the foundation for something you’ll have to understand about a walk with God. It is basically a walk of spirit, and it is potent and powerful to the extent that we eliminate the fleshly and soulish aspects as much as is humanly possible, and get into the spiritual aspects of it. To this extent, this move of God will be effective. This explains also why we find certain things in a walk with God that we’ve not experienced before.

The Holy Spirit transmits revelation to the human spirit, and new experiences first come through the realm of the human spirit. They do not come through the realm of the human soul. The distortion of things comes through the soul, while the purity comes through the spirit.

 People who learn to worship will come right into experiences of revelation, though they have not doctrinally been prepared for it. Those who were doctrinally prepared for it, but have slipped down into the more emotional, soulish realm, are unprepared for anything more, and haven’t received any more revelation since they slipped into that rut.

What happens when you become a Christian? You may say, “Oh, I can remember when my soul was saved.” You can? Do you still have a temper? Then your soul hasn’t been completely saved as yet; rather, you are being saved.

“You mean I can’t say that I’m saved?” Yes, you are saved. If you’ve been born of God, your spirit has been regenerated, but that is not the saving of your soul. It’s the new birth of your spirit, which opens up the spirit world to you.

Churches that have lived on the soulish level will find that their leaders immediately put a person back on the level of soul. You may start on a level of spirit, but they bring you back on a soulish level as soon as possible. Very often new Christians become absorbed with reading the Bible. It lives for them and they can’t seem to read enough of it. Then when they go to church and hear the preaching, it is talking about something else; because the church is walking on a soulish level.

You were born free. You were born of the Spirit and your spirit was made alive. But you can drift right back to the soul level.

 A pastor shared his experience, which confirms what we are saying here. In the early years of his ministry when he first came into the realm of spirit, he had revelation, visions and dreams, until one of the hierarchy told him to cut that out. People go about in some churches with a watering can, in case there’s a fire and anyone breaks into something of revelation. They can’t endure it; they have to put the lid on it.

God is doing a new thing in the earth that is purging people from the soulish approach of Babylon, with its ritualism, traditions and dead doctrines, and is bringing them into something that is alive in their spirit.

As our young people come into this, they receive revelations from the Lord, because they are coming in a pure realm of spirit. Some of the older people are still laboring along on the soul level: trying, trying.

Revelations do not come through the soul, but through the spirit. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24. It comes through the realm of spirit, and then the Holy Spirit comes, baptizing you, literally indwelling your body as a temple, by quickening your spirit.

…the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God. I Corinthians 2:11b,12. We know all of these things are ours, through the Holy Spirit speaking to our spirit—but not if we have had only a soulish experience.

I believe you can receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues in a soulish experience instead of a spiritual one. You can shake, get goose bumps and many sensations, but you can’t receive revelation, because that comes through the spirit—your spirit.

God will speak to your spirit. In John 16:13,15, our blessed Lord pointed out the way we should receive the Holy Spirit: …when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…he will shew you things to come… All things that the Father hath are mine…he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

There should be a continuous work of the Holy Spirit—prodding, exciting, revealing—and you should be going from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. It should be taking place within you. If it is not, it’s because you’re not living in the realm of spirit; you’re living in the realm of soul. Move up, come up higher.

You may be wondering where we are now. Most are on a level somewhere between soul and spirit right now, and we can come up to a higher level of spirit. Would you like to get to that place where you walk and talk with the Lord; you commune back and forth?

You may say, “Oh, I praise the Lord for these doctrines.” You can be dead with doctrines—so orthodox, but so dead. Paul said in Acts 24:14, …after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers. When someone is breaking through, it is always called heresy.

What will you do if you don’t walk with God, and learn His voice and come to know Him? It is no walk with God if you don’t have an awareness of the Lord, if you’re not communing and talking with the Lord. And if you don’t get out of the soul realm and into the realm of spirit, you’re not going to walk with God. You will have a religion and experiences; God will deal with you and chasten you, because you can always feel the whip, even when you don’t know God.

The purpose and key of all the things you go through, is that you come to know Him and walk with Him; and this is done through lifting yourself up into a realm of spirit, and worshiping the Lord with all of your heart. God has revealed these things unto us through His Spirit.

When you receive the Holy Spirit, it’s to make alive and further quicken the faculties you are to have in your spirit. Your spirit has the faculty of hearing and seeing. The more highly developed and open your spirit is, the more it will superimpose upon the physical senses, feelings and awareness of what is taking place in the spirit realm.

What you call the gifts of the Holy Spirit are often divine endowments of grace that enable you to tune in to the mind of Christ, so that superimposed upon your mind is what God sees or is thinking about a thing. Then you are given an ability to see something—not with human prejudice—but with divine understanding. How important it is that we learn to walk in the spirit and come out of the realm of soul.

What is the basic way that we do it? By our worship—real deep worship in the spirit. Nothing will replace this basic need of worshiping God in your spirit. This walk with God begins, it is furthered, and continues into eternity, with worship. It never will end.

This is the one thing that you can know with all of your heart: once your spirit is in tune with God, you have begun the walk that will take you through the millenniums to come. This is not based upon an experience, or by the laying on of hands and prophecy, etc. That doesn’t explain it, for it is based on a revelation. How do you get a revelation? As you begin to worship God, suddenly you will say, “I was standing there worshiping God and all of a sudden it all came alive and real to me.” That’s the way it happens—your spirit opens up to the realm of revelation.

If singing in the spirit makes you nervous and you can’t figure out what they’re talking about, just open your heart and begin to worship. When you break through on the level of worship, the revelation will begin to come and the things of the Spirit will become alive to you. There are people in the congregation breaking through all the time. Some will say, “Oh, I heard this word this morning, and it was so real to me. What a revelation! What a marvelous word!” And we feel like saying, “That’s been coming to you for six years. Where have you been?” They were hearing it, without ears to hear. When their spirit worshiped God, suddenly the revelation opened up.

Then what is the key? Jesus said, I thank thee, O Father…because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Matthew 11:25. “Master, tell us plainly. How do we know? How do we have understanding? How do we really know what is truth?” Jesus said, If any man willeth to do his will—that is, the Father’s will—he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself. John 7:17.

How will we know—with the mind? No. We know because we have a will set on God, and that’s where worship comes in. If I set my will upon God, and begin to worship, then my worship breaks through.

Otherwise I might as well get a prayer wheel and twirl it like the Hindus do. And this idea of praying just because you’re emotional is wrong, too. Prayer is no prayer if it does not come out of your spirit.

People can be soulish and cry and pray when they are in a corner. They’re sorry they got caught and have to pay the consequences. When they get out of that corner, they thank God, and off they go, forgetting all about Him. They’re not interested in a real walk with God. But if your will is set on God and you say, “I will myself to worship the Lord,” in that realm, revelation comes to your spirit.

With our heart set upon Him, with our will set to worship Him, we have come into a constantly increasing flow of revelation and understanding. It doesn’t cease. It continues to come. It will never cease. We will never be able to put a wall around it and say, “This is what we believe. This is what we know. This is what we’ve experienced.” It will never stop there. On and on and on, as long as we remain people of spirit instead of people of soul, the revelation will continue to come. Wherever people lag back from that earnest will to worship God, the flow stops.

We never need revivals as we did in the old order, to prod and stir people up in the soul level, because they’re not living on that level. If we brought in some famous evangelist, the church would be empty within a week. No one wants to go back to the soul level anymore—they want to walk into the realm of the spirit. So what do we do when people get a little lax? Just stir them up and say, “Now set your will upon the Lord. Open your spirit up to God.” Everything now is based upon what happens to your spirit.

Suppose we want to win souls to the Lord? Forget it! Let’s regenerate spirits! People used to find the Lord and their spirit was made alive to God; and then they went into the process of saving souls. The soul involves habits, emotions, etc.; so they would start dropping off the habits. From month to month they were overcoming things of a hereditary nature, all of it coming through the soul. They came in; their spirit was saved; their soul was being saved; and they had the promise of redemption.

From the moment that the Holy Spirit came within them, it was a seal of the Holy Spirit that the body would ultimately be redeemed. They go about, waiting for that redemption of the body, to be glorified in Him. Our salvation is only about halfway along: the spirit—that’s done; the soul—that’s being done; the body—yet to be done, and that’s why there are divine healing services. We still appropriate a great many things for this body that have the Holy Spirit as a seal of the long-promised redemption and the glorifying that is to come.

How did we get into this walk with God in the first place? Our spirit opened up to the Lord and revelation came to us.

How do we reach people today? We start in strictly from a spirit level. We can illustrate this by carrying on a conversation with someone. I can talk to him about his job and without his being aware of it, I can minister to his spirit at the same time. Does the Bible say that this can be done? Is there any place in the Word where it says you can get some hard-hearted, rebellious fellow who won’t even listen to the Word, and if a woman has the right spirit, she can win him without a word? I Peter 3:1 tells us, …ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, even if any obey not the word, they may without the word be gained by the behavior of their wives—her spirit gets to him. Suppose someone is oppressed—how do we minister to him? Bind the strong man, bind the thing that is affecting his spirit and keeping him blind and in death; then minister to him, and bring him right into the Lord.

We have amazing methods of approaching through the spirit: sermons will be preached on that level; personal work will be done on that level. From the very moment that people come in, they will be changed. It’s interesting how people will warm up to someone with a right spirit, but they won’t warm up to someone who is very religious. Most religiousness comes through the soul. It often stirs up argument and debate. People love to argue politics and religion, and they always get soulish about it. All of our political campaigns and elections are conducted on the soul level—throwing dirt, slinging mud—because Americans are soulish people. Politicians are not men of spirit—they are men of soul. Therefore, the more they appeal to the soulish level, the more votes they will receive because more people are living on that level than any other.

The devil is ruling over the souls he has taken captive; and we snatch people out of his influence by binding the enemy, and then bring them in through the realm of spirit. Our work is cut out for us. We minister more to the spirit, knowing that it is the predominant force in the human make-up; and when we reach the spirit, we can reach any part of the body. In this day in which our spirit is coming alive, it superimposes itself over all other faculties and senses. The day is past when we just pray for the sick. Let’s minister to their spirits and get them well.

If you are continually suffering—and it isn’t just a testing or a pressure; take the doctor’s advice, for symptoms are warnings that something is wrong. When those symptoms persist, go a little further and recognize that there is something wrong in your spirit.

In a walk with God, an openness in your spirit will allow the enemy to get through to you. Openness is good, if it’s the right kind. But your spirit can be open to the wrong thing, and then you pick things up that are wrong. Personal ministry is so important because it can close your spirit to the things that you should not be open to. Sometimes they are almost like allergies. You know that if you are around certain plants, you will break out with a rash. Likewise, you can be around certain kinds of spirits that get to you and you feel as if you were allergic to them; you have an openness and they oppress you and you have to start backing away from them.

Oppression can be many things. It can be walls that you’ve put up. If you get hit hard enough through circumstances or problems, you will put up a wall. But the trouble is that your spirit doesn’t put up selective walls—it puts up a complete wall and you have walled God out, too. Then you go along with no openness to God; and you have to labor to open your spirit to the Lord. It is very essential that you do it.

Prayer, as we know it now, is definitely an exercise of your spirit. This is different than praying to gain merit, by repetition. Some people believe that the longer and the louder they pray, the more God will hear them. It may take you longer to pray, when prayer becomes an exercise of your spirit, because of the time you spend preparing to pray, by opening your spirit and getting rid of the restraints. The praying doesn’t take long once you’re in tune; but sometimes it takes a little longer to get the sending equipment ready and get in tune with the Lord.

He’s right there, ready to help you and hear you. Prayer creates that oneness with God and then you can get through. Therefore, you must get rid of the restraints and the withdrawal in your spirit. Whenever you find yourself drawing back, it means something has hit your spirit. Whenever you are aware of walls, you know something is wrong.

Satan has great power to separate people from God, because of the bonds he makes. Paul said, …know ye not that he that is joined to a harlot is…one flesh? I Corinthians 6:16. That flesh is actually bonded together, and that bond can affect the spirit of an individual. Your spirit accepts a bond and a restraint through fornication or adultery through a prostitute. That is the reason God was so emphatic in forbidding any such contact in an individual’s life. It’s not just because of the consequences of venereal disease or an illegitimate child—though these things are very serious—but there was more than that …the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; I Corinthians 6:13. Anyone who commits fornication sins against his own body, because he bonds it to a fornicator, instead of the Lord. There’s a restraint and a cloud upon him. We avoid the things of the flesh because we know it will cloud us and God won’t get through to us. We may kid ourselves, and go off on some soulish emotional venture, but we’ll never get anywhere until those bonds are broken and God has set us free, and then we must realize that we wholly belong to the Lord.

What happens to your spirit in the experiences and relationships with others is so important. That’s why it is very difficult for a person to live with someone in a divided home. Paul talks about that in I Corinthians 7:12–14. He says if the one who is unsaved is content to live with you, you are to stay with him and God will sanctify the children through the one who is believing. You will find that the spirit of a person who is born of God is a much stronger influence than the death that is ministered from the soul level of someone who is not a Christian. This means that through your spirit, you can take dominion over the oppressive thing. And you can sanctify your child in that home, because the bond that you can make with his spirit is a sanctifying bond that is stronger than the oppressiveness of the unsaved parent. You can have faith for it and overcome it.

Almost everything that happens to you in your spirit takes place because you recognize that in the fullness of Christ is every answer. It’s only a matter of appropriating it and taking it to yourself.

In the realm of spirit, everything is acquired by appropriation. In the realm of spirit, all force is based upon a rank of authority, not upon the size of your muscles. Jesus said to His followers, “Go forth in My name, for all authority is given Me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18–19). God can give you nothing greater than the use of His authority. If He said, “I’ll let you use My power,” He would still be restricting you. But when He says, “I’ll give you My authority, and you will use My name,” in the realm of spirit there isn’t anything greater than that authority. We can strengthen our spirit and the immunities that are about us.

By the use of your imagination in worship, you can actually think yourself in the presence of the Lord. The human mind, with its imagination, is capable of many things. It can become a tool of your spirit, so that when God gives you a promise, and something is set before you, you can give it substance or an image, by your imagination.

Satan usurps the world and all the universe, as God has created it, because he can’t do anything else. Everything that Satan does is nothing but a corruption of God’s plan, which is pure. Satan, through witchcraft, can impel someone to make a little doll and put a hank of hair on it from a victim, and stick pins in it. The individual has formed an image of his victim and then through a kind of sympathetic magic, by concentration, he supposedly can bring him down by witchcraft. Satan is only trying to borrow the principle of substitution from God.

God used this same principle in His plan of redemption. He sent His own Son in the form of flesh and put Him on the cross. Moses put a brass serpent up on a pole, as a substitute for Christ on the cross; and people could be healed. Any witchcraft is substitution, a transferring from one person or object to another individual. In the same way you can have the image of an answer which your mind has received. It becomes as potent as a vision could ever be. If you are praying for something or claiming a blessing God has for you, stop and visualize the victory, the happy state of the answer that you are looking for, and begin to rejoice in the Lord. In this way the appropriation of faith is speeded up. If you sit there and feel sorry for yourself, you will get nothing. When you claim it; believe it, appropriate it, rejoice in it and soon you have it! It breaks into view.

In aggressiveness, you have a key that will help you more than anything else. Your spirit easily accepts defensiveness, passivity and lethargy. Immediately, lethargy takes control of your whole body, and you become very tired. Anyone who has been put on the defensive, can sleep for hours, and wake up feeling drugged; though he really shouldn’t be sleepy or weary. His body is reacting to what his spirit is feeling. For just a brief moment, he has relinquished the aggressive role, and the passivity floods through him. Then he feels depressed. You can get wiped out by condemning yourself and thinking that you are no good. It comes through the soul and through the body.

In order to counteract that, do anything to reactivate your spirit to an aggressiveness. Do something physical. The key is to keep your spirit aggressive. Submission is not passive—it is very aggressive. An officer in the army doesn’t want a soldier who says listlessly, “Sergeant, I’m obedient to you. I’m submissive to anything you say.” He wants someone who salutes sharply, says, “Yes sir,” and turns briskly to do what he was told. That’s aggressive submission. Submission that is passive just drifts along.

If you relinquish this aggressiveness in your spirit for even a moment, you will get wiped out. This is a walk with God, and it’s accomplished with faith in your heart. This aggressive submission means: find out what God wants and then do it. While passivity is a general state that hits you and leaves you open for Satanic harassment, aggressive submission is selective in its subject, for it is submissive to only one thing: the will of the Lord. When you’ve set your heart in that submission, and to the divine order, then you are aggressive in every other way, and you move ahead in the Lord.

Some will insist that they must have the soulish songs, and they continue with that. It may take longer than a few days—it may take months—but they should keep the objective in mind of reaching up to the highest level in the spirit, where they can commune with the Lord and draw from Him. Just start where you are and work up in the spirit to as high a level as you can; and the Lord will bless you in it.

In a walk in the spirit, you never stop to consider, “What am I in myself? What do I have?” You go by what God has commissioned, by what He has designated or endowed you with. And you know that you can draw on all the resources of heaven, because that’s what authority is. Authority draws and appropriates; then it ministers. The more we get into the realm of spirit, the more we’ll move in the things of the Lord.