Saturday, July 3, 2010 - Young People’s Study Group Time

Today I’d like to share something from Isaiah, but it’s not something from the training messages. I’d like to talk to you about two important things in your pursuit of God, two faculties that you and I were created with. These two faculties are prominent in the Scriptures, especially in the book of Isaiah. What I am referring to is your spirit and your heart. I hope you will be impressed by this, that you would have a refreshed and uplifted view concerning these two parts of you. I hope that it will enhance your pursuit of the Lord.

“For thus says the high and exalted One, Who inhibits eternity, whose name is Holy: I will dwell in the high and holy place, And with the contrite and lowly of spirit, To revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15)

“Thus says Jehovah, Heaven is my throne, And the earth the footstool for My feet. Where then is the house that you will build for Me, And where is the place of My rest? / For all these things My hand has made, And so all these things have come into being, declares Jehovah. But to this kind of man will I look, to him who is poor And of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.” (Isaiah 66:1-2)

This last verse, verse 2, is one of my personal favorite verses in the Bible. This verse has nourished me, enlightened me, and preserved me. I’d like to share a little bit of this with you. I would like to first impress you that our spirit and our heart are the most crucial things in our relationship with God. There is nothing greater than these two things. They are not only crucial but critical in our Christian life, in our life with the Lord.

We were made with a spirit. Actually, that night when I shared about the great light, there was a verse that is a sister verse to a verse in Zechariah about forming the spirit of man within him. Isaiah 42:5 talks about giving breath to the people upon the earth and spirit upon those who walk on it. I’d like to impress upon you that in God’s creation He made us with a spirit. That is what distinguishes us from all the other creatures. This spirit has a particular function which is to contact God. We can communicate with God. We can have a relationship with God. We can receive God. We can contain God in our spirit. So it is important that God would rank the spirit with heaven and earth. These three things are ranked together. Let me tell you, if you mean business with the Lord, you have to see your spirit. You have to know your spirit and you have to treasure your spirit to the uttermost. I hope you would come into another level of appreciation of your human spirit, which now has been indwelt by Him as the Holy Spirit. It is a mingled Spirit.

My emphasis today is your spirit, your human spirit, the faculty that is a direct result of Him breathing His breath of life into a man he formed from the dust of the earth. This breath is of God, from God, very close to God, and became our spirit. You must take care of your spirit. You must rank the spirit so high. The spirit is incredible. It is everything to God. Without the spirit, God would have no way to work out His economy in you. The spirit is what He has in man. We are enlightened that we have this spirit. However, today, the problem is that we don’t see it and treasure it. And we don’t use it that much. In James it says that people who don’t know they have a spirit and don’t use their spirit are like animals and beasts. Why are the worldly people behaving and acting like beasts and animals? It is because they don’t know their spirit. They fail to realize that they have a spirit. The spirit is what makes you different from animals. The spirit is what defines you as a man. The spirit is your glory. The spirit is what makes us special. You must treasure your spirit above all else. You have to love and take care of your spirit. You have to cultivate it and live a life that revolves around it. You have to give your spirit the preeminent position in your whole being. It has to be so special to you. If you as a young person see that you love and care for your spirit, then you will not sin. You will run away from so many things. You will live differently all of a sudden. You will have a noble existence just because you know you have a spirit.

In the regenerated spirit, you have three parts – intuition, where you can know God; fellowship, which is to communicate, relate to, fellowship, and listen to God; and the conscience, which is God coming to you to condemn or approve something, depending on what is right and wrong, based on His being and His righteousness. The conscience, even in an unsaved person, has some function. These ones may at least live morally, in the realm of right and wrong. When we flee the way of conscience, that’s when we become animals. If you want to be saved from all these worldly things, know your spirit and exercise your spirit because that’s where God is. He has committed Himself to live there and dwell there as the life-giving Spirit. If we love the Lord, we need to love our spirit. This is the way to love our Lord practically. We need to listen to our spirit and spend time with our spirit. I hope that your spirit is enthroned and is at the top. When I meet you, I just want to meet your spirit. When I touch you, I don’t touch intelligence, I just touch your spirit. This is when your spirit has been so uplifted by you in your being that it dominates and rules you and controls you. When that happens, God is controlling you. That is the spirit.

God also made us with a heart. Your heart is just you. Your heart is your soul (mind, emotion, and will) plus your conscience. The heart thinks and decides. The heart and the spirit overlap one another with the conscience. It is through this door that the Lord can migrate out of your spirit and into your heart. We need to take care of our conscience. Eventually, your mind, emotion, and will will have Christ in it. Then your heart will be renewed and be settled and possessed by the very God Himself. Our heart is important because our heart is us. What we think, love, and decide depends on our heart. We better take care of our heart. Don’t say that you don’t have any control, that the devil made you do it. We must say, “I refuse to let the devil make me do it. I have control. This is my heart.” We have to exercise this heart of ours to know God, to think about God. We need to use our heart to love God, to choose God. We need to listen to God in our conscience. Take care of all these things. Guard your heart diligently because out of it are the issues of life; this is from Proverbs. Our whole life depends on how we take care of our heart.

I want to tell you that when your spirit and heart are in the right condition, then you will grow in life instantly, like a rocket. Some young people exist in a place where no life exists. We don’t need to live like this, do we? How should you live? Take care of your spirit and take care of your heart. Really take care of them, day and night. Treasure these two organs of yours and use them. Make sure they are in the best condition. If you are obsessed with your spirit and your heart, then you will grow in life. Do this in a proper way, not in an introspective way. This is the way to pursue God. The spirit is to believe in the Lord, to receive the Lord, and to contain the Lord. The heart is to desire the Lord, love the Lord, enjoy the Lord, and express the Lord. These two things are vital and critical. You are the pride and joy of God. Never have any thought of throwing your life away or of suicide – that is straight from hell. You should love your spirit and your heart. He regenerated our spirit and He is transforming your soul, which is the main part of your heart.

These two verses were with me so much because He speaks a particular condition of lesson. This God, who inhabits eternity and fills space, needs a place to dwell. Eternity and heaven and earth are not His dwelling place. This God is still looking for some place to live in, some place where He can settle down. God is not happy with where He is. He is still homeless. This is what preserved and nourished me for years as a young person. A proper spirit should have many conditions: 1) a lowly spirit, 2) a contrite heart. Remember these two things. If you have these conditions, that will always draw God’s presence.

What is the lowliness of spirit? This means that you are humble. You are not arrogant or proud. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. We always need to exercise to have a humble spirit, to be poor in spirit. You need to be so meek that you are just thoroughly always unloaded, vacant, and available for God to fill. Pray, all the time, “Oh God, create within me a lowly spirit. I want the blessing of being poor in spirit. I want you all the time. I’m always desirous of God and more God.” This is the greatest blessing. This is how I lived my college years. I just want God - that means my spirit is lowly and humble and thirsty. Never say that you know it or you’ve got it – always say, “I need more and I want to receive more of this very God.” You have to be a person who knows your spirit. You need to be lowly, always wanting God. Not more flesh, fun, or world, but more God. We need this kind of spirit.

The heart has to be contrite. To whom will He settle His eyes upon? To him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at His word. Contrite means you have feeling or showing of sorrow, regret for having done wrong, penitent, repentant, remorseful, sorry, shame, conscience-straightened. To this kind of man will He look. I have found this to be the key to blessing. Always, when I come to the Lord, the light shines. Suddenly I realize all kinds of things about me – sin, wrongdoings, transgressions, defects. The more that the light shines, the more terrible I feel. When the light shines, all these things take place and you will be full of remorse and regret. The result is a kind of sorrow. This is the kind of man that God is visiting. Don’t resist it. Don’t be proud. Don’t put it off. Have more times in the presence of the Lord, in the presence of His light, and in the presence of His face, and let the Lord touch you. I didn’t feel darkness, but while the condemning light and exposure was upon me, I felt a surging sense of peace, of love, of rest of the Lord Himself. This kind of experience repeated itself again and again. I can attribute my growth in the Lord to such experiences. This is the beginning of revival. No one will feel like he is okay or clean when God visits them. We are not too young. We need to take the time for Him to do the thorough work in us. 

— Brother Minoru Chen