MENTORING LETTER 39

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SOUL AND SPIRIT SERIES

Part 1

SAVED OR BORN AGAIN?

There is much confusion in the body of Christ about salvation primarily because most believers do not distinguish between the soul and the spirit. They are certainly NOT the same, nor are they interchangeable. Hebrews 4:12 points out the distinction, clearly suggesting that if we are to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh---if we are to walk by faith and not by sight---if we are to crucify the flesh--then the soul and the flesh must be divided by the two edged sword of the word of God. In order to understand this biblical truth, we also need to have a sense of the differences and similarities between ours soul

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and our spirits. There are quite a few similarities. Though the body is mortal, the spirit and the soul are both eternal. As the body is finite and material, both the soul and the spirit are invisible and without natural substance. As the body has five senses, the spirit and the soul have senses also. The spirit is heaven bound. If it were not for the soul, the spirit would "fly away." The body is earth bound. The two meet and correspond with each other through the activity of the soul. So a basic definition of the soul is that the soul is the mediator between the spirit and the body---an interpreter. A control center, if you will, with the brain of the body as its command center. A person who is alive yet brain dead, is one whose spirit is still in his body but his soul has left. A body without a soul is dead so they turn off the plug and the spirit flies away. However, when the spirit leaves and the soul remains in the body, as long as the spirit does not travel too far into "outer space," the soul keeps the body intact and alive. Out of body experiences are called astral travel by occultists. However, every day, the spirit often takes "little trips" through day dreaming and deeper forms of altered states of consciousness.

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When the body is asleep, the soul is busy keeping things in order. For example, when you are sleeping and your body gets the urge to urinate, the spirit will create a toilet in a very imaginary way. Because I take a water pill at night, this happens to me frequently. The soul tries to "help out" and I see the toilet in the spirit, but something always goes wrong. In a dream, I see myself making the effort, but the sensation in my body continues to increase and my soul continues to try and work things out in my mind, but a mental picture of urinating does not help the situation. So my soul simply wakes up my body and says, "hey Pam, you'd better get your body up before we have an accident in this bed." This little example shows how when you are sleeping, the body is at rest and therefore is at its weakest. The spirit and the soul often fight for control, at times manifested as a strange dream. Demons also try to send their messages to the soul and God will also communicate in dreams, but only to your spirit. While the spirit operates in the unconscious realm of intuition, the body in the conscious realm of the natural world, the soul functions in both realms. For this reason, the soul and the spirit of a born again, saved person must be divided, for God will only speak to your spirit. Here is the thing. When the Holy Ghost draws us to Jesus, our spirits immediately become "born again." That which is

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flesh is flesh. Flesh is a mixture of soul with the body. Flesh is also a mixture of soul with the spirit. So when God "saves us," He gives us a NEW SPIRIT. All of the darkness that was in our spirits BEFORE the Holy Ghost translates us out of darkness into God's marvelous light, our spirits were depraved and contaminated with evil. That is why when we slept, we had so many nightmares. The evil that we saw was merely a reflection of our own dark spirits, contending with demons. When our spirits are born again, all things pass away, all things become NEW. We become a "new creation." God's light comes into our spirits and our spirits become the temple of God. Our spirits are ALWAYS eternal, both before salvation and after it. Before the new birth, our spirits are in captivity to Satan. As soon as we say "yes" to the invitation of Jesus, our spirits are immediately changed, justified, sanctified, seated in heavenly places. We are "translated" or brought out of Satan's dark jail into the marvelous light of Jesus Christ. To be sanctified is to be set apart for God's use--a vessel of God. To be justified is to be treated as though we never sinned. We are washed and cleansed. We are seated in heavenly places immediately, with our prayers having immediate access to the throne of God. I know that rebirth is immediate because the Lord allowed me to actually SEE the process at the moment of the rebirth of my spirit. I was laying on my back on my couch in a birthing position, legs wide open as in labor. Contractions began to occur but they were not in my womb. They were in the chest/belly area, the seat of my spirit. As I lay there, I saw a light, like the hand of God, go into that area, as if it was gently massaging me there. I had about 4 deep "birth pains" and then "voila!" Hard to explain. All I know is that the old gospel song which asks "how did you feel when you come out the wilderness? Did your hands look new and your feet too?" Yes, Lord! lol. I actually felt like I had just been born for the FIRST time. It was like I had no existence before that day on 3/29/1977 at 4pm on a Monday! I was crying and laughing at the same time! What joy unspeakable. I have felt the joy of the Lord many times, but never like the day that my spirit was made new and I was born again. However, the soul said, "Hey, Pam. You are 33 years old. Life goes on. Let's get real, here, okay?" Yep. My un-renewed soul showed up the next day, March 30. It was my favorite aunt's birthday. I'd never missed sending her a card or buying her a gift. So I wanted to call her. The Holy Spirit said "No, Pam. Today is God's day." I struggled

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real hard that day. The Lord told me to sit and think on nothing but Him for the entire day. Try as I might, it was real rough. I wanted to go see about my aunt. As I sat there, my mind thought of all the things I could be doing. I remember thinking, "the toilet needs to be cleaned." I wanted to get up from being before the Lord to clean my toilet. It was the strangest thing because my flesh is not fond of house cleaning. By sundown, I was a sobbing mess!!! That is how the Lord showed me that even though my spirit was born again, the salvation of my soul had to be "worked out." How? By the renewing of my mind. I'm just going by memory here but this is how the salvation of our souls is worked out. We present our bodies----all 3 parts--as a sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God as a reasonable service. Where our soul and our bodies are concerned, we are not to be conformed to this world. Instead, we are to allow ourselves to be "transformed" by THE RENEWING OF OUR MINDS. With a renewed mind, the salvation of our souls is worked out. Why? Because the soul consists of the mind, the intellect, the emotions, the feelings, ie. the individual, human personality that makes each of us different---one from the other. There are no souls that are the same. So the renewal will affect each of us differently. Each soul is an "I AM." However, God is the I AM THAT I AM." So the working out of the soul's salvation often involves wrestling not only with principalities and powers but with God Himself. The Holy Ghost, though the Comforter, He is also the taskmaster. He helps us to put to death the deeds of the flesh for we can not work out the salvation of our soul's without the Holy Ghost. He will put us in situations in order to break the "self" aspect of our soul because the soul is "all about self." I can hear your unspoken question. You are thinking, "what if a person's spirit becomes born again, but that person doesn't do a good job of renewing their souls through dying to self? Will they STILL be saved? I have both a biblical and a personal answer to this question. The answer is if they are born again, "yes, they will." Here is the scripture: It is 1 Cor. 3:14 "If any man's work shall be burnt, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." I saw two instances of this in the death of two important women in my life. One was my daughter's grandmother

whom everyone called "Sis." Sis was a good, strong woman. She was as religious Catholic but she rarely went to church. She lived her life how she chose, as is typical of Catholicism. One of her vices was smoking. It killed her a week before her 80 birthday. When the doctors tried chemo, Sis said, "no, I am going home to die." She did so, in good humor and without fear. However, for years, it was clear to me that Sis was not saved. A day came when the doctors said "she'll die today." But Sis lived a few days more, shocking everyone. One morning, the Lord spoke to my daughter in a dream. He said, "Go to your grandmother and say "Jesus" in her ear. She went. Sis was laying on the bed, eyes closed, looking like she was dead already. My daughter got up on her bed, whispered in her ear, "Jesus." Sis's eyes popped wide open. Looked directly into the eyes of her grand daughter. 30 seconds later, she was gone. As a mother in law, Sis and I had had our issues. But one thing the Lord did. At her wake, He made it real clear to me that He took Sis with Him. In 30 seconds. Certainly she suffered loss both here on earth and with her place in the eternal kingdom. But she is saved. Same thing with another close friend. This woman was strong, demanding, controlling, a matriarch in the truest sense of the word. However, she was Pentecostal and extremely religious. Gladys went to church every time the doors were opened. A younger woman then Sis, Gladys had just retired. Suddenly, she was stricken with a stroke, completely paralyzed. Seemed like she lost her faith, starved herself and died. However, a day or so before her death, Gladys came to me in my sleep, looking young, strong and happy. In the dream, she made peace with me over a minor disagreement. The next day, she was dead. The entire time I knew her, I believed that she was not born again. She certainly never seemed to renew her soul. When did she get saved? Probably on her deathbed. I don't know. What I know is that she is in heaven ---because God revealed it to me. He showed me that Gladys is with Him. Certainly, she suffered loss. She was unable to enjoy the retirement she planned and her family was left feuding and dysfunctional. Yet God provided her a place in his heavenly kingdom. God saves many people at their deathbeds, particularly those who die of debilitating sicknesses and diseases. I suspect this is the case because when the body weakens, the spirit gets

stronger. When I was a pastor, I witnessed this among the sick and dying. The soul weakens, in that it is no longer focusing on "self" and the world. The spirit begins to ascend. This is the true purpose of fasting--to strengthen the spirit and thereby increase its capacity for greater faith. There is a real serious danger to a fast that is not led by God because when the spirit is strengthened, doors are open to BOTH side of the spirit world---Satan as well as God. So through tribulation, trouble, and trials, the Holy Ghost prepares a wilderness for all of us so that the salvation of our souls will be worked out, in fear and trembling. The fear is "the fear of the Lord." I have personally done a lot of trembling. In fact, I trembled much this week. I'll simply say that an ex-husband of mine died on May 9th. I can't go into details about it because of my fear of the Lord. I will simply say that through his death, the Lord sent me a powerful message that helped to transform my soul. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

THE BELIEVER'S PART In spite of the fact that the work of dividing the soul from the spirit is the job of the Holy Ghost, we have a part to play also. The Holy Spirit will not carry out His work without our consent and cooperation. Briefly summarized, the following are conducive conditions set by our diligence and perseverance:

our will must be firmly placed on God's side as the circumstances of life set the stage; the cross of Jesus as set forth in Romans 6:1-14 must be steadily maintained. As we carry out the command NOT to let sin reign in our bodies; when we crucify the affections and lusts, we allow the Holy Ghost to make various adjustments in our likes and dislikes, the selection of the people in our lives, our ambitions and desires, the things in our personalities that we have admired that require change. Generally, whatever we love about ourselves is what God hates, and what we hate about ourselves, God loves, is the general rule. as we delight in the Lord, He puts His desires in our hearts. It is almost an unconscious thing. One day, we look up and we are desiring what He desires and we often don't know HOW that happened. As Jesus said, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Dying to self loses its sting.

To delight in the Lord involves fulfilling these conditions by carrying them out in practice daily. As we become steadily faithful to all that the Holy Ghost has shown us, we will

deliberately refuse the soul life and choose to open ourselves to the higher life of Christ in our spirits. The word of God as the sword of the Spirit is not the bible. Shocked? Well, the bible was not written when Paul wrote his epistles. Surely the word of God includes the written word but it is not solely the written word. This is yet another subject for yet another mentoring letter. To walk after the spirit is to be able to discern what is spirit from what is soul. More on this in part 2.

PAM'S BOOK CORNER:

An Excerpt from my first book, "TO CURSE THE ROOT."

The body is instinctual--- motivated by biological urges and appetites that can only be temporarily appeased. KEY WORDS FOR THE FLESH ARE LUST ANDDESIRE! However, mans outward nature is believed to be balanced by his inner nature of rational mind, willpower, emotions and feelings--- faculties of man that constitute his personality. As the instrument of our thoughts, the mind is the source of information, understanding and reasoning. Likewise, I think, therefore, I AM! The willpower is the faculty for decision making, with the power of choice. It expresses either willingness or unwillingness: ie. I will or I wont! The instrument for our likes or dislikes, is the faculty of emotion. Without emotion, man is insensitive, and cannot feel joyful, angry, sad or happy. As the seemingly endless stretch of a sandy beach point to immeasurable time, mans inner nature is an enduring and perpetual mixture of the worlds influences, both parental,

societal and cultural. As sand is a mixture of clay and bits of rock that have disintegrated over centuries, mans inner nature The urges and appetites of the outer man combine with the thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and feelings of the inner man, producing such qualities as self centeredness, selfishness, self exaltation, self pity, self loathing, self esteem, self love, self hate, self gratification, self-recrimination, self-righteousness, self-satisfaction, self importance and self-seeking, to name but a few. The inner man is the source of self consciousness. Two more names for the inner side of man is THE SELF or the SOUL. THE SOUL is the life that each human being lives. As the soul or inner man is joined to the body or outer man, it becomes mans LIFE. Our lives are simply an expression of the common life shared by all human beings, that each of us receives at birth. All that this life possesses and all that it may become is a product of intellect, thought, attitudes, ideals, love, emotion, discernment, choice and decisions. These are but various aspects of the inner man ,the SELF or the SOUL. As I have compared man to the elements of the ground or soil, we proceed further with this metaphor by comparing mans innermost nature to topsoil. As weeds can fl ourish in sand, so too can unhealthy attitudes and negative emotions produce and cultivate destructive behaviors. To produce good fruit, a farmer or gardener turns over in plowing both the clay and the sand of the ground to reach the top soil. Unlike the sand,

top soil produces good fruit. The top soil of mans ground is his innermost nature. Without plowing under the clay and the sand, topsoil is invisible as it is buried. So, too, is mans innermost nature. Psychology refers to this side of man as the unconscious. Another word for the unconscious is the spirit. As the outer body functions with the five senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste, and as the inner body or SOUL senses with the faculties of reason, awareness and feeling, the innermost body or the spirit senses with balance, intuition, and creativity. The spirit is balanced in that it enables all persons

is also mixed with influences from his outer physical nature. 22

regardless of age, race, gender, national origin, intelligence, education, or social background to begin where they are, and to progressively draw their lives into focus by establishing a personal relationship with God. The removal of demographic barriers offers a broader bond for identity that is not based on racial blood ties or on territorial affinities. In fact, the same opportunity for growth is available to empower each person. In the spirit, we can discover our life goals and purpose at our own timing and on our own terms. Unlike the soul, the spirit is intuitive because insights can be obtained and believed without visible evidence. Very often a person thinks of a certain activity that his mind tells him that he has a right to perform. For

example, in our present day society, the tendency is to believe that sex is a right of every human being and that the sex act should be performed whenever one desires. The outer voice says I feel the urge. The inner voice of the soul says I desire it, I want it, and Ill do it. Yet somehow, in the innermost depth of his being, there seems to arise an unuttered and soundless voice strongly opposing what the mind, emotion or will has considered, felt and decided. If not deadened or muffled, the intuition of the spirit can come to ones aid with a sharp warning, that is totally in contradiction to the mind. With a voice of its own, intuition has the capacity to provide wisdom, revelation and understanding from within itself. Thoughts, reasoning, feelings and emotions may run amuck with worldly opinions, making it difficult to tap the spirits resources. However, taking time to ponder, dream and meditate can make ones innermost voice audible, making sense out of confusion. The innermost, unconscious side of man is creative in that the spirit carries the true seed nature of each person. Motivations, habits, and defense mechanisms are often unconscious and invisible. Nevertheless, through dreams and fantasies, the innermost nature of man has the capacity to creatively reveal and resolve the personal contents of life. Through signals and intimations, each person can become aware of his potential to overcome his current circumstances.

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