Practical Ways to Cooperate with the Lord to Deal with the Passage of the spirit

There is a way to deal with all the impurities and defilement in our being! On the one hand we have Christ in our spirit, and He wants to flow out in a pure way to minister life to others. On the other hand, there are so many problems, defilement, issues, and impurities in our flesh, our self, our heart, and our soul.

But praise the Lord, there is a way for us to deal with all these mixtures and impurities!

First of all, as the Lord exposes them, we just need to condemn them – don’t stand with the mixture, simply condemn it. Then, we need to remove them by the power of the Holy Spirit – simply enjoy the life-giving Spirit in your spirit! The death of Christ is in the Spirit, and when we exercise our spirit (though “we may not feel like it”, we choose to turn to the Lord!), His death is applied to our natural being.

This is the way for us to take the initiative to apply the cross and crucify the passages of the spirit, so that when our spirit flows out, it will be pure and sterling.

On His side, God is sovereign in arranging our environment to break our outer man. On our side, we need to cooperate with His breaking inwardly by putting to death the practices of the body and the self (Rom. 8:13).

May the Lord have a way to flow out from and with our spirit in a pure way to minister life and life supply to others!

A Practical Way to Deal with the Passage of the Spirit

In his book, The Experience of Life, brother Lee not only exposes the fallen condition of our human being in its totality but also presents to us a very practical way to deal with the mixtures and defilement in our being.

We have to admit: we cannot “deal with ourselves” – we can’t change ourselves, we don’t have the power or the willingness to deal with the problems in us. But under the Lord’s shining and through His strengthening into our inner man (Eph. 3:16), we can cooperate with the Lord by choosing to crucify the flesh with its passions and its lusts (Gal. 5:24), and to put to death the practices of the body by the Spirit (Rom. 8:13). Here is how:

1. We need to condemn all the mixtures and defilement. As the Lord shines on us and these things are exposed in us, we simply need to condemn them. Remember: the mixtures, defilement, crookedness, and all the other negative things in us are NOT US. We are one with the Lord in our spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), and we choose NOT to stand with these things!
2. We need to remove them by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is now dwelling in our spirit. We condemn these things which are being exposed and manifested in us, and then we exercise our spirit to access the power of the Holy Spirit and remove these things! We don’t need to “pray against these negative things”, imploring the Lord to remove them; we simply need to exercise our spirit as we realize and condemn these negative things! In the Spirit there’s the power to overcome them!
3. We need to take the initiative to apply the cross and crucify the passages of the spirit. First of all, we see these things exposed, we condemn them, we exercise our spirit to touch the Spirit, and then we apply the cross to these things! The Lord will not “crucify them for us” – we need to initiate! We can’t crucify them – we simply realize them, condemn them, and initiate the power of the Spirit to terminate them! In the Spirit there’s the death of Christ, and the effectiveness of His death is applied to us when we exercise our spirit!

In both Rom. 8:13 and Gal. 5:24 we see that we need to be willing to deal with these things and initiate the dealing, and the Spirit will come in to deal with these problems.

The cross of Christ is in the Spirit mingled with our spirit; we simply need to take the initiative to apply the cross and crucify the passages of the spirit, including our flesh, our self, our natural constitution, and our purpose, aim, intention, inclination, and motive of heart.

Positively we enjoy Christ and negatively we crucify the passages of the spirit as they are being exposed by the Lord.

The Discipline of the Holy Spirit

Inwardly we learn to cooperate with the Lord by initiating the dealing with the passages of the spirit, and outwardly God is faithful to arrange our environment for the purpose of dealing with our self and destroying it (see Matt. 10:29-31; Rom. 8:28-29).

God is faithful to arrange all the circumstances and things in our environment to deal with the self and the flesh in us – this is the discipline of the Holy Spirit. Nothing around us is by chance – our family, our work place, our boss, our spouse, our children, and everything around us is sovereignly arranged by God to break our outer man and refine and purify the mixture in our being.

We may want to change our situation and make it a bit “not so difficult”, but the Lord arranges even the house we live in, the distance we have to travel to work and to meet with the saints, the color of our hair, our health situation, etc – to deal with the self and destroy it, so that the quality of our spirit would be enhanced and purified. What a wonderful God we have!

Having an Excellent Spirit to Richly and Mutually Supply the Saints

Why do we need to have a pure and sterling spirit? Why does God go through so much trouble so that He may purify us?

Think about it: if all the brothers and the sisters in the church life today have a pure and noble spirit, they will mutually supply one another and the church will be rich! When we meet someone who has a pure spirit, even his very presence ministers life to us.

When the Lord breaks through in us and we cooperate with Him to purify the passages of the spirit, we will have an excellent, pure, sterling, and weighty spirit.

And the others will even “smell our spirit” that we don’t behave in a presumptuous, controlling, or overpowering way, but we simply minister life to them! I was impressed with three patterns of such saints who have a sterling and pure spirit (there are many more, but these three I mention for now):

1. Daniel had an excellent spirit – he dealt with his inner being, and he was a person who exercised his spirit to pray all the time. He was called by God “man of preciousness” and even “preciousness itself”, and even a Gentile king recognized that he has an excellent spirit.
2. M. E. Barber had a pure spirit – brother Nee testified that even by being with her, he was supplied with life. She was dealt with by the Lord and learned the spiritual lessons, and she had a rich spiritual deposit and an excellent knowledge of life, and her being and speaking ministered life supplied to others. Just by taking a walk with her or by sitting in front of her, brother Nee received nourishment and anointing. It wasn’t about her words or speaking, but about her pure spirit and dealt-with being.
3. Witness Lee also had a pure spirit – we all know the things that he went through as a minister of the Lord, and how much opposition he had. But even when he was praying with the brothers concerning the opposing ones, besides praying for the Lord to bind His enemy and limit his damage to the church, he also prayed, Lord, may our prayer may not cause the usefulness of these ones in Your hand be damaged. He cared more for their usefulness in God’s hands and he was pure in his spirit in relation to them. What a pattern!

Lord Jesus, we open to You. We want to cooperate with You and condemn anything that Your light exposes as being mixture and defilement. Lord, may we be those who initiate the dealing with the passages of the spirit and apply the cross by the power of the Holy Spirit. Keep us turning to You in our spirit and enjoying You, and keep us dealing with anything that is negative in our being. Lord, give us an excellent spirit – a pure, sterling, and weighty spirit!

References and Further Reading

• This sharing is inspired from brother James Lee’s speaking in this message and portions in, Experience of Life (page 291), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, ITERO spring 2013 “The Experience, Growth, and Ministry of Life for the Body“, week 4 entitled, Growing in Life by Dealing with the Spirit.
• Further reading: Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 62, ch. 42.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Oh, may my spirit flow, / Oh, may it flow! / I ask Thee, gracious Lord, / Oh, may it flow! / My trust in self o’erthrow, / Down from self’s throne I’ll go, / That living water flow / In spirit, Lord.
  # By the cross discern the spirit, / Put the soul to death alway; / Bear the cross, deny the self-life, / Walk in spirit day by day.
  # Since it must be thus, I pray, Lord, / Help me go the narrow way; / Deal with pride and make me willing / Thus to suffer, Thee t’obey. / I for greater power pray not, / Deeper death is what I need; / All the meaning of the Cross, Lord, / Work in me-for this I plead.
• Pictures credit: Rom. 8:13-14 here and Rom. 8:28 here.