Hi Everyone,

Happy 2009! Another year of bliss awaits us, heh heh! I want to take this first paragraph to say that I will be changing the Subject line of the Bible Study messages to reflect the content, not merely the date. In so doing, perhaps it would be easier to have a sense of what I am writing about. This morning I was finishing reading the book of Hosea in the OT, and the last verse struck me as appropriate to reiterate our studies for the last month of December 2008:

Hosea 14:9b … For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but the transgressors will stumble in them.

So then…  If you’ve been reading these weekly Bible Study thoughts, I’ve mentioned an aspect of our being that is easy to overlook… our spirit. A fundamental truth of all human beings is that we have a spirit. We have an inner part in addition to our body that makes up who we are. And yes, even atheists have a spirit.  😉

I watch “The Dog Whisperer” sometimes. Have you? Caesar Milan refers to someone’s “energy” and/or “spirit” frequently when counseling people how to live with their dogs. Think also of the phrase, “A prevailing spirit” or “A spirit of anarchy”. Spirit in these senses refers to attitudes, moods and how we carry ourselves in a given circumstance. But the spirit I am referring to is the real you, the God-given life force that is inside your flesh and bones.

I’ve been teaching my kids to recognize their spirit. I tell them when they think thoughts with their mind or when people read not out loud, but to themselves, or when they feel bad when they’ve done something they know they shouldn’t have done, what is doing all that is their spirit. I tell them their brain controls their body, but that their spirit controls their brain. They also now know that when people die, their spirit is no longer inside the body and that is why dead people can’t walk, talk or do anything. Now, please… my kids ask me all sorts of questions… such conversations with them are not morbid 😉 When they want me to read the part (over and over) in their Kids Rhyming Bible when Jesus dies on the cross and then comes to life 3 days later, their little minds start wondering how all that is possible.

Okay… so whether you like it or not, you have a spirit. Can you recognize it? If you are reading this email to yourself and thinking thoughts about it, you (your spirit) are doing the reading… your spirit is seeing with your eyes and running it through your spirit’s information/ memory bank stored in your brain. Your flesh and bones  together is merely a tent for your spirit. Put another way, your spirit resides in your body.

I know you’ve heard: “The mind is willing, but the body is weak”. Guess what the mind is? Your spirit! Body is outer part, spirit is inner part. We all have a material/ outer part and immaterial/ inner part. Our spirit is invisible.

As an aside: I grew up thinking man was made up of three parts: 1. Body, 2. Spirit, 3. Soul… However, I never could quite see the difference between the spirit and the soul. I now have come to believe the spirit and soul are essentially synonymous in the Bible. Both words denote living, both words describe our inner part. Just think of the words “thoughts and intentions” as a way to understand. They’re essentially the same thing… can be used interchangeably. Saying “My heart and mind” is like saying “My soul and spirit”, it is essentially the same thing. A couple of verses…

Romans 8:10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit (inner part) is alive because of righteousness.

1 Corinthians 2:11a For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit (inner part) of the man which is inside him?

How else to recognize your spirit? When you feel guilty, that is your conscience. Your conscience is a spiritual component of who you are on the inside. When you comprehend the lovingkindness of God and joy springs forth from your heart, that comes from your inner part. Other things like our rational nature, intelligence, volition (decision making), attitudes, and so forth spring forth and are realities
because of our inner part.

Why focus on our spirit so much? Ready for this?…. Your spirit will never cease to exist. According to the Bible, when our body dies one day, our spirit will live on in either heaven or hell.

God is invisible right? We can only see the results of His works, but He Himself resides in the spiritual dimension. Angels (including Satan and the demons) reside in the spiritual realm. Departed loved ones reside in the spiritual realm. One day we’ll reside in the spiritual realm. Not meaning to sound too X-file-ish… everyone currently living on earth is a spirit residing in a physical body made of flesh and bones. Is this not true?

Our spirit is like the big pink elephant in the living room that no one sees. Consider your spirit. The Bible has a lot to say concerning our spirit and how it (we) relates to Almighty God.

Remember Adam and Eve. Remember the test in the garden of Eden. And recall that they made a choice (volition)… Where does volition come from again? It is a spiritual attribute, right? So even way back when, God related to man on a deeper level… on a spiritual level. And He still does so to this day! Thus to relate to God, we have to relate to Him spiritually. But to relate to Him spiritually, we first have to be aware of our spirit.

Hopefully you are now aware of your spirit. See how your spirit works and acts over the next week. Once we have a good awareness of our spirit, we’ll see some fascinating things in the weeks to come!

Peace,
Jim