We have a New Spirit, and we need to Constantly Exercise our Spirit to Contact God

How we thank and praise the Lord for giving us a new heart to love Him and a new spirit to receive Him, so that we may be inwardly recovered by Him! Now we can exercise our heart to love the Lord and enjoy Him, and we can exercise our spirit to contact God.

In His organic salvation, God recovers His people inwardly by giving them a new heart and a new spirit (see Ezek. 36:26) so that they may be deified to become a new creation, the New Jerusalem. Wow, hallelujah!

Because we were fallen people – or because we are backslidden – our heart toward the Lord is hard, stony, and our spirit is deadened. When the Lord saves us or renews us, He renews our heart, making our stony heart a heart of flesh, a heart that is soft and loving toward Him.

When we receive the Lord and when He revives us and recovers us from backsliding, He gives us a new heart to love Him; however, we need to maintain the newness of our heart by practicing to love the Lord every day.

Our heart is actually our representative; when we say something to express our feelings, when we have some desires or inclinations, and when we have preferences, that is our heart. Our heart is our representative in action – our heart is our acting agent.

Furthermore, our heart is the switch that can release the flow of life; if our heart is right, the Lord as life can flow into us and through us, but if our heart is hard and cold, the flow of life stops (see Prov. 4:23).

Therefore, we need to maintain the newness of our heart by keeping our heart turned to the Lord and seeking purity, loving Him with our whole heart. We need to love the Lord and open to Him, and as we exercise to turn our heart to Him and love Him, He will soften our heart, melting it, causing our heart to lose its resistance and hardness.

The more we love the Lord, the more we are purified by this love; the flame of God’s love will consume anything that hinders the Lord in our being. The more we love the Lord, the more our heart becomes a loving heart, for we use our heart to love Him.

Furthermore, the more we love the Lord, the more we will deal with anything that He exposes in us, so that we may have peace in our conscience before Him.

The Lord gives us a New Spirit to Receive and Contact Him for us to Live Him

The Lord gives us not only a new heart to love Him but also a new spirit to receive Him. Saying, Lord Jesus, I love You! is wonderful, but it is not sufficient, for we still have not grasped Him, gained Him, and received Him.

If we love the Lord but we don’t give ourselves to Him and we don’t gain Him, it is not enough. The Lord doesn’t only love us with His love and He doesn’t only enjoy our love for Him, but in His heart He wants to give Himself to us.

Love is the procedure that opens the way and prepares us and Him so that there would be a marvelous dispensing taking place. The greatest divine dispensing takes place in the realm of love.

Our human spirit is very important in God’s eyes; according to Zech. 12:1, the heavens are for the earth, the earth is for man, and man was created by God with a spirit so that he may contact God, receive God, worship God, live God, fulfill God’s purpose for God, and be one with God (see Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 6:17).

This is more than just adoring Him, desiring Him, and loving Him; by means of our spirit we can contact God directly and receive Him into us. The greatest wonder of God loving us is that He joined Himself to us, and we and Him are intertwined, mingled in spirit.

Our love for the Lord and His love for us consummate in the God-man relationship in the oneness, blending, uniting, and incorporating – this is the Spirit with our spirit, the place where God’s economy takes place.

Through regeneration we have a new spirit, for our old, deadened spirit has been enlivened; we were once dead in sins and offenses, but we were made alive with God in spirit (Eph. 2:1; John 3:6). Hallelujah, there is a part in us that is alive with God – our human spirit, our new spirit, by means of which we can contact God and receive God so that we may live God!

However, in his subtlety Satan has hidden the matter of the human spirit from most Christians, and most believers today live their Christian life overlooking the spirit.

Blaise Pascal once said that there’s a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man, which nothing in heaven or on earth can satisfy or fill except God the creator, which is known through Jesus Christ. This God-shaped vacuum in us is our human spirit, which has been renewed and revived through regeneration.

There’s something in the depth of our being, the hidden man of the heart, where we have the breath of God, the breath of the Almighty, and the lamp of the Lord (see Prov. 20:20; Zech. 12:1) – this is our human spirit, by which we can contact God and worship Him (John 4:24; 1 Thes. 5:23).

We need to know our human spirit, realize we have a new spirit, and exercise our spirit to contact God, receive God, contain God, and be filled with God so that we may live God and fulfill God’s purpose for God.

Thank You Lord for giving us a new spirit to receive You, contact You, be filled with You, and live You. Thank You for coming as the Spirit to be mingled with our spirit, and now we have a new spirit, a mingled spirit, by means of which we can worship God, live God, fulfill God’s purpose for God, and be one with God! Oh Lord, we want to know our spirit, treasure our spirit, and exercise our spirit every day so that we may be one with God in spirit and live God! Praise the Lord for our new spirit!

We need to Maintain the Newness of our Spirit by Continually Exercising our Spirit to Contact God

Now that we have a new spirit, we need to learn to maintain the newness of our spirit by continually exercising our spirit to contact the Lord, so that we may walk, live, and have our being in and according to the mingled spirit (see Rom. 8:4; 6:4; 7:6; 1 Cor. 6:17).

If we don’t exercise a certain organ of our body for an extended time, that organ will shrink and lose its function. If we don’t exercise our spirit continually, we may lose the newness of our spirit.

The only way to maintain the newness of the spirit is a constant exercise of our spirit to contact God. We need to exercise our spirit to contact God day by day, week by week, and year by year; we cannot quit “going to the spiritual gym” after a while, but daily we need to contact the Lord!

We should learn to exercise our spirit to be one spirit with the Lord in our daily living (1 Cor. 6:17). When we come to the Bible, we need to exercise not only our mind and eyes to read the word but also exercise our spirit to contact the Lord.

We should never neglect our spirit; if we don’t exercise our spirit, we can’t be proper Christians. There are at least five main ways the New Testament gives us for us to maintain the newness of our spirit:

1. We must call on the name of the Lord (Rom. 10:12). We need to practice calling on the name of the Lord every day, calling, O Lord Jesus! everywhere, at every time, and in every situation, just as the Old Testament prophets, the psalmists, and the early disciples did (see Acts 2:21 and footnote 1).

We need to fan our spirit into flame by calling on the name of the Lord; for this, we need to open our mouth, our heart, and our spirit. We need to call on the name of the Lord not only with our mouth and our heart, but go deeper to use our spirit, opening up from deep within, and the divine fire will burn.

2. We must pray-read the word of God as the Spirit (Eph. 5:26; 6:17-18). A very good way to maintain the newness of our spirit is to exercise our eyes to read, our mind to understand, and even more our spirit to contact the Lord as we read the word of God. We need to learn to muse on God’s word, converting the written word of God into Spirit and life by means of exercising our spirit.

And we need to watch unto this: watch unto the prayer that receives the sword of the Spirit as the word of God (Eph. 6:18). When we pray, we should pray with the word of God, and this will make our spirit strong and vital.

3. We must always rejoice, pray unceasingly, and give thanks in everything (1 Thes. 6:16-18). When we are down, we need to learn to always rejoice, give thanks to the Lord, and pray without ceasing. We need to turn to the Lord again and again and exercise our new spirit to sing to Him.

We shouldn’t love our vocal cords and spare them, but rather use the organ made by God to sing to Him! Hallelujah, praise the Lord! When we have problems, we should sing our way out of them, soaring like the eagles. When we are sad or disappointed, we should give thanks to the Lord and exercise our spirit to pray unceasingly.

4. We must fan our spirit into flame, not quenching the Spirit (2 Tim. 1:6-7; 1 Thes. 5:19). God gave us a gift: our spirit; this spirit is not of cowardice but of power, of love, and of sobermindedness. Power belongs to our will, love to our emotion, and sobermindedness to our will; our will should be strong, full of power, our emotion should be loving, and our mind should be sober.

We need to exercise our spirit to fan our spirit into flame, and we can live a normal Christian life! Furthermore, we shouldn’t quench the Spirit but, when the Spirit moves in us to go somewhere or speak something, we should follow Him. In every little thing that the Spirit regulates us, we should listen to Him, and our spirit will become happy, alive, and full of energy!

5. We must practice prophesying for the building up of the church, not despising prophesying (1 Thes. 5:20; 1 Cor. 14:4, 31-32). On the one hand we need to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord, receive Him, sing to Him, and be filled with Him; on the other hand, we need to exercise our spirit to prophesy for the building up of the church.

To prophesy is to speak for God and to speak God forth with the exercise of our spirit. May we not despise prophesying but may we strengthen and enrich our practice of prophesying today in all the local churches!

Lord, we want to maintain the newness of our spirit by continually exercising our spirit to contact You! Oh Lord Jesus, we love to call on Your name and be filled with You! Keep us musing and praying over Your word so that Your word would be Spirit and life to us, making us new and living. We praise You, Lord, and we give You thanks in everything! We want to contact You through the exercise of our spirit so that we may walk, live, and have our whole being in and according to the mingled spirit!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Minoru C. for this week, and portions from, The Spirit with Our Spirit, ch. 7 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Ezekiel (1), msg. 12 (week 12), The Inward Recovery by Life for the Carrying Out of God’s Economy.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # O how nigh the Lord is unto all who call on Him! / When we call, His very presence strengthens us within. / Seeking Jesus, He is found, and calling, He is near— / O what a comfort to our hearts to call His name so dear! / Jesus! O what a name! / O Lord Jesus! Life-giving name! / Name victorious, name all-glorious, / Name exalted—O what a name! (Hymns #1083)
  # Exercise the spirit / Thus to touch the Lord; / Ever by the spirit / Take Him thru His Word. / It is by the spirit / Christ is testified; / It is by the spirit / Man is satisfied. (Hymns #866)
  # Lord, teach me how to exercise / My spirit now to contact Thee, / That in Thy Spirit I may walk / And live by Thy reality. (Hymns #493)