THE PROSPERITY OF

THE SOUL (2)

SPIRIT

SOUL

SOUL

BODY

BODY

BODY BODY

God has ordained that He will deal with man through His SPIRIT and that by man’s SPIRIT divine counsel will be communicated and realized.

It is therefore necessary that the spirit of man be in continual and constant living communication with God.

The prospering soul is one that is obedient to the Spirit of God because it has a renewed mind, controlled emotion and submitted will.

As we showed you last Sunday at the occasion of man’s fall the soul resisted the spirit’s authority and answered to the desires of the flesh and became a slave of the body and its passions.

Man’s spirit was denied its lofty place of authority and government and was reduced to a prisoner.

There is an ever going on contention and war between the body (flesh) and the spirit, no wonder Paul wrote in; Romans 7:18-19

Romans 7:18-19 “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

19For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

And he gives the solution and teaches in Galatians 5:16-17 - “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

17For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”

The flesh (body) demands full sovereignty and government so does the spirit man. The motive of the body is earthly, the motive of the spirit is heavenly.

The flesh desires to lead man to sin but the spiritual life longs to lead him to righteousness.

Now the life that we receive from God at new birth is extremely powerful and is what we need to destroy the works of the flesh.

But the spirit man that has been regenerated is newly born and weak – his spirit man though perfect in its composition is still very weak and the flesh is still very dominant.

For this dominance of the flesh to be broken the Christian must enter the prosperity of the soul program.

At the point of salvation we are not only regenerated but also come into union with the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 6:17“But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.”

So that now the Holy Spirit of God the third person of the Godhead comes to dwell within us.

The Holy Spirit is a person who is mandated to teach us, guide us, comfort us and communicate the reality of Christ into our spirit.

The Holy Spirit does nothing with our souls – that is not His realm

- to the degree that we allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate our spirits and guide us –

– to the degree that we acknowledge His leading and respect His wisdom – that shall be the degree of the manifestation of the power of God from our spirit going into our souls and ultimately to our day to day living.

For the Spirit to prevail and have headship we must have a prospering soul. The first arena that must be altered is the RENEWING OF THE MIND.

The Mind

The mind is the arena for generating, processing, arranging in a logical manner and storing up our thoughts and imaginations

It is the part of our soul where we have our intellect, imaginations and memory.

The mind manifests our intellectual power, our creative power and our storage capacity.

Out of these arise our wisdom, knowledge, reasoning and creativity – without these mental capacity one is foolish and dull.

A man’s mind occupies an important place in his life because his thoughts, imaginations and memories influence his speech and ultimately his actions.

No wonder the word of God says, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” Proverbs 23:7.

Your body will only act out what it has been told by the mind – so if the mind is not renewed you will continue acting the way you have always acted and you will continue to get the results that you have always been getting.

So when an instruction comes from a regenerated spirit and finds an unrenewed mind that instruction is immediately frustrated and ultimately discarded.

But when an instruction that has its origin from God is dropped in your spirit and finds a renewed mind that instruction is quickly communicated to the body and acted out at once so that now you are walking in the spirit or after the spirit and not after the flesh.

The same way when an idea comes through the body to the mind so that it can be processed and acted out, when it finds a renewed mind that idea is first of all judged by the word of God and if it fails the test it is immediately discarded but if it finds an unrenewed mind it is implemented to the detriment of the spirit.

The mind of man constitutes of three major parts;

Intellect

This is the part of the mind that has logical circuits– through the intellect, the man reasons, analyzes issues and draws logical conclusions.

Through the intellect, man makes calculations and deductions and comes to logical conclusions. This part of the mind when allowed by the man to be influenced by the spirit it has the capacity to operate in supernatural dimensions.

When under the control of the Holy Spirit, the intellect of a renewed mind has the capacity to tap into the mind of God and come up with ideas, thoughts and wisdom that are supernatural that can usher them into incredible levels of thinking and operations.

Adam before the fall had such an incredible intellect that he used it to govern the earth and all the creatures on the earth.

When God brought animals for him to name in Genesis chapter 2:19“And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”

Adam supernaturally named them and whatever he called them that is what they were called.

When man fell the body took leadership and now we have to fight the good fight of faith to bring our intellect under the subjection of the wisdom that comes from God.

When the mind is unrenewed this part of the mind called the intellect always opposes the leading of the Holy Spirit because the ways of the Spirit are foolishness to an unrenewed mind.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:14 “but the natural man (the intellect of an unrenewed mind) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Then he continues to teach in verse 15 “but he that is spiritual – meaning the one whose mind has been renewed and now he is living from the spirit going out – (judgeth all things) that is stands and looks at his thought and judges them using the standard of the word of God.”

So the word becomes the judge and so there is no need for anyone to judge him because he has judged himself.

Then he concludes in verse 16 “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.”

That is to say the mind of Christ cannot be instructed – it is beyond reproach or instruction – it is perfect, complete, needing nothing to be added into it - this perfect wisdom, perfect knowledge, perfect in instruction – and that is the mind that we have when we renew our minds.

2. Imagination (the second part of the mind)

(Please don’t forget we are learning on the PROSPERITY OF THE SOUL)

This is the part responsible for erecting images in man. These images can be stationary or moving images, real or fictional, images of the past, present or future.

Imagination is a powerful faculty in the mind of man and it is here that man paints a picture of the future he desires or aspires for.

Through the imagination man has been given the ability to create and forecast how tomorrow should be like.

God made the imagination as a tool for man to think creatively like Him because creativity is impossible without imagination. The Wright Brothers sat in their father’s garage and begun to creatively imagine how man can fly.

Everybody said it was not possible but the two boys tapped into the power of imagination and creatively brought out an aeroplane.

Thomas Edison creatively thought out through the power of imagination. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.

No wonder the Bible says in Job 32:8 “but there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.”

When the imagination is inspired by the Spirit of God in a man with a renewed mind that man is able to come with creative ideas that have never existed before.

However if the imagination is not coming from a renewed mind it brings out corrupted ideas that are demonic and completely perverted.

Romans 1:21 give us an example of this when the Bible says “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

The answer to that is located in 2 Corinthians 10:5 “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;”

God intended for man to use his imagination to create the future he desires “as a man thinketh (creatively imagines) so is he.”

3. The memory This is the storage bank for the man; it stores images and thoughts that have been accepted by the soul.

The memory is the storage place for man’s experiences in life – good and bad, wicked and holy, success and failure, defeat and victory – all these is stored up here.

The memory is like a photographic bank and is able to bring out with great details the happenings in a persons’ life.

The memory will store up things that happened to us along time ago with great detail so that if we were to recite what happened to us we would do so just as if it happened yesterday.

When we allow the Holy Spirit to flow through our memory He brings to remembrance all the wonderful things that we have learnt or God has done.

Jesus said in John 14:26 “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”

But when we don’t renew our minds the memory becomes a tool in the hands of the enemy to remind us of all the messes that we have been – and the failures and the defeats.

The Bible says that the children of Israel said to Moses in Numbers 11:5 “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick:”

But did they also remember the lashings of whips and the making of brick and mortar, did they remember the afflictions and the pain of watching their boys being murdered by the midwives.

I know that you are born again and you are going through tough times, but don’t forget the pain, the loneliness, the discouragement of Egypt.

For your soul to prosper – your mind must prosper and the mind prospers by being renewed.

The enemy seeks to control your life though the intellect, imagination and memories that is not of God.

If your intellect which controls your thoughts and how you analyze them and your imagination which is that creative part of the mind and your memories which is the storage part of your mind are not being constantly renewed by the word of God – then your mind will sabotage your life – because you are a sum total of all your thoughts.

The mind is the battlefield within man, where Satan and his agents contend against the truth of the word of God.

The enemy seeks to hold the mind of man captive through confession strongholds he has planted in their minds, influencing his intellectual processing, imagination and memory.

These strongholds are imaginations, reasoning and logics of the mind that are contrary to the truths and principles of the Kingdom.

If these strongholds are not dealt with by renewing of the mind that individual will be controlled from outside (using the S, S, B CHAT) in, and he will be walking in the flesh and fulfilling the lusts of the flesh.

SPIRIT

SOUL

SOUL

BODY

BODY

BODY BODY

But if that person allows his mind to be renewed by the truths of the word of God so that the light of the word shines in his soul, that man’s spirit is given opportunity to download instructions from heaven and he now lives from inside going out.

The original definition of repentance is CHANGE OF MIND. An unrenewed mind stands in enmity with God.