I am a spirit being

 Is 26:9

My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.

This is one place in the Old Testament where we become aware of the fact that we have a soul and a spirit, separate from each other.  We usually look to the New Testament to affirm this, as it is written in 1 Thess 5:23

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are mostly not aware of our spirits until it is pointed out to us that we actually have one!  We tend to live in the soul-area of human emotions, will and personality.  This is then also the part of us most often fed through worldly persuits like education, entertainment, promotions, hobbies, and the like.  Soul rules, and decisions are based on external factors which we filter intellectually and then choose the options best suited to our personality, our particular world-view, and our humanly-acquired wisdom.  Spirit is present but largely ignored, just going along for the ride, not allowed to really give an input.

But God!  When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, our spirits are instantly transformed and come alive to God!  We suddenly have a beautiful holy spirit within us, a place where God can dwell through His Holy Spirit, a place where God wants to meet with us and build a love-relationship with us, a place where we can behold Him – how awesome is that!

From then on, we have to start changing the order of command in our being.  God designed our spirit to be dominant and our soul to be subordinate to it.  And it really is a decision that we have to take concerning ourselves, as Scripture says in Prov 25:28 “ Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls”.  How do we go about it?

Firstly acknowledge that you are really a spirit being, who lives in a body and has a soul, with which you interact with the world around you.

Start feeding your spirit with spiritual food – read the Word; pray both in the Spirit and in the body through using your mind and speaking your earthly language; worship God; meditate on Him; actively seek a living relationship with Him; spend time with Him.

Bless your spirit with spiritual truths and promises from the Bible spoken over it – how?  Call your spirit to the fore and read those blessings over you, this is how you grow your spirit.

Points to ponder:  As you get up every morning, call your spirit to attention and instruct it to follow Holy Spirit’s promptings throughout the day, leading body and soul on this journey!

By Your Spirit

Holy Spirit's voice

 

2 Cor 10:5

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,

Why is it necessary to take every thought captive to obey Christ? We need to remember that not every thought we have, is our own. Some thoughts are a communication from the spirit realm, either from Holy Spirit, or from Satan and his demonic forces.

How then are we to discern where our thoughts originated from? One of my favourite teachers, Neville Johnson, speaks of the spontaneity of the Spirit’s voice. Your own thoughts mostly come out of your deliberations concerning a specific matter, it is based on your own logical reasonings and arguments about it. Which mostly cannot be trusted, as it comes from you! But the Spirit drops a thought into your mind spontaneously, it just suddenly is there, out of the blue as it were.  I was reminded of this when a friend gave her testimony on how she was packing for a camping weekend, and a thought just arose:  Pack an extra pair of contact lenses. Which she ignored because it was not something she usually did - to her detriment, as one lens tore while she was on the camp!

Holy Spirit’s voice sounds just like your own thought voice, it is not an audible voice from outside (although God can speak to you in this manner if He wishes to). It sounds the same because there is a Spirit-to-spirit communication which then reaches your brain instantly, using your physical neural pathways. But there is a certain awareness or feeling of the person behind the voice. The character of the speaker shines through. If what is thought makes you anxious, or afraid, or makes you feel condemned and ashamed, or puts you down, or alters your mood so that you now feel depressed – you can surely know that Satan and his demons are behind this communication. He is the father of lies, he hates you, does not want you to have the joy of the Lord, and will always try to deceive and mislead you. Holy Spirit, on the other hand, will give you thoughts to uplift you, guide you, give you truth, and even if you need correction will never make you feel condemned, but just quietly and lovingly convict you that you are now on the wrong path.

God has given us a test by which we can discern who is communicating with us:

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Is that thought in your mind conveying truth? Will it lead to behaviour that is noble and honourable? Does it encourage me to do what is right? Is it pure, lovely, admirable? Can I praise whatever it is suggesting to me as excellent? If not – cast it out of your mind!

Points to ponder:  Am I just accepting all thoughts which arise in my mind as my own, or am I discerning where they come from?  Ask Holy Spirit to teach you and start practising to recognize His voice.  You can stand on His promise given in Joh10:27 that His sheep do indeed hear His voice!

Spirit lead me

The wonder of Israel's rebirth

 Is 66:8

Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children.

When Isaiah penned these words from the Lord, I am sure that he wondered greatly about its meaning! This prophecy was fulfilled in recent history.

The Belfour Declaration in 1917 paved the way for the United Nations to adopt Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947, officially declaring Israel as the homeland of the Jews. (Provision was made for the division of the land between the Arabs and the Jews, a solution plan which the Arabs rejected).  On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, thereby establishing the first Jewish state in 2 000 years. The State of Israel officially came into being upon termination of the British mandate in Palestine that same evening at midnight – and a country was born in a day!

There is another wonder associated with this day in history. Since the 6^th century, the rabbis from the Babylonian exile had divided the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and later the Haftarah (the books of the Prophets) into sections to be read publicly in synagogues, the aim being that they take one calendar year to read through.

The day following the proclamation of the State of Israel was a Sabbath, and the reading from the prophets for that day was Amos 9:11-15, of which verses 11, 13 and 14 are given here:

In that day I will restore David’s fallen shelter— I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins— and will rebuild it as it used to be,

I will bring my exiled people of Israel back from distant lands, and they will rebuild their ruined cities and live in them again. They will plant vineyards and gardens; they will eat their crops and drink their wine.

I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God.

These words echoed throughout the world from synagogues on the first day of modern Israel’s existence – only God could have orchestrated this!

Points to ponder:  Let these events from the history of Israel greatly increase your faith in the God Who keeps His promises, and Who knows every little detail of your life!

 Hatikvah

Spring means the harvest is ready

 Song of Solomon 2:11-13

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come, and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.

Song of Solomon can also be interpreted as the journey of the bride of Christ from the moment she meets Him, her Beloved Jesus, and through the seasons of her life thereafter. The above verses stood out for me because it is now spring in South Africa, and we can physically relate to what the writer is describing here. 

Up to this point the Shulamite shepherd girl (identify yourself with her) has met and fallen in love with the King (Jesus), as described in Chapter 1.  He is her First Love, and she yearns to spend time with Him, but the more she experiences His perfectness and beauty, the more she becomes aware of just how dirty and unkept she is, and this makes her feel ashamed and unworthy.  And yet she remembers how He sees her as perfect and lovable, without spot or blemish!  This sustains her, so that she renews her efforts to be of service to Him and to introduce Him to her friends.

This could be a dangerous place for the bride to find herself in, because often, and I would venture to say more often than not, the religious community (my mother’s sons in 1:6) sees her vigour and passion for Jesus and puts her to work in the church, using her anywhere and everywhere because she is willing and able. The day then inevitably arrives where she finds herself having less and less time to spend alone with her Beloved, even while spending more and more time serving Him! As soon as she realises this, she withdraws herself from many responsibilities and returns to His chamber of rest, and this is the best decision she could make, even if she then must endure the criticism of those who do not understand.  Now she can fall in love all over again, and her Beloved sternly adjures her brothers and sisters not to awaken her love until it pleases Him, until He considers her ready to be sent out again.

And this is what the above verses refer to:  He has seen that she is ready and is now calling her forth from her place of worship and rest in the King’s chambers, inviting her to come to the nations with Him.  He has prepared the ground with rain, the cooing of turtledoves shows that her love for Him is restored, and He has already prepared the harvest to be gathered. On reading further you will see that she does not respond immediately.  This does not keep Him from calling her His darling, His beautiful one.  Nothing you will ever do, or not do, can change His love for you!

Points to ponder:  Where are you on this journey of the bride and her Beloved?  Are warning lights flashing as you realise that you are not spending time with Him because you are so busy working in other people’s vineyards that you neglect your own? Return to Him, He is waiting with open arms to receive you!

Song of Solomon

When God changed His mind

 

I am sure the title raised your eyebrows a bit! Surely God decides matters and then keeps His word? We find these interesting verses in Amos 7:

Amos 7:1-3

The Sovereign LORD showed me a vision. I saw him preparing to send a vast swarm of locusts over the land. This was after the king’s share had been harvested from the fields and as the main crop was coming up. In my vision the locusts ate every green plant in sight. Then I said, “O Sovereign LORD, please forgive us or we will not survive, for Israel is so small.”  So the LORD relented from this plan. “It will not happen,” He said.

If you continue reading, you will find that it happens again, when God wanted to punish Israel with fire and in response to Amos’ plea relented and decided to revoke His sentence. One righteous man pleading for his nation has the power to stay God’s hand. However, when Israel still did not return to Him, He shut the door of mercy and did not spare them any longer and allowed them to be exiled from their land.

What would move God to have mercy and grace for us to such an extent that He does not judge us as a nation or a city with the punishment we so richly deserve?

We find the answer in Jonah, who had been sent by God to warn Nineveh of their impending judgment:

Jonah 3:10

When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.

The whole city, (120 000 people!) fasted and repented of their evil ways and violence and then turned away from their evil doings. And herein lies the key:  repentance does not merely mean to say that you are sorry. Repentance means to make a U-turn concerning those wrong thoughts and behaviour and then move in the opposite direction, actively refraining from doing them again.

It would seem that our task here is twofold – as intercessors we need to stand in the gap for our nation and our cities, repenting on their behalf of the sins that are continually  being committed, pleading with God for an extension of His grace and mercy, begging Him to  delay His inevitable judgment.  But secondly, we need to send out as many workers in the field as possible to lead people to repentance and turning to God!

Points to ponder:  Think about your twofold role in saving your nation from the terrible wrath and judgement of God on their stubborn refusal to acknowledge Him – are you actively involved in both?

Song of Repentance