I. PRESERVING OUR SPIRIT FOR LIFE
A. Exercising Our Spirit to Contact God
[Our spirit is composed of three parts: the conscience, the fellowship, and the intuition. Our spirit is mainly for us to fellowship with God. When we have fellowship with God, we contact Him. This contact with God spontaneously gives us a sense of God, a consciousness of God. Intuition denotes the direct sense and consciousness that came from God. Through this intuition we can know whether we are right or wrong. If we are wrong, we shall be condemned by our conscience. But if we are right, we shall be justified by our conscience. Our conscience, therefore, either accuses and condemns or excuses and justifies. The way to preserve our spirit is first to exercise it to have fellowship with God. If we fail to exercise our spirit in this way, we shall leave it in a deadened situation.
Whenever we Christians come together in a church meeting, we need to function. We need to pray, praise, or give a word of testimony. This is to exercise our spirit and not allow it to remain dormant or in a deadened condition. But sorry to say, many saints do not preserve their spirit by exercising it in this way. Instead, they allow their spirit to remain dormant. It seems that they leave their spirit in a tomb.] Is your spirit in a tomb right now? O Lord Jesus! First Corinthians 12:3 says, “No one can say, Lord Jesus, except in the Holy Spirit.’’ Call on the Lord to exercise your spirit to come alive.
B. Keeping Our Spirit Living
The apostle Paul said, [“Always rejoice; unceasingly pray; in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit’’ (1 Thes. 5:16-19). To rejoice, to pray, and to give thanks is to exercise our spirit. When we exercise our spirit in this way, we cause it to be living. Exercising the spirit to keep it living is the first way to preserve it.
Because of the fall, our spirit has been deadened. Our spirit, therefore, must overcome the problem of deadness. The spirit of an unbeliever is absolutely dead. Most of those around you at school, at work, or in your neighborhood are utterly dead in their spirit. Have you been sanctified, separated, from a spirit-deadening situation?] We should struggle to save ourselves from that kind of situation by exercising our spirit. “Praise the Lord, call upon His name, declare His doings among the people, make mention that His name is exalted’’ (Isa. 12:4). By doing that, we [pull our spirit out of death and cooperate with the operation of the Triune God in sanctifying us. He wants to separate all of us from those whose spirits are deadened. Because we have been regenerated, we need to be different. We need to show that our spirit is living, that it is not deadened. Thus, our spirit should rejoice, pray, and give thanks to the Lord.]
C. Keeping Our Spirit from Defilement
[Another way to preserve our spirit is found in 2 Corinthians 7:1. In this verse Paul says, “Having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.’’ This verse indicates that we should abstain from all defilement of both flesh and spirit. We need to stay away from anything that contaminates our spirit. This is the reason we should keep our eyes from looking at evil things, such as defiling pictures. Such pictures defile not only our eyes; they also defile our spirit. As a result, you will not be able to pray unless you first ask the Lord to cleanse you from all defilement.]
(Lesson Book, Level 4: Life—Knowing and Experiencing Life, Chapter 9, by Witness Lee)
