Lesson for June 19. 2019
Spiritual Dynamics
Introduction
The definition of the true spiritual lifeis: our personal relationship with God. The only way this personal relationship is developed is by consistently learning, believing and applying (living) accurate Bible doctrine from His Word. This is the ONLY way we can truly know God. The spiritual life is designed to change your character not your personality or your individuality.Every believer is unique. The spiritual life does not demand that we all act a certain way, dress a certain way or like the same things. God has given you your very own spiritual life, and you are the only one who can live it. Believers are all different, yet all are members of the same royal family. God has provided for every believer his very own spiritual life with the same set of principles, divine mandates and means of glorifying Him. The spiritual life is developed by the consistent study and application of Bible doctrine. The spiritual life combines the filling of the Holy Spirit with learning, understanding and application of Bible doctrine.(Ephesians 4:11-16; II Timothy 2:15; II Peter 3:17-18)
There are changes which naturally occur in you as a result of executing your spiritual life, but there is no mold in the Christian life into which you must fit. We all have different personality traits, but we are all on the same team. The spiritual life does not require a set type of personality. The spiritual life isa system of biblical mandates and biblical principles, not designed to change your personality, but designed to glorify God. In eternity past, God the Father in His omniscience knew all about you, and He knew that you would make the decision to believe in Christ for eternal salvation, and He provided for you in eternity-past your very own Portfolio of Invisible Assets. While the spiritual life, which God has given to us in our portfolio, has set mandates, set operations, and set support systems, it is not designed to change your personality. (Romans 12:1-3)
Portfolio is defined as the assets or investments that a person or company owns. Your personal portfolio may consist of houses, land, stocks, gold, money, etc. The believer’s Portfolio of Invisible Assets is the grace work of God the Father placing certain assets in a “portfolio” for every believer. In your Portfolio of Invisible Assets, God has provided everything necessary for living the Christian life, growing in grace, and the execution of the Protocol Plan of God. The Portfolio of Invisible Assets provides everything necessary for you to have a fantastic life through receiving your “escrow blessings.” Escrow is defined as an IOU kept in the custody of a third party, taking effect only when specified conditions have been fulfilled. God has deposited in an escrow account in Heaven, an “IOU,” as it were, which are your invisible assets.
God the Father gives wisdom through the knowledge of His Word to all type of personalities so that we each may know the riches of the glory of our inheritance – our portfolio of invisible assets. God provided a portfolio of invisible assets in eternity past, so that you could have a life of meaning, purpose, and definition that is beyond anything you could ever imagine. (Ephesians 3:15-18)
True wealth (riches) is not measured by God in terms of materialistic things, but in terms of what you have in your soul. Our spiritual wealth begins to pay great dividends when we tap into the invisible assets that God has provided us. The spiritual life is a process, a system of spiritual values you retain and apply every day of your life and a total understanding of spiritual dynamics (what the spiritual life consists of). Bible doctrine (the mind of Christ) circulating in your soul by means of the filling of the Spirit is your spiritual life. (Matthew 6:33; Mark 8:36-37; James 1:22-25)
Spiritual production and spiritual skills are the basis for your Christian service, but spiritual skills must precede production skills. Spiritual skills plus production skills equal the production of divine good. Production skills minus spiritual skills equal the performance of human good, dead works, and evil. The spiritual skills are related to the portfolio of invisible assets—the filling of the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness.
In eternity past God the Father deposited into escrow (your account) greater blessings for you for now and for eternity. These are the greatest blessings God can ever give you, but you must fulfill certain conditions of what we call “escrow blessings” by advancing to maturity. Failure to execute the conditions of the escrow means these blessings remain on deposit in escrow forever as a memorial to lost opportunity.
An escrow is a trust fund, a deed, a bond or other written agreement entrusted to a third person by the party of the first part, to be given to the grantee. All three persons are mentioned in Ephesians 1:3, “Worthy of praise and glorification is the God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ.” God the Father is party of the first part, the Grantor. Every Church Age believer is the grantee. The third party is our Lord Jesus Christ, the depositary and our escrow officer. The deposit, or escrow assets (greater blessings), are placed beyond the control of the Grantor, in that He cannot cancel them. God the Father cannot cancel what He has deposited with Christ, i.e., your portfolio, and your special escrow blessings.
Spiritual dynamics are optional. Dynamics is defined as the forces or properties which stimulate growth, development or change within a system or process. Spiritual dynamics are the divine forces or power given to every believer in Christ at the moment of salvation for the development of a spiritual life. The power system for the development of the spiritual life is twofold: the filling of God the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine in the soul.
The spiritual life is mandated by the Word of God but is lived only by those believers who are positive to doctrine. The spiritual life is the dynamics of the Christian Way of Life and has practical application to every phase of our experience on earth. Objectivity, discernment, common sense, and wisdom from Bible doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness through the filling of the Holy Spirit are some of the by-products of execution of the spiritual life. The spiritual life is a body of doctrine for the believer in Jesus Christ with practical applications by means of the power of the Holy Spirit to every aspect of your life as a believer in Jesus Christ.
The spiritual life is related to the function of your soul in thinking, in motivation, in decision making, and in action. The source of your spiritual life is in right thinking and proper motivation from accurate Bible doctrine. Your spiritual life demands that you begin to metabolize the Bible doctrine which you hear.God did not immediately take you to Heaven when you believed in Christ for salvation. You are still alive on earth because of the sovereign will of God and His grace policy and provision for you personally. Therefore, you can conclude that God has a plan, a will, and a purpose for your life. This plan is related to the spiritual life provided for you in your very own Portfolio of Invisible Assets.
Our spiritual life instructs us to forget the past and move forward toward spiritual maturity. Past failures must never become present handicaps. As long as we are alive, our objective should be to reach the point of forgetting those things which are behind us. But we cannot do it in our own strength, because the spiritual life was never designed for us to function in our own strength. Learning, understanding and applying the Bible doctrine under the filling of the Holy Spirit on a consistent basis will drive out the guilt of past failures and development the character of Christ in the believer’s soul. (Philippians 3:1-16)
All believers should discipline themselves after salvation. Self-discipline is related to several things: your motivation in life, your priorities and your decisions based on your priorities. You cannot handle the problems of life without developing your very own spiritual life. The only believers who derive any blessing from the future are those who develop a spiritual life. Believers have promises for the present life and for the life to come. Claiming those promises is one way of handling the pressures of prosperity and adversity. When believers give up on their spiritual life, they become lovers of pleasure and the cosmic system rather than lovers of God. (II Timothy 3:1-5)
Simply being exposed to Bible doctrine on a limited basis and thinking that is all you need is not the spiritual life. Holding to some superficial form of a so-called spiritual life is ritual without reality. These types of people are those who ignore true powers in the spiritual life: the power of the filling of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Word of God. When you have abandoned the true spiritual life, “garbage” from Satan’s world system leaks into soul and begins to push any doctrine you have learned out of the soul. The result of this is immature, legalistic, ritualistic Christians.
Jesus Christ was the Creator of the spiritual life. In the resurrection, ascension, and session of Jesus Christ, God gave His stamp of approval to the spiritual life of the humanity of Christ and made it the model spiritual life for believers in the Church Age. It is the most fantastic thing God has ever given to believers.At the very moment of salvation, every believer receives his very own spiritual life tailored to his own soul and personality. While every believer receives his own spiritual life at salvation, the function (mechanics) of that spiritual life is common to all believers. All believers have the same set of instructions – the mandates of Bible doctrine as revealed in the New Testament epistles.
The spiritual life possesses both individuality on the one hand, and operational uniformity on the other hand. The purpose of the spiritual life is never to change your personality, but to give your personality the expression that God designed for it in providing your own spiritual life. The individuality of your spiritual life is based on the fact that you have an individual soul; you have your own personality to go with your spiritual life.
You and you alone are the only one who can live your spiritual life;no one else can live it for you. Consequently, you and you alone are responsible for your own decisions, good or bad, positive or negative to doctrine, which means you cannot blame environment, childhood, people, anyone or anything for your failure to live your own spiritual life. Your spiritual life was designed by God in eternity-past and functions under divine power only – the power of the Spirit and the power of the Word of God. Therefore, Bible doctrine and the filling of the Holy Spirit must have number one priority in your life after salvation.
Since both the filling of the Spirit plus learning, understanding and application of Bible doctrine are commanded for all believers, you have to undergo a change, and the first change has to be your scale of values. Sooner or later you must assign number one priority to Bible doctrine. The Word of God is the revelation of God’s will, plan and purpose for your life. You cannot know the will of God apart from Bible doctrine. You can pray that God will guide you; however, it is a prayer that will not be answered if Bible doctrine is not residing in your soul, which is what He uses to guide you. The only way that you are going to know the will of God is through the Word of God. Only through living your very own spiritual life through utilization of divine power can you glorify God and fulfill His will, His purpose, and His plan for your life.
The Christian Way of Life is a supernatural way of life, which cannot be lived apart from knowledge of Bible doctrine and the guidance of God the Holy Spirit. (Romans 7:6, 8:2; Galatians 5:25; Ephesians 5:18) This way of life requires thinking. Consistent study of God’s Word keeps Divine Viewpoint Thinking (God’s thinking) fresh in the mind and helps counteract Human Viewpoint Thinking (Satan’s world system thinking). (Psalms 119:129-135) Thinking your way through life with Divine Viewpoint Thinking will bring victory, peace, power and stability. (Isaiah 26:3-4, 33:6) It also eliminates mental attitude sinning, such as maligning, character assassination, gossiping, jealousy, self-pity, etc. Vacillating between Divine Viewpoint Thinking and Human Viewpoint Thinking makes a believer unstable according to James 1:8. An unstable believer is an unhappy believer.
All changes in our lives must come from the inside. The true character of the believer is determined by what he thinks, not by what he does. God never forces the believer into any course of action. We determine what our own spiritual lives are going to look like based on what we allow ourselves to think. Divine Viewpoint Thinking equals a victorious Christian Way of Life. (Romans 12:1-2)