364 The Spiritual Man
within the soul and to quench his spirit. He will give many strange
physical sensations to believers and fill their mind with various
wandering thoughts. He intends to confuse one’s spiritual awareness
by these sensations and thoughts. While confused, God’s children are
incompetent to distinguish what is of the spirit and what emanates
from the soul. Satan well recognizes that victories of believers rest in
their knowing how to “read” their spiritual sense (alas! how many are
ignorant of this principle). He musters his whole force to attack the
believer’s spirit.
Let us reiterate that in such spiritual warfare Christians must never
make any move according to their feelings or sudden thoughts. Never
assume that such thoughts cannot be wrong because we have already
prayed. It is a mistake to consider every notion which comes to us in
prayer as being of God. We seem to innocently think that prayer can
right the wrong and that whatever has been prayed out is bound to be
all right. True, we have sought the will of God, but it does not mean
necessarily that we have already known His will. God makes it
known to our spirit, not to our mind.
Satan employs even more drastic measures against believers than
that of enticing them into living by the soul instead of following the
spirit. Upon succeeding in luring them—through their thoughts or
feelings—to live by the outward man, Satan adopts the next step of
pretending to be a spirit in them. He will create many deceptive
feelings in the believers in order to confuse their spiritual senses. If
they are ignorant of the wiles of the enemy, they just may allow their
spirit to be suppressed until it ceases to function. And then they heed
this counterfeit feeling as though they were still following the spirit.
Once their spiritual sense grows dull, Satan proceeds further in his
deceit. He injects into their minds the thought that now God is
leading them by their renewed mind, thus subtly covering up the
fault of men in not using their spirit as well as covering up the work
of the enemy. As soon as man’s spirit ceases to operate, the Holy
Spirit can no longer find any cooperative element within him;