GOD’S SPREADING FROM OUR SPIRIT TO OUR SOUL BEGINNING WITH OUR HEART
How can God spread into every part of our soul from our spirit? God’s spreading to every part of our soul begins with our heart. Our heart has two aspects: the biological aspect and the psychological aspect. Our biological heart can be seen during a surgical operation, but no one has ever seen our psychological heart. Here we are speaking about the psychological heart. According to the thought in God’s Word, the heart includes one part of the spirit and all the parts of the soul. The main part of our spirit is our conscience, and our soul includes our mind, emotion, and will. All these parts combined together comprise our heart. Hence, when we touch the source of man’s problem, we touch man’s heart. It is not enough to say that just our soul represents our being. Actually, it is our heart that represents our being.
The Chinese refer to someone who is absent-minded as a person whose heart is absent. Man’s heart is very important; it represents man’s genuineness. When the Bible speaks of man’s relationship with God, it says that we must use our spirit to worship and contact God (John 4:24). However, we not only need to use our spirit, but we also need to use our heart. Matthew 5:8 says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In our relationship with God, our heart is a crucial station. We have a spirit within and God dwells in us, but if we do not have a heart to love God or desire God, He will not be able to do anything in us.
In the four Gospels the Lord paid attention to the matter of dealing with man’s heart. In the Gospel of John, the Lord asked Peter, “Do you love Me more than these?…Do you love Me?” (21:15-17). Even in the Gospel of Matthew, He also said that he who loves his father or mother or son or daughter above Him is not worthy to be His disciple (10:37). In the three and a half years with the disciples, the Lord mainly wanted to gain the disciples’ hearts. The Lord drew them and appeared sweet and lovely in their eyes in order to gain their hearts.
Song of Songs 1:2-3 says, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! / For your love is better than wine. / Your anointing oils have a pleasant fragrance; / Your name is like ointment poured forth; / Therefore the virgins love you.” The first step of pursuing the Lord begins not with the spirit but with the heart. Everyone who follows the Lord is first drawn by the Lord. Hence, this seeker of the Lord says, “Draw me; we will run after you” (v. 4). If we do not love the Lord with our heart, the Lord will not be able to do anything in us. We love the Lord because our heart is drawn by Him. This love is not a love of adoration or affection but a romantic love. He is so good and so sweet! He is altogether lovely! We must love the Lord to such an extent.
Our heart connects and joins our soul with our spirit. When we love Him, this love will transmit what is in our spirit to our soul. As we love the Lord, we will see how much we are filled with ourselves in our mind, emotion, and will. Then we are willing to take the cross. To take up the cross is to deny our soul, to deny our mind, emotion, and will, and to deny our very being. When we do this, the cross will set a mark on us and kill our self. In this way we will experience the cross. Our self, our love, our choice, our resolution, and our knowledge will all be on the cross.
When the cross works in our soul, it kills the self in our mind, emotion, and will. Where there is the death of the cross, there is also resurrection. The cross works in our mind, emotion, and will to create room for Christ to be in us. At this time the Spirit also transfuses God’s mind into our mind, God’s emotion into our emotion, and God’s will into our will. The more we know Him, the more we will know ourselves; the more we know ourselves, the more the cross will work in us; and the more the cross works in us, the more the Spirit will come into every part of our being. When the Spirit comes in, Christ comes in, and when Christ comes in, God comes in.
As a result, day after day our mind, emotion, and will are filled with God’s element. Then our thoughts will become God’s thoughts, and our preferences will become God’s preferences. God will mingle Himself with us to the extent that all of our attitudes, speaking, expression, and actions will express God. When God has mingled Himself with us and has filled us with all His riches, we will become His fullness.
(The Crucified Christ, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee)
