Spirit Life Defined
Spirit Life: Knowing God In Private Ways and Ordinary Days
There are many good books about the power and gifts of God, or about how to develop a ministry with the Holy Spirit. I find too few books focused on helping Christians understand how to know the Holy Spirit in personal daily fellowship. Yet I consider the development of this relationship both crucial and a prerequisite to any genuine ministry with and for God.
It is this fellowship, this life-sharing with the Spirit, that establishes a Christian’s heart and mind securely in God’s love. This relationship is the perfect way to learn God’s values and wisdom. The Spirit is your best guide on how and when to apply God’s wisdom.
Walking with the Spirit in ordinary days is about how all that promised peace, grace and wisdom become part of the fabric of your life. Knowing the Holy Spirit as a constant companion is the source of joy that David, Moses, Paul and the prophets wrote of in Scripture. This joy was not a special privilege just for them. Jesus spoke of it often, especially in those last hours before He was crucified. You find the best expression of His passion for you to abide in Him, in joy and with a full sense of the love God has for you, in chapters fourteen through seventeen in John’s gospel.
In His prayer to the Father before he was arrested, Jesus said:
O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.
John 17:25-26 (NASB)
Sadly, I meet Christians every day who do not have joy; who do not experience God’s personal love for them. They struggle to manufacture these things in their lives by sheer discipline.
Discipline is good, but it is the Person of God — the Spirit of Christ given to live right with us — who nourishes us in these ways. It is the Spirit’s job to build God’s character and life in us. It is the Spirit who brings us into true fellowship with the Father and the Son, and that fellowship is the source of abundant life.
The version of Christianity that is based solely upon disciplines of prayer, church attendance, giving, Bible reading and good deeds can easily come to feel one-sided. You do all the work, and if you stop doing the work, you revert back to guilt and weariness, as if it is all up to you. It is exhausting. I know, because I tried that version. You know you’re stuck in that place when your heart is reduced to the question, Where are you, God?
God chose to dwell within your heart, by His Spirit. If you are born-again, His Spirit is yours for the asking. You are already sealed with the Spirit, marked as belonging to God; but that’s not what Jesus meant when he promised you another counselor, comforter, teacher and guide. He was referring to what he described as river of living water, a veritable fountain of life whose source would be within you:
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
John 7:37-39
That great thirst you feel will only ever be satisfied by the indwelling Spirit. He’s a real presence, a real Person of the Trinity, and your God-given companion for life. But you must believe, and receive, then learn to be attentive, to respond daily to His wonderful presence. That is what I write and teach about in my books and blog articles.
Entering God’s Rest
When I quit working to make myself over into Christ’s image and invited the Holy Spirit all the way into my life, I finally entered rest with God. His “rest” is a relationship where God carries you, you don’t carry Him. It is a life of intimate companionship with a real Father, friend and mentor. You don’t talk yourself into how much God loves you, He reveals it to you personally day by day. Simple faith in the Spirit’s presence is the seed that He will grow into a tree of life, as you water that seed with attentiveness.
This is how you come to live the New Covenant life promised throughout Scripture. It’s personal. It’s powerful. It will ruin you for any other kind of life or way of being.
What about following Christ into missions and being part of His kingdom-building team? What about developing the spiritual fruit and gifts of God? The Lord will take care of all that. First comes the relationship, the knowing, the learning, the growing up in your salvation under the personal guidance of the Spirit. When you come to know the Spirit in ordinary days, He makes your whole life extraordinary!
Your Spirit: The Interior Life With God
When I speak of life, I am referring to the interior place from where life is lived: in your human spirit. The human spirit which was once defiled by sin is now dead, and when you were saved, God gave you a new and holy (sanctified) spirit. That’s why your spirit is now a suitable place for God to dwell.
Your spirit is the place where no one sees but you and the Lord. He made it for Himself, for His Spirit to inhabit, that Spirit of life and light. His Spirit illuminates everything, reveals everything you need to know. His Spirit enables you to see and hear the Lord, to fellowship with the Father and with His Son.
When I write of the life I enjoy with God, it always first refers to this life. The inner place where I experience and know Him.
Every human spirit is an eternal spirit.
Once a human spirit is created, it lives forever. As the vehicle for the soul, it lives on when the human body dies. So every human spirit is eternal. This is why the Bible warns that that those who are not saved through Jesus Christ, will live on forever in a place of torment. The human spirit was created by God so He could share life with His creation, but man corrupted that spirit. Jesus paid for that with His death. It was His resurrection that revealed the Spirit’s power to create new life, first for Jesus, then for all who would join to Him.
The experience of salvation is not merely one of accepting Jesus’ death for your sin; it is also the moment when your corrupt human spirit dies and a new human spirit is created in you. Thus your original created purpose of knowing God is restored.
The question of eternal destination for every human spirit — whether heaven or hell — is determined by which spirit you possess when your body dies — be it the sin defiled spirit that is separated from God, or the one newly created by Him which connects you to God. It really is that simple.
All Christians who are born-again are destined for heaven. However, it is still entirely possible for a Christian, ignorant of his or her newborn eligibility to be filled with and walk with God while still living in their skin suit, to live a hellish life. To feel distant from God, lonely, with no deep sense of God’s love, much less His joy, peace, comfort and guidance. These are all the things the Bible promises from God, over and over and over again. But they do not come because you are born again; they come through inviting the Spirit to come fully inhabit your spirit, and learning to share life with Him. These come through the fellowship and companionship of the Holy Spirit.
Rivers of Living Water
The flow of God’s life coming INTO you looks like inspiration, strength, wisdom. It is truly sensing and even hearing, in your spirit, God’s love and encouragement.
It is also God’s correction, and the sense of unease when you know you have offended — just as you experience in human to human relationships.
The flow of God’s life into you is also unique to your needs, your capacity to comprehend, and how many filters God must go through to reach your true heart. God created you, so He knows what you need. He speaks differently to me than he does my husband. Ron has different filters, generated by life, gender, roles, goals and people.
As you live and move and have your being in God — living face to face with Him — you are healed by the waters of His love and grace. You are grown. You become more like Jesus, your brother, the firstborn in God’s family of humans indwelt by His Spirit.
The flow of God’s life coming OUT of you will be a love and compassion for others beyond anything you had before. It shows up s the ability to forgive when you didn’t think you could.
God’s outward life flow is also an ability to do the work He created you to do. It is the gifts of the spirit, and the enabling of the spirit. It is the joy of partnering with God in this life, sharing in His work. It is helping others discover this divine Father, Brother and Friend who are holding out abundant life.
The flow of God’s life out of you is creativity, ideas, insight and understanding. It is wisdom which others will wonder where it came from.
God’s life in and through you has expression. His flow of life in you will expand as you drink of His Spirit daily. You will come to the point of not knowing whether it is you or the Spirit giving that gift to another, and it won’t matter, because you and He are Team now. You’re a partnership.
Spirit life is the ability to really live and move and have your being in God, and His being in you, for your joy, and for His glory
