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Have you ever felt like God seemed far away and out of reach, even after you were saved?
Over the course of our Christian life, we sometimes experience the Lord’s presence with us in a clear and definite way. Maybe we’re in a difficult situation and when we pray to the Lord, He feels so near. But after the crisis passes, it seems like that experience of His presence was a mysterious, even accidental occurrence—like we were stumbling around in a dark room, inadvertently hit a light switch, and the lights came on.
As believers in Jesus, we long to know Him and be close to Him. Here’s the good news: the Lord wants that too. He wants us to experience Him intentionally, not accidentally. He wants us to enjoy His presence every day, not just occasionally or only when we have a pressing need. But how can we regularly and consistently experience Him if we feel like He’s so far away?
In this post, we’ll get some help by reading a few excerpts from the book The Economy of God by Witness Lee, which you can download for free here.
Actually, for believers, the Lord Jesus is not distant at all. He’s closer to us than anyone else ever could be.
When we believed in Jesus, some wonderful things happened: we were redeemed through His death on the cross, our sins were forgiven, and we were saved from eternal judgment.
But this isn’t all. Redemption solved the problem of our sins before God, but God’s full salvation includes more than this. According to His eternal purpose, God wants to live in us so we can have His life and know and experience Him subjectively.
So after dying for us, 1 Corinthians 15:45 tells us that in resurrection, “the last Adam [Christ] became a life-giving Spirit.” And when we believed in Christ, He as the Spirit entered into us.
In The Economy of God, Witness Lee devotes chapter 3, titled “The Residence of the Divine Spirit,” to the wonderful fact that the Spirit is now living in us.
Let’s read this excerpt on page 27. Here, Lee begins by pointing out three verses in the Bible that show us the Holy Spirit and the human spirit together:
“In John 3:6 we read, ‘That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’ This verse speaks of two distinct spirits—one is capitalized, and the other is not. The first occurrence of the word refers to the Holy Spirit of God, and the second, to the human spirit of man. That which is born of the Holy Spirit is the human spirit. Another verse showing these two spirits is John 4:24: ‘God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit.’ Again, the first Spirit is capitalized, and the second is not. We must worship God, who is the Spirit, in our human spirit. Romans 8:16 further confirms the existence of two spirits: ‘The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.’ The pronoun our definitely designates the human spirit and removes any ground to doubt the reality of both the divine Spirit and the human spirit.”
Notice that all three of these verses mention the divine Spirit and the human spirit. All of us need to know, understand, and appreciate these three crucial verses: John 3:6, John 4:24, and Romans 8:16. They’re worth remembering, and even memorizing.
In the following paragraph on page 27, Lee explains why we must know the human spirit in addition to the Holy Spirit:
“Why do we point this out? It is because Christians have very little knowledge about man’s spirit. Much attention is given to the Holy Spirit, but the human spirit, the residence and dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, is almost entirely neglected.”
We might know something about the divine Spirit of God, but we may not have known that we have a human spirit and that the divine Spirit resides in our spirit. Without knowing this, we can’t intentionally experience Christ because we wouldn’t know where to locate Him.
Lee continues:
“Suppose someone wants to visit me. He must first find where I live. If he cannot locate my home, he will have to forfeit his visit.”
This illustration drives the point home.
If we don’t know the Lord’s “address” other than a vague “He lives in me,” no matter how much we want to be close to the Lord Jesus and enjoy His companionship, He will continue to seem far away.
But once we know that Christ lives in our human spirit, we know where to find Him! This is the secret to experiencing Him every day. We can turn to Him in our spirit to contact Him any time and enjoy fellowship with Him. We can consistently experience Him personally and subjectively. We no longer need to hope that somehow, we’ll experience Him; we know where He is and can “visit” Him anytime!
Thank the Lord that His Word is specific and clear about this. The three important verses pointed out in the first excerpt we read show the wonderful relationship of the Holy Spirit and our human spirit.
We also have 2 Timothy 4:22:
“The Lord be with your spirit.”
This verse underlines the fact that our spirit is where we need to go to meet Him and experience Him! That’s why striving to think about the Lord more or depending on our feelings doesn’t help us experience Him. We need to go to Him in our spirit.
By turning to our spirit, our deepest part, we can contact the Lord Jesus and enjoy Him. And this is something we can do anywhere, anytime, under any circumstance, in good times and bad times. We can experience Him in all the situations of our life.
A few simple ways we can practice turning to our spirit include calling on the name of the Lord, praying to fellowship with Him, and praying with the Word of God. By turning to our spirit, we’ll realize that the Lord is so near and available to us all the time.
Seeing that the Lord Jesus lives in our spirit will revolutionize our Christian life. We’ll know exactly where to go to find Him at any moment. As we learn to live according to our spirit, contacting the Lord and talking to Him throughout the day, we’ll enjoy His dear presence more and more. Our human spirit is truly the secret to experiencing Him.
We encourage you to download a free copy of The Economy of God here to read chapter 3 in its entirety, along with all its included scriptural references. And if you live in the US, you can order a free New Testament Recovery Version here and read the insightful notes that accompany the verses mentioned in this post.
We hope you enjoy this BfA staff member’s testimony about discovering her human spirit and the profound impact it had on her.
The blog post “The Immense Significance of the Human Spirit” really touched me because it talked about exactly what I have experienced. Ever since I began to see in the Bible that I have a human spirit and then to actually experience the Lord who lives there, my life has never been the same.
Before then, I had always felt deep within that something was missing in my Christian life. After you believe in the Lord and get saved, then what? What did God want? What was being a Christian all about? For a period of time, I thought that maybe the Lord wanted me to help people. I thought of becoming some kind of doctor or joining the Peace Corps. And then other times, I thought He wanted me to pursue and fulfill my dreams.
There’s a very specific moment in my life after graduating from high school that I’ll never forget. I laid in bed next to my two younger sisters, tears streamed down my face as I tried not to wake them up. I was so desperate for something real. So I cried out to the Lord, “Lord, You have to be real to me! I can’t go on if You aren’t real to me!”
[[Free Study Bible]]
The Lord answered that prayer when I went to college. There, I met a group of believers who showed me in the Bible that God has a purpose, and that in order to fulfill this purpose He created man with a human spirit to contain and contact Him. Even though I had grown up as a Christian, I had never heard about this crucial truth. These believers helped me to see that the moment I believed in the Lord, He came to dwell in my spirit!
I was also helped to realize that God wants people to experience Him. He wasn’t this impersonal, faraway God that I had to try to please by doing good or by doing something for Him. No, the God of the universe was someone I could turn to, fellowship with, and live by, by contacting Him in my spirit. God became so real to me!
For so long, even after I received the Lord, there had been an emptiness within me that I could never explain or fill. But when I learned to touch the Lord in my spirit, that emptiness disappeared. There was a sense of, “This is it! This is why I was created!” Mankind was created to receive the Lord Jesus and enjoy Him as the Spirit in our spirit.
I am so thankful to the Lord Jesus that this crucial truth was revealed to me, and that I’ve been able to experience Him in my spirit. My prayer is that many others would also discover their human spirit, and that the Lord would become as real to them as He is to me.
Have you ever noticed that in addition to the Holy Spirit, the human spirit is mentioned numerous times throughout the Old and New Testaments?
In other posts, we’ve looked at the three parts of man: the spirit, soul, and body. We also examined the difference between the soul and the spirit in more detail. In this post, we’ll focus specifically on the immense significance of our human spirit, the deepest part of our being. We’ll see the monumental place it occupies in both God’s purpose for humanity and our Christian life.
Let’s first see how God views the human spirit. Zechariah 12:1 says:
“Thus declares Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.”
It’s easy for us to appreciate the awe-inspiring, God-created heavens and earth. We can’t help but be struck by their grandeur when we look up at the stars, or see images that capture the beauty of nature.
But Zechariah 12:1 shows us that in God’s eyes, the spirit of man is equally important. It is ranked on the same level as the heavens and the earth.
Notice also that this verse doesn’t just say that God “forms man” in a general sense, but that He “forms the spirit of man within him.” This indicates that the spirit is the most outstanding part of our being.
But why is our spirit so important to God?
First, let’s look at how and why God formed the spirit of man.
When the mighty God created the universe, He stretched forth the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth with His power. Jeremiah 32:17 says:
“Ah, Lord Jehovah! It is You who have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm. Nothing is too wonderful for You.”
The creation of the heavens and the earth was a tremendous event. Through it, God displayed His awesome power. But when it came to creating man, Genesis 2:7 gives us these details in contrast:
“Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
In Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament, the word translated as breath is neshamah. In Proverbs 20:27, this same word, neshamah, is translated as spirit:
“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah.”
These verses indicate that the breath of life became the spirit of man.
The creation of man’s spirit was an intimate act of God. God breathed into man after forming him from the dust of the ground. This is much more personal than His way of creating the heavens and the earth, which was by His great power and outstretched arm. He imparted His very breath into man. This breath, which became man’s spirit, came from within God’s very being. How precious our spirit is to God! He took such care in forming it.
[[Free Study Bible]]
God created the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man because He had a purpose in His heart that He wanted to fulfill. It was for this purpose that God created us not only with a body and soul, but also with a spirit.
God's purpose is to impart Himself into us, sharing His divine life with us and becoming everything to us. This is how we and God can have an intimate and personal relationship. God desires that He and man share one life inwardly and one living outwardly. By receiving the life of God and living by it, mankind would express God in every way.
To accomplish God's great plan, our human spirit is indispensable. It’s the part of our being that can contact, receive, and contain God. No wonder our human spirit is so important to God!
John 4:24 says:
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.”
This verse shows us that God’s very nature is Spirit. As we’ve seen, our human spirit corresponds closely with what God is. So we need to use our spirit to contact God, who is Spirit.
When we believed in Jesus as our Savior, we were regenerated—that is, born again—in our spirit with His divine life. That’s why John 3:6 says:
“That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Now God isn’t far away from us—He’s living in our spirit. We can use our spirit to contact Him and continue to receive more of Him.
Our God-formed and God-designed human spirit is truly marvelous. Without our spirit, we could only know and worship God objectively as our Creator. But because we have a spirit, God can impart Himself into us so that we can experience Him inwardly as our life.
Realizing the importance of our human spirit should revolutionize our Christian life. The Lord isn’t far away from us; He’s dwelling in us, in our spirit. Now, no one can be nearer or more available to us than He is. At any time, in any place, under any circumstance, we can contact Him, receive Him, and enjoy fellowship with Him.
When we experience Christ in this way, the words of 2 Timothy 4:22 will be most precious to us:
“The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.”
All our personal, subjective experiences of Christ are possible because He’s living in our human spirit.
When it comes to the Christian life, the New Testament doesn’t tell us that we must try our best to live up to certain outward regulations. It actually emphasizes our human spirit again and again, even exhorting us believers to walk by our spirit—that is, to live by our regenerated spirit. When we live by our spirit, the living Christ within us with all His wonderful virtues is lived out of us. That is how we express Him in our daily lives.
But living by our spirit and experiencing Christ as our life is not just for our own individual spiritual growth. Actually, this is how God will gain His corporate testimony, which is composed of all the believers. The New Testament calls this corporate testimony the church and the Body of Christ, and this is what will fulfill the desire of God’s heart.
To be God’s expression is the meaning of our human life and our Christian life, and this is what will satisfy both us and God.
If you live in the US, you can order a free copy of the New Testament Recovery Version here to learn more about the significance of our human spirit.
