How The Human Spirit Works by Pastor Poju Oyemade: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

How the human spirit works

When a person is born again, the Holy Spirit recreates and imparts life into the spirit man. The life force of the flesh is the spirit; the life force of the spirit, for a Christian, is the Holy Spirit. When man died spiritually, there was a severance between the human spirit and the Holy Spirit, that is spiritual death.

The human spirit, independent of the Holy Spirit, still has a function it plays out, this is why people who don't believe in God can still produce great things. The human spirit is the production center of a life, and it uses the same method whether producing good or evil.

The heart is the production center

Proverbs 4:23

"Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." The word "keep" is the same word God told Adam in the garden, cultivate it, guard it from intruders. Whoever has access into your heart has direct access into the experiences of your life.

• The experiences of your life are not a product of what God desires for you, but of what lies in your own heart. God's will for Israel was the promised land, but what they experienced was what was inside their heart, the strongholds there determined the outcome.
• This is why God changed the covenant, "I will write my laws in their minds and in their hearts," to gain access into the heart, which the old covenant could not do.

notifications_active Stay Updated

Join the Readsermons communities for daily nuggets and new sermon alerts.

WhatsApp Telegram

Matthew 12:34

"O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, a man speaketh." A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things. The method is the same either way.

Proverbs 16:29

A violent man entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good. He shuts his eyes to devise mischief, that is meditation, and once devised in his heart in abundance, he begins moving his lips, speaking words consistent with that objective, until the opportunity for its realization is granted.

If you pray for something but never let the spiritual substance of it get into your heart in abundant measure, it will remain a struggle and a disappointment. Whatsoever things are true, pure, of good report, think on these things, Philippians 4:8. That's what it means to let the thoughts God gives you get into your heart in abundance.

Meditation: getting thoughts into abundance

The reason a child learns a nursery rhyme with ease but struggles to recall a biology answer is repetition. In the same way, for the thoughts of God to be integrated into you, there has to be repetition, sitting still and quiet with Him, thinking through until light begins to break within your consciousness. That flash of light is the activity of the Holy Spirit.

• An evil man devises, meaning he fashions out a way that looks impossible by sitting with it. A good man must do the same with God's thoughts, thinking through the challenges rather than ignoring them, "ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established," Proverbs 4:26. Faith is not blind, it is sight of another kind, it is intelligent and strategic.
• Rick Warren sat still for around 30 minutes a day; out of that came a single book, The Purpose Driven Life, the highest-selling Christian book outside the Bible.
• Bill Winston meditated on buying a private jet without telling anyone, and received the scripture "a bird of the air shall carry the voice," which he understood as pointing to the plane.

Two channels of the spirit: imagination and words

Genesis 11:6

The human spirit is designed to accomplish things without limitation from the body or environment; that is part of the DNA of man's spirit since God said, "Have dominion." At Babel, humanity, of one language and one mind, imagined a tower reaching heaven, and God acknowledged nothing would be restrained from what they imagined to do.

• When God gives a promise, the spirit begins to create images of it. "We all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image," 2 Corinthians 3:18. Imagination is your first contact with your future, the first entry into the fulfillment of God's promise.
• The second channel is words spoken that override present understanding. "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not to thine own understanding," Proverbs 3:5. If you only imagine and speak what your mind can already explain, you stay confined; breakthroughs come from imagining and speaking beyond what you currently understand.
• Joseph's decision about Mary changed after an angel appeared while he "thought on these things," Matthew 1:20, showing how meditation opens the door to divine communication.

Two keys: love and joy

• Love: how what you are imagining will be of service to humanity. Jesus never carried out a self-centered miracle; His miracles served the multitude.
• Joy: not because something has already happened, but because light has come, the "Eureka, I found it" feeling. This joy is the last stop before manifestation, a certainty that the thing will work because it did not come from copying someone else, but from personal contact with God's light.

Practicing it

• Three things: imagination, seeing life beyond your current resources or position; words consistent with that imagination; and sustained quiet meditation to keep receiving fresh spiritual material.
• Illustration: sitting to meditate before a watch night service, it suddenly came to mind that the pulpit had not been set on the stage, and it was confirmed the team had indeed forgotten it. That is how literal meditation can get.
• Illustration: meditating on a class of students not as children but as future presidents, judges, and doctors causes the Holy Spirit to supply exactly the information needed to teach and shape them, even though the curriculum itself does not change.

This is spirit-to-spirit impartation, not simply working with the natural mind. As a person meditates this way, they become intuitive, perceiving things ahead of time, because they have taken time to think beyond the challenges others present rather than ignoring them.

• Father, we thank you for this word. We ask by the power of your Spirit that this word take deep root in the hearts of the people, be established within their consciousness and lives, and bring forth massive fruit, in Jesus' mighty name.