When I began to minister in the United States in 1962, a number of people told me that they had never before heard that man has a spirit. Many teachers and preachers do not know or believe the truth concerning the human spirit. In 1954 I was invited to hold a conference and training in Hong Kong. A certain Brethren missionary came to Hong Kong to attend my conference. After the conference he told me that he appreciated what he heard in the meetings but that he could not agree with the teaching about the human spirit. He said that the spirit and the soul are synonyms, referring to the same thing. I asked him about 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where Paul refers to our "spirit and soul and body." Paul used the conjunction and twice in this phrase. This shows that man's spirit and soul are two distinct items. Furthermore, Hebrews 4:12 says that the living word of God can divide our spirit from our soul. After I pointed this out to him, he still said that he could not believe that we have a human spirit. Many dear saints today are like this. Some do not care about the spirit and the soul. They feel that this is too abstract to talk about. It is no wonder that they cannot be spiritual. Actually, you can never be spiritual if you do not know you have a spirit.

John 4:24 says that God is Spirit. This means that God's substance is Spirit. This verse goes on to say that those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit — the human spirit. The divine Spirit and the human spirit are both mentioned in John 4:24. The Gospel of John has another verse which refers to the two spirits. John 3:6 says, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." In this verse the first Spirit is the begetting Spirit; the second spirit is the begotten spirit. Romans 8:16 says that the Spirit witnesses with our spirit. The pronoun our is used in this verse, referring to our human spirit. God is Spirit, but if we had no spirit, we could not join to Him as one spirit. This is mentioned emphatically in 1 Corinthians 6:17: "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit." These are the strong verses in the New Testament which convey the revelation to us concerning both God the Spirit and our spirit.

If God were not a Spirit, how could He be our life? If we did not have a spirit, how could God be contacted, touched, received, and contained by us? This would be impossible. Our spirit is the organ with which we can contact God the Spirit. We must use the proper organ to contact God. In order to see, we must use our eyes. We cannot appreciate colors if we do not use our eyes, the proper organ. People say there is no God, because they are unaware that they have a particular organ within them with which to contact God. They deny this organ and do not use it, so they cannot know God. God is a Spirit, and He made a spirit within us so that we can contact Him.