Prayer and Warfare 283
desire, but all according to God’s will. If our mind, emotion and will
plunge into a state of quiescence—in which we are no longer active
but idly waiting for an outside force to activate us, then our spirit too
cannot escape being passive at the same time. And thus Satan
benefits immeasurably when we are unable to exercise our spirit but
expect instead to be prodded by some external force.
A fundamental difference obtains between the work of the Holy
Spirit and that of the evil spirit. The Holy Spirit moves people
themselves to work, never setting aside man’s personality; the evil
spirit demands men to be entirely inactive so that he may work in
their place, reducing man’s spirit to a robot. Hence a passive spirit
not only provides the evil one an opportunity to function but binds
the hand of the Holy Spirit as well, because He will not operate
without the cooperation of the believer. Under these circumstances
the evil power inevitably will attempt to exploit the situation. Before
a Christian becomes spiritual he is not confronted by this danger of
contacting the satanic power; but once he becomes spiritual the
wicked one naturally will assault his inner man. The fleshly Christian
never experiences this passivity of spirit; the spiritual alone
encounters the hazard of developing an errant spirit.
Due to his misconception of the destruction of the flesh, a child of
God may allow his inner man to sink into an inert state. This affords
the evil one a chance to simulate the Holy Spirit. If the believer
forgets that the enemy may influence his spirit as much as the Holy
Spirit can, he unwittingly may accept every moving in his spirit to be
from the Holy Spirit and thereby cede ground to Satan for pursuing
his aim of destroying the moral, mental, and physical well-being of
the saint and making him suffer unspeakable pains.
This is exactly what has happened to many who have experienced
“the baptism in the Holy Spirit.” They do not understand that such an
experience necessarily initiates them into a closer relationship with
the spirit world and exposes them to the influence of both the Holy