Debrecen Messages #9 – The Function of the Human Spirit: Discernment, Peace & Knowing God

I’m the only man in the world who ever got cussed out by a squirrel. I was out in my backyard one day. I don’t know what was going on. This squirrel came down the tree, out on a limb to the very end. He was not four feet away from me. You never heard a squirrel make a noise in your whole life. That squirrel screamed at me for one solid minute. I almost broke down. It was so funny. I have no idea what he was saying to me, but I did not need my spirit to know that I was being rebuked by a squirrel.

Now, have you learned to understand people? There’s a lot you can learn. For instance, I know that I’m going to make some noise here on the microphones. I know that when I see that from a very certain little woman in my life, I am in trouble. That’s closure. That is absolute closure.

You can begin to read people in many, many ways. Do you know how you say soul in Greek? Huh? Okay, it depends on whether you’re Polish or American. In Greek. In Greek. And out of that, we get the word psychology. Study the soul. And we are soulish beings. We are soulical in our nature. I’d rather say soulical than psychological. We’re soulical beings. And we have a world around us to apprehend each other. So, I have a spirit toward God and things unseen and spiritual. I have a soul to the things that are around me that are very real to me.

And we’re told we have mind, emotion, and a will in our soul. And, you know, I can’t find that in the New Testament, but by George, it really seems to be correct. I have a mind, an emotion, and a will, and we could even do it this way. We have the mind, the emotion of the heart, and the will of the neck.

With the mind, we cogitate. We study things. With the will, we decide things. And with the emotion, we have our feelings of human love and so forth. It’s a fascinating audience I’ve got here. My audience just got up and left me. Is the building on fire? No, it didn’t catch fire.

I have, let me do that again, a mind to think, emotions to feel, and to love, and a will to carry out.

Now, I’m going to give you the great secret. There are only three denominations in the world, or a combination thereof.

The mindy people, that’s your Calvinists and your Presbyterians, and the Reform. They think about everything. There are the ones that totally don’t trust your feelings. Ha, ha. Let me tell you something. There are people in this world who are thinkers. And those people, I don’t like them. Those, you thinkers, I want you to know right now, I don’t like you. You think that everything’s got to be thought up. Well, we feelers can feel things you never thought of. And you think because you think, and your logic is thinking, that that is God, and it is not. I have studied theology, and I have studied philosophy, and I’ve gotten into theology so much, and into philosophy so much, that I can get a high. You know, I can get, I can get carried away by that. And if I’m not careful, I’ll think for all the world that was God. Because I’m getting like a drug. That’s not the end of being, sir.

And that’s the mind denomination. You have the will denomination. That’s the Baptist. We’re going to evangelize the world. Tomorrow, have it done by next weekend. We can do it, we can get in there and try. We can do it. I think the last sentence I ever heard as a Baptist, I went to one last Baptist convention, and the president of the convention was speaking, and he did his hand like this, and he was talking about a certain country we should enter. He said, if we will it, if we’ll will to do this, we can do it. It’s a matter of determining to get it done. And that was the last sentence I ever remember learning from a Baptist.

And the emotional people. Of course, that’s your, that’s your Pentecostals. And Charismatics. Yeah, Charismatics. I’m sorry. I used to live back before there were Charismatics. I have a hard time distinguishing them sometimes. Well, Charismatics have more fun. If I have to choose one of those three, I’m going to be a Charismatic. Who cares if I’ve got brain one in my head? I’m having fun. The problem, the problem with people who are very much the feelers, is that they get burned out. And there’s a lot of dishonesty because you have to invent something new to feel about.

“Will” people burn out because they just work so hard for God. Intellectuals, nothing ever happens to them. They’re intellectual to the day they die. And they’re looking down on the will people. And they’re looking down on the emoters. They hate emotional people. They just can’t stand emotional people. Emotional people and people who are thinkers have absolutely nothing in common. And what one hates, the other one likes. And for some strange reason in the great humor of God, God, these two people have a tendency to marry one another.

Someone said of me, there are people who like Gene Edwards, there are people who hate Gene Edwards, but the funny thing is, they tend to marry one another. Oh, my goodness.