Spirit controls mind. Mind controls emotion. Emotion controls life.
Inspiration sometimes come in as blocks of knowing that are hard to condense into a single post. I wrestled with the words that would be right for this insight, my mind was diligently putting bits and pieces together and creating several possible interpretations. I asked Spirit to help.
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm.*
I received only the closing words of this hymn, I played it and was struck by the profound implications of every word. I invite you to just sit with the words of this hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ and let Spirit minister to you.
Let sense be dumb, meaning get your mind out of the way. Today’s lesson was not meant to be translated by my mind, there was a higher voice I needed to hear. The voice of Spirit. In my eagerness to understand, I had allowed my own mind to drown out that higher voice.
Hands down that is probably the biggest failing in our journey of communion with our God. Spirit speaks, we run that through our processors and the interpretations are as far from what Spirit intends as Alaska is from the Sahara.
Today's lesson is actually about submission to the Holy Spirit.
There are some things you cannot DO, you must Simply ALLOW.
Dear Christian friends, as you are in the trenches, struggling through your fire, understanding today’s lesson is going to be crucial to your survival. Not just your survival, your breakthrough.
There are some issues in your life that cannot be fixed on the physical plane of existence. There are some battles that must be spiritually fought and won, for your breakthroughs to come.
Let sense be dumb, put away your concordance, shut down the internet, set aside your Wall Street Journal. There are some things you're not going to figure out because the spiritual dynamics are way beyond your mind's ability to comprehend. Your battle may not be one you can fight with your mind, you don’t win by being smart. You win by allowing yourself to be inspired by the Spirit of the living God.
“This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the Lord of hosts.” - Zechariah 4:6
Let flesh retire. You don’t take the victory through hard work, not even the hard work of fasting, or hours of fervid prayer. Physical power is but a faint reflection of true power. The bible says ‘the Spirit of the Lord came upon David and…’. The Spirit came upon Gideon and Samson and Isaiah and upon the gathering at Pentecost. When the Spirit came, wondrous events followed.
To surrender our flesh to the power of the Holy Spirit takes immense faith. I’m not talking about praying for a healing, or to resist temptation. I mean something as simple as raising your hands in prayer, instead of raising your hands to fix the problem. To surrender our flesh is to stop trying to wrestle things into place through our own power, and acceding to the power of the Holy Spirit to move in our situation.
Faith is not a state of ACTION it is a state of EMOTION.
Speak through the earthquake wind and fire, O still small voice of calm. We try to listen for that still small voice but we often don’t hear it because of the noise of the tempest. I love the words this writer chose. Our tempests are earthquakes that break apart our physical existence, they are howling winds that deafen us with their noise and fires that blister, scorch and consume us.
The still small voice can speak through all of this, if we allow it. Allowing it is so important. God may not want to move a mountain for us, He may want to move the mountain through us.
Today I was so intent on hearing the message I could not still my mind, so I started to pray in tongues. I am not from a tongues praying belief system but Holy Spirit gave me the gift.
One of the most profound lessons in my experience with the practice, is that when I pray in tongues a portal opens. Inspiration comes in a flood, solutions become clear, realizations light up in technicolor and spiritual energy amplifies exponentially.
You see, the still small voice is not so still or so small after all. We are talking about the Spirit of the living God, the same Spirit that hovered upon the waters at creation. We get excited by the power of the Holy Spirit to move on earth, with miraculous healings, deliverance and breakthroughs, yet we fail to comprehend the level of authority and power that this same Holy Spirit holds in the spiritual realm.
"For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." - 1 Corinthians 2:11
The Spirit works tirelessly on our behalf, defending us, representing us, protecting us, guiding us, fighting for us. The Spirit knows God’s heart toward us and works diligently to bring it into fruition in our lives.
We plead the blood of Jesus in prayer, we don’t understand that actually it is the Spirit pleading the blood on our behalf. Spirit is constantly working on our behalf. This work is only hampered by the extent of our ability to allow. Holy Spirit just needs us to consciously come into alignment with whatever Spirit needs to do on our behalf, and that is often not the thing we are praying for.
The work of the Holy Spirit is only hampered by the extent of our ability to allow it to move.
There are some battles of Spirit that cannot be won without us, they must be won through us. Our free will, our conscious choice has to be part of the process. That is the purpose of faith.
As we allow sense to still, as we back away from the power of flesh to move and will and do, as we simply decide to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through the turbulence of our emotions, Spirt can then impact matter on our behalf.
Spirit controls mind. Mind controls emotion. Emotion controls life. Therefore, Spirit controls life.
“Jesus gave them this answer: Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.” - John 5:19-20
The Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism. The scriptures say after that, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. After that Jesus started moving in miracles.
Jesus’ entire ministry was lived from a place of surrender to the Holy Spirit. Jesus knew who he was even as a child. Jesus knew the scriptures backward and forward, yet we have no record that Jesus moved in miracles until the Holy Spirit came upon him.
Our submission to the Spirit of God is that final piece that allows Spirit to work marvels and wonders in our lives.
Fellow Christians, we want to see change in our lives. We want radical change, we want lasting results, we want matter to move in response to our prayers. Let sense be still, let flesh retire. Give the Holy Spirit your consent to speak through the maelstrom.
You may be prompted to attend a church conference you never heard of and when you get there you receive your healing. You may just be scanning your cable and you stop on a particular channel, someone offers a prayer and your breakthrough breaks through. You may have an inspired business idea, you may have a divinely orchestrated encounter with the right person at precisely the right time.
Spirit will move in a million different ways. So many times on our journey Spirit opens up our breakthrough and we miss it because we are lost in the noise, we are busy doing, or trying to figure it out. Peace. Be still.
Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.
Let the Spirit of God govern your mind. Let your mind govern our emotions. Whether we believe it or not, our emotions govern or lives. If we understand this divinely orchestrated cascade, we are empowered to align ourselves with the divine flow.
That Spirit may control our lives.
We want God to move in our lives. Well, we have to give Him the wheel. Today's lesson is about the power of surrender, to change our minds, our hearts, our lives.
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm.
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” - Matthew 6:10
Author's note: Our cover graphic is inspired by one of my early visions, The Matador.
Across many other visions Spirit taught me that you can't really control emotions but you can learn to redirect the energy constructively. If you learn to direct the pure raw power of your emotions spiritually, there is nothing in this life that is impossible for you.
Today, many years after that initial vision, Spirit completed the picture for me. It is not really our mind that controls our emotions because, as many spiritual practitioners know, there is something within our mind which is beyond our own mind. I call this Spirit.
If we allow it, Spirit controls and directs our rational mind, so that we can appropriately direct and align our emotions. By doing so we come into a state of alignment with God's heart for us. Faith is not an act, it is an emotional state.
When we are in that state that is receptive to the Holy Spirit, we give the Spirit room to move in our lives in very physical and tangible ways. Thus the circle is complete.
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