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This profound phrase originates from Witness Lee, a disciple of Watchman Nee.
It may sound a little bit strange to the western reader, and when I came across it initially, I was also a bit uncomfortable. However, we must remember that the things of the Spirit do not make sense to the natural mind.
Learning New Skills
We need to learn the things of the spirit just like a young baby needs to learn how to control his hands or his feet, for example. Currently, we all know how to pick up a glass of water and drink it. Our brains know how to control our hands and give the complex instructions that make all the muscles in the arm and the hand contract in the correct order and the proper pressure so that we can bring a glass of water to our mouth and drink it safely. But it wasn’t always so; there was a time when we could not do this when we were infants.
Spiritual Growth is actually a Skill
When it comes to things of the spirit, we start as infants, and the process of learning about the spirit and engaging with the Holy Spirit while exercising your human spirit is a skill that is learned over time. Often more is caught than taught, and therefore being with older mature Christians when they do these things and ministering with them or receiving ministry from them is the best way to learn.
God Apparantly Likes It
What was always apparent to me, however, was that whenever the group said: “Let’s turn to our spirit and contact God,” I felt a happy sensation on the inside. Somehow it seemed that “contacting God” on the inside of your spirit was appealing to the Holy Spirit.
I want to encourage you to try and experience and embrace this. It must become a practice, a ritual, or a habit that you master just like you master control of your hands.
Western Intellectualism
The doctrines and the teachings, and the theological approach of western intellectualism have some value. God certainly gave us our left brains, our rational brains, and we should use them, but here more than elsewhere, the proverb applies that says, “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
One Spirit with God
Your body is a cocoon for your soul. Your soul is a cocoon for your spirit (human spirit). Your spirit is a cocoon for God’s Spirit.
We see in Corinthians that “being joined to the Lord” means God’s Spirit has become one spirit with our human spirits. This part of the working of being “born again” or begotten again”.
Spiritual death is spiritual separation from God, and Spiritual Life is spiritual union with God. This union with God is intensely precious and personal and is compared to sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. That is profound.
16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
” (1 Corinthians 6:15–17, NKJV)
This leaves with the compelling proposition that God is inside of us in a very intimate and life-giving way and that we must contact Him inside. You can “turn to your spirit and contact God,” How profound, wonderful and intimate.
Loving God, with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength, has gotten so much more real and practical.
