The New Nature.
In the beginning, all of mankind was cursed when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden. Sin entered all of creation and through Adam’s sin, man took upon a new nature. Every man born after Adam was born with a sin-nature and ever since, this sin nature has brought hostility between man and God. (Romans 8:8) Sin separates man from their right standing (righteousness) with God. Man’s sin nature was one of the reasons Jesus went to the cross. He went to the cross to set man back into their rightful place with God and one of His goals was to crucify the sin nature in man once and for all.
Yet, many Christians today still think it is normal to desire to sin. Many call it trying to tame the desires of their flesh. Some spend their whole lives trying to fight off the desires of their sin nature while failing to realize their sin nature died when they died with Christ on the cross. (Romans 6:3 & 8:4) He did all the killing and fighting for you. You died with Christ on the cross, were born again, and raised up with Christ as a new creation. The new creation has new desires with a new nature… That’s good news! It is no longer normal for you to sin!
But now that the sin nature is dead what is our new nature? Paul talks of the new nature in Galatian’s 5, saying that man’s new nature comes with the desires of God’s Spirit. But what are the desires of the Spirit? It’s funny how Paul doesn’t tell us what the Spirit actually desires. All He does is tell us what fruit will follow those who have a relationship with the Spirit. I believe Paul purposefully left this gap in their for a reason. If He would have given all of the desires of the Spirit people would eventually end up trying to follow the steps without the Spirit’s help. The result of this is religion and no relationship with God. People are still trying this today when they try to produce the fruit of the Spirit in their lives without actually having a relationship with the Spirit.
It’s impossible to walk the Christian life out and follow the Bible without the Holy Spirit. You can try to produce self righteousness by working not to sin anymore. You can try to crucify your sin nature on your own. You can try to walk in righteousness on your own. You can try to walk in love, hope, and joy on your own. You can try to forgive yourself on your own. You can try to love yourself on your own. You can try all of these things… but none of them will work. You see, it’s impossible to follow the Bible without the Holy Spirit’s help. The Bible is not a formula, nor does the Spirit follow a formula. Everything in the book comes back to a relationship with God, which comes through His Spirit.
The fact that we now have a relationship with God changes the way we do everything in life. Our entire identity should come from the fact that we have a relationship with God because your relationship with the Spirit is what qualifies you as a son of God. (Romans 8:14) The sons of God no longer have a sin nature. Our nature is now His nature. You have to spend time with Him to bear His nature. The more you spend time with Him the more you begin to act like Him. His nature is evident in your life when the fruits of the Spirit flow naturally through your life. Many people try to produce or justify a relationship with God by having a relationship with His book, the Bible. The Bible won’t do you any good without the Holy Spirit. Nor does coming to the Bible to find the Holy Spirit usually help. It’s not a rule book to having a relationship with the Holy Spirit.
For me, my relationship with the Holy Spirit began in worship. I would spend hours upon hours worshiping alone in His presence. I wouldn’t pray. I wouldn’t read my Bible. I wasn’t even going to a church at the time. I would just spend time in God’s presence pouring out my heart to God in worship. This is where I began to learn what He felt like. This is where I began to learn His voice. This is where I began to learn how He moves. This is where I began to know His heart. It didn’t take long for me to realize the more time I spent with Him the more I began to act like Him. The fruit of the Spirit became natural in my life. The Spirit gave me the grace that empowers one to walk like Christ in righteousness. When you try to do the Christian life alone, it’s a battle full of constant frustration and discouragement. When you live life with the Spirit, He empowers you to walk in your fullness.
Born for Glory.
You’re a son of God created to walk in God’s image. In His likeness. In His power. In His glory. In His authority. With His nature and with His attributes. This is who you are. When you act like God you’re acting like yourself. It’s who you were created to be. Every son leads to the Father…
If God’s power, nature, and attributes release glory, then when you reflect God’s power, nature, and attributes in your life you will also release His glory. In other words, He wants you to act like Him. When you act like Him, you are acting like yourself and in doing so you release glory! After all, you are the hope of glory… (Col. 1:27) ”For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” -Habakkuk 2:14. You are the hope of the fulfillment of that verse. It’s part of your destiny…
Are you a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness? (Romans 6:18) You will always act out of who you believe you are. If you believe you are righteous you will live to protect your righteousness. If you believe you are a sinner, you will live out your identity. It’s a false identity when Christians go around saying they are a sinner saved by grace. Your identity as a sinner only produces more sin. You WERE a sinner saved by grace and now you are a saint… You’re a new creation. The Father says you are His son who is perfectly loved, holy, righteous, pure, and perfect in Christ. Don’t get your identity off of what you think of yourself. Live from who He says you are…
Thinking From Your Spirit.
I would like to propose to you the idea that you don’t just think from your physical mind. I believe you also think from your spirit and your soul. You think from three dimensions, the spirit, soul, and body. Before you think I’m crazy, hang in there. It’s actually biblical. If you have been following my recent posts on the spiritual things you would know that the spirit, soul, and body are not three separated parts of mans being but that they are actually all connected and effect each other. I think the mind works this way as well. Think of a river with 3 streams (body, soul, and spirit) that all eventually flow into one (the mind). The mind thinks from these 3 dimensions. You should also know that in the same way you gather information from the physical world with your five senses you gather information with your spirit throughout your day. But where does the information you gather from your spirit get collected and processed at? It is in the same place that your physical body gathers information… It is in your mind.
In Ephesians 4:23, Paul said to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” Paul also said in 1 Corinthians 2:11, “For what man knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?” Meaning if you were to read the spirit of a man you would find many of his thoughts as well. Mans thoughts aren’t always from his physical body; some come from the spirit. Your mind thinks from your spirit, soul, and body. Meaning your thoughts don’t just come from your 5 physical senses. They also come from your spiritual senses and from your soul.
What then does the spirit “pick up” with it’s “senses?” The Holy Spirit, angels, and demons are all spirits. Each human being also has a spirit. Not only are there individual spirits but there are also spiritual principalities. (Eph. 6:12) Every day, whether you realize it or not, your spirit is “reading” all of these spiritual realities. All of these are read, analyzed, or processed through your mind. Meaning they all come as thoughts and feelings through your mind.
Not all of your thoughts are your own. You hear the Holy Spirit, angels, and demons… on top of your own thoughts and feelings. The question is do you know what are your thoughts and what isn’t? Your spirit also “reads” the spirits of the people around you quite frequently, especially if you move in the gift of discernment. The gift of discernment is the gift of the Spirit that I personally move in the most, along with prophecy. I usually mix the two when I am ministering to people. Most know the gift of discernment as being able to discern whether a spirit is good or bad. That is true, but that is only a small portion of what the gift is. When you discern a spirit it is the exact same thing as spirit reading. Many only know spirit reading when it is related to witch craft but the reality is the devil only copies the gifts of the Spirit. They are a perversion to the real thing. But you not only discern between angels and demons but you also can discern the Holy Spirit, spiritual principalities, and the spirits of the people around you. It’s sounds very spiritual but the reality is it is very normal for me. I honestly don’t have an on or off button. To shut off a spiritual sense or gift it would be like shutting off one of your physical senses. Like walking around all day with your eyes closed or plugging your ears. Nobody does that. In the same way you don’t turn off your spirits senses.
You are probably “spirit reading” more than you realize. Have you ever been around a person who carries so much peace within themselves that it makes you peaceful when you are around them? You are reading or discerning their spirit. It also works in the opposite. When you get around someone who is thinking suicidal thoughts you may start to think them yourself. Then the moment you get away you are perfectly fine and you think normal again. This is where it is good to know what is your “stuff” and what you may be picking up from others. This is also the reason why when you spend time in the presence of the Holy Spirit you begin to think and act like God. You “read” God’s Spirit. and the more you are around it the more you begin to pick up His traits. I know that doesn’t sound like your typical Christianese but it gets my point across. The more you worship, the more you are in the presence. The more you are in the presence, the more you begin to act like God and take on His nature. The result of a relationship with the Holy Spirit is you begin to act like Him and the fruit of the Spirit are evident in your life.
I would encourage you to start to test out the spirits around you. When you go into a big city, business, grocery store, or even in church, scan yourself and see what you feel and what you are picking up. Be aware of what is yours and what is others. It’s also important that you know not every one moves in the gift of discernment. When you get around people, ask the Holy Spirit what it is a person carries in their spirit. Is it peace, love, or joy? For some reason, woman are always easier to tell what it is they carry. Woman set the atmosphere around them. You may also pick up negative stuff. If you do, call out the gold in them. People already know whats wrong with them.
If God doesn’t speak to you this way, it is ok! Just find out how He speaks to you. Not every person walks in the gift of discernment. Also, take risk! It’s ok to fail. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from ever walking in the Spirit. It’s easy and completely natural. Don’t over spiritualize it. Be naturally supernatural.
Be Naturally Supernatural.
Like I said in my last post on the gifts of the Spirit, spiritual gifts are often normal to people. Many people often think you are getting really weird or obsessive anytime you ever bring up anything about the spiritual. But as for me, I love Bill Johnson’s quote on this topic, “Every Christian should be naturally supernatural”. I couldn’t agree more. We all know those people in church who get so spiritually weird that they lose all wisdom and social skills with people. If you aren’t in a spirit filled church, you are probably relating this to every Pentecostal or Spirit filled person you know. You may have even put me into that category ha. All I am trying to say is that anything dealing with the spiritual or the Holy Spirit should be done in a normal, authentic, down to earth way. Just because you once saw some crazy old lady praying in tongues or a whole church hyping themselves into what appeared to be a “move of the Holy Ghost” doesn’t eliminate the reality that there is actually the real thing. Nothing turns people away from the authentic like the counterfeit. In order for their to be a counterfeit there has to be something genuine. My point is, don’t rule off anything spiritual or about the Holy Spirit just because you haven’t found the real thing. Paul even said, “The spiritual man makes judgements about all things…” Test everything… and and look for the real thing.
Many would be surprised to find that the supernatural is natural… even outside of the church. I was surprised last month on my missions trip to San Diego when we ministered to some New Agers and witches and found how down to earth they are. They are normal people just like you and I. They don’t over spiritualize, they’re not weird in any way, and they don’t look like the Disney movies portray them to be. Not only are they relationally normal but the way they display their “power” is completely natural. If you were to ask one of the witches to tell you your future, your past, or what they “see” over you they would not do anything weird or unnatural. At the most, they would simply ask you to sit and they would hold your hands and go on by telling you what they see. And when I say they see, I don’t mean with the natural eye but with their spirit.
Your spirit is a natural part of who you are as a person. Your spirit has senses and it gathers information throughout the day in the same way your natural 5 senses do. It’s so natural, that many people don’t even notice what their spirit is picking up. The Holy Spirit usually manifests Himself and reveals things to you through your spirit. Your spirit and body are connected and effect each other. The spiritual is just as real to you as the natural. The question you should ask yourself then is if you are aware of what your spirit is gathering?
Before I go into the way the Holy Spirit speaks to me, it’s important that you know that the spiritual powers and experiences tied with the New Age, the occult, and witchcraft are all a counterfeit and copy of the ways of God’s Kingdom. In the same way the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts, the demonic does the same. Anything the New Age or witches demonstrate and practice is often a twisted, perverted way of the way things work in God’s Kingdom. A Christian should never be impressed with a witches ability to display their power, EVER. Witches can heal, tell you your future or past, see in the spirit, interpret dreams, and read spirits. Every one of these spiritual gifts were demonstrated throughout the book of Acts and the rest of the Bible. The same Spirit that fell on Daniel, David, Jesus, Paul, or the 12 apostles is the same Spirit that should rest on you. If the demonstrations of God’s Spirit naturally followed these men, they should follow you too. Anything a witch can do, a Christian can do better.
The spiritual power demonstrations of the demonic are often copies of the gifts of the Spirit. When I went down to San Diego in the New Age farmers market, my team and I set up a stand for “spiritual readings, dream interpretations, and paranormal activity encounters.” I know thats not your typical Church sign or outreach but Jesus loves to meet and love people right where they are at. By the end of the day we were known for giving far better spiritual readings and prophecies than any of the other fortune tellers around by far. The best part is that many people encountered Jesus for the first time in their life. My point? The church can’t keep quoting 1 Corinthians 4:20, “For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” Eventually you have to back it.
You will never accept the ways of God’s Spirit until you can accept the ways of the demonic. If you get weirded out and offended by the demonic, you will most likely get offended by the way the Holy Spirit moves. Both deal with spirits and the spirit realm. By now you are hopefully recognizing that I’m trying to affirm that the supernatural is a normal part of your every day life.
The Holy Spirit is the third person in the trinity. He is a person. But He is also a spirit (hence His name). His first name tells you about His level of authority. The hebrew word for Holy means to be sacred and set apart. He’s set apart and sacred, meaning the Holy Spirit is on a completely different level than any other spirit; whether that is an angel, demon, or Saten. The battle over who is more powerful has never been between God and the Devil. God could destroy the Devil’s very being in a split second. The Spirit of God, Holy Spirit, lives inside of you. The power in you completely overrides the power of the devil… Every single time.
Saying this may make you feel good about yourself (it should) but in the end it’s pointless if you can’t demonstrate the Kingdom within you. Take risk with the Holy Spirit. Step out and pray for someone to get healed at Wal Mart. Ask the Holy Spirit for a prophetic word for your waitress next time you go out to eat. The only way to ever start is to take risk. Failure is ok. Not every person is going to get healed. Don’t let 9 people not getting healed keep you from healing the 1. Keep pressing in for more!
“The Gifts of the Spirit.” (Part 1)
Since I’ve come to Bethel I have gotten to grow so much in following the Holy Spirit because of Bethel’s priority for the presence of God. It creates a place and community where you can experiment, learn, and take risk with the Holy Spirit. This environment has allowed me to grow in hearing the voice of Holy Spirit and observe and learn from the way He manifests Himself to others. Yet, even with how much I have grown in revelation this year with the way Holy Spirit manifests, I still have a long ways to go in figuring it completely out. With revelation, comes many questions that lead to more revelation and questions. My goal in this post is to share what I’m currently wrestling with and what I’ve learned from the Holy Spirit this year through my experiences with Him.
Firstly, before I go on, it’s pretty important that you read my first 3 posts that go along with this subject of the spirit or you will really misunderstand me and think I’m crazy. ( Post 1, Post 2, Post 3) It’s also important that you know that as Americans, we have been highly influenced in Gnostic teaching in that we tend to think anything physical is bad, and the spiritual is good. Not true. This way of teaching and thinking came to influence the church through greek philosophers. We also tend to categorize everything so that it fits into our understanding easily. This has caused us to think of the spirit realm as its own realm or dimension and the physical as a completely other dimension. We split them into two categories. Where as in Hebrew thinking, there is no split or division. The spirit realm and the physical realm are united. You can’t do anything in the physical without effecting anything in the spirit, and vise versa. This also causes us to think of the spirit, soul, and body as 3 separated parts of mans being, when all three are really connected and effect each other. I’m not going into the details in these as it would take a whole post to do so. If you are very interested in these facts, read Harold Eberle’s book, Christianity Unshackled. It will radically change the way you think and live.
The first thing I would like to start with is that the gifts of the Spirit don’t necessarily work the way most think. What many people often don’t realize is how natural the spiritual gifts are. For example, have you ever complemented an extremely talented artist or musician for one of their pieces or work and their response was as if they were surprised by your compliment. Most great artists think their work/gift is just average, mediocre, and normal. It’s a natural gift they have. It works the same way with the gifts of the Spirit. Paul’s description of gifts is to help describe the way the Holy Spirit manifests himself to different people. Each person’s way the Holy Spirit reveals things to them is different. Over the past year of learning the Holy Spirit’s voice, I’ve come to realize He has been speaking to me (for the most part) the same way my entire life. I just never recognized Him. Your spiritual gifts are just as much a part of you as your physical gifts.
That being said, when thinking of the “gifts” of the Spirit, think of them as the way the Holy Spirit speaks and moves naturally through a person. They aren’t usually sporadic encounters with the Holy Spirit that only happen in church, although that does occasionally happen. Your spirit doesn’t just suddenly “turn on” when you walk into a church. However, in an atmosphere where the Holy Spirit is moving, its easier to recognize the way the Holy Spirit speaks/moves through you. Whether thats through prophetic words, healing, revelation, or any of the other gifts given in 1 Corinthians 12.
People also tend to think that a spiritual gift only comes once one receives the Holy Spirit. I personally don’t think that is true, but I could be wrong. Now to operate in a gift of the Spirit, it obviously requires the Holy Spirit. But I think there is a difference between a spiritual gift and a gift of the Spirit. Once again, I could be wrong. This is just something I have been wrestling with. I really don’t like to put up many “rules” on the ways of the Spirit because every time I ever have, He shatters what I previously thought. But back to my point, I think that when God created our being (body, soul, and spirit), He not only gives our physical body gifts, He gives our spirit gifts as well. Romans 11:29 says the gifts and callings by God are irrevocable. The Holy Spirit still speaks and pursues you regardless of whether they are saved or have been baptized in the Spirit.
In my experience, the way the Holy Spirit was speaking to me before I was saved is the same way He still speaks to me today. The spiritual gift God gave me was the very thing that ended up drawing me to God long before I was ever baptized in the Holy Spirit. I’m not saying the way I experienced Him is the way He works every time. But after talking to many people who have extreme gifts, you usually hear that they had pretty crazy encounters and visitations at an early age before they were ever pursuing God.
If one was called by God to be a prophet, then the Holy Spirit would most likely manifest himself in ways such as visions, dreams, and prophetic words. Many people who are extremely prophetic often recognize this at an early age by having encounters seeing in the spirit or having open visions long before they have much of a relationship with God. I must add that not every experience is a pleasant experience…
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12 that the gifts are a manifestation of the Spirit. Meaning, the way the Holy Spirit manifests himself to you is the “gift” you have. For a person with a prophetic gift, the Holy Spirit will often speak (manifest) in prophetic words showing the person details (known as a word of knowledge) about other peoples past, their future, and the secrets of a persons heart. The Holy Spirit will often manifest (speak) himself to one with the gift of healing through various ways such as tingling in the hands, immediate pain in specific parts of the body where God wants to heal someone, or through mental impressions of body parts, diseases, and sickness that God wants to heal.
How does the Holy Spirit manifest himself to you? The easiest way to find out is to spend time with Him. Not just in church or when you spend time alone with God, but also with your friends or when your running errands. Create a place for Him to come. Praise and worship always ushers in the presence, or Spirit, of God. It’s not how much time you spend singing songs to Him. That’s not worship. Worship is a state of the heart; keeping your affection and attention on His heart. It’s from this place where a lifestyle of walking in the Spirit is developed. If you don’t see the Spirit moving in your life, follow people who He moves through! Eventually, He will start to follow you too…
Secular Humanism’s Effects on the Church.
Over the past century, secular humanists have been slowly trying to convince a vast majority of the church in America that Christianity is simply a religion with a set of beliefs. We have succumbed to their pressure and, like the rest of western culture, have neglected both supernatural power and spiritual experience. The church has been highly influenced by what secular humanists say about spiritualism, in that anything beyond the physical world can’t be tested, proved, etc. and therefore it isn’t real. Our response to their pressure was to prove our faith to them through scripture and science while ignoring anything spiritual.
”These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the HolySpirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them,because they are spiritually discerned.” -1 Corinthians 2:13-14
Secular Humanism has been greatly influencing the church. It’s influenced how we study the Bible, how we do church, evangelism, teach in Christian schools and universities, etc. Over time, we’ve diverted from the gospel. We have been reading the Bible with a secular humanist view in mind. The problem with that is you will only find what you are looking for. When you read the Bible you don’t usually read it for what it says. You read it to affirm what you already believe. After years of reading the Bible and trying to prove our faith in God through science and western thought, we began to no longer looking at the gospel for what it was. We were looking at it through a “lens” of a secular humanist. And because you only find what you’re looking for, we have only been reading the Bible the way a secular humanist would. Over time this western way of thinking effected what the church pursued. The result is we have altogether given up any desire to fulfill Jesus’ command to demonstrate the power of God’s Kingdom and we have ignored Paul’s command to desire the spiritual. Read 1 Corinthians 1 & 2 and see what Paul say’s to the greeks who were doing this very thing. What is the result of all this? The church has fallen asleep in demonstrating the Kingdom and hasn’t any revelation on spiritual experience. While the church has been asleep, the devil has been moving.
The church has been asleep while witchcraft and the New Age movement is gaining momentum in spiritual experience and the demonstration of spiritual power. Because of the majority of American churches lacking the desire and ability to demonstrate God’s power, our response to witchcraft’s demonstration of power is to simply say (through our secular humanist “lens” on the Bible) that since power comes with witchcraft, demonstrating power all together is evil too. The church has responded in the same way to the New Age communities experiences with the supernatural and the spirit realm. We’ve believed that since they have spiritual experiences, it must be wrong and from the devil. That simply isn’t true. Nothing on earth belongs to the Devil. He has no inheritance or authority. All authority and dominion (power) on the earth is man’s. The Devil only has power, authority, land, etc. when man gives it to him. The revelation of the spirit realm, spiritual experience, and demonstrating the power of spirits all belongs to the church. It’s not reserved for the devil and those who follow him. It’s time the church takes back what is ours. It’s time we stop believing the devils lies that power and the spiritual is bad. It’s the inheritance of the saints. It’s time we stop talking about the Kingdom of God and start demonstrating the Kingdom within us. Jesus didn’t just talk about His Kingdom, He brought it with Him and put it on display. Then, before Jesus left, He gave His Kingdom to the church and said to do exactly what He did.
I refuse to limit my Christianity to a set of beliefs that lacks spiritual experience and power when the Bible strongly encourages both.
After my ministry trip to San Diego where we ministered to New Agers, witches, and warlocks, I’m extremely passionate about this topic of the supernatural. If you didn’t read my two posts I previously wrote about my trip, heres the links: “Lessons Learned From Some Witches, Warlocks, and a New Age Community.” & “Eagerly Desire the Spiritual…” I strongly believe that the devil’s work in perverting spiritual revelation and experience is going to play right into the church’s hands. The devil created a momentum in spiritual revelation for us to run with without even realizing it. While the church has been focusing on revelation through man’s own wisdom, God has been using the devil like a chess piece to prepare the church for our next wave of revelation… a revelation on the spiritual.
