Jan 22
True Spirituality
Wow - great responses to this topic! So, to sum up my last posting,
in order to be truly, purely, spiritual one has to connect to the
original source, God. Anything less than the original is less than
spiritual. Remember, the soul has attributes, which are mind, will,
and emotion. Therefore, by sheer will power we can discipline
ourselves to have “controlled” responses - that is not spiritual,
though to some it might appear as such. Knowledge is not spiritual
though again it might appear to be, and the same can be said for
emotions or passion.
Now for the second phase of true Spirituality. To be truly spiritual
not only does one have to connect to the original source, God - we
have to ingest the actual Spirit of the source. This is why Adam and
Eve had to eat of the Tree of Life to have eternal life, not just
look at it. That fruit from that tree represents the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of Truth, that raised
Christ from the dead and gave Him life. The “in-filling” of the
Spirit is what is depicted by eating of the fruit of the Tree of
Life. After man fell, and until Jesus, prophets were the only ones
who had this privilege and the Spirit of God would enter them and
they would speak for Him to the people. However, because of what
Jesus has done, all of us who believe in Him now have that opportunity.
This is what Jesus meant
when He said, “The Spirit of Truth …. He dwells with you and will
be in you” (John 14:17). It is important to recognize the difference
between “with us” and “in us.”
It is the entering, ingesting, or in-dwelling, of the seed of the
Holy Spirit that actually starts the growth of true Spirituality in
our lives.
Here is an essential truth concerning spirituality in the world.
Jesus said in the same verse, the world cannot be filled with
this Spirit, because they can neither recognize Him nor know Him.
Thus, how can one be spiritual if they are not filled with the true,
pure Spirit and do not even recognize or know that which is “True
Spirit.” In essence, they try to replicate spirit, but true
Spirituality can only be birthed from the True Spirit. It is this “in-
filling” that gives us the deepest connection to God. This
connection then allows His presence to so fill us that we radiate His
presence to all we come near.
I’ll leave you with those thoughts and I’ll write more on this in my next
posting.
Blessings,
John Paul
22 Comments so far
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So, in essence you are basically saying “the word still has to become flesh and live among us.” Which is very interesting, because this is precisely what I have been discussing with others recently. The difference between those religious who know the word, and those who are Gods people is that many know the word, but even the devil knows the word. When we allow Jesus Christ to ‘get in our system’ and take over and get full reign of our salvation, then we allow the words of God to become manifested in our flesh, like Jesus did while on the earth. This is true salvation!!
We could even take what your saying one step further and say that all that laboring and work that people do to avoid sin in their lives is nothing more than harnessing the soul by soul power. At least thats what I beleive is the extension of the truth here. I have shared with many Christians who told me they were ‘working through this or that struggle’ that they should just stop working. What good is it if someone just uses the flesh to conquer the flesh. Eventually they will fail again, and then they will feel less worthy of Gods mercy, beat themselves up, and try again. Its the wonderful power of the holy spirit to transform us because the work of the Spirit lives and breathes, not because we can do it. True spirituality to me is kind of like just breathing in God and exhaling God to others.
That river of life and living water that flows from God and makes Glad Gods city (and even the city of God inside us!!) is full of his mercy!
One thing that amazes me all the time is the amount of people, whether my professors, or christians, or whoever comes up to me and one thing I really hear all the time is “You have a very interesting mind” or “I have never heard someone think like you do before” and the credit has to goto God because he renews my mind all the time. Many of the things I am talking about in my life to others today, was the revelations and experiences of God in my life in the past. It is GOD that makes the mind function differently, and its just kind of ironic that so many people pick up on my ’strange’ way of thinking, yet I did nothing to attain a new way of thinking, I just gave up all my religious striving years ago and let the Spirit flow out of me and do the work, its so much more beautiful that way, than when I tried to do it!!
Many times I have had religious people of varying faiths tell me why i can or can’t do things or say things that I do. They quote scriptures to me and I just listen, and then bust the bubble with the simple fact that satan quoted scriptures to Jesus, so knowing the word of God is not enough. Then they get usually get angry, but the truth is, we don’t have to argue a point if we speak truth, because truth will stand on its own merit. God is the best defense of his word…
yippieee!!! thats Goood NEWS!!
Bless ya, love ya!
At the end of my class today I shared your question with some college age students in a local church internship. They were stretched by the question, as was I. I then asked them to write down their answers. After they were finished, they shared their answers with the class. Then we read and looked at your blog. It was an interesting learning experience for them. Thanks for giving us a great discussion topic for our Holy Spirit class today. I was happy to see that most of them got at least part of their answers correct :]
With much respect John Paul: I am so pleased that you added “True”, but it is still as if you deny anything the other side of Holy as being spiritual??? Not so! Jesus, himself, spoke to them and I fight them in this little space. As God pours out His Holy Spirit in these last days, satan and his boys did not roll over!!! As we fight “the good fight” I would love to share a good cup for real.
With respect and love,
Robert in Bavaria
First, I’m so glad that you’re doing this. Second, I guess I want to make some comments and ask a question or two. Like I said earlier, I watch Oprah. It’s my way to keep in touch with world what the “world” is thinking. So, I watched the episode which interviewed the author of the book “Eat, pray, love”. To make a long story short. My question stems from God’s pursuit of us, His promise that those who seek the Truth (Him) will find Him and His supreme love. When I look back over my pre-Chrisitan life, I know now that God has always been pursuing me. When I heard this woman speak about how she was on the bathroom floor crying out to God and he responded, I couldn’t help but to think that it was the Holy Spirit. But then her journey landed her into the hands of some guru? I also have a friend, Kevin. He was a very worldly guy then decided to journey to Rome on some spiritual pursuit. He came back commmitted to becoming a Catholic priest. I was like “Kev, you don’t have to be a priest to serve God”. Another long story, but now seven years later, he is also become very confused. He changed his name to Prakish (or something crazy) and is now teaching yoga and is or has a guru. I don’t exactly know, but what I do know that is that he was seeking and he wound up very confused and has relicated Jesus to a wise man which completely negates the power of the blood. AHHH! This frustrates me! I have to trust that God will bring him to his senses since there was a time that He professed Christ as the Messiah. So I guess my comment/questions would be: Is it possible for you to profess Christ without fully understanding, recieve the Holy SPirit (because it comes at confession and profession, right?) then end up in Hell? Or is our God faithful enough to break through this confusion and redeem this lost lamb? Is HE bound to it? I hope this makes sense. Nina
Makes sense…
opps… I left my comment under my husbands name!
“Makes sense…”
I couldn’t believe how many responses there was to the question!
Simple and powerful! That’s the gospel that I hear from you, and that I believe in! And I believe it’s because of it’s accuracy…Only through Jesus were we able to have and accurate image of the Father, before that it was all rituals and so forth…
What amazes me in the days that we live is that, before, there was confusion for lack of knowledge, but today there is confusion for excess of knowledge…
I believe that only through revelation, by the Holy Spirit in us, can we live accurately…I believe knowledge has it’s place, but I’ll leave the rest for you to tell us…
I’m eager to hear! God Bless!
Hi John Paul:
So many people who haven’t recieved Christ as their savior but are on a mission to seek the truth can end up so far from the truth. But why does the Lord allow them to end up so far off the coarse in their seeking? It also seems that the Lord in many cases does reveal himself in a miraculous way and then delivers them and leads them into truth but only after they have entered into a worst case life unto death scenario. Why doesn’t Lord show himself so miraculously immediately or right in the beginning of their seeking. Is it because they are meant to be a testimony of Christ’s salvation, or is it because they will not even consider Christ as the truth or even question Christ as the truth and then just keep passing by the truth?
This is a great topic. I’m excited that this one is being talked about because this is exactly what I’ve been thinking about recently. It seems like the more “grow” spiritually the less I “know”. When I first became a Christian I was on fire and thought I knew so much. Now I’ve been a Christian for years, and I feel like I hardly know anything. There is just so much to truly knowing God vs. knowing a lot about God. So when I approach God now I feel more like a child and less like an adult. I’m not sure if this makes sense. Maybe someone can relate or intepret what I’m really trying to say.
You talked about these very things on your dreams and visions talk on the Joni show today.
It was great to see that she gave you the whole half hour from which to share and I liked how you tied dreams and visions included as one of the methods by which God pours out His Spirit upon the people to bring them into the knowledge of Him.
You shared a lot about true Spirituality in your comments I noticed along with scripture….Cool!
God Bless You!
This is all really good and stirs me up. I can understand Nina’s point of view. I think that perhaps it’s because people want to meet “Him” (i.e. God) under THEIR own terms, and therein lies the confusion and susceptibility and danger. …They have “a form of godliness, but denying its power”. (2 Tim. 3:5) So often our world wants to create god in their own image. They will pick and choose what they want to believe. That’s one reason why I love God’s Word so much. HE tells me the truth, whereas there are so many other voices. When I first became a believer and began putting His Word into practice, I found out I could trust it and it worked. But then it hasn’t always been so straight-up, ie. easy. Over the years, there have been seasons, long seasons, where His Word didn’t seem to work as it once did. He didn’t change. What was going on? I know it has been some type of training….I need to trust him on that…but it seems like it has often been a long desert journey. I don’t know why I’m so thick. It’s when we don’t understand what He’s doing… But then Job said, “Though He slay me, YET will I trust Him.” It’s one of God’s paradoxes…we need to die (to self)..the Old Man) in order to live! And dying is not always so easy. John Paul, can you talk about “Seasons” sometime please?
Thanks JP for listening to Holy Spirit and helping others to mature in Christ.
Will,
I too have found that letting Christ live through me is more fun than trying to subdue flesh with flesh… or soul with soul! 2.Tim 2.24 Rom 7.24-25 For years I strove to be perfect in the flesh, but thanks be to Holy Spirit for His patience in teaching me a better way! Rom 13.10 He is love, and being filled with Him will perfect His work in me!
God bless
David
I love the comments Will made about flesh overcoming flesh. At times we just make the flesh stronger by using it to overcome the weaker parts of our flesh. But if its not killed by the word,…it just comes back. When we read the word it has to become part of us. Faith is powerful. So I totaly can understand what John Paul is talking about when he says we must digest the word. Not just reading but allowing the word to consume and pentetrate you.
The other morning I said to the Lord,”I wish you would yell at me instead of whispering to me”. He reminded me of a time when He shouted the word SURRENDER to me,…..It scared the Hell out me! When God shouts surrender,….you wave your white flag immediately!
But I think that is what God requires, and we need. Total surrendering to what God is saying, doing, and expecting. Even Jesus surrendered to death. He could have had an army of angels save Him,..or saved Himself,…but He totaly surrendered Himself to physical death.
Where and who would we be if we could just surrender ALL of our flesh?
Thanks for the insight! By the way,…love the blog!
Meagan
Wow, I love this:
“This connection then allows His presence to so fill us that we radiate His presence to all we come near.”
YES. That is the cry of my heart.
John Paul,
In a good way, your post unscrewed some of my thinking. I think back to spiritual disciplines and how they are disciplining our bodies so that our spirit can rule instead of our soul, and therefore have Holy Spirit rule, if our spirits are connected to His.
How does that play out, though, in that we are choosing with our will to do the spiritual disciplines? Dallas Willard gives an analogy of spiritual disciplines something like this. He says a baseball player lifts weights to hit a baseball farther, not to be a better weightlifter. He does an action (lifts weights) indirect to his desired outcome (hitting a baseball farther)which results in the outcome he is looking for. Another way of saying it could be that it’s raining outside, and you desire to get wet with rain. You decide to go outside. You can’t make it rain, but you can do something to put yourself in a place where you can get wet.
I wonder, though, how that relates to God, in that the above examples are in one sense dealing with impersonal forces or laws, while God is a personal God. I guess part of the problem is trying to wrap in finite, definite terms He who is Infinite and cannot be contained. I think Richard Foster said words are pointers and fragmented at best, revealing a little of the world beyond (my paraphrase). Yet the words are not the actual thing being described (in this case God), but only a description of a minute part of Him. Maybe in the same way of how a picture of a diamond is not the diamond itself but something that can help show what it is, create desire for it(in the case of my wife!), etc.
That being said, how do spiritual disciplines play into being truly spiritual? In other words, are they the intentional trails we run on, and at times these trails become launching points off the trails themselves into God Himself? I guess the question is one of access. And yet how do we not rely on the disciplines as if they are “it” in terms of being our safety, when God Himself is to be our safety?
I guess I’m wondering how our soul is to function in relation to our spirit.
Blessings and thanks for doing this John Paul!
Dennis
In response to Robert, though I am not trying to start an arguement but maybe convey what I beleive John Paul is also saying (and I am sure he will elaborte more) I think that what John Pauls Point about defining spirituality that is “true’ as that is directly relating to the creator is not a denial of other spiritual forces. It is a perspective based in that satan, being a father of lies, is only a twisted or perverted spirituality. You can find truth in every single part of life because satan created not one thing. He morphed, twisted, perverted, and shrunk the ability for many to see clearly and so the distortion cames as a form of light twisted. This form can appear as ‘godliness’ but denies its power, whether that be healing, deliverance, or even the power of salvation and love!
I don’t think that saying ‘true spirituality’ being connected to God only as denying the other dark spiritual forces, just positiioning our eyes to see that which is ‘lovely, holy, pure, good, rightous” etc etc
While I Am a very big advocate for spiritual warfare, I have also taken a similar position as John Paul did in his book on spiritual warfare. I beleive that unless we see the father uprooting Specifically certain spirits, and hear him telling us to do such, we should stay away! The reason I beleive this is because I have seen many christians in presumption and not led by the holy spirit, destroy their life by attacking the devil and chasing him down over and over. We are to expand light and truth, not focus and expand on demonic spirits (while i remember I time not to many years ago when I would have argued that we gotta ferret the demon suckers out everywhere we go)
I now beleive that the God-force in us, that Christ’s new image, truly residing in us and allowed to manifest, will bring out and up and demons we are to take care of. ANything else is not ‘legal’ territory.
I also beleive that it isn’t truly spiritual when in darkness, because the aspects of your life that are spiritual are jaded and not fully functioning. FOr example, how about people like Rudolf Steiner who was a theophosist and an occult writer. He was also a seer. But his Gifting left him open to both worlds without the protection of the Christ Life. Therefor he found truth over and over again, but he also found alot of untruth and lies. Therefore his spirituality was warped, and untrue much like many beleivers are today.
The key is to get back to the garden and walk and talk day in and day out with GOd, then we will always have true spirituality, we will always be made whole, even if we stray God will use ‘all things together for good.’ but it is only in that relationship that we have that ‘true’ life.
This is what I beleive John Paul is referring to, and I hope that maybe can clear some things up for the guy named robert who commented above, if not, I am sure john Paul will reveal what he is actually refering to.
blessings to all.
will
If God is a spirit, then true spiritually is a deeper intimate knowledge of God Himself. Yes, we have the ability to become spiritual on our own; by praying, reading, studying, and meditating on the Word of God. A spiritual person has wisdom, knowledge, and insight into the mysteries of God’s Will. The spiritual person knows and carries out their purpose in God’s Will as revealed to them by the Holy Spirit.
To complete my thoughts when I said yes we have the ability to become spiritual each one of us God’s children have been given spiritual gifts by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit to each one for the profit of all (I cor 12:7). What I’m trying to say is first you have to be born of the spirit or born again, for no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit(I cor 12:3). Receive the gifts of the Spirit as is given by the spirit as he wills(1 cor 12:8-11). And then praying, reading,and meditating on the Word of God. And being obedient to God-Jesus-The Word by joining and faithfully attending a church where you are educated through preachings(rom 10:17) and fellowship(I cor 1:9). We have the ability to become spiritual. This truth has been revealed in my life so far by my experiences, being taught to me, The Holy Spirit, and one particular dream; which you helped me interpret in your thoughts on true
spiritually.
I will tell the dream only at your request.
If anyone in the conversation thinks I am one of those religious types who only quotes scripture with no substance, let me say I am far from being a religious type. The reason I quoted scripture (and I had to use the concordance and search for the scripture to back up my thoughts)was that I have learned, been taught that only real truth can be backed up by scripture.
Sincerely,
Donna
So, anything short of the Spirit of Truth, is in effect, a con game?
A fake?
I’ll buy that line of thinking. Because you once said, “The created, by definition, cannot create. They can only imitate.”
Since this blog line was started I wanted to say something but could not figure out anything good to say. Suddenly, this morning something profound hit me. It became very clear to me that spirituality has nothing to do with the mind.
How do I justify this? Basically, I believe God created every human being to have the ability to know Him. However, not everyone has the mind to understand the gospel. There are people with mental disabilities, brain damage, or retardation who are incapable of understanding the gospel. I do not believe their lack of mental abilities have completely cut them off from God. I believe EVERY human being has the ability to know God. So, how do they ever come to know Him? It is their spirit which would be able to connect with God.
What does it mean to not ‘think’ or ‘know’ your way into spirituality? If there are humans who cannot ‘think’ about God or ‘learn’ about God with their minds then we know there are ways to know God without ‘thinking’ our way into a spiritual relationship. This opens up understanding in me that my thoughts and book learning about God are not ‘spiritual’ communion. It gives new meaning to ‘the foolish things confounding the wise.’ Wisdom and spirituality are not necessarily equal.
This is not to discredit learning and thinking about God. I believe there is merit in head knowledge but it falls somewhere outside of spiritual communication with God. I’m sure that is an entirely different topic.
One of the books that changed my life was “There were two trees in the garden” by Rick Joyner. God opened my eyes to the difference between the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. I was thankful when I heard John Paul Jackson share that often people are just getting higher on the tree of knowledge but even a simple thought from God brings life!!! I shared with a prayer group this week that God is going to restore back to women the desire to pick fruit from the tree of Life. That is the liberation that women are looking for!!!! As a single mom with two teens who are living for God, I can say that I fed them from the tree of Life and now they have discernment when people are speaking or teaching from the tree of knowledge. They love John Paul Jackson. Keep feeding our Spirit from the Tree of Life John Paul, we need you. Blessings
Excellent line…
“It is the entering, ingesting, or in-dwelling, of the seed of the Holy Spirit that actually starts the growth of true Spirituality in our lives.”
First we are impregnated with the sperma (seed) of God then we are re-conceived and TRUE SPIRITUALITY begins. Simple yet profoundly true!
Z