Life In The Spirit # 3

A Principle of Spiritual Guidance (continued)

Now, it does not follow that you never do slip in the same way again, but as you go on you do spiritually grow out of that particular thing, and what is happening is that in spirit you are taking the mastery of your soul. You are not annihilating your soul, but you are bringing it under government and making it your servant; for mark, that frequently the occasion of stumbling is only the evil form of an expression which in itself may be necessary. Take anger, for example. You become angry; but you become angry in your nature, your natural life, and it was because there was a self-interest or some self-element in your anger that you had such a bad time. Anger is not evil. "God is angry with the wicked every day" (Psalm 7:11. "Be ye angry, and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26). Anger is not evil. You are not therefore going to annihilate your soul and make anger non-existent. You can take any other feature that you like in the same way and you will find that the soul itself is not essentially evil. The evil lies in the evil principle that has got hold of it.

What are you going to do then? In spirit you are going to destroy the evil principle and get the mastery of your soul, so that anger is going to serve you. Love may have personal elements in it; but you are not gong to annihilate love because you find love trips you up sometimes on a personal life and leads you astray. You are going to destroy the evil principle by the power of the death of Christ and master your soul and bring it under, so that by your spirit you use love, you govern the matter of love. Now then, the point that I am after is not so much the difference between the soul and spirit, but rather something related to the Holy Spirit Himself.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 4 - (The Holy Spirit An Earnest)