The New Life, Inc.

I think all of us have special encounters with Jesus and the Holy Spirit in our spiritual journey. I think of Paul as a great teacher in Israel. He then had the Damascus road experience and was blinded. The prophet came to him and his sight was returned, he was taken up into the heaven; he then became a great spiritual teacher in the church. These things did not happen in one year, they were spread out over many years.

Our spiritual journey is also spread out over many years. For many of us, our first experience was when we were children and faith in God and Jesus entered into our heart from our parents or our local church. A special time for some of us was when we were baptized or confirmed by our church. Sickness is also the time that some people have that special encounter with the Lord that changes the rest of their life.

I think of Billy Graham and his ministry and of the multitudes that came to his altar calls, many of whom were believers, and I wondered why they went forward? I now see why!  They were ready to make a deeper commitment. Many of them received faith as little children from their parents or in their bible school or at CD classes. There’s a time we receive faith and another time we make a commitment, another time when we serve, another time when we lay down our lives for one another.

Don’t expect more from a person then they are able to give. We are all at a different places in our spiritual growth. Because you don’t see Jesus in someone it doesn’t mean He is not there. A comment I have heard a number of times; “That church is deader then a doornail!” It might be dead to you but to someone else it might be very alive.

As we go on in our spiritual journey, something interesting happens in our thinking. We begin to think more and more like Jesus and less and less like natural man, the very foundation of our values of what is important and what is not so important becomes apparent. Most of us are very self centered before we begin our spiritual journey. It seems that self-centeredness is the first thing that has to crumble because spirituality requires that we get outside of ourselves.

We can get the idea that our spirit is the smallest part of our being because we are body soul and spirit. The body contains the soul and the soul contains the spirit; however the opposite is true. The body, even though it is so demanding is the smallest part of our being. The soul comes next and it also is very demanding because the thinking and the emotions want to be in control and can have a lot of influence on what we say and do. The soul has power and can have far reaching effect on other people; it can control and manipulate other people and events.

Our spirit is where our greatest potential is!  It is not limited to the natural realm and can expand out into the spiritual realm.  We are one man; body, soul and spirit.  I want to take a little liberty and make us into three men; a physical man, a soul man and a spiritual man. This creates a problem; our physical man wants his way; the soul man wants his way and the spiritual man just sits back and looks on. Our spiritual man is the one that could do the most for us if we allowed him to lead. The spiritual man will not force himself on you. Whatever leadership position your spirit assumes, the body and soul must relinquish it to him.

The body must realize it needs control and supervision; the soul must also realize it is not doing a very good job of being the leader and needs a higher authority over it. For some of us, our spirit is lazy and doesn’t want to take on its responsibility. We need to go to Jesus and have Him wake up our spirit and cause it to come alive and start doing its job as interface between God and our soul and body so that we can start being the spiritual man that God has created us to be.