You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
2 And the
spirit [ruwach] of the LORD [Yahovah] shall
rest [nuwach] upon him, the spirit [ruwach] of wisdom [chokmah] and
understanding, [biynah] the spirit [ruwach] of counsel [`etsah] and
might, [gabuwrah] the spirit [ruwach] of knowledge [da`ath] and
of the fear [yir'ah] of the LORD; [Yahovah] KJV-Interlinear
2 And the
Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the
Lord. NASB
The spiritual life applies to believers in Christ only. No unbeliever (anyone who has not believed in Christ) has a spiritual life. They (unbelievers) are simply carnal man (or woman), made up of body and soul and they have only the Lake of Fire to look forward to when they leave this world.
In order to have a relationship with God, you have the have the mechanisms with which a relationship is made possible. That mechanism begins with a human spirit. A human spirit is acquired only at the moment when one believers Christ. It takes only a second for God to create a human spirit in you and impute eternal life into it. The humans spirit is the vessel or the container, and eternal life is the life component that is entered into the human spirit vessel.
Anyone who has believed in Christ has a human spirit. Anyone who has a human spirit now has access to heaven, or you could call it an entry ticket for permanent residency in heaven. Without your ticket, without your human spirit you will never get into heaven. Believing in Christ is the only means of gaining a human spirit, and when you do believe in Christ, then your gaining a human spirit is automatic and it is permanent. You can never lose your spirit. You can never lose your access into heaven. That is Gods promise.
But there is more to life than just being saved. When you believe in Christ we call this being born again. That is the function of the human spirit being created in you. It is a life, and eternal life which is born inside of you. Once you are born, then you can never be unborn. No one can reverse the birth process after it has been completed. Try asking your mother if you can reverse the birth process, and if you live through her response, then maybe you will never ask a stupid question again.
When you have been born again, at that same instant, the moment when you believed in Christ, many things occur simultaneously. One of those things that happens is that the Holy Spirit enters inside of you and indwells in you. This is not an emotional experience. You do not feel it nor sense it in any way. It just happens. The Holy Spirit does not interfere in your thought process nor in any of your daily activities, but He does offer you the opportunity of growing up spiritually through the use of His power, and that is really where the spiritual life function actually begins.
We have called this, being in fellowship, throughout our study, but here, Isaiah gives the example of the action of the Holy Spirit as He 'rests' on the person of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. This has never occurred before in history and in fact, Jesus was the prototype of this pattern of life for all of the believers who would and who will, live in the Church Age. The Church Age is our dispensation, or our era in human history.
Prior to Christ, this indwelling never occurred. What occurred in the ages prior to the First Advent, was indument, wherein the Holy Spirit would empower, on a temporary basis, certain individuals and then He would give them certain powers or gifts, or abilities, and such. Some of the priests, and prophets, and kings and judges, and such, had this blessing, but it was not a universal blessing for all people. Only a certain few received it.
Today, everyone who believes in Christ receives the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and with it comes all of the power and blessings which are available in the spiritual life.
The first and foremost power is that of spiritual growth to maturity. And the reason I say foremost is because with spiritual maturity comes all of the extra blessings, and gifts, and promotions, and everything that is beyond ones ability to imagine, which comes from God both in this life and in the next.
When you are in fellowship, then God the Holy Spirit is placed in control of your soul. He directs all spiritual phenomena through your human spirit, and then into your soul where is builds spiritual assets, where it builds a spiritual complex inside of your soul. That construction project is your spiritual growth and power.
When you are out of fellowship, then the Holy Spirit in not in control of your soul and your whole spiritual construction project is shut down. You are off line with God, so to speak.
So the very first component of your spiritual life begins with being in fellowship and therefore with the Holy Spirit resting, settling down, dwelling, staying, residing, functioning as in a home, managing, and all of this from within your soul.
Without fellowship, your spiritual life is turned off and actually regresses, as an abandoned construction project deteriorates, requiring a lot of 'do over' work to get it back where you left off, and then resume toward a finished state.
In order to get into and retain your fellowship status, all you have to do is name your sins to God the Father (confession), on a current basis, and then forget them. We studied this in detail in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. You acknowledge your failures and God does all of the rest spiritually. And again, this is not an emotional experience. You will not feel anything, nor sense any change in your body or life. The spiritual life is separate and apart from this temporal world. We live on faith, not on feelings.
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