God’s Ordination for Living: From the Inside-Out

THEME:           HOW TO BE LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD  

LESSON:          TEN TOPIC:            God’s Ordination for Living: From the Inside-Out

TEXT:               1Thess 5:23; Matt 6:27-33, Eph 2:2-3, Gal 5:16

MEMORY TRACK:  

By God’s grace, we learnt that nature is formed in man by leading, the more subject a man is to the Leading of the Spirit, the more obvious spiritual fruits the man possesses. We saw that the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit of Promise in us is to form persons (nature) in us. The Holy Spirit wants to bring the Father and the Son, but He has to prepare the vessel (house) that will be able to bear the names, persons, natures of the Father and the Son. The leading of the Holy Spirit is for His name’s sake, it is for inheritance’s sake (Ps 23:3).

Man on Three Dimension (1Thess 5:23, Rom 12:1)

Man is tripartite in nature (man is a spirit, that has a soul and lives in a body). After the fall of man in Eden, man continued on a descent till he became flesh (Gen 6:3-5) and further descent till he became grass (1Pet 1:24). Each of the descent of man was a further acquisition of a nature that is anti-God and “anti-way of God” (Gen 6:11-13, Is 40:6)

The program of salvation is for the full redemption of the three dimensions of man that is one (spirit, soul and body) At new birth, the spirit man was saved and made alive, but the soul man and the body man are to be presented for salvation (1Pet 1:9, Rom 8:23, Eph 1:14, Phil 3:21, Eph 4:30). The body of man, which is the outer layer, is also called man’s tabernacle, which is a house (2Pet 1:14, 2Cor 5:1).

God’s Ordination for Living: from the Inside-Out (Gen 2:7, Job 33:4, Job 32:8)

The living soul man had had an inspiration from God, a breath within him that informed his response even to his physical world (Gen 2:19). Adam never related with his natural environment from his physical senses or feelings, he related purely from his Adamic spirit.

Man died and the order began to change (Gen 6:2), man began to live by the sense of the body, what we call the five human sense organs (i) sight (ii) smell (iii) hearing (iv)taste (v) touch. They saw that the daughters were fair, their true sight had been shutdown, which began first from Adam and Eve (2Cor 5:7, Heb 11:3, Hab 2:4). The Faith life was and is still the true eye by which God designed man to live.

The New Living Order of the Fallen Man (Gen 13:10, Gen 34:2)

After the fall, trusting the invisible became very difficult for man. Feeling, which is the voice of the body, became the source of man’s living and his response to things (even response to his physical world). Man was reduced to what he can touch, taste, smell, see and hear. We became carnal/fleshly (Col 2:18, 1Pet 2:11). This became a garment for the soul, that the soul in turn became carnal and responded more to the cravings of the body.

Hope for the Carnal/Body Led Man (Num 11:4-8, Tit 3:3)

As carnal and sensual beings, we became servants to the cravings of the body (Matt 6:27-33, Eph 2:2-3, Gal 5:16). To live by our feelings is to be body led, sight led, smell led or to be led by our human sense organs. The Bible says that as many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the Sons of God, which are they who walk in the spirit, who in essence walk by faith and walk in love. To be led by the Spirit is to respond to a life of faith (Heb 11:1), responding to a substance hoped for and holding with all assurance and evidence of the unseen thing.

At new birth the order was reset again (John 3:3-8), we received power to become sons of God (power to be led by the Spirit of God) through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our recreated human spirit (John 1:12). We are born of the Spirit to live in the Spirit (Gal 5:25), to walk in the Spirit (Rom 8:1&4; Gal 5:16), to respond in the Spirit (Rom 8:13; 1Pet 4:2), to feel (perceive) in the Spirit (Acts 17:27), to touch (lay hold/handle by faith) in the Spirit (1Tim 6:12; 1John 1:1), to taste in the Spirit (Ps 34:8; Heb 6:4-5), to hear in the Spirit (1John 1:1; Rev 3:6) and to have our being in the Spirit (Acts 17:28; 1Pet 4:6). We are spirits, a new species of spirits (2Cor 5:17), aliens on earth, strangers and pilgrims on this side of eternity (Ps 34:8, Rom 10:17, 2Cor 4:13).

Conclusion

Satan led man to the point where man was concluded to the flesh life, God is leading us back to our true state (John 4:24, John 3:6). Where we live is in the Spirit, move in the Spirit and have our being in the Spirit. We are “Gen Spirit”. Hallelujah!