The Believer’s Mistake 607
Father Who is in heaven. This will set him on the road to passivity
and in addition provide the evil spirits the chance for counterfeit.
Overstepping the bounds of the Word of God ushers in countless
perils!
- The Rule of the Holy Spirit. We will recall from our past
discussion how God rules our spirit through the Holy Spirit and how
our spirit rules our body or the entire person through the soul (or
will). This may sound simple, yet the spiritual implication is
enormous. The Holy Spirit influences our intuition alone to make His
will known. Only our spirit does he fill and nowhere else. Never does
He control or fill our soul or body directly. This point should be
carefully underscored. We should not therefore expect God’s Spirit
to think through our mind, feel through our emotion, or decide
through our volition. He makes His will known to our spirit’s
intuition in order that we ourselves may think and feel and act
according to His will. It is a grave blunder to think we must offer our
mind to the Holy Spirit to let Him think through it. The truth is He
never uses man’s mind directly instead of man. He never asks him to
offer himself passively to Him. What God wishes is cooperation with
him. He does not work for man, because even His movement in
working for him could be quenched by the believer. He never forces
anyone to do anything.
The divine Spirit does not directly control man’s body either. If
man desires to speak he has to engage his own mouth—to walk, his
own feet—to work, his own hands. The Spirit of God never interferes
with man’s freedom of will. Aside from working in man’s spirit
(which is God’s new creation), He does not use any part of man’s
body apart from the consent of the latter’s own volition; nay, even if
man is willing, He does not exercise any of his bodily parts for him.
Man should be his own master. He must exercise his own body. This
is God’s law which He will not violate.