Prayer and Warfare 281
Since the enemy focuses particular attention on the spirit, how
necessary for spiritual believers to keep their own spirit in its normal
state and frequently to exercise it as well. They must control with
utmost caution all bodily sensations and carefully distinguish all
natural and supernatural phenomena. Their mind must be kept
perfectly calm without any disturbance; their physical senses too
must be maintained in quiet balance without agitation. Spiritual
Christians should exercise their will to deny and oppose any
falsehood and seek to follow the inner man with their whole heart.
Should they at any time follow the soul instead of the inner man they
have lost precious ground already in spiritual warfare. Furthermore,
they must be very careful to guard their spirit from being passive in
this warfare.
Now we have mentioned before that all our guidance must
proceed from the inner man: we must wait with our spirit for the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. All this is fundamentally true; however,
we need to exercise extreme prudence here lest we fall into grievous
error. For while we are waiting in our spirit for the Holy Spirit to
move and guide us, a danger readily arises wherein our spirit and our
entire being may slide into a state of passivity. Nothing can provide
more ground for Satan to work from than this state of inaction. On
the one side we ought not to do anything in our own strength save to
obey the Holy Spirit; yet on the other side we need to be watchful
lest our spirit or any part of our being turns mechanical and plunges
into inertia. Our inner man must vitally govern our total being and
must cooperate actively with God’s Spirit.
When our spirit tumbles into passivity the Holy Spirit is left with
no way to use it. This is because His operation in a human life is
absolutely diametrical to that of Satan. The Holy Spirit requires man
to cooperate livingly with Him. He desires man to work actively with
Him because He never violates the believer’s personality. By
contrast, Satan demands a full stop in man so that he may take over
and do everything in man’s stead. He wishes man to accept his work