| Isaiah 43:14-45:10; Ephesians 3:1-21; Psalm 68:1-18; Proverbs 24:1-2
“I pray that He may give you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think – according to the power that works in you – to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:16-21)
What is our “inner man?” It is our spirit. The place where we connect with God. The true us. The eternal essence of our being. When we become born again and receive Jesus into our hearts our spirit becomes alive, it’s almost as though it were spiritually dormant. We are composed of a body, a soul and a spirit. The body is our earthly vehicle that gets us from point a to point b. It houses our soul and our spirit. Our soul is made up of our mind, will and emotions. Our spirit is what receives spiritual revelation and knows God on an intimate level. The way we are raised effects how our minds grasp things. For the most part we are raised according to our five senses filtered through our minds and anything outside of that natural realm is dismissed.
When we receive Jesus into our hearts, He awakens our spirit. Our spirit just absorbs everything about the Word of God, the character of God, the praise of God and spiritual warfare. Things that don’t make sense in the natural make incredible sense spiritually. Our battle comes when our flesh and our mind are teamed up. As we grow we must begin to rely more on our spirit, or inner man, for direction. Our flesh has all kinds of unhealthy desires and it’s our job to conquer and deny what it wants. If you feed the flesh, it will only want more. Freedom comes when we are able to mortify the cravings of the flesh and allow our mind and our spirit to team up.
Some may think that sounds ridiculous but consider this: it is your flesh that wants to destroy your marriage by having sex with someone other than your spouse. It is your flesh that wants to hold you in bondage to a crack pipe or alcohol. It is your flesh that wants to waste life, it has no conscience.
Our inner man is what taps into God and receives revelation and strength to fight our battles. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty. We are able to pull down strongholds and conquer the power of the enemy. How? By feeding our spirit on the things of God. As our spirit matures we find ourselves closer to the Lord. We know Him, we’ve experienced His great love and that makes us confident in our relationship with the Lord and in the abilities and power that He has given to us to complete our task here.
It is that love, that power working within us that enables us to rise above our inadequacies, mistakes and the condemnation of the enemy to prevail in all areas. When we are loved by God and know Him then we are successful, we cannot fail. Even our supposed failures are successes when we learn from them. We come to see that we are somebody in Christ Jesus, we are full of destiny and privilege. God is so good. I’m praying we will all have a deeper revelation of God’s love and all that He has in store for us and all He wants to do through us. Woohoo!
PRAYER:
I receive Jesus into my heart. I pray to know Your great love Lord. I pray to understand the power that is now working inside of me. Teach me how to know You and how to be pleasing to You. My reliance is totally upon You and I cannot wait to see all You have in store. What an adventure to watch it unfold. Please help me to not be impatient with You or myself, Lord. I know that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I believe Your tremendous love is going to give me the freedom to fail, to expand, to test my wings. I love You Father and I release this life, use me, Lord. In the name of Jesus I pray, amen. |
