Term paper The Spiritual man Part Three

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This study is part three of three. You're almost done! Please read on, when finished please meditate upon and ponder the precepts you've just ingested! They're guaranteed to produce spiritual growth and the fruit of righteousness in your life if you apply these truths in your walk! Press onward Soldiers of God! Please feel free to print, modify, or copy as necessary to facilitate reading! God bless! Ricky D.

Port Harcourt, Nigeria

June 08th, 1998

Term Paper:

The Spiritual Man Part III • By: Watchman Nee

Study by: Richard P. Duffield

In commencing this final outline on this great opening of the scriptures by Watchman Nee, I am very apprehensive that I might leave out something that would do the reader and by proxy the author injustice. Thus with much concern I will prayerfully try to minimize the amount of important truths regarding the believer’s spiritual growth I might overlook or unknowingly omit and fully cover all items that were contained within. Having said that, allow me to begin. This third book , or third part of the whole edition is a culmination of the previous two, further explaining things covered previously in deeper detail as well as handling aspects of a believer’s life that were not covered in books 1 and 2. Within this volume I unearthed truths that directly touched me to the core of my being, exposing the pure light of God to areas apparently previously untouched. As per my standard usual, I’ll try to keep the beginning of this term paper in outline form, covering all possible areas to the best of my ability, whereby the reader of the previous two papers will have their questions answered after having read this one, leaving my personal revelations to last as often God uses the time I take in writing these papers to further reveal His secrets to me. We will begin as the author did, the first section being a further explanation on the mind and it’s relationship to our overall spiritual walk with Christ. The author labeled it very appropriately, "The mind, a battlefield". We’ll begin by making clear the fact that the mind is our organ of thought, man’s intellect, reasoning, wisdom, and cleverness all pertains to the mind. Broadly speaking, the mind is the brain. And it is considered a part of our soul as previously stated... Mind being the psychological term, the brain being the physiological term, both for the same organ... As such, the mind greatly influences man’s actions due to the large place it occupies in his life! In passages like 2 Cor. 10:3 - 5 and others we can see that the mind is the actual battlefield where Satan wages his battles against man, and surprisingly we see by the Apostle Paul’s writings that the mind is pictured as being held by the enemy and as such we must wage war to take it back over! You see, Satan is helpless to do anything directly to the other parts of man’s soul, (will, emotions) or even his body without prior having obtained a foothold, however in man’s mind he is free to operate at will! We can see that every temptation with which he entices man is presented to man’s mind. All temptations are presented to us in the form of thoughts. Prior to regeneration, man’s intellect obstructs him from apprehending God, God Himself has to destroy our arguments and this occurs at the moment of rebirth, it happens in the form of repentance. The original definition of repentance is "a change of mind". At rebirth, man undergoes a drastic change of his thinking, he receives a change of mind from God but even then the believer’s mind is not totally liberated from Satan’s touch! We should all realize that the mind in fact is the believer’s weakest point and as such we should learn how to repulse the evil thoughts and spirits that continue to battle against us in our mind or else we will continue to be tempted and deceived into losing the sovereignty of our will! One of the biggest dangers is the heeding of false teachings, Paul spoke about this in 2 Cor. 11:4 as well as Gal. 1:8 & 9! We are very wise if we remember that apart from the pure teaching of the Bible, no man’s words are entirely trustworthy! It is very vital that we all renew our minds, daily in fact, this by the Word of God! Romans 12:2 plainly declares this! We must move on now, the next fact we need to understand is that man has been given by God a free will, as such it can be used as litmus paper to test where a thought is coming from and from whom! God does not wish to have us serve Him as robots, He wishes that we rule over our mind and body and serve Him by our own choice or as it were, free will! Whenever we note that our mind is not being governed directly by ourselves, we can clearly ascertain that Satan is at work in our minds! God does not, NEVER, take over one’s mind! Satan does so at every opportunity he has! That is a positive indicator of his being at work in our lives when we can see that our minds are being driven or forced to think things that we do not wish to think! God created us to have authority over every natural endowment and as such the mind MUST be subject to the power of man’s will! The author puts it this way, "The child of God should determine whether or not it is he himself who does the thinking. If he has not originated the idea but on the contrary opposes it, and yet it abides in his head, he can then assume that that idea issues from the enemy." "Thought" can be defined as something which man’s mind grasps at, in the case of outside interference such as the attack of the enemy; it will become something that grasps at man’s mind! Flash thoughts and or loss of memory are entirely beyond the ability or control of our will and are contrary to natural cause and effect; they must be inspired by supernatural evil forces. These forces work initially in man’s mind and then reach to his emotion as the mind and emotion are closely knit; they begin in the mind and from there arrive at man’s volition, because mind and will are intimately joined too. Many are the onslaughts of Satan on man’s mind, the Bible clearly indicates that the powers of darkness are able both to impart ideas to man and to steal them away. (See John 13:2, Luke 8:12) Let us be aware of the fact that man’s mind belongs to him, without man‘s permission the enemy is powerless to use it! Unless man voluntarily delivers (knowingly or unknowingly) his mind to the evil spirits, they have no right to encroach on man’s freedom. Remember, upon the believer exercising his will to oppose the tempting thought it must be stopped immediately! The enemy’s activity in our mind is directly proportionate to the amount of ground we have yielded to him through the following manners: 1. An unrenewed mind (man must renew his mind after being born again by the Word of God or else remain in ignorance, this yields ground!)

2. An improper mind (if the child of God cherishes sin in his heart he yields ground!)

3. Misunderstanding God’s truth (every time God’s children accept a lie from the evil spirits they yield territory!) 4. Accepting suggestions (Satan plants many suggestions in the minds of God’s children, especially those foretelling future events, whenever the child of God receives such predictions, he gives ground and actually assists Satan in fabricating said events!)

5. A blank mind (God desires man to understand His Word with the intellect, from whence the emotion, will and spirit are reached, if one leaves his mind in a blank, unexercised state, he will soon see that ground has been yielded and Satan will surely fill his blank and idle mind with evil ideas!) 6. A passive mind (this is not much different from a blank mind, the difference is this: the blank mind is not being used as it should, empty, while the passive sits waiting for some external force to activate it, neither is being used however the passive is more dangerous as when we receive the external motivation, where is it coming from?) Passivity is to refrain from moving by oneself and instead to let outside elements move one. Should anyone allow his head to cease thinking, searching, and deciding and to no longer check his experience and action against the Word of God, he is practically inviting Satan to invade his mind and deceive him!

1 John 4:1 admonishes us to test the spirits, we have the Bible to check everything as to it’s origin, when we fail to do so, we invite invasion and deception by the evil spirits! Any ground given of the above root causes invites the evil spirits to work. The most serious as previously stated is passivity because it reflects the attitude of the will, which in turn represents the total being! The main cause of this passivity is ignorance on the part of the Christian. His misconceptions regarding the role of the intellect and reasoning powers are his downfall. Many times it’s his misconception of the meaning of consecration and obedience to the Holy Spirit. The believer must never forget that he must follow the revelation in his intuition, not the thought in his head! If we heed our minds, we are walking after the flesh! We know by intuition, we prove by mind, it is the mind’s role to assist intuition. With the mind we check the revelation against God’s Word and verify if it is of God or counterfeit! With the mind we examine what we receive in our intuition and verify same as to it’s origin, we are to use this organ of thought which God gave us to probe the authenticity of guidance and not be afraid that we are being disobedient by doing so! 2 Cor. 11:14 tells us that Satan can come disguised as an angel of light, shouldn’t we check all things just as the Apostle John warns us to do! Absolutely! Let us always remember this, the Holy Spirit will never take over your mind, He will never overpower your thoughts, He will never force you or compel you to do anything, He is a Gentleman and would never break His own laws such as man having free will! Whenever a revelation comes from God, He permits our mind’s ability and function to continue as usual without any interference, unlike the revelations from the evil spirits, whereas they demand the cessation of the function of our mind. When receiving from God we will have control over ourselves, our minds functioning as usual, and use over every part of our bodies! This constitutes the fundamental antithesis between what is of God and what is of the devil. It behooves us to check every experience against the above principle! To recap, God’s Spirit never treats man as puppets, summoning them to follow Him without any consciousness and His thoughts are usually expressed in the depth of man, in his spirit. The evil spirits however always invades via our thoughts from outside, not from the innermost being, they force, push, and or coerce man to take action immediately so as not to afford time for man to consider or examine. Their thoughts almost always confuses and paralyzes man’s mind so that it can no longer think on it’s own. This book goes into much more detail on all of the above however I feel the explanation provided above is sufficient at present, lets move on... The book goes into detail on the subject of a passive mind, I’ll not do same but will list the states and areas where evil spirits attack a passive mind... 1. Flashing thoughts,

2. Pictures, 3. Dreams, 4. Insomnia, 5. Forgetfulness, 6. Lack of concentration, 7. Inactivity,

8. Vacillation, 8. Talkativness, 9. Obstinacy, 10. The symptom of the eyes, (independent movements of our eyes whereby they don’t follow the heart, dazed look, flighty eyes) Not all of the above listed indicate the presence of evil spirits in one’s life however in these areas do they operate most when concerning a passive mind! One principle underlies all of the above when evil works are being done, in all instances the person has lost control! By God’s own ordering, man’s natural abilities (among which is the thought process of the mind) should be subject completely to man’s own rule! If ever the Christian discovers any independent action in his mind he should and must realize that he is under the assault of the powers of darkness! Inactivity in place of activity, disquietude instead of calm, restlessness due to overflowing thoughts, inability to concentrate or distinguish or remember, confusion beyond control, labors without fruit, worklessness during the day and dreams and visions in the night, insomnia, doubts, unwatchfulness, fear without reason, disturbance to the point of agony, one and all are nefariously inspired by the evil spirits! As soon as one realizes that he has encountered any of the aforementioned phenomena in their lives, they must exercise extreme caution because they have given ground to evil spirits and as such are being assaulted! They need to immediately seek deliverance. Of course as soon as we seek deliverance, we can best bet that the spirits will seek methods of disguising the true cause of our problem, they will try to deceive us further and make up many excuses to help us to remain passive! They love to use a natural cause to be the blame, however it is their working as they side up near to a natural cause (such as temperment, physical condition, environment, etc.) and make the believer believe that the root cause of their problem really can be dealt with naturally. (For example; insomnia, maybe we’ll be made to believe that it’s due to excess work, maybe our mind’s overexhaustion, causing us to work less and rest our minds being even more passive!) You see, if we do not take the time to deal with the supernatural aspect, the removal of the natural aspect will serve no purpose at all except to further delay true deliverance. When dealing with the above listed phenomenon, we must learn to examine the source of the excuses we might be led to believe, we must examine carefully every excuse that comes into our mind explaining the reason of our state of being, we must scrutinize every reason and every symptom must be traced! The evil powers are highly skilled in misleading people into explaining their evil devices in terms of natural phenomenon! Every opinion the believer entertains about himself needs to be proven lest he yield new territory to the evil spirits even before the old is recovered. What is going on here is the flesh always works together with the devil, that’s a given, and the evil spirits are trying to get us to have our flesh cooperate with them. If the believer can recognize that all is just Satan’s lie and by so doing he can rise up and resist, and will overcome! We can surely await the mighty battle upon our receiving the above truth and determining that we will overcome, Satan will unleash his final assault as he is unwilling to give back ground without a fight! Such assault will be far worst than all that preceded it and might seem to be too much to overcome, however, the believer should set his face as granite towards the objective of obtaining liberty over Satan and his powers even should it kill him in doing so! He must always remember that God is for him and he shall be set free! We must ever remember that our weapons are not carnal but spiritual, therefore no amount of work in the natural can deliver us, it all hinges on one important issue, CHOICE! The battle is in our mind and we must exercise our mind to choose to offer ourselves wholly to God and choose not to allow Satan to use our thinking apparatus as he pleases! Having done this we are not immediately freed, we are only drawing a line in the sand and choosing to oppose wholeheartedly the attack of the enemy. We must now examine ourselves carefully to find out by which of the areas (as previously mentioned) have we ceded ground to Satan and his forces. Upon isolating the point or points whereby we’ve ceded territory to the evil spirits, we must set out immediately to recover all the ground we have lost! This is our only salvation! We can only be truly free when the footholds are all regained! The unrenewed mind must be renewed (1), the lie accepted must be denied (2), the passivity must be turned into free action (3)! Let’s look a little closer at the three aforementioned principles (actions) and see how we can effect same. How do we renew our minds? First and foremost we need to draw near to the cross! We must come to the foot of the cross, willing to forsake our traditional mentalities and trust God to renew our minds! The renewal is actually God’s work, however we must use our free will to choose to put off, deny, forsake, the old organ of thought as we’ve known it and having done this, God will renew our minds. God is displeased with the wicked man who uses his own mind to apprehend God’s truth, in fact, an unrenewed mentality is spiritually dead and everything that proceeds from it is dead as well. Patiently and decisively the Christian must examine his every thought, in the light of God’s Word. A Christian must not rest until he brings every idea into subjection to Christ! To deny the lies accepted we must first understand that a foothold was given to Satan’s evil forces when the lie was accepted as truth. If we did not resist or if we unquestioningly received a suggestion from the evil spirits, the same comes to pass by our doing so. In order to reject the lies and deny them, we must experience God’s light, which is God’s truth. As light dispels darkness, so truth destroys lies. We must therefore seek to apprehend every truth concerning God, the evil spirits, and us. We must pray singleheartedly for light that we may behold our precise condition (the truth) and thereby know where we have been deceived and accordingly have suffered. We must trace the source and then quietly and prayerfully wait to be illuminated by God’s light. Once receiving illumination in the areas of our deception, we must resist in our will the further workings of the evil spirits and afterwards overthrow one by one the lies which we formerly believed and now disbelieve. In this way we gradually recover surrendered territory. When we actively choose to resist and will our minds not to believe not even in the slightest degree the lies of the evil spirits, their power over us in summarily broken! In order to overthrow our mind’s passivity, we must first realize that in the spiritual just as with the natural, God has placed into effect laws whereby even the evil spirits are limited as to their actions. The most basic and perhaps the most important is that nothing pertaining to man can be accomplished without the consent of his will! It is through ignorance that a child of God accepts the deceit of the devil and allows him to work in his life. Such being the case, the believer must exercise his will to insist that he is his own master and will not tolerate the enemy’s manipulation of any part of his being. In so doing, the evil spirits must submit to God’s law and flee. The believer must declare by God’s law that his mind belongs to him, that he is going to use it and will not permit any outside force to instigate, employ, or control his mind! The believer in addition must assail the lies of the evil spirits by meeting every suggestion from the enemy resolutely with a truth from the Bible! Answer doubts with the text of faith; respond to despair with words of hope, reply to fear with words of peace. In short, victory is obtained by wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Each time the Christian exercises his mind and resists the devil he is depending completely on what the cross has accomplished. Having thus depended on the cross’s work, we rest positionally with the Lord and His death, whereas we too have died with Him and if dead, the evil spirits have absolutely no authority over us! Having accomplished all of the above, we must continue to restore our sovereignty until we are completely and utterly emancipated. If we stand on the foundation of the cross and exercise our mind to resist the enemy’s usurpation, we shall soon be delivered completely! We will so become masters of our own mental life as God originally intended and created us to be. God desires our minds to be full of light, wisdom and understanding, with all our imaginations and reasonings purified and brought to perfect obedience to His will. We will now move on to a section which the author titles; "The Laws of the Mind", and in so doing in an attempt to keep this paper as brief as possible, I will try to condense the most pertinent truths as they pertain to our spiritual walk although the author goes into much needed detail whereas the serious believer is advised to purchase and study this book for himself in detail. As we have seen that there are natural and spiritual laws, there are also those whereas the mind is regulated, some of those are: 1. The mind working with the spirit, (the mind is closest thing within a person to their spirit, it is an organ of knowledge just as the spirit is, to walk after the spirit, the two must work hand in hand, the mind being the spirit’s best helper!) To put it as briefly as I dare, the spirit of man receives the things of God through the intuition, which enlightens the inner man, however the outer man, (the body) knows nothing until the spirit communicates with the whole being through the mind, it enlightens our mental faculty to make us understand the meaning of the revelation received in the intuition. Since our outward man depends on the mind in order to comprehend things, the spirit must convey what it knows intuitively to the mind so that the mind can deliver the message to the entire being and enable the child of God to walk according to the spirit. We must ever keep things in this order; we can only receive the revelations of God in our intuition and then our minds, never in the reverse order! We must remember that our minds are the outlet of the Holy Spirit, it is through our minds that He can reach out and touch others however we must carefully keep the spirit and mind in the right, above stated order!

2. Mind, the spirit, and a spiritual mind, (To walk after the spirit means to have the mind set on the things of the spirit and as such allowing the spirit to rule our mind. Walking after the spirit simply denotes that a mind under the control of the spirit sets itself on the things of the spirit. On whatever the mind sets itself, that do we follow! This is an unchangeable law!) All the leadings of God are transmitted via small delicate sensations in the spirit. God never employs anything like a compulsory, overwhelming feeling to try to force man into obedience! Our spirit and mind must function actively together with the Holy Spirit if we expect Him to lead us! We will walk after the spirit if we exercise our inner man to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and use our outer man to follow the movement or silence in our spirit. 3. An open mind, (Besides experiencing God’s direct revelation, we also frequently receive truth through the preaching of the Word by other children of God. Such truth is first received in the intellect before it reaches the spirit. An open mind is consequently of paramount importance to spiritual life.) Truth is understood initially by the mind, next it enters and stirs the spirit, and lastly it is manifested in practical living. A closed mind prevents truth from entering the spirit. A closed mind can furthermore be described as a prejudiced one, a critical one! An unobstructed mentality in conjunction with a free spirit aids us the most in knowing the truth! An open mind lets in the truth, but the illumination of the spirit’s light renders the truth profitable. 4. A controlled mind, (Every part of the Christian’s life needs to be under reins, that includes the mind after it’s renewal!) We must remember that thoughts are the seeds of action! An idea sown will eventually grow, however prolonged such growth may require. If a sinful thought or notion is allowed to stay in one’s head, then after a time, it will result in a sinful act... Should our mental life be left uncontrolled, we cannot possibly control anything! We should and must scrutinize every thought in the light of God’s Word! We must choose to exercise our intellect to examine, test, every thought and ascertain whether it is from God and reject everything that’s not! An independent mind can only exhibit the corruption of the flesh, it is quite dangerous! We must reject truths which are mental, (from intellectual knowledge) and regulate our mind’s activity. We must not allow it to grow overactive and go out of control. Anxious, emotional, proud thoughts must be cast aside and this requires action on our parts! We must exercise caution and act swiftly to keep our mind under the spirit’s control, not allowing it to occupy a position it was not created to fill! 5. A mind full of God’s Word, (We should read and memorize more and more of the Word of God!) If we diligently read the Bible, God will fill our every thought with His laws. If our mind is abounding in God’s Word, the Holy Spirit is able through our spirit’s intuition to enlighten our mind at once by bringing to our remembrance some appropriate verse. If our mind is united with the Bible as such we will be able to apprehend the mind of God in all regards. 6. A cry for a cleansed mind, (We should as believers continually ask God to purify our mental life and keep it fresh!) We must request of God that every evil thought towards Him be rooted out and all excessive notions as well so that we can be assured that all we believe is completely of God. We must entreat Him to make us of one mind with our fellow believers and render us dead not only to our evil nature but to our evil mentality as well! With that we’ll head to the next area in this book, the Analysis of the Soul, the Will! We can begin with the following definition, however many times it’s been repeated, it must be known that a man’s will is his organ for decision making. It can be taken as his real self; it in fact truthfully represents him. It is actually man’s volition which wills, our volition as such acts for the entire man. Our emotion merely expresses how we feel, our mind tells us what we think, but our will communicates what we want. It is as such the most influential component of our entire person. It is deeper than emotion and or mind and must not be neglected when a believer is seeking spiritual growth! Many while seeking to spiritually grow neglect the fact that true religion does not aim at emotion or reason but aims to impart life to man’s spirit and to lead his will to be completely yielded to God’s will! Unless one’s "religious " experience produces in us a willing acceptance of the whole counsel of God, it is but very superficial. True and perfect salvation saves man’s will! Whatever is not sufficiently thorough to embrace the salvation of man’s volition is but vanity! The author in this third part repeats many of the truths brought forth in the first two volumes, in order to condense this somewhat I will only briefly review some important facts… Man has by God’s divine design a free will, this in fact means that man’s will is in fact sovereign, and as such man is responsible for all his actions, the will within controls all matters, both inside and outside him. Out of love, God gave man guidelines to live by, the first being the instructions about the trees and fruit found within the Garden of Eden, God could have restrained man but never, He merely persuaded, even prohibited verbally, but never coerced. The ultimate responsibility remained with man to heed God’s voice or not, this was part of man’s free will. For man to obey God it requires a willingness on man’s part, God never compels us! By understanding this principle of God, we can discern what is of God and what isn’t, God will NEVER force His will upon us, the evil spirits however are ever ready to do so! May I state at this time that there are two massive contradictory wills throughout the universe. On the one-side stands the holy and perfect will of God, on the other is the defiled, defiling and opposing will of Satan. In between stands the sovereign, independent, free will of man! In man’s unregenerated state, he finds himself utterly controlled by the flesh, as such he is corrupted and lacks any spiritual value. All his questing after God, his service and even suffering for God’s sake is in vain, it has no value in God’s eyes as it derives from fallen man and his flesh and is not consistent with God’s will for His fallen creation’s life. We can ascertain that in fact the first battle we face, that of whether to accept God’s free gift and be saved or to perish is fought out in the will of man! Man’s original fall was due to the rebellion of his will against God’s, and so his present salvation is effected by having his volition brought into obedience to God! As such we find that the first stage of man’s salvation is in fact the salvation of the will… By believing God’s Word and receiving His Spirit, man’s will is renewed and gains a new master. As such we can see how important a new and renewed will is to man, moreso that other parts of the soul. Salvation can be described as such, it is God saving man out of himself into Himself. A cutting off and a uniting with! Self is cut off; we then become united with God! Anything that cannot save man from self and join him to God is vanity. A true spiritual beginning involves release from animal life and entry into divine life. The created one must vanish in order that true salvation may be manifested. Authentic life can be seen only in the total abandonment of self! Salvation must be understood as man’s deliverance from his created, natural, animal, fleshly and self-emanating will! Aside from God giving us new life, the turning of our will to Him is by far the greatest work in salvation! Since we’ve determined that man’s total being moves according to his will, the will is the most important element of man which must be abandoned to God! In fact a union of man’s will and God’s will is not only necessary but also anything short of such a union is utterly inadequate in God’s eyes. Once this ruling will of man is joined completely to God, the man is spontaneously and fully submissive to Him. Salvation cannot be complete until man’s will is united entirely with God’s! He wants us to have His life but He wants us also to be united to Him and since our will most clearly represents us, our union with God cannot be complete without the joining of our will to Him! Let me interject this tidbit here, disobedience means to follow one’s own will in a matter, obedience means to follow God’s will! Except we unconditionally surrender to God and be disposed to accept God’s will entirely, all else which we label as spirituality is but an outward show. Unless a believer is determined in his volition to finish the course God has set before him, nothing is of any worth. If we are really united with God in will, we shall cease at once every activity which emerges from ourselves. Hereafter there can be no independent action; we are dead to self but alive to God! God wants His own to know that He saves them not for their enjoyment but for His Own will. In gain or loss, joy or sorrow, consciousness of His presence or that of His rejection, Christians are to contemplate God’s will alone! Christians MUST understand that they live on this earth not for themselves but for God’s will. Their greatest blessing, highest privilege and supreme glory lies in rejecting their corrupt volition of flesh and blood in order that they may be united with God’s volition for the accomplishment of His heart’s desire! We must understand here that without God’s grace we are powerless to fully unite our will to His, however hard we can try, we may in fact be obedient but our will may still have a thread of life which is unbroken, a hidden tendency, a secret admiring of the former way of life and only God’s grace can help us to overcome this aspect of our being. Remember that from God’s view, anything emanating from man’s self is corrupt, consequently the cardinal point here is not man’s intention nor the nature of a thing, but purely the will of God. It can be said that the measure of our being unshackled from the control of soul life determines the measure of our union with God, for nothing hinders that union more than the energy of the soul. The more the soul’s vitality is crushed the more our will centers on God! God’s will must be the standard of each footstep; no provision must be made for self! Let the believer do nothing for himself but trust God in all matters, let him proceed step by step, according to His way, waiting for His timing and fulfilling His conditions. Let him receive willingly from God his strength, wisdom, righteousness, and work. Let him acknowledge God as the source of all things and by so doing harmony can be attained. Having failed miserably at keeping this paper brief, allow me to continue along the lines the book follows, here the author adds more about passivity and it’s dangers. I’ll try to keep this brief, however some of this needs repeating and or further explanation… For each and every thing God has created there is a law. Laws govern all actions. The evil spirits are no different; they too operate according to God’s laws! In order for them to work in the lives of believers, we must cede ground to them through sin in our lives. This ground is what the Bible warns us to not give them in Ephesians 4:27! If ground is given, invasion is unavoidable! All sin yields territory to evil spirits, which hide behind the sin. Sin is mainly grouped within two groups, that of commission whereas we outwardly commit and act of sin, whether by our eyes, hands, ears, or mouth, etc… If occupation of evil spirits stems from commission, we must forsake unrelentingly so as to recover the lost ground! If not, the spirits will increase their hold gradually until the entire person is occupied!! The second group or type of sin is negative sin or that of omission.

Here we find the sin of passivity; it is the disuse of any part of one’s being in God’s eyes. This type of sin is actually the primary cause of deception in God’s surrendered believers! It is a cessation of the active exercise of the will in control over the spirit, soul and body, or either, as may be the case. Passivity is when the organ of volition ceases to choose and decide matters referred to it. The passivity of a saint arises mainly out of the non-use of his various God given talents! Evil spirits take full advantage of one’s inactive state to accomplish their wiles; God however never disregards our volition. While He expects us to obey Him, He nevertheless respects our personality and free will! Remember that Satan must gain the believer’s permission in order to occupy ground within the believer’s life, while that isn’t very likely openly, he then resorts to deception in order to extract this consent from him. Once a believer knows the principle of spiritual life as well as the conditions for the working of evil spirits he will not as easily fall into such dangerous situations! It is mainly because we are mainly ignorant of the above that we allow ourselves to become passive and by so doing yield ground! It is very much a necessity that our wills actively cooperate with God and not just passively sit back and become inactive. God never substitutes His will for man’s, man must be responsible for what he does!

God does not and will not decide for us what to do, we must choose to do His will as He reveals it to us. While God wants man to be yielded completely to Him, He also wants man to use every talent he possesses in cooperation with the Holt Spirit. God calls man to choose actively, consciously and willingly to do His will so that his spirit, soul, and body may be free! God obviously is not pleased if man wills things other than Himself, but neither is He pleased if man were to obey Him mechanically and unconsciously. He is satisfied when a person wills what He wills, and never wants him to become a will — less person! Exactly opposite of what Satan wants and in fact demands of man! Much as in Federal Court, with God ignorance is not necessarily innocence, if we yield ground through our passivity, it is sin and an open door for Satan to operate from in our lives. It is our continuing duty to ever seek to know God more, to understand His Word more thoroughly, to abide in His presence as often as possible and to actively seek His will in all circumstances and situations we find ourselves in! If man does not act, neither will God, leaving a willing Satan and his evil spirits to act for us! Let us ever keep in mind that once we perceive the will of God in anything through our spirit’s intuition, we must actively employ our entire being in swiftly executing God’s will! Let us ever remember what I’ve previously mentioned; only committed believers who disregard their own interests are open to passivity! Through their willingness to forsake self and obey all orders, they fail to take action waiting instead when God has already shown His will and in so doing cede ground to the enemy! No amount of honesty or good intentions can be considered a condition for not being deceived; knowledge of God’s Word however can greatly assist the believer in not ceding ground to the enemy! Deception is never a matter of life nor intention, it is a matter of one’s knowledge! Unless one is humble enough to acknowledge the possibility of being deceived as above mentioned, he will be perpetually deceived! Ignorance is truly the biggest cause of passivity!

Let us therefore learn by heart the difference between the principles governing the working of the Holy Spirit and that of the enemy, which is diametrically opposite! By examining the inward principles we are able to differentiate what is of the Holy Spirit and what is from the evil spirit, for each must work according to the principles God has made for them to operate within. God beckons us to deny the desire to live by our natural power and to live instead by Him, leaning upon His vitality moment by moment for the supply of every need. Such a walk with God requires us to exercise our will daily in an active, consistent and believing manner for the denial of our own natural energy and the appropriation of divine energy. Man as a person must continue, only his natural life must die! The right attitude is this: that I have my own will, yet I will the will of God. The author goes into so much more detail here that one must truly try to obtain a copy of this book to fully appreciate it’s teachings in their entirety. I however will move on, as much is further in depth covering of subjects already mentioned earlier. Having spoken so much about passivity it would be very prudent now to unveil the means of overcoming it! We can see that knowledge is probably the most important ingredient for finding the path to freedom, the first step certainly is knowing the truth of all things, truth concerning cooperation with God, the operation of evil spirits, consecration, and supernatural manifestations. The descent goes as follows, 1. Deception, 2. Passivity, 3. Entrenchment, 4. Further deception and passivity and as such the way of deliverance must be initially the uncovering of deception. Deception unleashes the gate for the enemy to rush in, passivity provides a place for them to stay, and the result of the previous two is entrenchment. Knowledge of truth is the first stage towards freedom. Only the truth can set or make people free! In all supernatural manifestations we can see that the Holt Spirit who bestows such gifts will not infringe on the person’s rights to govern his own body, the recipient retains the power of self control throughout the experience!

Such being the case, we can judge whether the supernatural manifestation required the person’s subjection or not, we can as such discern from whence it came! The believer as such should judge his experience by this criterion, and any such experience which demands the believer to be subject to it is obviously not of God! Many a saint of God has fallen for this very type of deception and upon learning the truth must admit his condition in the light of the truth herein revealed. Having done such it would be advised that such a person seek God’s help in showing him all the areas where he has been deceived. He must sincerely desire to have all the truth about himself revealed. Responsibility at this point for recovering the ground given up lays primarily on the will, it is the volition which became passive and hence it must be the volition which must dispel passivity. The deceived saint of God must immediately choose freedom, declare that he wants liberty, that he refuses to be passive, that he will use his own talents, that he wishes for the enemy’s defeat and declare that he severs all ties and relationships with the powers of darkness. Choice must be exercised and even though the enemy pays little or no attention to one’s resolve, but should one choose with his will to oppose the powers of darkness through the power of God, then they must certainly flee! By resisting he prohibits the evil spirits from further working and by refusing he cancels the former permission he had granted them. Refusal in addition to resistance practically immobilizes all the preparations of the enemy! One must firmly by faith take the position of Romans 6:11, being one with our Lord, the Lord’s death our death, and thus being the case being released from the authority of the evil spirits since they have no power over the dead! Having been released from the working of evil spirits through our passivity, we must now exercise full authority over our own volition and when we cannot exactly discern whether something is of God or the devil, we can continue exercising our will by always maintaining the attitude of wanting what is of God and rejecting what is not! A child of God should exercise his right to choose or reject in all respects, ever deciding to choose the will of God. We should ever repeat that whenever I know what the mind of God is I choose to do it, I always choose God’s will and reject Satan’s! The summit of a Christian’s spiritual walk is self control, this being a work of the Holy Spirit whereas He helps us to bring our outward man into perfect obedience to his self control. The Christian should exercise his volition to control, discipline and subdue his body in order that it may be entirely submissive, ready always to do God’s will! Once the believer’s volition has achieved a state of perfect self control (with the help of the Holy Spirit) he will not be hindered by any part of his being, because the moment he senses God’s will he will immediately perform it! Having declared so boldly all of the above, let us now move on to the final section of this wonderful work of Watchman Nee, this section dealing with the believer’s physical body and how it fits into the entire spiritual picture. Subjects covered are the believer and his body, sickness, God as the life of the body, and overcoming death. All are quite interesting and necessary subjects to understand for those looking to go onward with God and not wishing to lack any good thing He has to offer. Having said such, lets proceed by beginning with the following truth, our body occupies an essential role in our spiritual growth and walk with God and as such we must take time to develop it just as we develop our spirit or else we will never be perfected but always lacking in some physical way which can and will hinder our service to God. We must not neglect our outer shell while attending to our inner components! Our body is necessary and important; otherwise God would not have created man with one if not… We can make this statement with boldness, even though every believer has been made alive in his spirit, his body remains dead and as such we all share this common element. Spiritually speaking our bodies are counted as dead, the body is raised in His resurrection by the indwelling Holy Spirit, as such it "shares" the life of our Lord’s Spirit, however our bodies forever march onward towards death and the grave due to the sin it is made of. Our body can only be changed from it’s sinful nature in the "resurrection of our bodies" promised in Romans 8:23! This however cannot be changed in this life, it must be realized when our Lord comes back and receives us to Himself. Thus we can further ascertain that the real meaning of the Holy Spirit giving our bodies life as this; 1. He will restore us when we are sick and 2. He will preserve us if we are not sick. He will as such strengthen our earthly "tents" so that we are able to meet the requirements of our Lord’s work. Many today do not experience this restoration and preservation from the Holy Spirit and this is not because God does for some and not for others, it is simply because those who don’t experience it doesn’t fully take God at His Word! Surely there are cases where God uses a person’s illness for His own glory, certainly I would not put God in a box here however it is the author’s belief (and my own) that those who truly wish to live for God and claim this promise and provision by faith shall experience the reality of the fullness of life in the body as given by the Holy Spirit. Since the body is dead because of sin, we cannot live by following it or else we live in sin! By the provision of God’s Holy Spirit, we are competent to directly command the outer frame (body) without interference! We surely must eat, rest, drink, and clothe ourselves when cold however we must not permit these affairs to penetrate so deeply into our hearts that we make them partial or total objectives in our life! We must not love these necessities! They are needs yes, but we cannot allow them to become desires that can motivate us! We can ever remember that all sin manifests it’s effectiveness in the flesh, and that effect is death! We can not control our fleshly bodies on our own, only with the powerful help of the Holy Spirit can we accomplish such a task! Truly it is useless to try and crucify one’s self. We must realize that the cross without God’s Spirit is absolutely ineffective. Only the Holy Spirit can take what the cross has accomplished and make believers experience it. If we hear the truth of the cross but do not allow Him to work this truth into our lives, then we know nothing but a theory and an ideal. Only the Holy Spirit can translate the cross into experience, He alone can substantiate salvation! We as believers must abandon ourselves and trust completely in the power of God’s Spirit to lay to rest the deeds of our bodies, only a putting to death by the power of the Holy Spirit will give life today to our mortal frame! The indulgence of any part of our body solely for self gratification is not pleasing to God, even in such natural affairs as food and sex the body should be engaged exclusively to fill needs! We who aspire to sanctification of our spirit and soul must take into account that without sanctification of our bodies, bringing our nerve responses, sensations, actions, conduct, works, food and speech into total subjection to and for our Lord, we can never arrive at perfection. Our bodies are for the Lord and all that comprises them, not for ourselves! It has a job, to be an instrument of righteousness for God’s kingdom work! We can gain confidence when we realize that God does not look at believers individually, He includes them together within His view of Christ for no Christian can exist outside of Christ because his daily strength is supplied by Him!

Just as a physical body is joined to a head, so believers are joined to Christ; in God’s eye our union with Christ is perfect, unlimited and absolute! The book cautions us against the sin of immorality, specifically fornication as it is doubly abominable because it joins one’s body with another’s and as such defiles the members of Christ! It speaks of how disembodied spirits ever seek human bodies to possess! (Read the book!) When our body has truly died with Christ, that is, when it is subject completely to Him, all self-will and independent action denied and nothing sought but to be a temple of the Lord, then the Holy Spirit shall assuredly manifest the life of the risen Christ in our mortal frame. Let us be sober and watchful lest we use our bodies for ourselves or permit them to fall into a condition as though the Lord was not for the body. Thus we shall glorify God and allow Him to demonstrate His power freely in delivering us from weakness, sickness and suffering as well as from self-interest, self-love, and sin! Sickness is the next subject that we will dig into, sickness being a direct result of sin, upon man’s fall, the spirit and soul were damaged by sin and the body of man was invaded by sickness. We must not forget that when our Lord Jesus came to this earth in human form He not only forgave man’s sin but healed man’s body as well! As such the Gospel tells on many more occasions of healings on man’s body than forgiving of sins! Many today have divided our perfect Savior into two; they no longer receive His healing along with His salvation although Jesus has never changed! He still remains the Savior as well as the Healer that He always has been! The Bible reveals that Jesus thinks of sin as well as sickness as works of the devil, (as they well are) and He came to destroy the works of the devil. In fact He accomplished said task and it stands today and ever! Sin and sickness are as intimately related as are our soul and body. Forgiveness and healing complement each other! Having made clear that our healing is certainly an accomplished fact awaiting our acknowledgement of same and acceptance by faith, we can see also that God uses sickness as a type of chastisement whereby causing believers to judge themselves and eliminate their sinful errors. Let us not think that God Himself makes us sick, however He allows the one who certainly loves to make us sick (Satan) to render the necessary chastisement… You see sickness prompts us to recollect and examine the past as to whether there might be hidden sin, obstinacy or self will working in our lives. Each time we examine ourselves as such, we can realize how full of self and unlike the holiness of God has been our past life and these experiences enable us to advance in spiritual development and to obtain God’s healing! We need to remember that God delights in forgiving our sins and healing our ills, all we must do is through the light of the Holy Spirit after seeking His guidance, find where our sin or shortcomings lie, repent and ask God’s forgiveness and do our best to make them up if it were another that we wronged. A truth that we easily forget is that God knows every hair on our heads, we cannot forget that nothing will occur in a Christian’s life that isn’t first approved by God Himself! Sickness sometimes is for the purpose of causing the Christian to be brought to a condition of unconditional submission that would not be possible otherwise, God takes no pleasure in His children’s sickness but He wants us to love Him and not doubt Him even to death! Often times we do not see the folly of resisting God until we reach death’s door, He always uses sickness as a last resort, after love has failed to be effective. The biggest purpose of such chastisement is to break down self-will and also self-love which is closely related to our physical bodies. Isn’t it true that we don’t even notice how much self-love and will we have until we become ill, then we begin to focus on or Lord like never before! God wants us to seek Him at all times as we do when we are sick, it is a method He uses to better communicate with us when our hearing has grown dull! About medicine, this hit me between the eyes; the author makes the statement, " Trusting in medicine and accepting the life of the Lord Jesus are absolutely diametrical." The believer who trusts in medicine to be healed is doing exactly as the world does, and though he is healed physically; his spiritual life must suffer loss! Jesus never needed to use medicine, however He healed all that came His way. Neither Paul, nor Peter, nor countless other apostles and disciples! If a believer trusts wholeheartedly in God, he must commit himself to His love and power. He will inquire and investigate the cause of his sickness — wherein has he displeased the Lord. So then when he is healed he shall be blessed spiritually as well as bodily. Christians who trust in medicine are nevertheless not standing on the ground of redemption. They are in fact assuming the same position as do the worldly people. It is absolutely not my intention to imply here that one should not use modern medical means when dealing with illness, I am only making the case that the author himself makes and agreeing that biblically speaking, the author’s interpretation appears to be correct. One observation is certainly beyond dispute, which is that were we to be healed by dependence on God, we would derive such spiritual profit from it, as a cure by medicine could never accord us! The object lesson God purposes us to learn in sickness is to cease from all our own activity and trust Him thoroughly. To trust in God for healing, believers must honestly confess and forsake their sins and be willing to offer themselves utterly to Him. Whenever "self" relinquishes its power, the Lord will heal! God intends for His children to know that a strong and healthy body is not for the sake of pleasing one’s self, nor to be used according to one’s desires, but is wholly for God. The spirit of healing is a spirit of holiness! What we lack is not healing but holiness! What we need to be delivered from initially is not sickness but self! Let’s all remember one thing, God’s will is for it to be done here as it is in heaven and there is no sickness in heaven. The fact that there is no sickness in heaven fully proves what the will of God is in regards to healing. Also it is very important to remember that all sickness comes from Satan, (although God allows it at times to work His purpose in us) and therefore must be resisted by the believer as such! The very bottom line on healing is what does the Holy Bible have to say about the believer and sickness? Ask yourself that question, search the scriptures, after obtaining the truth as the Holy Spirit reveals it to you, hold onto it and exercise faith to receive the provision God has already provided for your need! What is faith? Faith believes God can, God will, and God has done it! If you believe you have received it, you shall have it. Remember that expectation regards things in the future, but faith deals with the past! Remember that, "It is finished!" Lay hold of these three steps: God can, God will, God has! When your faith reaches the third stage, the sickness is over! The author goes much farther into this subject however I will end here feeling the most significant points have been made already.

God wants us to learn how to let the resurrected, glorious and all-victorious life of Christ be expressed in every portion of our being, and as such God’s call today is for all of His children to experience a much deeper union than ever with the Lord Jesus. The life of Christ flows from the Head to the body, supplying energy and vitality to it. Since our bodies are members of that body, life naturally flows to them. This however is appropriated by faith, the measure of faith by which we receive this life determines the measure in which we actually receive and experience it We can however forfeit the manifestation of the life of Christ in our bodies through neglect, independence, or sin. We must ever be aware of that and closely guard against such! Solely through obedience will we experience the reality of Christ’s life in us! We must not request more than what God has supplied, and also not be satisfied with anything less than all that He’s promised! Can we take a moment now to remember that the Giver of the gifts is far more precious that the gifts themselves! Should a Christian genuinely live perfectly for the Lord he will not be anxious to seek help, blessing, or supply. He will instead commit himself unconditionally to God! What has God already said in His Word about and to us? Need we seek more than the promises He’s already given? Do we seek and adore more the Giver or the gifts?

The final section is titled, "Overcoming Death." I’ll begin now as does the author and say that it is God’s aim to bring His children through the experience of overcoming death now; to triumph over sin, self, the world, and Satan is necessary but victory is not complete without a corresponding triumph over death! If we are to enjoy a complete victory, we must destroy this last enemy! While most believers are busy resisting and trying to overcome sin, we often neglect to see that God also wants us to become serious about resisting and overcoming death! When the righteousness of God works in us we abhor sin; but we have not allowed God’s life to so work in us that we equally begin to hate death. To overcome death believers must alter their attitude from one of submission to one of resistance towards it. Unless we definitely know that it’s God’s will that we die, we must actively resist death and as such cooperate with His will to resist it! There are 3 ways in which a Christian can overcome death: 1. By trusting we will not die until our work is finished; 2. By having no fear of death even should it come because we know its sting has been removed; and 3. By believing that we will be delivered completely from death since we shall be raptured at the Lord’s return. Allow me to make clear that overcoming death does not necessarily mean no grave, for God may wish some to overcome it through resurrection just as our Lord Jesus did. In passing through death believers, like their Lord, need not have fear of it. The devil would like the believer to loose sleep, be full of anxiety, worry about this passing from earth to heaven, the Lord however would not have us waste a moment’s thought about it! We know that upon Jesus’ return those remaining alive will be raptured, and realizing that we are living in the end times, we should wage war and resist death at all costs that we may lay hold of the victory of being raptured up to meet Jesus in the clouds! We must clamp shut the wide- open gates of Hades with the victory of Christ. We should stand against death, forbidding it to make any inroad in our bodies! Resist everything possessing the disposition of death. We must view sickness, weakness and suffering with this attitude! Death must be singularly resisted and rapture must be claimed wholeheartedly! Ever we must realize that to overcome mortality we must persistently overcome sin, for death (our mortality) results from sin! God is very ready and disposed to forgive, we must ever judge ourselves by His Word and genuinely confess and repent all of our shortcomings lest death, through sin gain a foothold in our lives! We all know through God’s Word that the kingdom age will bring us a time when there will be no weakness, sickness, or death because our bodies will have been redeemed and Satan trampled underfoot! As believers, through faith we can taste of this age to come today if we can only meet God’s requirements (living an obedient, repented and holy life) and fully trust in His Word! Faith is timeless, not only can it draw upon what God has done for us in the past but it can claim as well what God will do for us in the future… Let us only believe and receive that it is possible to foretaste the powers of the age to come! Let us each therefore seek the Lord’s mind concerning our future and after knowing that it is not our portion to depart now, we must exercise faith to lay hold of God’s Word and trust that we shall not all die but shall see the Lord’s face alive. Let us purify ourselves as He is pure, moment by moment let us live for Him and draw upon His resurrection life for the needs of our spirit, soul and body! The book ends here and may I add that I have gained so much knowledge through these teachings that it could take 50 years to assimilate it all, one thing I know for sure, I haven’t arrived anywhere and sin very much still slaps me around like a young boy! I have a Father however who gave me His Spirit and together I look forward much like a child in working out the details of implementing what I’ve learned into my life. Jesus, forgive me of my shortcomings, guide me as I ever seek Your face!!

God's blessings to all!

In His service,

Richard P. Duffield Jr.

I pray that somehow this has inspired you, helped you, or at least made you ponder the wonders contained within God's Word! You've shown dilligence in getting through these studies now start putting these truths into action in your life & walk with God! You'll see spiritual growth in Christ as a result! I guarantee that! Please make sure to send comments or suggestions if you have any! They are welcome!
Remember, God doesn't need people who've already arrived, He needs common sinners, saved by His grace, like you and I!

Be blessed!

In His service,

Richard P. Duffield