Once the believer's spirit is passive, his conscience spontaneously becomes passive as well. Once his conscience becomes passive, he thinks that he will be led directly by the Holy Spirit, either through a voice or through the Scriptures. He thinks the Holy Spirit will no longer lead him through his conscience or through the judgment of the intuition. Since he possesses the highest way of leading, he thinks that he only needs to listen to what the Holy Spirit is personally speaking to him or what He is speaking through the Scriptures. By not using his conscience and letting it slip into a passive state, he is defrauded in his daily living by the enemy. The result is nothing but obedience to the work of Satan. Since he no longer uses his own conscience, the Holy Spirit also, according to the principles of His work, will not employ his conscience on his behalf. Satan will take advantage of this situation to replace the leading of the believer's conscience and intuition with supernatural voices and other things.
As their conscience becomes passive and is led by evil spirits, some believers lower their moral standard. They no longer look at immoral matters as immoral. On the contrary, they think that they are living according to a higher principle. This hinders them from advancing in life and in their work. They stop using their intuition to sense the will of the Holy Spirit; neither do they use their conscience to distinguish right and wrong. They simply act as machines, following outward, superficial voices which they have mistaken for the voice of God. In this situation they ignore their reasoning, conscience, and other people's advice. They become the most stubborn persons in the world and will not be convinced by anyone because they think they are following a higher way than that of the rest of the believers. They are very close to what the apostle said: "Who are branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron" (1 Tim. 4:2). They are void of any feeling of their conscience.
In such a life of spiritual warfare, we must keep our spirit in an active state—fully obedient to the Holy Spirit, not in a passive state. Otherwise, we will inevitably be deceived by Satan. If our spirit is not active and reaching out, even if it is not attacked by the enemy, it will be locked in, and Satan will blockade it and shut off all of its outlets. Our spirit will be unable to work, serve, or war, as though it were being suppressed. Our spirit must be active and reaching out. It must always resist Satan, or else it will be attacked from every side by evil spirits.
In spiritual warfare, one very important principle is that we must keep attacking Satan constantly. In order to guard ourselves from being attacked, we must attack. To attack the evil spirits is the only way to prevent them from attacking us. Once believers have entered into the spiritual realm, if they do not have a daily attitude of resisting the enemy in the spirit, assaulting Satan with prayers in the spirit, and asking God to destroy all the works of Satan done through the evil spirits, they will soon see their own spirit fall from the heavens and become weak and powerless. In a short time these believers will lose their feelings and not even know where their spirit is. This is because their spirit has fallen into a passive state and is no longer aggressively attacking. Believers unknowingly allow the enemy to attack, block, and surround their spirit. If the believers "release" their spirit daily and always resist the enemy, they will see their spirit becoming active and growing stronger day by day.
A believer must rid himself of all misunderstandings concerning the spiritual life. Before he reaches the spiritual realm, he often dreams of how happy he would be if he too could become a spiritual believer like some of his brothers. He assumes that the spiritual life is ecstatic. He imagines that the so-called spiritual life is a life of perfect happiness, one of rejoicing all day long. In reality it is just the opposite; the spiritual life does not provide any happiness to him; rather, it is a life of daily fighting. If you try to separate spiritual warfare from spiritual life, you will soon find out that that life is no longer spiritual. A spiritual life is one of suffering, charged with vigilance, labor, fatigue, sufferings, heartbreak, and conflict. This is a life absolutely for the kingdom of God, and one which disregards one's own happiness. When a believer is fleshly, he lives to himself and for his own "spiritual" happiness. He has no real spiritual use in God's hand. He can be used by God only after he has taken the attitude of being dead to sin and his own life.
A spiritual life in the eyes of God is one with spiritual usefulness because it is a life of attacking God's enemy for Him. We should stir up our zeal for Him and war against the enemy constantly, never allowing our spirit, which is so useful, to become passive.