Learn to Know Your Spirit

We are going to look at three scriptures: John 4, Romans 1, and II Corinthians 3. We'll start with Romans 1. This will be mystical but let me say this about the Scriptures, the Scriptures are very mystical. In seven different places in the New Testament, it talks about the mystery: the mystery of Godliness, the mystery of the Gospel, the mystery of Christ, the mystery of iniquity, the mystery of the faith, mystery of the Kingdom, the mystery of the Seven Stars and the Seven Lampstands, and the mystery of the Woman/Babylon. Seven different times it talks about the mystery. The Scriptures are on that mystical level. If you only see and receive what you read in the Bible in the natural, you miss it. Somehow, our spirits have to be taught, and we must learn how to reach beyond the surface and get the mystery that is in there. That is important. It doesn't come all at once. Just because you are a Christian, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are able to see the mystery that is in the Scriptures. Just because you have received the Holy Spirit, sometimes spoken in tongues and so forth, it doesn't mean that you have the ability to see the mystery.

Jesus, on several occasions, would give a parable and at the end of the parable He said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matthew 13, Luke 8). He didn't even go to the trouble of explaining it to them. In fact, He moves aside with His disciples who said, "They don't understand what you are talking about." Jesus replied, "They are not supposed to understand it. It is given for you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom, not for them" (Mark 4:9-11). Is the Lord Jesus Christ that hard-hearted that He would not explain to them the mysteries of the Kingdom? No, it is a matter of heart. Their hearts were not able to receive. People who do not receive the mysteries of the Kingdom and are unable to see the underlying mystery of the Gospel, it is because their hearts are not right. They cannot see it.

One of the Beatitudes says, "The pure in heart shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). The pure in heart shall see God in the Scriptures. The pure in heart shall see God's secrets and mysteries in the Scriptures. The pure in heart shall see. It has to do with the heart, the purity of the heart. And receiving forgiveness for your sins does not mean you have a pure heart. Just because you have been blessed and you have received the Holy Spirit to some measure, doesn't mean you have a pure heart.

I was in a home meeting many years ago. There was a Pentecostal preacher there. We were talking about the Holy Spirit. The preacher said, "The Holy Ghost won't dwell in an unclean temple." I was much younger then and I got rather upset. I said, "What a minute. You're not teaching that here. The temple won't get clean until He gets in there and starts working!"

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9. Jeremiah understood that principle. Jeremiah is called "the weeping prophet," because he looked at the people and saw the sinfulness that was there. He wept over the people. He knew what was coming because it was during his lifetime and ministry that Israel went into captivity into Babylon. He wept over the people. He loved them with all of his heart, and yet they treated him harshly.

We want to see what God is really saying in the Scriptures. That takes a purity of heart.

"I don't know if my heart is pure yet."

It probably isn't, not completely, but it’s headed in that direction. That is important. As the Lord is purifying your heart, the revelation begins to come, you begin to see things, and lo, and behold, the next time something pops out to you, "Wow! I never saw that before! Hey, the Lord just purified my heart a little bit. He opened the door so I could see!" So, it is not with your eyes, your ears, it's not with your human intellect, your reasonings, or the genius of your mind or anything like that that enables you to know the Lord or the things of the Lord because it is with your heart.

Sometimes we fail to understand that when the Scriptures talk about your heart, it is not talking about that organ in there that pumps the blood. It is talking about your spirit, your heart, the very centering core of what you are. That is your spirit. So, our heart needs to be purified. You can also say our spirit, my spirit, needs to be purified. It needs to be healed and cleansed. In the Old Testament, they would take the hyssop and dip it in blood, then sprinkle it on the altar and on different things, a sanctifying process. Oh, to have the Holy Spirit with His hyssop dip it into the blood of Christ to sprinkle our hearts so that we can see and hear and understand and know the Lord!

Alright, all that is to get us to this one verse of scripture in Romans 1.

Romans 1:9 For God is my witness…

What I am saying, God witnesses to it.

Romans 1:9 …whom I serve with my spirit…

Now, King James doesn't always give you the right prepositions. I have appreciated that fact. That might sound a little strange, but I didn't really have a grasp of the importance of prepositions and verbs until I really got into my King James Bible. The Holy Spirit began to teach me the difference. This is a case where in having been off a little bit, it enabled me to see something and to see it more plainly. King James says, "God, … whom I serve with my spirit." But the Greek, what the New Testament was written in originally, the Greek reads, I serve with in spirit.

Romans 1:9 …whom I serve with [in] spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.

The main point here being the fact that we serve in or with our spirit. You cannot do that until you learn to know your own spirit. I find that the majority of the Christian world determines or discerns with their soul life. Your soul life is the expressions of what you are in your man nature. It is corrupt. It doesn't see things correctly. It doesn't discern correctly. And if you read I Corinthians chapters 1 and 2, Paul talks a lot about that it is impossible to discern the things of the Lord with your soul life. It cannot be done. But most of the Christian world tries to know God and the things of God through their soul life - how they feel, their emotions.

I remember in the Pentecostal movement, you get into some worship, a little shouting, this and that, the other, and you get emotionally disturbed. That is when they will prophesy or speak in tongues. Boy, they are really on fire for God, supposedly then, but it was a soulish expression and God is not in the soulish expressions. Now we are all soulish in the beginning. In fact, we all still have soul there that we need to get rid of. The Lord is understanding. He doesn't just slap us down and say, "Listen you soulish person." He blesses us, sees us growing, taking steps, and He wants us to learn how to walk with Him. He is teaching us how to come out of the soulishness and into the realm of Spirit.

It really helps a lot in your spiritual growth if you set your heart to serve the Lord in your spirit. Learn to know your spirit. Learn to function with your spirit. If you need to discern something, you are not going to discern it with your intellect or with your emotions, but to learn how to discern it with your spirit, know with your spirit. We go through many different circumstances and our enemy uses circumstances, events, and things we go through to mislead us, so we need that special discernment.