 Okay, the recording is on. Let's take a moment please to pray together and we'll get started. Welcome everybody to BC 214, developing the human spirit. Merry Christmas, just please pray and lead us in prayer and then we will start. Dear Lord, we thank you for this morning. We humble ourselves before your presence. We pray our God as we spend this time in your presence learning from your word. We pray our God that you would speak to us, help us to understand how to develop our inner man. Pray Lord Jesus that you would encourage us and to help us to cultivate that habit in our daily life Lord Jesus. We thank you for this time in Jesus' name we pray. Okay, can you hear me now? It's okay, all right and let me say I was just trying to adjust my settings. I wasn't sure I could... I can... It's better both. Okay, you can hear me fine. So, let's go ahead and get started. I want to just quickly review what we did in lesson number one which was just introducing us to the fact that we are tri-part beings. Just quickly go through that and then we would move into lesson number two today which we focused on. So, what we said was that we God has created us spirit, soul and body, tri-part beings and the spirit, the soul and spirit together. Refer to as the inner man. We worship God and spirit, we serve God with our spirit and then we talked about last week, you know, at the stage of innocence there is a gradual development coming to know the law of God. So, we said that, you know, and we don't want to say this, you know, very forcefully but we can seem to infer from Scripture that there is a stage of innocence where, you know, God of, we say, an age before the age of accountability some people put it that the human spirit is innocent and then comes to understand the law of God, what's right, what's wrong and then God holds us accountable. The human spirit is without the life of God and before we are born again, when we are born again, we receive the life of God and then we said the human spirit can grow spiritually in several areas, several ways. So, we covered till that and then there were some additional notes that I just for you to read as out of interest the difference between the spirit and the soul, the soul referred, which again is part of the life of the being but you would see that the soul has to do a lot with the appetite. So, the, what we refer to as the emotions, the desires of the person and lastly though, you know, sometimes people would ask some questions about the spiritual realm, can there be emotions felt in the spiritual realm, can people feel, the answer is yes, we see it in the Bible, is there recognition, it can be recognized, yes, the answer is yes, we can recognize people, spiritual realm, will we remember, again, we see from Luke 16, yeah, there is remembrance of certain things. Now, when we get to heaven, you know, maybe God just causes us to forget everything about earth but in hell, we see that the rich man could remember, I have family back there on earth and so on and that actually caused so much torment. Can we see earth from the spiritual realm? It seems like it, we don't know for sure but it seems like, of course, the angels look into the earth, they see what's happening but as we can, believers who have gone into heaven, see earth from heaven, we are not sure, we're not very sure but Hebrews 12 seems to give some picture of this great grandstand that people are cheering us on so maybe those in heaven believers who are in heaven can see us, maybe we are not 100% sure but Hebrews 12 seems to indicate it but we don't know for 100%. But that's okay, we are not too much carried away by it. Let's move to our next lesson as we continue in this learning about developing the human spirit. What I want to emphasize in this lesson today is for us to be conscious about the fact that we are primarily spirit beings. That means if the way we live life, we live from spirit, from our spiritual life outside, you look at yourself that I am a spiritual being and I want to deal with things on the earth. Yes, we handle it in the natural, we handle it with our mind true but we also must bring to bear the spiritual part of us, the things that are in our spirit, we bring to bear one of the things that we are dealing with in life. So if we can recognize and live out of this understanding that we are primarily spiritual beings, so from that perspective I can handle the things that I'm facing in life that will be very, very powerfully important. So I want to just emphasize that in this lesson and then we will in the coming lesson talk about the faculties of the spirit, how to develop those. So the human spirit, the first point, the human spirit is the real person with personality, faculties and functions. So just as in the natural, the outside, the human person, the mind and the body and the soul, people say, okay, this person has this personality. I mean, people are very quiet, some people don't go in, some people are very friendly, some people are very, everyone has their own personality, their own composition. So like that, it is also true of the human spirit. The human spirit actually is the real personality. And there are faculties, like here we say, in the natural body, we say we have five faculties, what we see here, taste, smell and feel, five faculties. Similarly, we find in scripture that the human spirit has at least five faculties, five things it can do for faculties. We will see that. And then functions, the things that the human spirit is capable of the functions of the human spirit. So the human spirit has personality, faculties and functions. So we can see that. Now, in second Peter, chapter 1, 13 to 15, Peter is speaking and he is referring to the spirit as the real person. So let's go there. Second Peter 1, and just see how Peter just talks about the spirit. Second Peter chapter 1 was 13 to 15. I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tense of this body, because I know that I will soon put it aside as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me and I'll make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things. Okay. So notice what Peter is like that he says, I am in this tent, verse 13. As long as I am in this tent, so literally he is talking, he is referring to the body as a house, a tent. But I, it's the real person is living inside this tent, this house. And then he says, I have to put off my tent, verse 14. I must put off my tent. So the real person, I, is going to come out of this, is going to leave this house, the tent. So he's differentiated between the real I and the physical, which is he refers to as the tent of the physical body. So the real person is living inside this house, which is the physical anytime we look at the physical and we think, okay, that's the real person. Well, the physical is the tent, it's the house, the real person is inside the house, I. So you, the real person, is living inside the physical, this body. So think about that. I, the real person, I'm inside the house. This body is the house, the real person is inside. Now, the, we saw this earlier on 1st Peter 3, 4, that the hidden person is the real person. So 1st Peter 3, 4 Peter, let it be the hidden person of the heart. But the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, it is very precious in the sight of God. So it is very interesting. The, so, you know, we see several things. One is the heart and spirit is used synonymously or interchangeably. And the heart and the spirit are referred to as the hidden person, the hidden person. So this word person is very interesting. It's talking about the human, the Anthropos. So the human, the real human is the heart of the spirit, the real human, the real person is the heart of the spirit. That's the real person. And it is a hidden person. And so just as we say, you know, you know, in the natural, we can say this, the spirit person has virtues or character traits. In this case, he's talking about gentleness and quietness. And therefore, we can say it has other traits, gender, discourages, endurance, kindness, so on. So we can say, hey, that person's very generous person. You know, that person's very kind person, that person's very bold person. Now, those are the traits of the real person inside. It is expressed through their behavior. But it is actually the expression of the real person on the inside. That inside person, the real person, which is the heart or the spirit, is then being expressed through the way they behave, whether it's showing endurance or kindness or courage or whatever. We see those character traits. But they're actually traits of the hidden person of the heart. And they're visible to people. And we also mentioned last time that the virtues are incorruptible beauty. I mean, this is the character traits of the inner person is incorruptible. It won't fade away. It will stay through time. And they're very beautiful in the eyes of God, very precious in the eyes of God. So the hidden person has its own traits and traits and characteristics that determines the individual's personality. So the individual's personality is actually coming from the spirit, the heart, or who they are in the heart is being expressed through their behavior. So for example, in Luke chapter 9, in this passage 51 to 56, actually Jesus and his disciples, they are traveling through a particular village. And those people don't receive Jesus. And then James and John says, shall we call fire down from heaven? Like, they're thinking about Elijah who called fire down from heaven. And now James and John want to do the same thing. Maybe we just call fire from heaven and destroy all these people and get rid of them. And then Jesus says, you don't know what manner of spirit you are of or you don't know what you are really, what kind of spirit you are. I mean, you don't know what, you don't even know yourself, the true person you're in. So you're abusing them because they were being motivated at that particular time, James and John, about being motivated by, you know, maybe things like bitterness and revenge or anger and, you know, things that were not right. And Jesus rebukes them. So you don't know what kind of people you are. This thing is not what's coming out. It's not good that they're wanting to take revenge on these people. That kind of spirit, not good. So he rebukes them. And, you know, and so it's important for us to understand that what is really in our heart will come out, you know, in those difficult moments. And Jesus said that in Matthew 15, 15 to 20, he talked about, he said, you know, out of the heart come all these things, you know, Matthew 15, 19, he said, out of the heart, procedural thoughts, murders, all these, these, these deeds that we see people do, the kind of thoughts they have. Where is it coming from? It's coming from the inner person. The thoughts, the intentions, the actions of the inner person are now being expressed through actions, words and actions. And they form the character of person. So who we are in our spirit is so important because that will then express in our personality, it will express in our words and actions. So if we can shape the inner person, the heart correctly, then we can have a very Christ-like personality, a very Christ-like expression in words and actions. So that is where we are joining two. Now, let me introduce today five faculties of the human spirit. We've discussed in the seven functions of the human spirit. So five faculties, seven functions. We'll introduce that today and then we'll get into the details in the coming weeks. That means what we are saying is based on what we see in scripture. Now, all of this is based on scripture. It's not just something we're making up. But based on what we see in scripture, we see that the human spirit has at least these five faculties, which parallel the faculties of the human body. So in one way it's good because it helps understand these five faculties. So in the human body we have psych eyes that can see what we can know from scripture is that our spirit man also has eyes that can see. The human spirit has the ability to see, to see, to see things. So example, the psalmist prayers in Psalm 119, he says, open down my eyes that I may see wonderful things from your law. Obviously, he's not talking about his natural ways. He's got his natural eyes open. He can always read the scriptures. But he's not talking, asking God to open his natural ways. He's asking God to open his spiritual, open my eyes, my spiritual eyes. I want to see some, see things from the law. That means I want to go beyond the text that I'm reading and I want to see you. I want to understand truth. So that way he said, open my eyes. Also, we will see that when our spiritual eyes are open, we not only see spiritual truth, but we can even see things that are in the spirit. We can see things that God is communicating, God is showing to us in the spirit. So the eyes of our spirit. Similarly, we understand our spirit has years. Example, Jesus said, let him who has years to hear, hear what the spirit is saying. Okay, what is he talking about? He's talking about physical fears. No, because at events, everybody has been given physical years to hear. But still, he's saying, let him who has years to hear, hear what the spirit is saying. So that means he's talking about a different kind of hearing. He's not talking about our physical hearing, we can only hear each other. But he's talking about hearing what the spirit is saying. So that means the human spirit has the faculty to hear what the spirit is saying. This is a different kind of hearing. It's hearing in the spirit what the Holy Spirit is saying, what God is saying. So Jesus said things like, you know, my sheep hear my voice. Obviously, okay, we have sheep, he's free to us. But hearing his voice, he's not talking about hearing his voice in the natural. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. If I follow Jesus, we're going to hear his voice. But that's not physical voice that we are hearing. It's something about the spirit that we're hearing. So we can say the human spirit. I'm just giving a few references so we can look at a lot of these references. The human spirit has the ability to hear. Thirdly, we can also feel in our spirit. We can feel. We feel joy. We feel peace. Or we can feel disturbed. We can feel troubled. We're in our spirit. Just like in the physical, we feel cold. We feel hot. We feel tired. We feel energized physically. We're talking about the physical body. We have all these feelings physically. Similarly, the spirit, human spirit, has this sense, feeling. Now, generally, we communicated like this, I feel the presence of God. What do you mean you feel the presence of God? It is not a physical feeling. It is something in your spirit. Your spirit has become aware that God is here. Now, when your spirit has become aware, of course, it will touch your soul and your body. You might start crying. Your body might have some reaction. You might feel something. But really, it starts in your spirit. I feel the presence of God. So that is your spirit becoming aware of the presence of God. Or it may feel energized. It may feel incorrect. It may feel lifted up. You feel in your spirit. So your spirit can feel. And we will see how God uses these feelings in our spirit to speak to us, to minister to us. Similarly, we can think about smell and taste in the spiritual realm. Example, smell. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 2, he says, we are the fragrance of Christ for life to those who are believed or of death to those who are perished. Or in the spiritual realm, we see our prayers are like incense before God. So it's obviously has what is fragrance. Incense is not just bone, but it is there is a fragrance to it. So in the spiritual realm, there is fragrance and smell. And so sometimes we're able to sense that smell in the spirit, meaning there is this pleasant pleasantness in the spiritual atmosphere. And that's a way for us to know that God is moving or God is doing something. And it could be the opposite as we have that so unpleasant smells in the spiritual realm, that is something evil. It could be that kind of smell of unpleasant presence, which is sense. So that's also in the smell. The Bible says, taste is deep, the Lord is good, John and even Ezekiel, they said, you know, there is food to eat. And he says, with the aid, it was sweet like honey, sweet. Obviously, you don't eat paper and feel sweet in your mouth physically. So it is something in the spirit they felt that sweet after they received the word of God. So we can say that there is this sense of taste in the spirit that God will give us time to time, indicating something, especially what we know is the word of God is like honey, sweeter like sweet. So that sweetness, that sweet taste, God's word coming into our spirit. So this introducing these faculties, what we are going to learn is how these faculties can be developed and how God uses these faculties to interact with us. That is what we are going to learn. I'm just introducing this. And we will show all these scriptures. I'm not just making it up and giving us some things here. I've tried to just give some. We will show these scriptures and see how we can therefore develop our faculties. The point I just want to mention here is that these faculties can be trained. That means just as in the site, in what we see, our eyes are trained to recognize things. From a childhood point, okay, this is apple, this is orange, this is banana. If somebody didn't tell us that, we won't know what it is. Okay, it's something. But we have been trained. So our site, when it sees something, oh, this is what it is, because we have been trained. We were taught as children growing up, this is what it is. Okay, so our faculty or site can be trained, even in the things of the spirit, to recognize, oh, this is what is happening. Similarly, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, these faculties of the human spirit can be trained. And the primary tool that we use to train is the word of God. The word of God, we train our spiritual senses. We train these faculties to recognize the things in the spirit. So we will train. And when our faculties, the faculties, the human spirit, train by the word of God, we're not talking about training other ways. Now, people in general, the unsaved people, they can train their faculties to do evildoings. They get involved in the occult, witchcraft, evil spirits, etc., etc. They are training the faculties of their human spirit to do bad things, darkness, so that they can see what's telling, what has happened is that person has trained his spirit to communicate with the evil spirits. And if he was to give that person information, that they're able to tell people's history, this, that, and all, which is to, you know, fair degree, it is correct because they're getting that information from wrong souls, evil spirits. They have trained their faculties of the human spirit to engage with the dark side of things to get all that. So we are not going to go there. We're not talking about that. We're talking about training the faculties of the human spirit with the word of God. And then we can listen to God, listen to the Holy Spirit and understand relations from scripture. Now, similar to the five faculties of the human spirit, we must also recognize the seven functions of the born again human spirit. That means this is what the human spirit is doing inside you, seven functions. Or this is what the human spirit serves inside, the real human spirit should be developed in these areas. And it serves us like this. Okay. So we say seven functions of born again human spirit. First is conscience. Conscience means to go right in the wrong. Conscience is the ability of the human spirit. God is designing the human spirit to know right in the wrong. So that is what we call as conscience. It is the indication of the human spirit that if something is right, thing is wrong. By default, the human spirit is designed like a compass. It's like a right and wrong. It's part of God's thing. That's why we will see in scripture that there is a conscience inside. Why? Because they are a spirit and their spirit is designed like a conscience to tell them this is right, this is wrong. But we will learn as we study, we will study each of these functions in depth. We will learn that the conscience can be suppressed and the conscience can also be killed. I mean, the conscience is dead, no longer functioning. So then that's why we can understand that's why sometimes people can be so wicked and they wonder how could somebody do this? And how could that person do like this? Doesn't he have a conscience? He was born with a conscience but over time the conscience was suppressed and even the conscience was killed, no longer there. So he doesn't have any heart, no feelings of compassion, no feeling of empathy, nothing very beginning. So people can do such things, no conscience. But every person is born with a conscience, they're born, the spirit itself serves as a conscience, right and wrong, inside the person. The spirit serves in knowing that it's revelation and knowledge. So the human spirit, what is the function of the human born again? So we are focusing on the born again human spirit, it is to receive revelation, knowledge of God, other things of God. So just like in the natural, we develop our minds by learning and the more you learn, the better you can live in the natural, live the natural life. The same way, the more the spirit receives revelation, knowledge of God, the more better it can live the spiritual life. So that's why we have to receive spiritual revelation and knowledge. Thirdly, the function of the human spirit is to communion God, communion, it serves to worship and fellowship with God, that's part of the function of the human spirit, we have to develop that, develop the communion with God. Number four, fourthly, we will talk about, we'll talk about each of these. The human spirit is also like a container, that means this is where God deposits, God pours his life, nature, grace, power, glory, so that through that it can be poured out, it can be released. So we see that the human spirit is also like a container. So the container can be full, half or empty, so we need to fill it up. Number five, it also has identity, who you are. So the function of the human spirit is to serve in giving us our identity. So that is very important that if I can learn or discover my identity, that my spirit discovers its real identity in Christ, and the biggest live out of that. This is who I am, and I live out of that, no questions about that identity in Christ, then the personality of the person will change, it will become according to the identity that we have in Christ. The human spirit can also take action in spiritual things, just like in the physical, the physical body can do things, we have our hands and feet can do things. In the spirit, we can take action through believing, through serving, through interceding, through fighting, getting things done in the spirit. So we can take action in the spirit. So we must learn to do that. And lastly, number seven, the human spirit also grows. It is developed into Christ like this. So seven functions of the born again human spirit, which we are going to talk about as we progress. The five faculties, the seven functions, this is what the human spirit inside you, the real you must be developed in to serve well, to function well within us. So in closing up this chapter, we are going to talk about the fact that the born again spirit needs to be nurtured. And in the Bible, we see this, that when we are born again, the Bible is teaching us, we are like babies. And the Bible says, from that stage of babyhood, we have to grow up becoming like young people, and then becoming like sons and daughters, and becoming like fathers and mothers. So spiritually, the human spirit has to grow to become bigger, stronger. And so as the faculties are developed, and as we are developing in our functions, we are actually mature. We are going out of being babies, to becoming adults, to becoming fathers and mothers. Just like in the natural, there is a stage of stages of growth and development. So as the faculties, the natural speaking naturally, as the babies, faculties are developed, and the functions are developed, now the babies are able to do things, stand up, walk, talk, understand, learn, etc. The functions are developed, the faculties are developed, what is happening? That baby is no longer a baby, it's becoming a child, it's becoming a young person, it's becoming an adult, and then eventually grows into being a father or a mother. So also, in the spirit, as born again, and I'm speaking exclusively now about belief, as born again people, the born again human spirit needs to be developed in its faculties and its functions. So the five faculties must be trained, the functions must be developed, and as the faculties and functions are developed, the person is growing to becoming a father and a mother spiritually, developing spiritually. And then, of course, the way we live will glorify God, will be more Christ-like, and we will be able to serve better. So will in the kingdom of God. So that's why we need to develop the human spirit to nurture, to develop. And so that's what we're going to discuss. So in the weeks to come, we will address the five faculties, how to develop it, how God uses it, and how to develop it. We will address the seven functions, how to develop those functions, and then how God basically, how God can be glorified in our lives as we grow spiritually and develop the human spirit. And like we said, in our spirit, we worship God, in our spirit, we serve God. So as the faculties and functions are developed, our communion with God is going to become stronger, and our serving of God is also going to become more effective. Okay. So let me pause here. Any questions for today in today's class? Everybody's with me so far? Okay. So let's take a moment to pray, and we will wrap up for today. I know this little short class, but it was just outlining the direction in which we are going, the things we're going to be covering in the coming weeks. We delve into each of these, and hopefully we can all learn how to develop our spirit or develop spiritually. May I request somebody to please pray close and then we will dismiss. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to the name of Jesus. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the class that we had. Gaur, we thank you that you're helping us to open our eyes and the heart and to understand these deep truths about life, Lord. There is a realness living inside us, a spirit. God help us to nurture it each and every day by focusing on your word more and more. And as we listen to this class, God, I just pray that me, myself, and all my classmates, we will put everything into action. We will try to nurture our spirit because out of it, everything comes out, Lord. Help us to get deeper in our relationship with you. Help us to put everything that we learn in action so that we can glorify you on this life that we live through every single thing that we do, that people will see us and know that you are God. Be with us and guide us. We thank you for Pastor Ashish, and we thank you for every single thing. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you for being part of the class today. See you all the next day. God bless. Bye now. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.