In a number of verses the Apostle Paul tells us that he served God in his spirit, that he exercised his spirit in many different ways in the service of the Lord. By pray-reading all these verses, we receive a deep impression concerning the way the Apostle Paul served the Lord. In Paul’s record of how he served the God of his forefathers in the Jewish religion before his conversion, he did not mention anything about his spirit in relation to serving God. (See Acts 22:2-4; 26:4-5, 9-11; Phil. 3:5-6; and Acts 9:1-2.) However, there are many verses telling us by what way, or by what organ, he served God after he met the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus. It is very clear that the Apostle Paul served God in his spirit.
In these messages we are considering the matter of how to serve. The first point we have covered is that we need to serve in the Body. In this message we come to the second point, that we need to serve in our spirit. We are speaking here of our spirit, our human spirit. We may consider that serving in spirit means serving only in the Holy Spirit, and we may altogether neglect the matter of serving God in our human spirit. There are many verses in the New Testament which make the matter of the human spirit clear.
As Christians, we all know that to serve God we need the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no possibility that we could serve God. However, we need a vision, a revelation, that to serve God it is necessary for us, in addition, to know our human spirit. The Holy Spirit is the power for us to serve God, and the human spirit is the organ, the means, the instrument, for us to receive and contain the power and to apply it.
The way to use our human spirit can be illustrated by the application of electricity. First of all, it is necessary for electricity to be installed into a building. After the electricity has been installed, what should we do when we need to use it? It would be foolish to call the power plant and ask them to send some electricity. What we need to do is simply use the switch in order to apply the electricity. If we realize that electricity has been installed already, we simply need to go to the place where there is a means for us to apply the electricity. When we turn on the switch, immediately the electricity works for us.
We may compare ourselves to the building, and the Holy Spirit to the heavenly, divine electricity. This spiritual “electricity” is the Lord Himself, and He has already been installed into us. We need to realize that we already have the heavenly electricity installed into us. Hallelujah, we do have this installation! We received this wonderful installation of Christ into us when we accepted Him. Now we know that we need the Holy Spirit, but we may not be so clear as to the way to apply the Holy Spirit who has been installed into us as the heavenly electricity. There is no need for us to fast and pray for three days and nights without sleeping. There is no need for us to pray with a loud voice in a zealous way, with tears flowing down. The heavenly electricity has already been installed into us, and there is a switch within us. When we need electricity for any purpose, we simply go to the proper place to touch the proper organ, the means to apply the electricity. We touch the switch just a little bit, and the electricity is turned on. It is so simple. This is the wonderful secret of applying the heavenly electricity.
The crucial question then is where to find the switch, where to find the organ, the means to apply the heavenly electricity. It is clear that neither our eyes, our mind, nor even our heart is the proper organ. God created the human spirit as the specific organ for this purpose. “God is Spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit,” in the human spirit (John 4:24). Some have opposed our emphasis on the human spirit because they pay their attention only to the Holy Spirit, and they do not recognize the difference between the spirit, the mind, and the heart.
There is no way to tell people how they can be regenerated if you do not recognize that God has created our human spirit to contact Him. Surely an unsaved one could not be regenerated in any other part of his being, in his mind or in his heart! Regeneration is a matter in the human spirit. In John 3:6 we are told, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In this verse there are two spirits, the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. That which is born of the Holy Spirit is the human spirit. The human spirit is a specific organ for us to have contact with God, who is the Spirit. Our human spirit is the switch, the proper organ or the means to apply the heavenly electricity that has been installed in us.
Today we know where to find the switch, and we know how to use the switch, how to use our human spirit to contact the Lord, who is the divine electricity. How pitiful it would be if we could not find the switch and did not know how to touch it, how to use it to contact the Lord! The switch is the human spirit. When we speak of handling the switch, using the switch, or touching the switch, we are talking about the exercise of our human spirit. It is so simple. If I could plant a deep impression within you concerning this one matter of the exercise of our human spirit, there would be no need for me to speak any further. How crucial it is for us to learn how to exercise our human spirit, to know how to use the switch!