 Okay, recording is on. Good morning and welcome everybody to this brand new semester. Spring 2023 and welcome to this course on PC214, Developing the Human Spirit. I'm really excited about sharing this course with you and the things we're going to learn. I trust it will be a blessing to all of us. Let's pray together and then we will get started. Could somebody just lead us in prayer and then we will start. Go ahead, Zafina. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this beautiful day and for the class we are about to have. God, as we learn this course, help us to get each and every word into our heart and help us to translate the truth into action in our lives so that people will know that you're God, so that your light will be shining through our lives and our actions and in everything that we do. I give Pastor Ashishan to your hands. Be with him and guide him. And we pray that this whole semester will be a blessing to us and it will help us to get a lot more deeper in our relationship with you so that we can proclaim this gospel much more boldly for your glory. Lord, be with us and guide us throughout the session. Give us the good Wi-Fi connections that we need and everything else we give into your hands in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right, just one quick announcement. We will not be having classes next three days. That is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday because we're going to be having our Christian Leaders conference. We have that once a year in the month of January. So the next three days we're having conference here. The good news is this conference will be live-streamed online and also, of course, it will be recorded and the sessions will be available. So you're welcome to tune in live or to listen to the recording of the conference. This year the team is on intimacy. And so we'll be focusing on that. Just coming, bringing us all, reminding us all about the importance of being in a place of intimacy with God and doing ministry out of that place. So I just want to let us know there won't be classes, but please join or listen to the conference recordings if you are interested, right? So let's introduce this course and get started with this course. I've put both the course introduction and the first lesson in the Classwork section so those of you online can get it. You can get it from the Google Classroom. Let me just go ahead and share the... So this course, developing the human spirit, actually it's a relatively new course. We only introduced it last year. So this is the only the second time we are teaching this course. So it's a new course. And I felt it was important for us to do this as a course, to emphasize this aspect of Christian life and ministry, which is about the spiritual aspect, the human spirit, and how to really develop our human spirit. Because so much of what we do, we are depending on our mind and our body, but really we are spiritual beings. And so we have to live out of our spirit. We have to live out of what God is doing inside our innermost position. And from there we have to live out. So if we don't do that and only limit ourselves to our soul and body, that's what we can do mentally and physically, then we become very limited. And as Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 3, we live like ordinary people or mere men, instead of being living as spiritual people. So I felt this course was important, just to enlighten us on the importance of the human spirit and how we develop our spirit and live out of that, do ministry out of that. So we introduced this course for the first time last year. And so it's still a relatively new course. And hopefully we will enjoy this. We're going to talk about some things we cover in this course. It's about understanding the human spirit, to understand how the human spirit functions and how the place the spirit is supposed to have in our whole existence. And so understand that. Understand the functions of the human spirit and the ways we can develop our human spirit. Just as we develop our mind, we all go through education and we keep learning and all of that. We develop our mind, we take care of our body. You must also develop our spirit and we want to understand the importance of doing it. There's only one lecture every week because it's not like a very vast content, content you have to cover. Nonetheless, it's important content that we will be covering in each of these lectures on developing the human spirit. The rest of the things in terms of assessment, grade, everything's going to be simple as you are familiar with. So we are going to start off our first section in understanding the human spirit. All of you can see the notes here. The first lesson we're going to talk about. The first thing we must understand is what the Bible teaches. I think many of us are familiar with this about spirit, soul, and body. We will look at these three scriptures. Again, these are familiar scriptures for us, but it's good to look at them. Can somebody please read for us? First Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 23, please. First Thessalonians 5, 23. Somebody could read that for us. So we'll look at these three scriptures. First Thessalonians 5, verse 23. First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 23. Now, may the God of peace make you holy in every way and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. Thank you. Let's also read Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12. We will read these verses and then we'll all compare it. We'll study it together. Hebrews 4 verse 12. Somebody could read that for us. Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12. For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest to its sword, cutting between soul and spirit, and the point and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Amen. And one more passage scripture. First Peter chapter 3. And we're going to read verse number 4. First Peter 3 verse number 4, please. First Peter chapter 3 verse 4. You should clothe yourself instead with the beauty that comes from within the unfading beauty and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. So let's look at these three passages of scripture. So in 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, Paul is saying, you know, may God sanctify you completely. So he's talking about you, meaning as people. May God make you holy completely. And then he goes on to explain that you, the you, who is he talking about? May God sanctify you completely. And then who is you? Your whole spirit, soul and body. So he says, may God make you holy completely. And to explain it further, he says, may your whole spirit, soul and body. So this, from this scripture, we understand that every person is a tripod being. Three parts to us, spirit, soul, body. So if you look into the Greek, the spirit is pneumum. The soul is suke and the body, the physical body, you know, could be just depending on the body. That's the flesh or the physical part of us. So he's talking about three parts. I forget the Greek word now for body, but let me see if I put it here in the notes. Yeah, soma. So the Greek, the word soma. So he's saying your whole spirit, soul and body pre-punch to us. The spirit is that part of us, which is spiritual or connects with the spiritual realm. The suke, the soul is the seed of the mind, the intellect, the emotions, the psychological part of us, the emotional part of us. And the body, of course, we all know it's the outer man, the outer part of us. Now, when we look at Hebrews 412, he's talking about the division of soul and spirit. That means the soul and the spirit are distinct parts because there is the distinction of soul and spirit, division of soul and spirit. So the soul is not the spirit and the spirit is not the soul. They are distinct parts of us. And yet there is so much of overlap. Together the Bible talks about the inner man. So when the Bible talks about the inner man, we are talking many times of the soul and the spirit together or sometimes in the context of where it is written, we can say, well, it's talking only about the spirit or maybe addressing only about the spirit. But generally inner man, we're talking about spirit and soul together. But the spirit and soul are distinct parts of us because he says in Hebrews 412, the word of God divides us under soul and spirit to separate parts of us. But because they are inner parts of us, they overlap and their functions sometimes are parallel. So we can sometimes even get confused. Is that my soul or is that my spirit? Is that coming from my spirit? Is that coming from my soul? But the key here in Hebrews 412 is the more we engage with the word of God, the more we can see the distinction of spirit and soul because it is the word of God that goes deep to the place where it divides or distinguishes spirit and soul. So the key here, which we will come back to later on is as we engage with the word of God, we are able to clearly see the distinction between soul and spirit. Or this is from my spirit. This is actually my soul, my own emotion at work and so I must deal with that a little differently. So from Hebrews 412, two things to take away. One is the spirit and soul are distinct parts of us, even though many times they may seem like the same thing because they're inner parts of us. The second takeaway from Hebrews 412 is it's the word of God that helps us distinguish spirit and soul. What is of the spirit? What is of the soul? And he tells us here it is a disson of the thoughts and intents of the heart. So the word of God can help us clearly distinguish these thoughts and intents. Where is it coming from? Is it from my spirit? Is it from my soul? Two takeaways there from Hebrews 412. And then first Peter chapter 3, very interesting when Peter is writing here. Of course, the context is about conduct and how he talks about the art word adorning and all of that. That's the context. Now, I don't want to emphasize the context, but what I want to emphasize is what he actually says in first Peter 3 verse 4 about the heart. Now, in the New Testament, the word spirit and the word heart are used in a synonymous way. Spirit, heart. So in the New Testament, you use the word heart. You see the word heart. He's talking about the spirit man, the inner person, spirit person. Now, I said it in the New Testament because in the Old Testament, the word heart is used in a more general way. It can be used to talk about what in the New Testament we refer to as the soul, meaning the soulish part, the mind-intellect emotions in the Old Testament. So in the Old Testament, you look closely at the context and say, okay, yeah, that's addressing the soul or it's addressing the spirit. But in the New Testament, the distinction is a little bit more clearer when the New Testament used the word heart. Very often, most likely, it's talking about spirit. So now, in 1 Peter 3, 4, it says, notice what it says, let it be the hidden person of the heart. So a lot of things we can take away from 1 Peter 3, verse 4. The hidden person of the heart. That means the heart is actually the real person. But the heart is the hidden person. That means it's not what we see outside. Outside, yeah, you see me right now. We are seeing the outer person of me. That's what I look in my soma, in my body. This is my appearance, wearing certain clothes now and this, et cetera. That is the outward appearance. But the real person is the hidden person of the heart. So in the context, Peter is saying, don't worry so much of the outer person because the real person is the hidden person. The person of the heart. Your heart is the real you. I can say like the spirit is the real you. That's the real person. It's the hidden person. The second thing he says is that this hidden person, sorry, has incorruptible beauty. That means the virtues of the inner person, the spirit person carries character. Just as the outer person has its own character, its appearance, et cetera. So the outer man, you look at the outer man, oh, this is what, you know, his skin tone is brown. His hair is black. He is six feet, whatever at all. He's like this. He's like that. That is the outer person, you know, the characteristics of the outer person. But the characteristics of the outer person can change. You know, their black hair will turn gray. All those things will happen. It is fading away. But Peter is saying the virtues of the hidden person, they're incorruptible. They're incorruptible, right? That means who you are really on the inside in your spirit. And what you carry in your spirit is something that can stay through time. It can even get better through time. Whereas the outer man is fading, right? We're all growing old and older. The outer man is perishing. But the inner man, the spirit is being renewed and the beauty of the inner person is incorruptible. And then he mentions some of the characteristics that make the beauty or the virtue of the inner person. He talks about a gentle and quiet spirit. So gentleness, quietness, that is peacefulness. These are characteristics, you know, just like we mentioned. You look at the outer man, yeah, brown skin, black hair, this, this, this, this. Okay, those are characteristics of the outer person. Now, how do you talk about the characteristics of the inner person? Oh, the characteristics of the inner person are things like gentleness, quietness, peacefulness. And those characteristics, they are incorruptible. So the inner person, so what are we saying? We are saying the hidden person, the heart, the heart, your spirit is the real person. The spirit has characteristics. That is where your real character is. Thirdly, we are saying the characteristics of this spirit person are incorruptible. They endure through time. They could get better even through time. Or of course, if the person is evil, he gets more evil. But we are talking about from a believer's perspective. The characteristics, the hidden person, the characteristics of the hidden person, the heart is enduring, it's incorruptible. And then he also says, in the sight of God, it is very precious. Think about this. That means who you are in your spirit is what is precious in the eyes of God. So God is not impressed by my outer person. Of course, God created the body and we take care of the body and all of that. But what is God looking at? Here he says, it is this character of the hidden person, the heart, which is very precious in the sight of God. You know, we know in the Old Testament, Samuel said, Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. So we know that. But Peter is taking it a step forward. He's saying, the character of the spirit is very precious in the sight of God. That means you can imagine it like this. God looks at your spirit. He sees gentleness. He sees those characteristics of maybe love, maybe compassion, maybe patience, maybe gentleness, quietness, humility. You know, those attributes of those characteristics of your heart and God says that is very precious. The heart is the real person. The heart has character or characteristics. These characteristics are enduring through time. And these characteristics are what is precious in the sight of God. So if you and I, we want to put on our best before God, so to speak, it is the character of the heart that we must focus on. And so we want to learn about that. And you know, one of the things God says, I resist the proud, but I give more grace to the humble. That means these characteristics of the heart, they actually draw the grace of God on our lives. They draw the grace of God upon our lives. Why? He says, I resist the proud. What is the pride? That is the characteristics of the heart. The characteristics of the heart. He says, okay, there's pride. I resist it. But there's humility. I'm giving more grace. It draws God. It draws. He says, you draw near to God. He'll draw near to you. But what is it that draws God near to us? The heart. Blessed are the pure in heart. They will see God. So what is going on in my heart? It draws the grace of God that attracts the very presence of God. So the heart of man, and talking from a perspective of us believers, our heart, the condition of our heart, or our spirit is so important. And then we can take this further. Let me look at a few more scriptures here. I'll share this PDF now at this point. So like I mentioned a little earlier in the New Testament, when we say the inner word inner man, it's the spirit and soul together. So when you read about the inner man or the inward man, and this is a term the Apostle Paul uses often. For example, in 2 Corinthians 4.16 he says, though our outward man is perishing the inner man, the inward man, is being renewed. In Ephesians 3.16 he says, you be strengthened with mind by his spirit in the inner man. So he's talking about the inside person being strengthened. And what happens at death? At death the soma or the body decays. But the inner man, which is spirit and soul, they go either to heaven or to hell. So again there you have to understand that the functions of the brain, the brain stops, the brain is a physical organ that dies. But that doesn't mean we seize having feelings. Because when you look into the scripture, a simple example is the story of Lazarus. The rich man in Lazarus in Luke 16, Jesus said, the rich man went to hell. Lazarus was in Abraham's bosom. And this man in hell could feel the torment. Now he said, oh, may Lazarus dip his finger in water and come and touch the tip of my tongue. So that means though these people are dead and their inner person is gone to heaven or hell, in that this was the Old Testament. So Lazarus was in Abraham's bosom. The rich man was in hell. He could feel. He could even remember there was consciousness. He said, Lord, please send somebody to go and speak to my brothers. I don't want them to end up here. So there was that consciousness and there was that emotion. So what we're saying is at death, the body decays, the soma decays, but the inner man, the spirit and soul, they go to heaven or hell and there is consciousness, there is awareness and so on. That's this little background here. Let's continue talking about the importance of the heart. In John chapter four, let's go now to John four and we look at these scriptures here. In John four, 21 to 24, Jesus teaches us something very important. Again, we are familiar with John four, but it's to look at it from the context of the human spirit. So John chapter four, verses 21 to 24, Jesus is... He's talking to this woman at the well of Samaria and he says, she's asking, which mountain must we go to worship? And Jesus says, look, you're not going to worship. It doesn't matter which mountain you go. It's not this mountain, that mountain. But then the key verse here, verse 24, he says, God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. God is spirit. God is a spiritual being. God is spirit. He's a being in the spiritual realm. God is spirit. So therefore, our primary interactions with God is spirit to spirit. We interact with God's spirit to spirit. God is spirit. We worship him in spirit. We interact with him in spirit. He interacts with us primarily in the spirit. And that doesn't mean God cannot touch our soul or God cannot touch our body. Of course he does. But our primary interactions are spirit to spirit. And that's important for us to understand because when we want a touch of God, many times, okay, we're waiting for something to happen in the natural, something happening here. But when we want a touch of God, we should first look at spirit to spirit, that God will touch us in our spirit. And through our spirit, he will impact, touch our soul and body. That's primary way. He can circumvent that, of course. He can go straight to the soul and the body, of course. But in our interactions with God, primary interactions, spirit to spirit. Paul reinforces this or he reiterates this in Philippians chapter 3 verse 3. Somebody could read that for us. For us, Philippians chapter 3 and verse 3. Philippians 3 verse 3. We will also read Romans 1-9. We look at both these scriptures together. Philippians 3-3 and Romans 1-9. Somebody could read that for us, please. Philippians 3 verse 3. For we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. And Romans chapter 1. We look at these two together. Romans 1 and verse 9, please. Romans 1-9. For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son that without ceasing I may mention of you always in my prayers. Thank you. So Jesus said, when you worship God, worship in the spirit because God is spirit. Paul is writing, Philippians 3, we worship God in the spirit. He says we have no confidence in the flesh. That means I am not trying to impress God or trying to connect with God through my flesh. Now, of course, the flesh, the body is important. We have to keep it in subjection. We have to keep it, you know, honorable before God. It is important. But we worship God in the spirit and we are not trying to impress with the flesh. Do we worship God in the spirit? But over in Romans 1-9, he says, I serve God with my spirit. That means our ministry starts in the spirit. I serve with my spirit or out of my spirit. It's starting there, not in the flesh. So example, I'll just give a simple example. Suppose I'm going to go to preach. Okay, I think about what clothes to wear. I'm going to be on stage. I have to wear a nice shirt. It has to be nicely ironed, clean, a nice trouser. Yeah, that is good. I'm not saying we shouldn't. You dress properly. You respectfully, because you're going to do something very important. So of course, you want to dress well now. But the ministry that's going to happen, it's not going to happen because I wear some nice clothes. It's going to happen because of what is in my spirit. I serve Romans 1-9. How do we serve God? I serve with my spirit. So the ministry that's going to happen, it's going to happen out of what is going on in my spirit. Example, I want to worship God. Of course, we will tune all our instruments and make sure our music is good. Okay, that's important. I'm not saying it's not important. Yeah, you do all that, do it well. But when we worship God, we worship God in the spirit. So my spirit has to connect with God. If I have great music, all of that, but if my spirit is not connecting with God, then I really haven't worshiped God. I have everything outside. But I don't serve God with my flesh. Or with these things, we worship God with our spirit. It has to be a spirit-to-spirit connection. So our worship of God and our service to God or for God both come out of our spirit. So the condition of our spirit is so important. So important. So in the ministry, we are all interested. We are all preparing. We are all involved in Christian ministry. And it's okay. I'm going to serve God. But how do we serve God? It's not the outside. Outside to a certain extent. Yeah, we have to, you know, walk properly and so on. But more important than that is we serve God with my spirit. It's a spiritual service. And therefore the condition of my spirit is so important. And that's what we want to focus on. How can I develop my human spirit? How can I, you know, keep my spirit in the place where it should be so that I can serve God? Well, it's what we will journey into in this course. And how do I connect with God in my spirit so that out of my spirit we can minister to God. And many of us may have experienced this. You know, you go into a situation, maybe a counseling situation. And sometimes, you know, when people, I'm about to talk to people. So I say, God, I have no idea how to handle the situation. It's so complex. It's so difficult, you know. And I don't know what to do, God. But then you just go in, boldly in the situation. And then out of your spirit comes the wisdom of God. Out of your spirit comes. And you're, you know, you're like, okay, where did that thought come? Where did that idea come? How did that solution come? How did it even happen? And it's coming out of from God, the wisdom of God. It's coming from God, but it's coming through your spirit. And it's going into that situation. So although in the, in our soul, in our body, we had no capacity to handle the situation, to, to solve the problem. But because we are serving in the spirit, God, who is the source of wisdom, releases that wisdom to our spirit. And from there, we are able to serve the people. And we're able to bless the people, right? So the condition of our human spirit is so important, both in our relating to God and also in our serving people, serving God by serving people. It's both sides. It's very, very important. Okay. So we will pause here for today. I just want to quickly recap what we said. So we started by saying, first of students, 523, we had tripod beings, spirit, soul, body. We understood that. And then we said, the spirit and soul are distinct parts of us. Okay. Don't, we don't, we shouldn't mix the two. Sometimes, you know, people just use the word soul without talking about the spirit, but there is the human spirit. Okay. So there is these two are distinct parts of us. And what we also said was the more we engage with the word of God, the more clearer the distinction becomes and we are able to discern thoughts and intents. What thoughts and intents come from the soul? What thoughts and intents are from the spirit? We are able to discern that. And then we said, based on spirit 3, 4, that this spirit, the spirit or the heart, that's the real person. The spirit or heart has characteristics, traits, and those characteristics, those traits are enduring. They're incorruptible. And the good, we talk, you know, the assumption here is it's good, the good characteristics and traits, which is the example, gentleness and quietness. In the sight of God, they're very precious. So who you are in the spirit, the character, God looks at that and it is very precious in his eyes, the good, the good character traits. So that is where real beauty is it's in the spirit. And then we said, God is spirit. So our primary way of interacting with God is going to be spirit to spirit. Our spirit connects with God, God goes spirit. And when we worship, it is an expression of our spirit coming up to God. Yes, we sing songs in our language and we lift up our hands, all that is good, but really it is the heart that is being expressed through the soul and the body, through the music and the words and all that. It's the heart that matters. So we worship in the spirit and we also said, we serve God in the spirit. So our ministry is flowing out of our spirit. So the condition of our spirit is so important. That is where ministry comes from. Okay. So with this, I will pause here. Let us give a few minutes. Any questions? Any thoughts before we close today? Any questions? Any questions? Anyone else in class? So I think this introduction was clear and simple. So let us close in prayer please. May I request somebody to pray with us and we close. And we will take this further. I'm very excited about just delving into this further next week. Somebody could pray with us and we close please. Lord we thank you for this time of learning. Lord we thank you for this beautiful subject that we have ahead of us to learn. Lord we pray that you would teach us from your word and help us to develop our spirit and to walk in alignment with your word and to see what you have installed for us manifested in the days to come Lord. We thank you for each one of us and for your pastor to deliver your word God. We thank you Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you everyone. Thanks for being on the class today. We'll see you again next week. Thank you. Bye.