The children of Israel ate manna every day, but there was no oldness. Every day there was the newness of manna, the freshness of manna (Exo. 16:13-15, 21-22). Many people do their grocery shopping once a week. They buy their food and put it into the refrigerator for one week. But God did not give manna once a week. The children of Israel did not come out of their tents on Monday morning, gather manna, and then put it into the refrigerator to enjoy for one week. God sent the manna day by day, early in the morning.
If you love your bed, you miss the manna. You have to rise up every morning to contact the fresh dew since the manna always came down with the dew (vv. 13-14). You have to rise early to gather manna every morning. Every morning it is the same, yet every morning it is fresh. I do believe that what was in the heart of the Lord was that His people had to rise up early in the morning to contact Him.
We have the same Bible every morning, the same manna, but every morning it should be fresh under the fresh dew. It all depends on your contacting God. If, in your reading of the Bible, there is no contact with God, the same book becomes old. If there is the contact with God, the same book becomes new. To serve God today is not a matter of oldness but a matter of newness. Newness is just God Himself! Newness is in God! If you contact God, if you are in God, if you are one with God, whatever you say is new. For forty years the same manna came down again and again, but every morning it was new. To be new means to be in the presence of God, to be in God. We serve God today in the newness of His presence. I hate to see the oldness in the church meetings. We must learn to be new in the presence of the Lord in everything we do. Whatever we do we must have God in it. Then we have the newness.
In Romans 8:4 we are told to walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. The spirit here in Romans 8:4 is the mingled spirit, our spirit mingled with the Holy Spirit (v. 16; 1 Cor. 6:17). We have to walk according to our spirit because today the Holy Spirit is within our spirit and is even one with our spirit. When we walk according to our spirit, spontaneously we walk according to the Holy Spirit, because the two spirits are one.
Most people walk and do things according to the mind, according to what they think, and according to what they like. Some who walk according to the flesh are doing sinful things, while others are doing good things according to their mind, their thinking, and their likes and dislikes. But we Christians should walk according to the spirit. It is easy to discern the spirit from the flesh, but sometimes it is not easy to discern the spirit from the mind. Perhaps, for example, you may be thinking about visiting a brother, but deep within something is bothering you. You should walk not according to your thinking or your likes and dislikes, but just according to the “inner red light” or the “inner green light.” This is to walk according to your spirit. The flesh is our fallen body (Rom. 7:18, 24; 8:13), and the mind, the thinking organ, is a part of our fallen soul (Psa. 13:2; 139:14; Lam. 3:20). Most people walk according to these two things. When they walk in a better way, they walk according to their thinking. When they walk in a worse way, they walk according to their flesh. We Christians, however, should not walk according to either of these two, but according to spirit. We should not care merely for what is good or bad, right or wrong. We just care for the inner green or the inner red light. We just care for the spirit. We walk according to spirit.
Galatians 5:16 says, “Walk by the Spirit and you shall by no means fulfill the lust of the flesh.” The cross has to deal with our flesh, with our mentality, with our thinking, and with our likes and dislikes, that we may be fully walking by the Spirit who dwells in and mingles with our regenerated spirit. The more we walk by the Spirit, the more we are spiritual. To be spiritual simply means to be in spirit.
Romans 8:10 says that “though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.” If you are faithful to the Lord, you will realize that, on the one hand, your spirit within is so alive, full of life, but, on the other hand, your body is dead because it is fallen and disabled. Some physically weak brothers and sisters love the Lord so much and are so faithful to the Lord. They discovered that their spirit within is so alive, full of life, yet their body without is disabled, weakened, and dead because of the sin we inherited from Adam. So we need to have our body redeemed, which is the full redemption (v. 23; Phil. 3:21). Our spirit has been regenerated, but our body has not been redeemed yet. We have a hope that someday we will enjoy the full sonship, the redemption of our body.
(Our Human Spirit, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)