The Dangers of Spiritual Life 361
spiritual; all that is required is to abide by their intuition. In order to
listen to the Spirit we must apprehend His mind intuitively.
Some seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit with genuine earnestness.
Yet often what they crave is but some joy, for the “I” is hidden
behind their quest. They believe if they can feel the Holy Spirit
descending upon them or some external force controlling their body
or some warm fire burning from head to foot, that then they have
been baptized in the Spirit. However true it may be that He does
sometimes allow people to so feel Him, it is very damaging for men
to seek Him by means of emotion. For this not only can excite their
soul life but also may evoke the enemy’s counterfeit. What is really
valuable before God is not how we emotionally feel the presence of
the Lord or how we even feel love towards Him; rather is it how we
follow the Holy Spirit and live according to what He has revealed to
our spirit. Frequently we meet “Holy Spirit-baptized” people of this
kind who continue to live by their natural life and not by their spirit.
They lack a sensitive intuition to discern matters in the spiritual
world. Not emotion but communion with the Lord in the spirit is
what is valuable before God.
Through our lengthy discussion of the functions of the spirit as
described in the Bible, we now can realize that the spirit can be as
passionate as emotion and as cool as reason. Only those who are
experienced in the Lord can distinguish what is of the spirit and what
is of the soul. Those who try to reason out the movement of the Holy
Spirit or, as more frequently happens, attempt to feel His movement
rather than to seek to truly know God in their intuition and walk
accordingly, commit themselves to a life in the flesh. They permit
their spiritual life to sink into oblivion.
It may help us to see more clearly the significance of following
the spirit’s intuition if we examine the life of Paul. God “was pleased
to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the
Gentiles, (and) I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up