Intuition 309
their head and heart. In service we still attempt to move people’s
mind, emotion and will by our intellect, zeal and effort. God desires
to teach us the fact that in service the soul, ours and everyone else’s,
is void of any spiritual value or worth. He actually allows us to be
defeated in spiritual work and to become despondent, cold and
fruitless in order that He may destroy our natural life with its
wisdom, fervor, and ability. Such a lesson as this cannot be learned
in one or two days. God must instruct us throughout our lifetime in
order to make us realize that apart from following the spirit’s
intuition everything else is vain.
Now comes the crisis. Which will we follow when intuition and
soul clash in their opinions? This will determine who is to rule over
our life and which way we shall go. Our outer man and our inner
man—the man of the flesh and the man of the spirit—are struggling
for supremacy. In the early days of our Christian walk our spirit
fought with the lusts of our flesh; today it is a battle between our
spirit and our soul. Formerly the engagement was over the issue of
sin; presently it is not a matter of good and evil but of natural good
versus God’s goodness. We contended for the quality of things
before, but now we are concerned with the source of things. It is a
conflict of the inward against the outward man, a war between God’s
will and man’s good intention. To learn how to walk after the spirit is
a lifetime’s occupation for the new man. If one wholly follows the
spirit, he shall overcome the man of the flesh completely. Through
the strengthening by the Holy Spirit of the spirit in the new man, the
believer shall be able to destroy totally his minding of the flesh so as
to mind the things of the spirit. This is life and peace.