18. One Spirit with the Lord

God places Himself fully in each part of our human makeup in three ways. First, He is there as one who works upon, who energizes, who shapes and molds. Second, He is there as One who lives in, who belongs, sitting in His recliner, comfortably enjoying the view out the windows. Third, He is there as One person, one spirit, with us.

 

He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 1 Corinthians 6:17

This is one of many verses in the New Testament that have no limit to the truth inside them. What on earth does it mean? You cannot explore it a little bit and determine that you have found its depths. You cannot draw a line and say, “It means this much, but it certainly doesn’t mean more than this.”

We are far beyond the point of wondering whether or not we ourselves are “joined to the Lord.” When I was seven years old, I sat on the back porch of our house, thinking about a recent Vacation Bible School lesson – a black heart covered by a red heart, then becoming a white heart. My own heart was “strangely warmed,” and I asked Jesus to come and live in my heart. From that moment to this, in all ways, whatever I have done, wherever I have been, I am joined to the Lord and I am one spirit with Him.

Jesus lives in my heart.

The first time I received deliverance, I was sitting on a bench, awaiting my turn for prayer, anxious and hopeful. As I sat there, the Lord spoke to me. He said, “Son, remember your teenage years, when you walked in rebellion and sin? You were My son all through those years, even though you did not know it.” The Lord based the beginning of my deliverance solidly upon the truth that in spite of whatever I had done, I was still joined to the Lord and one spirit with Him all through those dark, and thankfully short, years.

In order to enlarge our understanding of what it means to be one spirit with the Lord, I want to explore again the makeup of the human being.

Let’s start this time with the heart. There is only one thing that can be said about our hearts.  Christ lives in our hearts, and He does so by faith.

If you were to write down every verse in the Bible containing the word “heart,” seeking a definition of the human heart (I have a list of every verse in the New Testament containing “kardia,” or heart on my website), you would have a very hard time arriving at a single definition.

Is the heart a part of the body, of the soul, or of the spirit? Yes — it is part of all three, each in its sphere.

Here is one of the most unusual statements concerning the human heart found in the book of Acts.“And He filled their hearts with food and gladness.”

 Filled their hearts with food? Is the belly part of the heart? In a sense, yes.

In order to understand something, you must take it apart to see each part individually, and to see how each part is joined to and works together with the other parts. Yet, the moment you have separated something out into its parts, it is no longer as it really is. If you take a car engine all apart, you can see how the valves and the pistons work together, but you cannot see the force being applied to the wheels, that is, the engine as a whole and at work.

Out of my heart come the issues of all that I am. We are not, first, a spirit, as many have taught; we were created by God a living soul.

We understand that our spirit is the largest part of our being and extends all through every other part of our makeup. However, the soul is who we are. We are one who thinks, who feels, and who chooses. At the center of who and what we are is our heart. Our heart contains our dreams and hopes, our desires and ambitions. Everything we are issues, first, out of our hearts.

I once sat under a teaching that said our soul must become subject to our spirit. But this is not a Biblical teaching. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 14, that our spirit is always subject to us, that is to our soul. God never, ever, violates our person. There is no “dictatorship” in God; servile “obedience” is a satanic, tree-of-knowledge definition of God and man.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Solomon

Delight and desire go hand and hand, they are both found in the heart – and with us, they are centered in the reality that Christ is our life, He alone lives in our heart, therefore our delight and our desire are His and His are ours.

We have two bodies that are equal in purpose. Through our physical body we relate with the physical world and through our spiritual body we relate to the spiritual world, heaven and earth, both at the same time and forever.

But forever, we remain first a living soul, with our heart at its center.

He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. — Christ lives in our hearts by faith. — Your body is the temple (dwelling place) of the Holy Spirit. — We have the mind of Christ. — The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. — God works in us the want to and the doing of His will.

God places Himself fully in each part of our human makeup in three ways. First, He is there as one who works upon, who energizes, who shapes and molds. Second, He is there as One who lives in, who belongs, sitting in His recliner, comfortably enjoying the view out the windows. Third, He is there as One person, one spirit, with us.

Now, I don’t claim to know what all this means; I just want to lay it out so we can have a look at ourselves. I consider the subject important, because God fills the Bible with a precise and endless discussion of all the parts of our makeup, what they are and how they work. God wants us to know ourselves; He wants us to know Himself. In the end, we are the same; we are created in His likeness.

 Let’s look at the heart as it works in the physical body.

The heart pumps the blood. The blood is the life of the body. The blood carries in it all the oxygen and nutrients needed by each cell in the body. At the same time, the blood gathers up the waste products from each cell and carries them to the kidneys or to the lungs to be removed from the body. The blood fights against invaders that seek to destroy the body. And the blood is able to reach every cell of the body entirely because of the force of the heart, sending it there.

The heart is the strongest muscle in the body.

Now, as I have shared, I suspect that our spirit corresponds in very similar ways to the physical body. Our spirit is not some intangible idea of a thing. It is definite and concrete, though of spiritual form. It has functions and operations just like the physical body, and it works in very similar ways – just on the plane of spirit, existing fully in the heavens.

Let’s translate the physical heart, then, into the spirit. This is a metaphor. We are still blind; we cannot see the heavens as we normally will when we receive our ability to see. Therefore we do not know exactly how the functions and qualities of our spirit operate. Thus, I am using this description as a metaphor of truth in order to reach for a fuller understanding of what God means when He says that we are one spirit with Him.

Faith is never divorced from understanding. Faith and understanding go hand in hand, joined together at all times. We can neither believe nor make use of what we do not know. We do trust in God without understanding, but trust and faith are two different things. And faith is the primary faculty of the heart.

Our heart, the human heart, is as much a part of our spirit as it is a part of our body. Paul said that we believe with our hearts.

Our physical blood, then, corresponds by metaphor or counterpart to the Blood of Christ. Jesus said that by drinking His Blood we have life.

It is the heart, then, that pumps the Blood of Christ into every part of our spirit. The Blood is the life of the spirit. The Blood carries in it all the “oxygen” and “nutrients” needed by each “cell” in our spirit. At the same time, the Blood gathers up all the waste products, all that would cause harm or blemish, from each part of our spirit and carries them to, shall we say, the forgetfulness of God, to be removed from us. The Blood fights off invaders that seek to destroy the spirit by entering into it with negative frequencies. And the Blood is able to reach every “cell” of our spirit entirely because of the force of the heart, sending it there.

The heart is the strongest muscle in our spirit. The muscle of the heart is FAITH. Faith is the strength and the beating of the heart.

However, faith is specific to the Word God speaks. Faith is not general, exuding some sort of “power” of its own. Faith is female; it receives a word spoken into it and then brings forth the life of that word out of it. Faith can receive a word from the serpent just as easily as it can receive a word from God. But faith does not invent power. Faith only reproduces what it hears. The heart pumps out only the blood that flows into it.

We live by every word God speaks. But every word God speaks enters into us only through FAITH.

Just as the physical blood flows through every part of our physical body, so the Blood of Christ flows through every part of our spirit, in a very similar way, literally and concretely. The life is in the Blood. We are “saved” by His life; that is, we live by His life.

When God says that we are one spirit with Him, He is speaking of something very literal, specific, and concrete. The substance of spirit in the heavens is as substantial, is more substantial, than the substance of physical atoms on earth.

If it is true that the Blood of Christ is literally (not symbolically) the “blood” of our own spirit, and if it is true that our faith is the strength that sends that Blood into every part of our spirit, bringing it nourishment and removing stain, then we can understand the importance and role of faith in our salvation, that is, in our becoming whole, in our becoming who we are.

Weak faith must produce a weak spirit. Strength of faith must produce a strong spirit, not that faith itself makes our spirits strong, but because strong faith sends the Life and Blood of Christ into every part of our spirit. The life of Christ is what makes our spirits strong.

Most Christians are anemic. The Blood just doesn’t go very far for them; they do not immerse themselves into believing all that God speaks.

Everything is dynamic; nothing is static. Everything is continually being renewed; nothing just sits there. Electrons are always spinning; atoms are always bouncing around; molecules are always vibrating; the body is always breathing; the heart is always pumping blood. In the same way, and much more, God is always speaking. His Word is always entering into us. We are always believing it – or disbelieving it. We are always responding to the spirit and to the word entering into us.

Now, let’s look at a distinction here. When we were without Christ, our spirit was energized by the spirit of Satan and his demons. As Paul says, “The prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.” But now that we belong to Christ, our spirit is entirely in the Holy Spirit and is one spirit with Him.

The serpent cannot energize our spirit. But he can still speak. His goal with us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is to keep us from faith in the Word God speaks. His work is to put us to sleep, to lethargize, to make passive, to run us around in circles, ignorant of the purposes of God, disregarding the Word that He is always speaking, ineffective and dull.

Solomon said that the serpent sleeps upon the rock.

Christians imagine that they are not under the influence of the serpent because they do not “feel” demonic. Anything that blocks – between the Word God is always speaking and our believing that word – is always demonic, even if it feels quiet and peaceful and familiar.

So when God says that Christ lives in our hearts by faith, He does not mean something that sounds good, that we “believe” to be true, even if it can’t literally be so. Rather, He is speaking of the literal operation of our human makeup – of our spirits. Christ lives in our hearts literally and substantially. The operation by which He lives there is faith – the spirit-pumping of the heart.

We are one spirit with the Lord. We want to know who we are; we want to know what that means, not just as an “idea” or to create some sort of “belief system,” but as understanding that grows into the full expression of power and reality.

It is the continual beating of the heart that sends the lifeblood into every part of the body. It is the continual beating of faith that sends the life of Christ into every part of our spirit. God is always speaking; faith is always believing what God speaks. This is a mutual, continual, and dynamic relationship; that is, it is personally shared, it is always happening, and it is filled with energetic workings.

Now, if God is always speaking, and if we are one spirit with Him, then our tongue corresponds directly to the present workings of God in us. We speak what God speaks, and our hearts grow full with faith in Him, thus increasing the strength of our spirits. This relationship is continual, it is personal, it is filled with movement and energy just like breathing is. Just as our lungs are always breathing in the breath of life and breathing out the waste products of the blood, so our spirit is always breathing the Holy Spirit.

There is no dull, passive, sitting in something that just is.

Now, note that the two most important aspects of physical life, the beating of the heart and the breathing of the lungs are both automatic. They just happen without thought. So it is with our spirits. We don’t have to be “making” Christ be our life; He just is, yet He never is apart from us. However the second two important aspects of maintaining physical life, eating and drinking, are not automatic, yet we are compelled to do them with great desire. So it is with our spirits.

He that eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life. — If any man thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.

There is every reason for us to assume that our spirits follow a very similar pattern in their makeup and operation as our bodies.

Yet, we really have no idea what God means when He says that we are one spirit with Him. Yes, we have some vague thoughts about it, and we can talk about those thoughts, but still, we have no idea what it means in full experience.

Everything that exists is frequency. Physical atoms are nothing more than balanced charges vibrating at a certain frequency. Different arrangements of atoms create different frequencies. We understand the light spectrum. Visible light is a small area in the center of the light spectrum. Most of that spectrum, that is, most “light” cannot be seen by the human eyes. Some animals can see light frequencies that humans cannot. Far to one side of visible light is ultra-violet. Far to the other side is infra-red.

Man is aware of these things, and can use them to do useful work, but really does not understand how electrical frequency and radio waves and the whole light spectrum really work, what they really are.

Spirit, I suspect, is a higher, much more dynamic level of frequency than physical matter.

God is Spirit.

Angels are spirits, but they are not like God. When Jesus said that God is Spirit, He was speaking of something far beyond the angelic or heavenly realms.

Humans are like God, and they are a union between physical matter and spirit. The result of that union is “a living soul.” Soul is what happens when Spirit comes into union with flesh. Yet angels think and feel and choose.

“Yordy,” you might say, “You are talking around in circles.”

Yes, and such discussion in itself is pointless.

Here is what matters. God said, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” We believe that word with all our hearts – faith includes understanding – and the word God speaks brings forth its life inside of us.

The frequency, the dynamic working, the life force of God is one spirit with our spirits.

This means two things. It means that what we are in this world right now, the human me, this incapable, bumbling, oft-mistaken person, is in all ways simply the expression of the generation of God inside the present human experience. I am God’s flesh. Yet God is never in me as an impersonal force. God never violates my person. I never violate God’s Person. Union with God is very personal. “One spirit with the Lord” means that at all times and in every way, I express Him and He conforms Himself to me in an intimate relationship of love and high regard and respect.

But the second thing it means is this. There is no limit in God. There is no limit to the extent that God can reveal Himself as He is through me.

My spirit is merged in all ways with every part of my being. My spirit fills every part of my body; the energy, the life force of my physical body comes from my spirit. My spirit is one spirit with the Holy Spirit.

But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Romans 8:11.

You see, this verse is not some idea about some “doctrine” that we read about in the Bible. It is speaking of the actual construction of our human make-up.

It is also clear that, even though the dynamic workings of God, the Holy Spirit personally with me, living together in full and continual union with my spirit, is energizing a body that is dying and dead because of sin (condemnation), the implication is that the LIFE force continually working out from this dynamic union of my spirit and the Holy Spirit is the same resurrection life of Jesus that transformed His dead body into His present body of resurrection.

. . . the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. Philippians 3:20-21

Here is the bottle neck. Even though all this is true, God will never, ever violate our person. At no point, now or in the future, will God reveal Himself through us in any way except through our full permission. That permission is faith. Faith is actively giving God permission to prove Himself through us.

Jesus was of God. But Mary was as much involved in birthing Jesus into this creation as God was – if not more so. Jesus would never have come into His creation if Mary had not consented with all her heart – not a passive, whatever, consent, but a very active, “Look at me, God, I belong to You. Let it be to me according to Your word.”

Jesus will not subdue our mortal body to His immortal life except with our full permission and active cooperation. God did His part, but Mary birthed Jesus into this world with all the agony of female travail. And for those husbands who have stood by their wives during childbirth, I am convinced God felt as useless as we do when our wife is giving birth.

The reason God has made Himself one spirit with us is so that God Himself might enter into His physical creation, and then so God Himself can enter into His heavenly creation in a way He never has, as incredible as that sounds.

…to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places… Ephesians 3:10.

Heaven has not yet seen God as we will reveal Him.

The concept of “rapture” pervades all of Christian thinking. There are those who believe in the literal “rapture” of the church as an idea that replaces the resurrection of the body. But even those who do not believe in that “rapture” still believe that at some point, sometime in the future, God will automatically do something, wave His wand or something, and with no reference to them personally, no union with their own faith, no acknowledging the intimate person of their heart, God will just, “kaboom,” transform them, make them like Jesus, make alive their body.

The fellowship I was a part of for many years originally believed and taught in the imminence of the power of God right now to transform us as we believe what He speaks. But as time went on that teaching faded and vanished. It was replaced with a definite form of “rapture.” Someday, sometime in the future, IF you prove that you love God by obeying everything that He speaks and by doing absolutely nothing at all unless He “tells” you to do it, then God will simply go “Shazzam,” and you will be transformed in an instant. Then you will be the vision we once held in faith.

Every form of rapture, no matter what it looks like, is the very opposite of the nature and heart of God. Every form of rapture is rooted entirely in present unbelief. Every form of rapture is just one more way of treating God like dirt. Every form of rapture is rooted in a satanic definition of God, that He makes things happen separately from us.

There is not one ounce of faith involved in “rapture.”

God is meek and lowly of heart. Never ever will He violate our person or work contrary to the wishes of our hearts. Yet He will break our hearts to get the crusty nonsense of this world shed off of them. He breaks our heart, and then He heals it. This is the holy doing of God.

Not one thing God has ever spoken, nothing God intends to do will He ever do except through the personal beating of our own spirit heart, which is FAITH.

God at all times and in every way conforms Himself to me.

God did all that He could for Mary, but Mary birthed Jesus into the world. In that final act, God was as “useless” as Joseph. God was 100% dependent on Mary for the fulfillment of His dreams. All the plan of salvation rested upon Mary’s female strength.

The revelation of Jesus Christ is in no possible way a “rapture.” It is a birthing. None of it is “automatic.” All of it comes through Faith, through hearts that believe what God says.

That you might be filled with all the fullness of God. — Rivers of living water shall flow out of your innermost being. — They cast down the accuser. — God is determined to conform me to the image of His dear Son.

God speaks many things, and all that He speaks, He is continually speaking. But these words God speaks are sufficient to show us that when God says, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him,” there is nothing inside of God that God does not intend to pass through the personal beating of our Faith and so be birthed into all creation.

That Faith is the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet it is entirely our faith, yet it is His faith, yet it is our faith. God highly regards us, that means He will never violate our person. Unlimited God is waiting to move through you and me into all manifestation, yet not one ounce of God will ever pass through us except through the faith beating of our hearts. And we highly regard Him. That means that every word God speaks we believe with all confidence and joy that God means it is revealed now, personally, in us.

The full meaning of “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him,” can be found only in the beating of the human heart. And that is 100% personal between you and Him. Jesus will never violate my person or my heart. I can never believe Him in all confidence, face to Face and eye to Eye, too much.

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Romans 10:8-10

Full salvation begins with the transformation of our physical bodies, transformed by the same Spirit-power that raised Jesus from the dead working right now in our present dying bodies, and right now, 100% fused with our own spirits. At that moment we will be who we are. At that moment we will be just like Jesus in all glory as He is right now.

In all the beating of our hearts, in all the speaking of our mouths, Jesus, revealed in all glory, right now, through us.