23 Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT). Just a note here, it doesn’t say, may the God of heaven, may the God of your salvation, whatever. He is saying, 23 … may the God of peace … Because when you have peace, it will affect your body, soul, and your spirit. And of course, we know that word peace means nothing missing, nothing broken. Everything is together. Everything is whole in your life, body, soul, and spirit.
God said, “I’m going to make man to be the ultimate winner in life. He’s going to look like Me. He’s going to have all My authority. He’s going to talk like Me. He’s going to be in a place that’s a safe place that I’ve made for him, and in that place, he has complete power. He has complete authority. He has a mandate for everything to become like he says it should become. There’s only one thing that, in order for him to be like Me, I have to give him the option to change his mind.” In other words, make a choice.
So, here we are then, a couple of 1000 years later. We’re still on the same earth that God made for Adam and Eve. Things have changed quite dramatically because Adam changed his mind and he was deceived into doing this. If you’re a Christian and God’s given you the right to win, there’s only one thing that can stop you from winning – you change your mind.
John 14:6. 6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6, NLT). That means there’s a way to truth and there’s a way to life that is His way; it’s not some other way. It’s His way.
God wants us to be successful, and He’s not trying to make our success conditional to some obscure thing that I don’t even know whether I can be successful or not, hindering my life. If you don’t believe this, then you should just go and be poor and be sick so you can learn all the lessons and then get on with being successful.
I (Ps John) want you to be successful. I want all of us to be successful. Why? Because that’s the heart of God. If I’m coming to you and I’m trying to teach you something that in any way you think I’m trying to not make you successful, then why on earth would I want to do that as a pastor? Why would I want to set you up for failure? I wouldn’t.
The spirit and the soul is what makes the body work on the earth. Everybody that’s born on the earth has got a spirit. The difference is that there are some spirits that have made space for Jesus to live in your spirit. When you choose to believe that Jesus is the Lord and Saviour and you invite Him into your life, you invite the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, the life of God, Jesus, the Father of all fathers, you invite Him to live in your spirit. How does that happen? Don’t know. When I get to heaven, He’ll tell me, but it’s got to do with the power of how He created us in our spirit.
Our spirit has got to be an amazing thing, inside here (the heart), that it can have God in there. The person who’s never met Jesus has a spirit, but it’s not alive to God. It just exists. Has a soul, and obviously, the soul has got to be connected to the spirit, and the soul is also connected to the body.
The access to your spirit is through your soul because that’s where your choices are made.
God says He has put eternity in your heart, your spirit, so that you could search for God. Your spirit is that life that’s keeping you on the earth, that spirit, that spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. In other words, it’s designed for God to be able to tell you what’s right and wrong. Searching all the inward parts of his being (Proverbs 20:27 KJV). You agree with me then God is going to deal with you as a spirit. What’s your true self? Your spirit. Those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit because God is a Spirit. God is not going to deal with your soul because He’s a Spirit.
Whatever you put into your soul, whatever you put into your mind, whatever you put into your heart, it’s going to grow.
When I started the ministry, people knew that I was a success-oriented person. So, people wanted to come to hear what I had to say to help them be successful. But they didn’t bargain on something. They didn’t count on the fact that I gave God the credit for it because I didn’t develop my soul, I developed my spirit. Because God speaks to my spirit, not my soul. So, when I was looking for a solution, how to sell photocopiers, I wasn’t looking to my soul for the answer. I was looking to my spirit. So, when they wanted to come and hear me teach them how to be successful, I said, “You have to have a relationship with Jesus. You have to speak the Word. You have to know the Holy Spirit. You have to become a mature Christian, not just someone who’s a Christian that develops your soul.” “No, I don’t want to hear that because you’re now putting a responsibility on me that when I get up in the morning, instead of having five positive confirmations and affirmations every day, I’m going to take the Bible and I’m going to put the Bible and my relationship with Jesus into my heart. So, my relationship with Jesus grows, not my five affirmations of success.”
If I wanted to give myself credit, I had enough to give myself credit, but I knew that none of what I achieved was because of myself. I knew it’s because I was God driven. I was spirit man driven, and my spirit began to impact my soul.
If God’s Word and the Christ in me is that powerful, then it means that my soul can become more powerful than anybody’s soul in the world. The Spirit of God inside of you is the smartest. The Spirit talks to your spirit, and what is in your spirit will control what comes out of your soul. Your body, your soul, and your spirit are all contending for what’s going to lead you in your life. If you let your body control your future, then obviously, that’s where people just eat McDonald’s because they want to because, “I like the taste.”
If you want your spirit man to lead you, you have to feed your spirit man. “I’m not going to let my taste, my desires, my lust, old habits of eating take my future, just because I like it.” In fact, I say, “Lord, I’m feeding my spirit man, I’m giving the Word of God to it, I will treat my body with respect. I will present it to You as a sacrifice, as my worship. I give You my body as my worship. Therefore, wherever I’ve got bad habits or bad eating that treat my body badly, I’m asking you spirit man to guide me and lead me that in the moment of weakness, the spirit man will be strong enough to overcome it.”
That might not work for a while because your spirit man’s got to get stronger. But one day, you’ve been saying it enough and your spirit man says, “I’ve got the power.” It’s going to control your soul. It’s going to tell your body to shut up and now you’re going to win. You’re going to win over and over again because any new desire that comes your way, you can beat it the same way.
So, I pray for you that this day you will be at peace and may the God of peace, may He preserve your body, soul and spirit blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus. And may the peace of God guide you, lead you, and overwhelm you with such amazing power that you just know God is God in your life.
© 2024 – Heritage of Faith Ministries International
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