What Did You Receive When You Were Converted to Christ

Keep a soft heart. The heart must be soft. Toward whom? Toward God. Toward whom? Toward all the brothers and sisters. Then third, toward heaven. There’s only one class left. There’s only one group left. If you have a soft heart toward the Lord, a soft heart toward the brothers. One word. Your enemy. Didn’t you know everybody else is your enemy? They don’t look like enemies, but they are. Every teacher I teach with at the school where I teach is my enemy if they aren’t a believer. Every one of those people would have me ensnared in the educational world if I weren’t careful, or they would try to bring me into their worldliness or something.

Keep a soft heart towards your enemies. But I brought up being soft toward our enemies because the Lord admonishes us about the heart: “Love your enemies,” which is the hardest to love. And even those who are ensnarled by the enemy, we love. We fight him, we war with him, but we don’t make the world’s people who are ensnarled by Him; we don’t hate them, even if they aggressively hate us, even if they imprison us; we just don’t hate them. If there’s anything that can be learned in the season that we’re in right now, it is to be utterly soft toward absolutely everyone. Our flesh lurches right at the door right now. Every instant we walk, the flesh is ready to take over at a moment’s notice. The Lord gave you a soft heart at conversion; this is no time to harden it. Keep it very, very soft, very soft.

Alright, the Lord gave us a heart of flesh. The second thing He gave us was what? He gave us God and God’s life, then He gave us a heart of flesh. The one that follows right after that, what does He give us? Very similar. He gave us a new spirit. He gave us a new heart. You got Ezekiel 26:20, 36:26. Alright, you want a new spirit? Okay. Ezekiel 36:26 also, Colossians 2:13, Psalms 42:1 and 2, and 1 Corinthians 2:14. He gives us a new spirit. What are we speaking of when we speak of a new spirit? He will give us a new spirit.

Do you know what we’re referring to? You have heard it said, man is three parts: spirit, soul, and body. Brother John taught you that this morning. A spirit, a soul, and a body. Alright, my body. With this body, what do I contact? I contact the physical world.

Something within me is my soul. Through our body, we contact other people’s minds, emotions, and wills, but it is a very inner, subjective exercise of our soul. I think of something, and I express it with my tongue. I contact other humans and communicate with them with my soul. We must be clear about this: in the garden, Adam contacted the fruit with his hand, but he decided to contact it with his soul. When God created him, He gave a body to contact the outer world, the physical. He gave a soul primarily for contacting one another and for our own self-consciousness. You might even say the body is other consciousness; the soul is self-consciousness. In the garden, when man ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, at that time He lost the function of his spirit. He lost the function of his spirit.

Now then, if the body is for other consciousness, the soul is for self-consciousness, what is the spirit for? God consciousness. The spirit is for the contact of God. It is with the spirit we contact God. I’m telling you that right here is the first key to the experience…the continuing experience of life. Whatever experience you had that day of the Lord, it was simply that spirit coming in. He gave you a new spirit. Well, we can say it was new, or we can say it was renewed; it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you it was in such bad shape, it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes we say, “Oh, the car’s got a new engine in it,” but the block is the same. But the pistons, the rings, the inserts, all the little things inside that matter, the nuts and the bolts have all been replaced. God gave us a new, or renewed, spirit without touching it.

What do you contact a book with? Yeah? But even sight isn’t sufficient; mind and what will you contact God with? Absolutely. Who said that? Bill said, “You contact God with your heart.” Bill, may I? With your heart, you love Him, but it is not with your heart you touch Him, nor contact Him, nor know Him. After you know Him, you will love Him with your heart, but you must first contact Him. Therefore, brothers, how do you contact God? With your spirit? With your spirit. How are you going to experience God? Spirit. How will you know that?

Which are you more interested in? Knowing yourself, knowing a tree or a wall, or knowing the Lord? Alright, then I want to say to you, brothers, probably as Christians, we need to start giving a little attention to our spirits. For it is through the Spirit we contact the Lord. Now, God gave you a new spirit to contact Him. When He gave you the spirit, He can communicate with you in spirit, and in that communication, no matter what it is, there comes a love for the Lord out of the heart. Have you ever considered any time in your life when you were really touched by the Lord, no matter what the situation was, that it didn’t produce a love for the Lord? Always. The heart is stirred by the Spirit’s conduct here.

Here is a burden of mine today. I have said this so many times, but today, because I find something reasonable here that has to do with the Bible, doesn’t mean I’ve contacted the Lord. If I find something that is just absolutely correct and right and proper, it doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ told us in the scripture, “Guard your mind.” Oh, we need the biggest sentinel in the world standing at the mind. The mind can start functioning and spiraling until it convinces itself of anything. We’ll say it one more time, “He who sits on a totem pole, a telephone pole, and talks to self comes up with many weird ideas.”

Don’t let yourself get stuck primarily in the mind. I don’t mean to give up all rationality; I don’t mean to reject the thinking, but it isn’t primarily the mind and then the spirit. It is primarily the spirit and then the mind. I may even have to go through the mind to get to the spirit. That’s okay. That’s really proper order. Then the spirit is energized and touches and renews the mind. But if I start in the mind, sit down there, I don’t care what spiritual subject I deal with, I am not in the proper place. I must go into the spirit.

You know the Lord Jesus Christ is absolutely in disagreement with everything in my spirit. Did you know that? Yeah, yeah. In my spirit, the Lord is just in disagreement with everything. I want an automobile; He doesn’t want me to. I want to live in a certain place; He doesn’t want me to live in a certain place. I want to marry a certain girl. He doesn’t want me to marry a certain girl. I want to make a lot of money. You just need to be willing to be poor. I want to save the kingdom of God. He’s doing His best to lose it. Everything about me is usually found in reverse…to be in reverse order tonight, sir. Now I’m not going to ask you to go around beginning today and do everything opposite of what you want to do. It has nothing to do with the spirit. That’s just a double mind. Just come to the Lord’s spirit, live there in your spirit; the rest will come. It will take care of itself.

Now I want to say this to young Christians, those of you who are really new in the Lord, or if you’re new in an experience of spiritual things, and I don’t care if you’ve been a theologian for thirty years. If you have not been in your spirit, you are a babe in Christ. As far as that goes, you’re worse than a babe in Christ. You have got problems; you really have got problems. I want to urge you, brothers, who are new in Christ, to live a simple life. Be very simple. Don’t start a movement to evangelize the world in our generation. If you’re a new Christian, keep your life very simple. Then, if a situation comes up, go to a brother with more experience and ask him to help you understand your spirit. Let someone else be ambitious. Right now, you spend the next two years getting to know the Lord.