For years, we were mystified as to the source of thoughts. We knew that they were not the children of reason. They flashed upon us; they came leaping at us from nowhere.
Beautiful melodies would float into our consciousness and gain the mastery over us; poetry would come, beautiful couplets, to which reason did not give birth.
Solutions of problems that had bothered us for days came to us unsought, unheralded.
Inventions and creative things flashed into our minds independent of sense knowledge sources.
Designs of beautiful structures, fabrics, and pictures that staggered reason came floating into the mind as clouds on a June day pass over our heads. From whence did they come?
Then we discovered Proverbs 20:27: “The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah” (ASV).
This spirit is to guide the reasoning faculties. So, few enjoy the Lord’s lamp or take advantage of it.
We learned that man is a spirit. He is in the same class with God. He can live independently of the body. He is eternal.
We learned that there are two kinds of education: spirit education and mind education.
We discovered that the church and our educational system had never seriously attempted to understand the real man.
In the babe, we see purely the physical. Then as the child’s mind begins to reach out and becomes inquisitive, the child becomes simply mind and body to us.
We are careful to feed the child’s body, to build it up, to train the mind and make it efficient, but who has ever taught or trained the spirit?
We heard much in psychological discussions about the subconscious mind. At first, we were thrilled with it. Then we discovered that it was nothing but our own spirit.
We found that conscience is the voice of the spirit, reason is the voice of our mind, and feelings are the voice of our body.
There are two kinds of conscience: one of the Christian, the child of God, and the other, the conscience of natural man.
We discovered that there are three kinds of spirit development.
Natural man can develop his spirit until it becomes a force in him. We see this in Christian Science, unity, spiritualism, and other psychological religions. This is the natural, unregenerated human spirit being cultivated.
The human spirit is naturally very religious because it is God-hungry. It is the mother of all human religions.
Christianity is God’s answer to the hunger of the human spirit.
Every human religion attempts to answer this hunger and fails.
The part of man that is born again is the spirit. It receives the nature and life of God.
It is our spirit that can contact God or contact Satan. Reason cannot find God. Sense knowledge has been unable to discover God, or the human spirit.
It can see evidence of a Creator, but it cannot find Him.
It can see evidence of man’s spirit, but it cannot understand it or find it in the body.
Natural man’s spirit is dominated largely by evil. Men have used it to gain mastery over others for their own ends.
Then there are demonized spirits, men who are controlled by evil spirits. Oftentimes, it seems like they perform miracles.
The Scriptures speak of necromancers, spiritualists, and mediums. They are all demon-ruled spirits.
Often their minds have no part in what they say. Demons speak through their lips independent of sense knowledge.
These men can become deeply spiritual and become deep in the things of Satan.
The third kind of spirituality is that of the new creation spirit, for a man becomes a new creation by receiving the life and nature of God.
The Holy Spirit makes His home in the physical body and dominates the human spirit that has been recreated. As this is cultured and developed through the Word, there is no limit to its possibilities.
The effect of the spirit upon the body is little understood. It would pay materia medica to study this phase of healing.
Proverbs 15:4 says, “A gentle tongue is a tree of life; but perverseness therein is a breaking of the spirit” (ASV).
Words affect the human spirit. Your mind may cast aside the unkind words that are spoken, but your spirit absorbs them.
Proverbs 15:13 says, “A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.” The word heart is used interchangeably with the word spirit.
Then Job answered and said, How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words? (Job 19:1–2)
Words are more dangerous than bricks or stones. They are more potent than pen or brush. They don’t break bones, but they crush hearts.
Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
Proverbs 18:14 says, “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?”
In these Scriptures, we see the secret of healing for the body. We are praying for the sick daily. Every man who is sick physically is sick in spirit, for the moment his spirit is healed, his body becomes well.
Our first ministry is to bring them in contact with the healing Word.
Psalm 107:20 says, “He sent his word, and healed them.”
In Matthew 8:8, the centurion said to Jesus, “but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” The centurion recognized that Jesus healed folks with words.
You cannot heal bodies with words, but you can heal man’s spirit with words. You heal the spirit, and then the spirit heals the body.
It is the Logos on our lips that heals the spirit of sick men and women. The Word of God is the healer.
When we know how to rightly divide the Word, we will be able to administer the right kind of spiritual medicine, the right portion of Scripture to the sick one to bring healing.
The secret of the divine life is to learn how to live in the spirit realm, how to have one’s lamp filled with the oil of heaven, and how to keep one’s spirit fit so that no disease can break in upon it.
This brings before our minds the distinction between wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge comes from reflection, observation, and contact with people, books, and teachers. Wisdom comes from one of two sources: God or Satan.
Here are the two kinds of wisdom in contrast:
Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. (James 3:13–17)
We have two kinds of knowledge in contrast. We have the knowledge that comes from the senses. We have this knowledge in our universities, colleges, and technical schools, the knowledge we use every day in our factories, knowledge that seems to be independent of God, and often seeks to be independent of God.
The other kind of knowledge is revelation knowledge, which comes from the Word.
Sense knowledge is often at war with revelation knowledge.
Man needs revelation knowledge to complete his education.
Sense knowledge cannot find God or know the reason for man, the reason for creation, the source of life, or the source of motion.
When it faces problems of this kind, it turns speculative and forms theories.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is a masterpiece of guessing. He went as far as sense knowledge could go, and then he boarded an airplane of fancy, left the realm of facts, and wrote a book of speculations and theories. It has damned millions, but helped no one.
God imparts His message to your spirit.
The thing called a hunch, that still small voice, is your spirit, which is sometimes called your conscience.
The only way to know God and the Lord Jesus Christ is through the spirit.
I used to be confused when people would say, “If I could see someone healed, I would believe.”
One of these skeptics happened to be with me when a man who had been bedridden was miraculously healed. His legs had refused to function. He was healed instantaneously. He walked and praised God. My friend said, “Well, that’s all right, but it was his time to get well anyway.”
Sense knowledge cannot understand miracles. Only the spirit can reveal them.
When people come to our services and see men and women healed and miracles performed, it gives them sense knowledge faith in healing. Many of them take their healing because of what they see and hear. But if the trouble returns, as the adversary would doubtless make it, they would have no foundation, no root. They have no deep, rich knowledge of the Word.
They are like the seed that was sown in shallow soil. (See Matthew 13:1–23; Mark 4:1–20; Luke 8:4–15.) When the heat came, it died, for it had no deep root system.
Before a person can be permanently helped, his spirit must be educated in the Word of God.
Creative faith, dominating faith, healing faith, and saving faith are all in the spirit.
Faith is not a product of reason.
Sense knowledge has never produced the kind of faith of which we are speaking. It can produce sense knowledge faith that believes in what it sees, hears, and feels.
Love is the fruit of the spirit. This does not refer to the Holy Spirit, but to the recreated human spirit.
Here is a wonderful exposition of the human spirit:
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. (Galatians 5:16–17)
In Galatians 5:19–21, Paul tells us about the works of the senses, or the manifestations of the senses. Then he tells us about the fruits of the renewed human spirit. They are “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:22–24).
When the human spirit gains the mastery over the senses, it brings them into captivity. Then a man says, “I cannot do that. My conscience (which is the voice of his recreated spirit) will not permit it.” His spirit has gained the mastery over his mind.
The mind, in turn, gains the mastery over the body, and brings the body into subjection to the mind.
“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). That is the human spirit.
Romans 8:1–3 deals with the same problem. The third verse states, “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.”
What sin is condemned in our flesh? It is not sin of conduct as we understand it to be, but it is sickness.
Sin, here, is a broken law of the senses. Disease is condemned in the body.
Until you recognize that disease is an outlaw, and until your spirit grasps this fact, you will never build a fence against physical distress and disease.
When you realize that physical disease is an outlaw, and you still consort with that disease by pampering it, you are joining forces with the outlaw, and it will bring you under condemnation.
The Scripture continues:
That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh [senses]; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh [senses] cannot please God. (Romans 8:4–8)
Paul is not speaking of the Holy Spirit, but of the recreated spirit and its place in your physical body.
Romans 12:1–2 says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Here, the body is brought into subjection to a renewed mind, and the renewed mind is brought into subjection to a recreated spirit.
Until your spirit gains the mastery over your senses, your faith will never be strong and vigorous.
Because “the spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah” (Proverbs 20:27 ASV), God Himself must fill the lamp with oil of the right grade and from the right source. This oil is eternal life.
The lamp sheds light in the spirit realm, the realm of faith, and the realm of love. It throws light upon the Word.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).
Your spirit is in the realm of creative faith, of dominating faith, a faith that rules demons and disease.
In my dealings with the sick during the early days of my ministry, I found that certain diseases filled me with fear. I shrank from going into their presence. I had seen their devastating work in my own family, but later, I came to see that disease was not physical but spiritual.
When my spirit had fed upon the Word until it had developed a robust, unconscious faith, then I walked into the presence of diseases as a master.
Jesus’s dominion was not a physical or mental dominion. He ruled men, the laws of nature, demons, and sickness, by His spirit.
Jesus said:
The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. (John 14:10)
It is the spirit that quickeneth [brings life]; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:63)
God is a spirit; Jesus is a spirit. He was here in a physical body so that men could see Him. His lips spoke words of the Spirit.
When you give your spirit right-of-way, and it assumes the dominion in your life, love will be natural. Love is the fruit of the spirit.
When your spirit is recreated, that love will be the Jesus kind of love.
The natural man has natural love, which is selfish, and turns to hatred and jealousy. Often, it turns to murder.
The Jesus kind of love flows from the fountain of a recreated spirit.
Jesus said, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47). Another translation says, “He that believeth hath eternal life” (ASV). Eternal life is the nature of God. That nature has now come into man’s spirit.
These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life. (1 John 5:13)
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 John 4:8)
He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:14–15)
Eternal life abides in a man’s spirit. When a man is recreated and filled with the nature of the Father, which is love, there will come forth from his spirit love actions, promptings for love words, and love deeds.
Let us study it from another angle.
The animal world acts by instinct. They have souls, they reason, and they have affection. They have the power of choice in a measure, but instinct rules them.
God did their thinking for them. The animal’s safety depends upon instinct. Sight and hearing have a second place.
When the wild animal trusts his sight or his hearing and ignores his instinct, he becomes a prey of his enemy.
When we ignore the voice of the recreated human spirit, we become a prey of the adversary.
For who of men hath known the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? thus also the things of God knows no one except the Spirit of God. But we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which have been freely given to us of God: which also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, communicating spiritual things by spiritual means. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:11–14 DBY)
It is spiritual teaching. God’s Spirit through the Word is teaching our spirits.
Natural man cannot know God.
Sense knowledge has never been able to find God. Sense knowledge makes man more skeptical. Ofttimes, the more sense knowledge a man possesses, the farther away he is from the Word.
Second Corinthians 5:7 states, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” Faith rules the spiritual man. Why? Because Jesus is the Lord and head of this new man. The Word rules him.
It is deeply important that we realize that this new creation has a law all its own.
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. (John 13:34–35)
The new creation has a priesthood of its own. Jesus is our High Priest. We new creation folk belong to the holy priesthood. We have the joy of functioning in the royal priesthood.
First Peter 2:5 says, “Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (ASV).
God has become our actual Father. We are His actual sons and daughters. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God” (1 John 3:2).
It is well that we know that reason, feelings, and the senses are generally opposed to our spirit.
Some believers have never learned to live in their spirit. They live in their senses, their bodies largely ruling them.
Others live in their soul, or their intellect. They are what Paul calls psychical men.
Now the natural man [marginal rendering: unspiritual; Greek psychical] 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. (1 Corinthians 2:14 ASV)
A carnal believer is a baby believer who has been fed with milk and not with meat.
Do ye not walk after the manner of men? (1 Corinthians 3:3 ASV)
This is one of the most striking sentences in that wonderful epistle. This man, who is recreated, has never yet learned to walk in his spirit, governed by the Word. He walks as a common man. He walks just as he walked before he was born again.
In a short time, he will break fellowship with the Father and fall back again into the old life, a recreated man, but one dominated by the physical body or by his senses.
The new creation man is to walk by faith.
Hebrews 10:38 says, “But my righteous one shall live by faith: and if he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him” (ASV).
Shrink back from what? From the walk in the spirit by faith.
He shrinks back into a sense knowledge walk.
You can see that if you are a recreated spirit, you should live in the realm of the spirit.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)
This righteous, recreated man lives by the Word, feeding on it and obeying it.
We have found that man is a spirit being. God’s dealings with him are through his spirit.
If he is sick, his spirit must be healed.
If he is ruled by sin, his spirit must be cleansed.
If his mind has not been renewed, the spirit does not have liberty or freedom and cannot manifest Christ in his life. The spirit of man is really the lamp of Jehovah.