Because we have two lives, the soulish life and the divine life, there are always two ways for us as Christians to do things. We can do things by the human life in our soul or by the divine life in our spirit. We can also act either as the old man or as the new man. The way to live for the Lord, following and obeying Him, is to not exercise our soul—our mind, emotion, and will—but to exercise our spirit. Our spirit is the innermost part of our being; it is deeper than our mind, emotion, and will. In order to live and walk by the spirit, we must learn to reject, to deny, the mind, the emotion, and the will. If we practice this, gradually we will realize that it is simple. Whenever we exercise a certain organ, it becomes stronger. Education teaches people how to exercise their mentality, but today we must realize that we need to learn how to exercise our spirit. Usually, when Christians come together, very few are strong in their spirit to utter a prayer or a praise to the Lord. Because they do not exercise their spirit in their daily life, they are very weak in their spirit. However, if we exercise our spirit day by day, our spirit will become positive, active, living, and strong. Then when we come to the meetings, it will be easy for us to express something either by giving a short word or by offering a prayer or a praise. Let us exercise our spirit to follow the Lord, to obey Him, and to live by and for Him.
To exercise our spirit, on the positive side, simply means to use our spirit. Our spirit is full of feeling and consciousness because the Holy Spirit is always working in our spirit. First John 2:27 says that the anointing which we have received from God abides in us. This anointing is not merely the Spirit as an ointment; it is the working and the moving of the Spirit in our spirit. The Holy Spirit as the ointment is always working, moving, and acting within us. The feeling of the anointing comes from this working and moving. Because we neglect the exercise of our innermost part, we do not take care of the inner feeling. But if we pay attention to our innermost part, we will sense that there is always a certain kind of feeling or moving, and we should go along with that feeling. This is the positive side of exercising our spirit. On the negative side, by exercising our spirit we will automatically deny our natural man, our natural way of thinking, our natural emotion, and our natural will.
If we exercise in this way, we will be normal Christians. The normal Christian life is a life lived in the spirit, where there is victory over sin, the self, Satan, the world, and worldly things. Some may say that we must substantiate our crucifixion with Christ through faith. However, all the things that the Lord has accomplished on the cross can be realized only in and through the Spirit, who dwells in our spirit. When we are in our spirit, all the divine facts that the Lord accomplished through His death and resurrection become real to us. If we are not in our spirit but in our self, it is not possible for us to experience what the Lord has accomplished on the cross. We need to walk in the spirit, which means that we must exercise our spirit.
Furthermore, we must learn to distinguish the life of the soul from the faculties, or functions, of the soul. The soulish life must be put away, but the functions of the soul must remain. For example, if I am a clerk in an office, I must exercise the function of my mind; however, I should use my mind as an organ not by the life of the soul but by the life of the spirit. Then if my boss becomes unhappy with me, I can still work normally by using my mind as an organ. However, if I am living and working by the life of the soul and my boss becomes unhappy with me, I will become unhappy with him and will find it difficult to continue working normally. Therefore, as a clerk I must work by the organ of my mind, yet I should work not by the soulish life but by the life that is Christ Himself in my spirit. Since the natural man, the soulish life, has been crucified, we must reject and deny it; nevertheless, all the organs of the natural man still remain for us to use. To repeat, we must reject the soulish life but not the soul’s faculties. Indeed, the more spiritual we are, the more we will function properly by the faculties of the soul.
We may also illustrate this by the love between a husband and a wife. The genuine love of a wife for her husband can be seen when the wife lives not by her own life but by her husband. She uses all her faculties but gives up her life in order to live by her husband. This is genuine love. As a husband, I know that to love my wife in a sincere way, I must always put my life aside in order to live by my wife. Divorces take place when husbands live by their own lives and wives live by theirs. Likewise, although God created us as independent human beings, He demands that we not live by ourselves but by Him. Moreover, although He created a life for us, He requires us to give up that life and take Him as our life. This is a wonderful matter.
The principle is the same with prayer. Genuine prayer is initiated from the spirit. When we come to the Lord in prayer, we must forget about our mind, emotion, and will and exercise our spirit. This affords the Holy Spirit the opportunity to burden us with certain prayers. Then automatically the human faculties of the mind, emotion, and will come into function. Sometimes as we come to the Lord, rejecting our mind, emotion, and will and exercising our spirit, the Holy Spirit energizes us within concerning certain matters, but our mind does not understand them. At such a time we need to pray, “O Lord, I simply do not have the utterance. Lord, be merciful; I simply do not know how to pray.” It is at this time that the Holy Spirit in our spirit intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Rom. 8:26).
Wherever I go, people ask me, “Brother Lee, please pray for me in this matter.” I very seldom answer these requests affirmatively, because I am not sure whether the Spirit will lead me to pray in that way or not. I simply say, “If the Lord leads, I will do so.” Genuine prayer is initiated not by us but by God on the throne. The Holy Spirit transmits to our spirit what the throne initiates, for us to sense as a burden in our spirit. If our mind has been transformed, it can interpret the burden in our spirit. When we utter that interpretation in words, we pray a genuine prayer, a prayer initiated by the throne of God and transmitted into our spirit.
Do not try to understand all these things thoroughly; it is impossible. The food we eat day by day can never be understood thoroughly. According to our experience, the simplest way to live the Christian life is to forget about our mind, emotion, and will and to exercise our innermost part to go along with the Lord. This is effective. For example, the more I think about a certain brother, the more unhappy I feel about him. This means that the more I exercise my mind concerning him, the more unhappy I feel about him in my emotion. But if I am following the Lord, I must forget about my mind and emotion and exercise my spirit to contact the Lord. I may pray, “Lord, I praise You. What should I do concerning this brother? In my spirit, Lord, energize me to love him.” If we contact the Lord in such a way, our mind and emotion are still there, but something is different.
We can never explain this clearly or analyze it thoroughly, but it is nevertheless a fact. We must take the simplest way to experience this glorious fact. For our physical life, if we daily take milk, toast, and other good foods into us, we will receive the good things that we need in order to live, and day by day we will grow and be strong. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the bread of life...He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:35, 57). The Lord is edible, and His desire is that we would eat Him. To eat the Lord is to exercise our spirit to contact Him. We must practice this. Our mind, emotion, and will must always be secondary, and our innermost part, our spirit, must always be primary. In all things in our daily life we must exercise our spirit to contact the Lord. Then we will experience the Lord in a real way and will be constantly energized by Him. If we continually exercise our spirit throughout the day, we will be holy. Sanctification will be ours, and victory over all things that oppose God will also be ours (Rom. 8:35-39). We will be spiritual and have power, energy, strength, light, and life because in our spirit we will experience all the riches of Christ. In the beginning we may feel that this is not simple, because we are not used to it. Learning to drive a car is awkward at the beginning, but after practicing for a time, it becomes easy. The Lord today is within us as life and as everything; hence, there is no need for us to struggle in order to be victorious, holy, or spiritual. We must exercise ourselves to apply the Lord to all the things in our daily lives. This is the way to be spiritual, holy, and victorious.