Hi, thank you for joining us again.
In this segment, we’ll continue our discussion on “The Key to Experiencing Christ—The Human Spirit”.
Tom, related to this chapter and this title, can you tell us about this key to experiencing Christ—the human spirit,
and how we can experience Christ with our human spirit?
The key to experiencing Christ, as we’ve mentioned is our human spirit.
And we’ve seen that the Lord now dwells in our spirit.
2 Timothy 4:22 tells us, “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.”
So now we know the Lord is with our spirit, but if we were to experience Christ,
we need to all the time learn to exercise our spirit.
You may say, “Well, where did you get this term exercise?”
In 1 Timothy 4:7 Paul says this, “But the profane and old-womanish myths refuse,
and exercise yourself unto godliness.
For bodily exercise is profitable for a little, but godliness is profitable for all things…”
So, we know here that Paul was not speaking of the exercise of the body or the exercise of the soul.
But when he says “exercise yourself unto godliness,” he was referring to the exercise of our spirit.
So if now we are to experience Christ and enjoy Christ, we need to learn how to exercise our spirit.
We need to enter into a new kind of practice.
Tom, you mentioned that the way to experience Christ is by exercising our spirit.
Can you talk now about some practical ways to exercise our spirit?
That’s really, I’d say, the key to this whole series here is to see that we need to learn how to exercise our spirit.
We need to realize that our spirit is our inner-most part. It’s the deepest part of our being.
So as believers, whatever we do, whether it’s the spiritual practices like praying, reading the Bible,
or whether it’s just the daily life practices of speaking to the people in our family or talking to people at work,
we need to exercise to do everything by sensing this innermost part
and use our deepest part for whatever we are doing.
Now specifically, it’s good to look at what the practice was of the early believers.
In Ephesians 5 it says, “Be filled in spirit.”
And then it mentions a number of things:
“Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing (psalming) with your hearts, giving thanks at all times in all things.”
So actually, it’s not just one thing.
Of course we did mention previously about the importance of calling on the name of the Lord, but that’s only one way.
We should call on the Lord throughout the day but we should also learn to give thanks
and we should give thanks from our deepest part.
We should pray from our deepest part. And if we do this, we will really experience and enjoy Christ,
we’ll touch our spirit, and we’ll experience the Lord in all things.
I really like this verse that you’ve mentioned in Ephesians 5, which talks about being filled in spirit.
And also the points you mentioned about how praying, singing, thanking the Lord,
and even calling on the Lord, whatever we’re doing, whenever we do these things from deep within
and from the deepest part, this is how we exercise our spirit.
Tom, thank you for sharing with us today.
Thank you all for joining us and this concludes our segment on “The Key to Experiencing Christ—The Human Spirit.”