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The Father's Business Podcast
The Father's Business Podcast
Updated Re-release: Biblical Foundation Teaching of Spirit, Soul, and Body
Through compelling metaphors of gardening and shepherding, we explore the nurturing care our spirits require, as well as the distinct roles of spirit and soul in aligning with God's design. Our conversations delve into familiar scriptures, offering fresh perspectives on how biblical figures like Caleb, Job, and Stephen exemplified living from one's spirit and fulfilling divine purpose.
Our discussions encourage listeners to embrace God's messages to us, recognizing and celebrating the unique ways in which God communicates with us. Through examples of blessing the spirit with intention, we explore the profound impact of aligning blessings with God's will to bring clarity, healing, and peace, aiding others in recovering their true identity as envisioned by God.
We conclude with an exploration of the divine creativity within each of us and the importance of embracing God's gifts and calling. This episode is an invitation to reflect on our true design and celebrate the potential within each of us to live a life that resonates with God's creative purpose.
We're excited to tell you about our Ruach Journey conference that's coming soon. It will be March 5th through 7th at Sandy Cove Conference Center in Maryland in 2025.
Speaker 2:And for the first time we're going to be offering two tracks at the same time. You can either come and be a part of the beginner track, which is for people that are new to the idea of Ruach Journey, or be a part of the advanced track, for those of you that have either attended a conference before or have done the Ruach Journey study that's available on our website.
Speaker 1:So if you want to come be a part of that beginner track, we're going to give you the foundation for the teachings of the Ruach Journey. We'll be talking about the biblical foundation for blessing your spirit, how to live from your position and identity in Christ, understanding your unique design. This will give you a rich introduction to this framework. If you want to go deeper in this advanced track, then we will dive even deeper into these topics. We will explore new connections between the spirit, soul and body. We will learn about blessing the land and the impact that land can have on us. We will also talk about how to heal the wounded spirit. This advanced track will be an opportunity to focus on building what you've already learned. So we hope that you will join us for one of these tracks.
Speaker 2:So go to our website, thefathersbusinesscom. Click on events to learn more and register. Today. The Father's Business was founded by Sylvia Gunter to encourage people to a deeper relationship with God. I'm Elizabeth Gunter Powell.
Speaker 1:And I am Kimberly Roddy. Welcome to the Father's Business Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us. Well, welcome everyone to our podcast today. Last week, we talked about what it's been like so far to live in 2025. And we talked a lot about the idea of being resilient. If you haven't listened to that yet, go back and check it out. It was a really encouraging conversation. We talked about how we can live with resilience, how we can stand firm, how we can endure and be elastic in the midst of all the things that are around us and come at us. So to further that conversation, Elizabeth, share with us more about where we're going today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked a lot last week about needing to nurture our spirit and our spirit, soul and body being aligned with Father, son and Holy Spirit, and that brought up some questions for some of you that have not been through the Rock Journey study before. And our deepest desire is that you would be grounded in God's word, that you would be fully understanding how God has designed you and made you to be, and then learn how to walk that out so that you can be resilient, so that you can stand firm, so that you can have that elasticity that we talked about last week on the podcast. So last fall we released a recording that is the foundational teaching that we do at Ruach Journey on spirit, soul and body Basically the biblical foundation of why we believe that you have a spirit, soul and body and what God's intention is for that. And so, as we begin 2025 and our focus is on how can we be resilient, how can we stand firm, we wanted to re-release that teaching this week for our podcast. I'm going to share the biblical foundation for Ruach journey and for the idea of living from the fullness of your spirit and blessing your spirit.
Speaker 2:For some of you, this is going to be new information, but for others, you have been hearing about this for years, because there's many people currently teaching about this concept in the body of Christ. Here's the great news Whether it's new to you or not, it's not new to God. It's not new theology that showed up in the last couple of years. It is steeped in the tradition of both the Jewish and early church culture. There are many scriptures in the Bible that talk about it. We're going to walk through a lot of verses, many of which will be familiar to you, and the fun part is is that we're going to look at verses that we've read many times before, but through the new lens of understanding spirit, soul and body. There are verses that I have been reading and quoting for years and as I've learned about how God created me spirit, soul and body the light bulb goes off and I realized that God was speaking about my spirit, and I've been quoting these verses for years and I just didn't see it. My hope is to give you new language for things that God has already been doing in you and through you for a long time. This is the fun thing about it Our spirits have been active and God has been partnering with our spirits and we just didn't know how to explain it until many years later. I've had a lot of those moments and it's so fun to see how God has been at work, whether I understood him or not. So this is not new to God and this is also not theology that we're hanging on half a verse.
Speaker 2:There are many scriptures throughout the Bible that speak about God's spirit and our human spirit, and I love the word of God and we're going to hear verse after verse about your spirit. In scripture God has been talking about it all the time and I've just been playing catch up to where God is. So I want to bless your spirit, to be engaged and be the one who hears. It's real easy to stay in your left brain as we go through this material, because it's your left brain that takes in all the information. It's the encyclopedia side of your brain and it's really easy to stay in that place and just try to take in some good information. But my heart is to invite you to allow your spirit to be connected to God's spirit and hear what God is saying to you, because God's desire is for transformation, not just information, so you can invite your brain to be a part of it, and we want your brain to be engaged, but we want God's spirit to speak to your spirit. So I bless you with freedom of knowing that you don't have to figure it all out, because your spirit is taking in far more than what your brain can process.
Speaker 2:I want to invite your spirit to hear the word of God in 2 Corinthians, 4, 6, and 7. For God, who said let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. This verse is so central to what we're going to be talking about. It would be easy to talk about the human spirit without connecting it back to God. If you start talking about the human spirit and working with the human spirit and not connecting it back to God, who is the all-surpassing power, then you are doing what the New Age movement is doing.
Speaker 2:And there's been a lot of people who've pushed back on this teaching because blessing someone's spirit sounds a little too New Agey. Well, to that I say that God is the creator of all things, and all the enemy can do is counterfeit something God has created. But it is a fine line that we are walking here. But I want you to clearly hear through the verse in 1 Corinthians 4, 6, and 7, learning about your design and blessing your spirit is not to make you feel better about yourself. You will. You will have a more settled feeling on the inside of you as you understand who you are and how you are created. But the purpose of this is about showing that all surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are pursuing this so that we can be a better reflection of the glory of God.
Speaker 2:So what is the human spirit? The word spirit in Hebrew is ruach, which is where the name of our study comes from, and the word ruach in Hebrew means breath. It is the breath that God breathed into you when he created you. Think about when God created Adam. What did he do? He took some of the earth he gathered together and he breathed life into Adam. God's breath went into Adam. Your human spirit is that part of you that existed before you had a human body, and it's the part of you that will continue to exist after your human body has died. This is what God's word says about your spirit.
Speaker 2:Zechariah 12.1 shows us that God formed our spirit. It says Did you just hear that you are incredibly special? In the same verse where God talks about stretching out the heavens that are more vast than we can understand. And the one who laid the foundations of the earth also formed your human spirit and put it within you. Job 33.4 says the spirit of God has made me. The breath of the Almighty gave me life. There's that definition again of it being the breath of God. And Job 34.14 and 15 says if it were his intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all of mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust.
Speaker 2:The phrase Holy Spirit that we see in our Bible can also be translated Holy Breath. So the same word is used to describe both your spirit and God's spirit. Your spirit is where God chose to breathe that Holy Breath into you and you became a living being. He has hidden his treasure. His breath is within you. How awesome is that.
Speaker 2:I hope you let that resonate deep down inside of you. You were born to be somebody. You were born with the breath of God inside you. You were somebody before you met Jesus, because it's not that. God breathes his breath into Christians. Whether you are a believer or not, you have a human spirit. Now there's a big difference. The difference is that, as a believer, you are allowing your spirit to be controlled and directed by Father, son and Holy Spirit. And there are a lot of people out there who were very big spirited people, but they are not feeding their spirit with Father, son and Holy Spirit. They're feeding their spirit with all the wrong stuff, like occultism, and they are very powerful in spirit, but for all the wrong reasons, and we do need to be mindful of that. The great news is that, as powerful as they can build themselves up, apart from God, there is no way they can build themselves to be more powerful than one person who's allowing themselves to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. God's design is that we are spirit in conjunction with Father, son and Holy Spirit, allowing God to flow through us and impact the world around us. So I hope you hear in these verses that you are a masterpiece. You are a carrier of the breath of God and from the moment God said, let there be Susan or let there be Amanda or let there be. Elizabeth. You are a masterpiece.
Speaker 2:Jeremiah 1.5 says before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. Did you hear that Before you had a body, before you were formed in your mother's womb, god knew you? At some point in eternity, god breathed into you and made you a life-giving spirit and at his chosen point in time we know from Psalm 139 that he wove you together in your mother's womb. And then Job 10, 12 says he didn't just stop there, he didn't just place you in your mother's womb and say hey, talk to you later. I'll be back to have a relationship with you when you're fully developed and your brain is functional and you have formed the capacity to understand what it means to have a relationship with me. Job 10, 12 says you gave me life and showed me kindness and, in your providence, watched over my spirit.
Speaker 2:Now, sometimes the English language just doesn't do a verse justice, so I want you to hear how it sounds when you read it through the Hebrew words. So I've kind of created my own translation of this verse after studying every Hebrew word in this verse. Listen to this crafted and made my life and your zealous love and kindness, your favor, your custody and care have kept and guarded me and given heed of my spirit. Like a gardener watches his garden or a shepherd watches over his flock, I love the passionate intent of God towards us. Do you hear the attentiveness and the care? Think about it. Of all the analogies he could use in these words? God talks about a gardener and a shepherd.
Speaker 2:Now I tried planting a garden one summer and it didn't go well. I do not have a green thumb. When you plant a garden, you don't just put some seeds in the ground and come back in a couple of months and enjoy some food. If it was that easy, I would have the world's largest garden. No, if you're growing something, you have to water it, you have to fertilize it, you have to nurture it and then, oh, did it get too much rain? Did it not get enough? Okay, now there's insects on it, and now we've got to treat the insects.
Speaker 2:It is constant, daily attention needed to have a garden. It's the same with a shepherd and a sheep. Sheep are really dumb. I don't know if you know that or not, but you can't leave sheep alone. Or if one sheep walks off a cliff, all the other sheep follow them If they get flipped over. Sometimes they can't figure out how to flip themselves back. Flipped over, sometimes they can't figure out how to flip themselves back. Sheep need constant attention from a shepherd, and God says in Job that he has been watching and nurturing and taking care of our spirits since he gave us life in the womb. According to this verse, even if no one else was excited the day you were born, god was, and he has kept and guarded your spirit, whether you realized he was doing it or not. Even in the most dark of situations, god was still in those pictures and he was still watching over you. I just love that and that's why I get so excited about this teaching that we do in Runt Journey.
Speaker 2:Now some people have asked so when in eternity did God create our spirit? According to these verses, it's not really clear, and I would say that there are some things that we just need to leave in the category of the mysteries and understandings of God that are far beyond our comprehension. Ecclesiastes 11.5 says as thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones grow in the womb of her, that is, with child. So you know not the works of God who made them all, and I think that's just a loving, gentle way of God saying to us. There is a level of understanding we can grasp and we want to fight for all that understanding in His Word. But there comes a point where we have to say our finite minds can't comprehend all the works of God and the rest just has to be left up to the otherness of who God is. But the point of all of this is, at some point God created your spirit and then, when he chose to put you in your mother's womb at a specific time and place, he created you spirit, soul and body, and you are a masterpiece. Part of the reason I'm so passionate about this teaching is because your spirit reveals who you really are in your inmost being.
Speaker 2:Proverbs 20, 27 says the human spirit is the lamp of the Lord that sheds light on one's inmost being. In another version it says the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord and I really like in the King James version it says God, who is light, reached out of the essence of himself and he lit the lamp and he called it your spirit. So out of the very essence of himself he lit you before he sent you in human form, which is so awesome, because each of us is uniquely created in his image. Yet none of us are exactly the same, but something of the essence of who God is, of his light, is in you, and you get to shine that to the world. What did God want to reveal to the world about himself in you when he created you? I like the analogy of the candle, because if I have one candle and I use it to light another candle and then another candle and another candle, I could keep lighting candles all day and I would never diminish the light from the original candle. So it is with God, the light from the original candle. So it is with God. God, who is light, is in no way diminished by putting something of his image and a light of who he is in each one of us, and there are so many characteristics and facets of God that we each reflect him in a different way, in a very special way that is specific to you. So part of our journey is to discover who we are, so that we can be that reflection of who God is to the world. One of the most honoring things I found in scripture as I was studying about the human spirit is God names himself by talking about our spirit. The names of God are very precious and very powerful and very important, and so I feel so honored that when he's trying to introduce himself to his people, he talks about himself in reference to our human spirit.
Speaker 2:Just a few verses. There are more Numbers 16, 22. But Moses and Aaron fell down and cried out oh God, god of the spirits of all mankind. And it's repeated again in Numbers 20, may the Lord, the God of the spirits of all mankind. And then in Hebrews, in the New Testament, hebrews 12, 9,. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits? And then all the way in Revelation 22, the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angels to show his servants the things that must soon take place. God named himself by referring to our human spirit. Now there's a lot more verses in the Bible.
Speaker 2:I could sit here and read you nine type pages of verses about the human spirit in the Bible, but I promise I'm not going to do that. But I want to kind of shift our thinking and go okay, I'm starting to understand. I hear that I have a spirit, but how is that different from my soul? Or is there even a difference between the soul and the spirit? And I will say there are some godly men that I admire that would disagree with me and say that we are only a two-part being and that the word spirit and soul are interchangeable and that it's ambiguous. But to me, as I study the word, it seems clear that both in the Hebrew and the Greek there are separate words for spirit and soul. So I'm just going to walk you through some verses and say go, get with God in your Bible and ask God for yourself. God, what is truth through your word? But for me, where I land is I can't get around the fact that there's a distinction between spirit and soul.
Speaker 2:So let's look at 1 Thessalonians, 5, 23 and 24. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls is faithful and he will do it. If the spirit and the soul are the same, then why are they listed separately in that verse?
Speaker 2:And then a bigger question came up for me as I read back through a very familiar verse I have heard for most of my life in Hebrews 4.12. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit. Joint and marrow, it judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. Now, growing up, that was a very familiar verse to me. But in the particular church I was raised in, we spent a whole lot more time on that second part, talking about how God was judging all of your thoughts and attitudes. And the message I heard was you better be good or God's going to get you Okay, because he can tell, he can read your thoughts, he knows your heart. And I mean, oh, what a tragedy that we jumped over the first half of that verse to only talk about the conviction of sin, which I mean. Conviction of sin is important, but the word of God is sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit. And I have to ask the question if spirit and soul are the same, if they're interchangeable, then why do they need to be divided by the word of God? Obviously, to me there's something different about the spirit and the soul. Some would say that it's just a difference in the Hebrew and the Greek worldview and my response to that was okay.
Speaker 2:Then let's look at a very proper Hebrew woman, mary, the mother of Jesus, obviously chosen by God to carry his son. But she knew she had a spirit and a soul. And in Luke it says when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and a loud voice she exclaimed blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ear, the baby in my womb leapt for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished. And then Mary, a very good Hebrew woman, says says my soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. Mary knew her soul worshiped God and she knew that her spirit worshiped God and that they were different and separate. Because if spirit and soul are the same thing, why did she need to say my soul glorifies the Lord, lord, and my spirit rejoices in God? She could have just said one or the other.
Speaker 2:There's another key point I want to make in here and underline we're not teaching that spirit is good and holy and the soul is bad. There are some people who are teaching that way, but Mary glorified the Lord in her soul and rejoiced in God in her spirit. So the Ruach Journey study is about getting a better understanding of how we get our spirit, our soul and our body, working together on the same team, all coming into alignment with Father, son and Holy Spirit, because we're not saying that your soul is bad. Jesus talked about his soul and his spirit. Jesus, speaking in John 12, 27, says now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? And then a chapter later, in chapter 13, verse 21, it says when Jesus had said these things, he was troubled in his spirit and testified and said most assuredly I say to you, one of you is going to betray me. So did you hear that Sometimes he was troubled in his soul, sometimes he was troubled in his spirit? Later in the Ruach Journey study, we're going to unpack that word troubled and you're going to hear exactly the amount of emotion and struggle that was going on in both his spirit and soul. So I underline, it's not that your spirit is good and holy and perfect and it's just your bad soul that we need to get under control. No, both your spirit and soul can worship God and both your spirit and soul can struggle and be burdened.
Speaker 2:There are verses in the Bible that say that your spirit can struggle, it can be troubled, it can be anxious, it can be grieved, your spirit can be broken, your spirit can be crushed, and as we go through Rock Journey we'll unpack all of those. But there's one thing that can't happen your spirit, regardless of how much pain you are in, your spirit cannot be destroyed, because your spirit is eternal and it is the breath of God in you and God has been watching over your spirit like a gardener and a shepherd since it was created. And sometimes in our lives things feel so difficult and it feels like we are being crushed to a fine powder and the feelings and the situations and the circumstances are so overwhelming. And if you're in one of those moments right now, or you remember time when you're in those moments, you need to remember your spirit may be crushed, it may be grieved, it may even be broken, but your spirit cannot be destroyed and your spirit in partner with Father, son and Holy Spirit can get through anything. So maybe some of you just need to hear hold on, just trust that your spirit will not be destroyed. So let's get real practical about this whole spirit, soul, body thing for just a minute and think about how God created the system. All right, so God created us spirit, soul and body in the womb.
Speaker 2:Back to what we were just reading about Mary and Elizabeth. When Mary comes to see Elizabeth and Elizabeth is pregnant with John as Mary approaches, john leapt in his mother's womb but the body is not fully formed in the womb. We don't come out of the womb with all of our systems of our body at 100%. Our eyes aren't focused, our brain isn't fully connected, our muscle control is not developed, we don't eat solid foods and our soul is not fully developed. We can't reason, we don't have language skills. When we come out of the womb, we can't explain our thoughts, we can't process abstract ideas, we don't have a full range of all of our emotions. We're either happy or not happy, and we let that be known for sure as babies, right? If we're not happy, we cry until someone fixes whatever's wrong with us, but we can't tell them what we need, necessarily because our language isn't developed. Those things are developed over time. They're started in the womb but they're not completed there. So how did John respond the way he did? It was his spirit that responded, because the spirit, the holy breath that God gave us is complete and responsive from the moment we are knit together in our mother's womb.
Speaker 2:1 Peter 1, 3 says we have been given all we need for life and godliness, and God is trying to say I have already breathed into you everything you need. Now you have to learn how to live from your spirit. You have to be discipled how to live from your spirit. You have to learn how to grow and let God expand everything that he's put in there and unpack everything that he has placed in you. But you have everything in you that you need for life and godliness. How exciting is that? So for those of us who either have young children or around young children, we have the awesome privilege of blessing those children and speaking to their spirits, knowing that, even though their mind may not understand it their bodies are not fully formed that the Spirit is receiving everything you are saying to them.
Speaker 2:There's several people in the Bible who talk about their spirits. I just want to give you a few examples. My favorite is Caleb. Just love his heart and his spirit. Numbers 14, 24 says my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly. You know, I really hope at the end of my time here on earth that that is something that God can say of me. Remember who Caleb is.
Speaker 2:Caleb spies out the land with the others. My interpretation of that is he spied out the land with the others. My interpretation of that is he spied out the land from his spirit. The others who came back from looking at the promised land said oh no, you don't want to go in there, it's too dangerous. There's giants in the land and I believe they were looking at that situation not from their spirit but from their soul. That situation not from their spirit but from their soul, because we will talk about how your soul tries to use logic and reason and understanding to figure out the world around you. There are things that you receive from God's spirit to your spirit that may not be able to be understood by the mind of man. So I believe when Caleb went into the land he was a man of a different spirit. I believe he was living with his spirit, in connection with the Holy Spirit, and when he came back from seeing the same scouting experience, he said yeah, there's giants in the land, but what a great opportunity to see God show up. Because living in your spirit, connected to God's spirit, changes your perception of the situations you find yourself in. All of a sudden, god is really really big. And what's a few giants? Job also talked about his spirit.
Speaker 2:I hope you recognize we've already quoted several verses from Job about the human spirit. Job, chapter 7, verse 11, says I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Job recognized that neither his spirit nor his soul were in a very good place at the moment and honestly, can you blame him for the amount of suffering that he was going through? But he was able to identify that he was complaining in the bitterness of his soul and he was speaking out of the anguish of his spirit.
Speaker 2:Another Old Testament character that I like to bring up is Nebuchadnezzar, and I mentioned him because I want to show one more time you don't have to be a Christian to have a spirit. Everyone has a human spirit. Nebuchadnezzar built an idol of himself that everyone had to worship. So not really a God-fearing man. And it says in Daniel, chapter 2, that Nebuchadnezzar's spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him. And the king said to them I have had a dream and my spirit is anxious to know the dream, had a dream and my spirit is anxious to know the dream. So even a pagan, non-god following man knew he had a spirit and how his spirit was responding to the circumstances he was in.
Speaker 2:Then in the New Testament, there's Stephen, acts 7, when they are stoning him, stephen prayed Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And then one of the most familiar verses in the Bible if I'm started, you can finish it when Jesus is on the cross and he's done everything he needs to do, the last thing he says is Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. There are many more characters in the Bible that speak of their spirit, and I could keep going, but those are just a few of the people in the Bible who talk about their spirit. So then some people wonder why we need to bless or speak to the spirit. After all, we just read in Peter 1.3, that said that we've been given everything we need for life and godliness. So if everything's in there, why do I need to bless it? Well, it's a good question.
Speaker 2:The easiest way I know how to explain it is think about a balloon. All the latex that is in a balloon is there. When you have the balloon in your hand, you can't add more rubber latex to it. But if you want to make a balloon bigger, what can you do? You blow air into it and it's bigger. And if you keep blowing and blowing, you make it bigger and bigger. The amount of latex has not changed, but the capacity and the size of the balloon has.
Speaker 2:That's what happens when we bless the spirit of a person. We are calling their spirit to a bigger and bigger place, to expand and be as large as God created it to be. But you know what else can happen to a balloon? You can let the air go back out, and when that happens, when we choose not to be intentional, to live from the fullness of our spirit, our spirit becomes smaller and smaller. Now again, has any of the rubber or latex been lost from that balloon? Because the air is released from it? No, but its capacity is so much smaller. So we bless our spirit, we nourish our spirit, we spend time with God, allowing him to speak to our spirit so that we are able to live in the fullness of everything that he's called us to be. It's the concept of abiding that we find in John 15. We keep abiding with Christ because we want to live in the fullness of all that he has put in us. And there are several biblical examples of blessing someone's spirit.
Speaker 2:Paul ends a lot of his letters in the New Testament blessing the spirits of those that are going to receive the letter and also spoke of some of his disciples about their spirits. Just a few of them in Galatians 6 18, paul says the grace of our Lord, jesus Christ, be with your spirit, brothers. In 2 Timothy 4.22,. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Philippians 4.23,. The grace of the Lord Christ be with your spirit. 1 Corinthians 16.18,. He says For they refreshed my spirit and yours also. Such men deserve recognition. Oh, how I always want to be asking the question how can I be refreshing the spirits of those around me rather than draining them? 2 Corinthians 7.13 says how happy Titus was because his spirit had been refreshed by all of those that Paul was writing to. And then in Romans 1.9, he says God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit and the gospel of his son.
Speaker 2:Paul was very aware of his spirit and the spirit of others, and he was exhorting us to live from the fullness of that spirit and, in turn, refresh the spirits of others. Now there are some godly boundaries for blessing someone's spirit, and this is so important. So if you don't hear anything else I say, please listen as I explain that we need to be careful to only bless with the words that God wants us to use. My best advice of how to bless the spirit of others is to invite the spirit of a person to turn to God and get its specific instructions from God. Be careful, oh so careful, not to mix in your own agenda. It is so easy to do, especially if you're thinking of blessing your husband or your wife or your children.
Speaker 2:We do not want to use this as a manipulative or corrective tool to help persuade a person to do a certain thing. I mean, have you ever been in one of those prayer meetings I know I have where someone starts praying but what they're really praying is their opinion about what God should do in a situation, or trying to give a message to someone else in the group through prayer time. Well, it's the same thing that can happen as we bless someone's spirit, especially when we're blessing the spirits of those we're closest to because we really think we know what's best for them to do. You know, we'll just bless their spirits to know that this is what they're supposed to do. Right, and I cannot say it loudly or clearly enough. Do not use this to manipulate or correct anyone, because when you start to do that, you have stepped into witchcraft and that's a very strong word that I don't use lightly. But witchcraft is attempting to control or direct the spirit of another person to get them to do what you think they need to do. That is human control over another human versus blessing them to be in it and giving them space to hear from God what God wants them to do.
Speaker 2:Very famous verse in Numbers May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you. So oftentimes I just invite the spirit of the person to turn into the face of God and receive from God whatever he needs. Very simple but very profound, and I have seen radical changes happen in people's lives. With that simple of a blessing, clarity comes, physical healings have happened. Alignment and peace comes as we just invite the Spirit to receive from the Father, receive from Jesus, receive from the Holy Spirit everything that they need in that moment.
Speaker 2:Another great thing to do when you're thinking about blessing others is to become a student of Bible promises. You can take any passage of scripture that speaks to you and turn it into a blessing. My favorite blessings are using the names of God and blessing them to know God is their shepherd when they're in need of comfort or care, or God is their warrior when they need someone to fight on their behalf. Or you can pray anything that the Bible instructs us to be, and again, paul gave us a lot of those. I bless you to be filled with the Spirit. I bless you to live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. I bless you to be alert and self-controlled. I bless you with the grace of God that brings salvation, that has appeared to all men and it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age. I bless you to grow up into Christ, who is the head. All of these are direct quotes from scripture on things that we're instructed to be. But in no way am I trying to manipulate or control what that means. That's up to God.
Speaker 2:And the reason why we want to bless and nourish our spirit is we want to recover our identity, who God made us to be in eternity. When God breathed me into eternity and he said this is who she is, when he said, let there be Elizabeth, he had specific things in mind of who I was supposed to be. And then I was brought into a sinful world and a lot of wounding happened and a lot of other life just happens in each of our lives, and so we've lost some of our true identity and we've believed lives of the enemy. And so we're on a journey to recover all of that. And I don't know about you, but I'm not just going to be satisfied with 50%, I'm not even going to be satisfied with 95% of who God breathed me to be. God wants everything of what he made me in eternity to be to be able to shine forth so that I can be a reflection of the glory of who God is, and each of us are on a quest to find out who we were before we showed up on this earth and before sin ever entered the picture.
Speaker 2:So the person inside you, the real you, is not your body of flesh. It's not your will, your mind, your emotions. It is the treasure that has been buried in the deepest part of you, and what God wants you to do is to spend time with him figuring out what does it look like to live from your spirit. God is calling each of us to step into the fullness of what he designed us to be. And here's the real encouraging news, because in some ways it's like wow, this sounds like a lot of work and now I've got to be worried about living from the fullness of my spirit. But God wants you to be living in your spirit so much more than you do, even as you hunger for it. He wants it so much more. And there is some part of you that is probably thinking it's over. I've screwed up. So much has gone wrong for me, nothing has gone right for me. I've failed him too much. And all these negative words that come and assault our hearts and minds and spirits are not what God wants you to know. What God wants you to know is that he is eager to take you on a journey to understand exactly who he designed you to be before sin and pain and the expectations of your parents and the disappointments that you have felt in your life and the thoughts about who you are supposed to be entered the picture.
Speaker 2:Each of us needs to ask ourselves an important question that was often asked in scripture what do you want At the deepest core of you? What do you want? It's a question Jesus asked several people in the Bible. When Andrew tells his brother Peter that they found the Messiah and he takes him to meet Jesus for the first time, the first thing Jesus says as Peter approaches is what do you want? And then there's several stories in the Bible that we're all familiar with where people are sick and they come to Jesus and Jesus asks them what do you want? And in all of those stories of the sick and with Peter, it's not because Jesus didn't know the answer to the question. He wasn't asking the question for himself because he's God, but I believe he's asking the question to penetrate to the very core of who they are and start to try to wake them up inside. What do you want?
Speaker 2:For some of you, you may have been struck down so much that you don't know what you want. You may have been struck down so much that you don't know what you want. You may have lived your whole life trying to be what others want you to be and you don't even know who you really are. This is your time. This is a safe place for you to start to even ask the question what do you want? The great news is, if you don't know, god's here, and God knows what he breathes into you. He knows the desires and the dreams and the wants that he put in you and he longs for you to sit with him and discover it. So what do you want? What essence or characteristic of who God is? Are you a reflection of who are you?
Speaker 2:For each of you, this is going to be a different answer. What do you ache for? What is the deepest desire of your heart If nothing is bubbling up? Maybe another way to ask it is when you were young, before anyone started putting limitations on you or telling you you couldn't do something. What did you dream of being? Your spirit has been aching and wanting and longing with this. Your whole life. For a lot of us, myself included. With this, your whole life For a lot of us, myself included, you've been rationalizing it away, squashing it down, thinking that's silly, that's not practical, I can't do that, that can't be God. But God keeps coming back with this question what do you want?
Speaker 2:I first started asking this question about 20 years ago and when I asked that question, it didn't take long for an answer to come and I thought it was the silliest answer I'd ever thought of. And when I asked that question, it didn't take long for an answer to come and I thought it was the silliest answer I'd ever thought of. And so I thought well, that can't be true, that's not practical. And I tossed it off to the side and I dismissed it and I didn't tell anyone about it. But it just kept coming back. So what do I want? I want to be an Olympic gold medalist pairs figure skater.
Speaker 2:Now, when God and I are dialoguing about this, I'm already 30 years old, I'm over six feet tall, most skaters are five feet or shorter, and so I don't meet the age or height requirements to become an Olympic skater. Age or height requirements to become an Olympic skater. And most skaters are skating from the time they can walk, and I have rarely put on a pair of skates, so there's no way I'm supposed to be an Olympic pairs figure skater in the natural. Now, just, you know, to humor God and myself, I did get a pair of skates and I went to a nice skating rink and tried to skate and let me just tell you, tall people, the center of gravity is too high and I spent most of my time falling down. So I was like, okay, I knew there was no way I'm supposed to be a Olympic medalist pairs figure skater in the natural, but I did stop and think and realized, ever since I was a little girl, as young as I can remember, I loved watching figure skating and I loved watching, especially the Olympic skating, and I would watch every round and every practice and everything that they would show on television.
Speaker 2:I was all in. And so I was like, okay, there's something deep in my heart about figure skating, specifically pairs. I mean, I watched all of it, but I really something about pairs figure skating. And I was like, okay, god, obviously I'm not supposed to go buy a sequin outfit and become a figure skater at the age of 30. So what are you trying to say about me and who I am? And so I spent time over several weeks just sitting and listening and journaling and thinking about it and the first thing that came to me is Olympic figure skaters will get up at 4 am and they will train and they will work hard and they will do the things that no one else sees and there's no one there cheering them on at 4 am.
Speaker 2:But they get up because they're committed to excellence and they understand the greater promise and I just really sense God saying I see that in you, you have a passion for excellence, you are a hard worker and you will keep going, chasing it, working at it, sacrificing yourself for it, even if no one is there to cheer you on. And it was just a sweet time of feeling him appreciate the fact that he knows how I am a hard worker even when no one else knows. And then there was. Then I spent another time journaling. Okay, why is it a gold medalist figure skater? And as I journal about that and thought about that, I really sensed it's because I want to be the absolute best in the world. It's not enough for me to be in the Olympics, I want to be I mean because that's pretty impressive, but I want to be the gold medalist and there is a natural drive for excellence and leadership that God has put in me and it was so affirming as I felt God, you strive for excellence and you are such a strong leader, because God is excellent and God is a leader and that is a unique thing that God has breathed into you. And then I started thinking about how a gold medalist is on a world stage and I've always had a passion for the nations and I don't want to just change my neighborhood, I want to change the world, and so just the bigness of vision and that the Olympics brings all of the nations together.
Speaker 2:So it was months of going back again and again and asking God what else do you want to tell me about this whole idea about skating? And I would sit with him and I would just listen and I knew I wasn't supposed to be a physical skater because all that did was hurt. But I soon realized my spirit skates when I'm speaking in front of people, when I'm counseling one-on-one with someone, even when I'm just enjoying worship. I realized when I'm worshiping, god and I are out on the ice together and that's why I want to be a pairs figure skater. It's about he and I skating together, that whole idea of God's spirit and my spirit, partnering with one another, and so we can do beautiful things that I could never do in the physical. I can skate with him and enjoy worship in a unique way. So God used this analogy to get to my attention and he began to speak to me about my spirit and what my spirit wants. And I didn't tell anybody because, I mean, I think even some of y'all listening to this now are like she's crazy. So I went about to go around saying you know, god told me that I'm supposed to be a gold medalist pairs figure skater. I didn't tell soul, but you would be amazed over the next several months how many different ways, when I didn't say a word about it to anyone.
Speaker 2:All of a sudden people start talking to me in skating analogies. And even one time I remembered I was flying through an airport and I was so tired I've been doing ministry and I was just exhausted and I had a long delay between two flights. It was a Sunday afternoon, so professional football was on all the television screens. I'm not interested in this. This is before. We had, you know, our own entertainment systems on our phone and all of a sudden they make an announcement hey, they're having to evacuate the stadium where this playoff game is going on because of weather, and so we're just gonna have to flip it over to something else. And all of a sudden, every television in this airport is showing the world skating competition on the screen and all the guys you know sitting there and I'm just smiling. I'm like God, you know me, you see me. Of course, you made all the television screens turn to ice skating because I have two hours to wait in this airport.
Speaker 2:So, over and over and over again, god kept speaking to me in skating analogies, and had I not taken the time to really tune in to what do I want and what would give me a picture, an analogy of what my spirit is like? Those would have been cute and I still would have enjoyed the skating, but I would have missed what God was saying. So what do you want? What is it that God is going to say to you? God wants you to know who he is and what he's put in you so you can enjoy him and glorify him better and understand who you are and walk in the fullness of who God has created you to be. I have no idea what God's going to tell you.
Speaker 2:When my mom, sylvia went through this exercise. Hers was about big horizons. What does she want? She wants to be somewhere where she can see from sunrise to sunset, and God really spoke to her deeply about that. And she also knows something that she needs to do on a regular basis to refresh and renew her spirit is watch a sunrise and a sunset, get somewhere where you can see a bigger horizon, dream a bigger dream. And there's a lot more that I won't share, that's personal to her, about what God said to her through that. But who knows what God's going to say.
Speaker 2:But here's what I want to encourage you to do is, as you spend some time saying God, what do you want to show me? Do you have a picture? You want to show me? What makes my spirit come alive? Who am I? What do I want? And just whatever starts to bubble up, write it down and turn off the critical thinker. Don't say that's silly, that. Write it down and turn off the critical thinker. Don't say that's silly, that's impractical, that's stupid. Just write down what it is you think that you're sensing or hearing and then continue to ask God to give clarity and for God to show you what it is that he wants to say to you, and God will help you understand what he wants you to focus in on and what's from him. So maybe you have to write down two or three things before you get to the real thing.
Speaker 2:But ask God, show me, what do I want? What have you breathed in me that I am to reveal to the world? So, as we close, I want to invite your spirit to listen to the word of God for you in James 1, 17. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. So be blessed to know that your heavenly Father gives good gifts to his children.
Speaker 2:Spirit, your Father is asking you what do you want? Be blessed to give him your true answer, with no fear of rejection or ridicule. Be blessed with being thoroughly and totally alive and real in your answer. Be blessed as you reflect the one who is infinitely creative and share in the glory of his creation, the brilliant colors, the complexities of his designs, the varieties of his creatures, his thoughts that can't be counted. Every moment is an opportunity to see his fingerprints. You, spirit, are finding your voice and you're expressing who you are so that you can come to a higher level of embracing and understanding and accepting how God has made you in his image.
Speaker 2:Listen to what you hear when you ask, what do you really want? And then do it. Honor all the gifts that God put in you so that they are released from deep within you, with the power of divine grace operating in your whole being, pursue the pure expression of who you are. Be blessed to line up and synchronize with the fullness of God's expression in you, so that there is less struggle inside of you between spirit, soul and body. Be blessed inside with life-giving clarity, alignment, congruence and harmony. Blessed inside with life-giving clarity, alignment, congruence and harmony. Be blessed as God is calling you up higher and all that pleases himself when he thinks of you. Be blessed in the name of the creative one who saw all that he had made and called it very good. I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business Podcast. I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business Podcast. This podcast is made possible through donations by people like you. To donate, go to wwwTheFathersBusinesscom. Be sure to follow us at the Father's Biz on Instagram and Facebook.
