"Get In Touch With Your Spirit!" - says Oprah

Oprah Winfrey has become a foremost TV personality. Her daily talk-show is highly rated. She is recognized as having become the richest woman in the entertainment industry.

In the last few years, she has begun to devote a portion of her program each day to “getting in touch with your spirit within.” People comment, “Isn’t it wonderful that Oprah is stressing spiritual things to everyone? We need more of this on TV!”

Well let’s analyze Oprah’s spiritual message in light of the truth of the Bible. We ARE all spirit people and every living person is operated by an indwelling spirit. Right so far. Oprah’s popular message for today is that everyone has a good god spirit within and all we have to do is recognize the fact that he is there.

The idea of the human race being spirit ­indwelt and spirit-operated is not exclu­sively a biblical idea. It is a belief that has always been widespread in the world. The difference in that overall world view and the biblical view is what is important.

There used to be a commercial for a local ice-cream company - Chapman Ice-cream - which stated that Chapman’s was a little different. But their trademark message was:
“Chapman’s has that LITTLE difference that makes ALL the difference!” The same is true about the “spirit within” message. There is a little difference between Oprah’s message and the Bible message that makes all the difference.

Oprah says that everyone contains god’s spirit at their center and all one has to do to be complete is to recognize that fact. Yes, the Bible says we all have a god spirit within that is our master and operator, but - and it is a huge “but” (a “but” that divides the entire human race into two entirely different kingdoms) - there are two different indwelling spirit operators and everyone is operated by one or the other of the two. The unsaved, those who have not chosen to accept Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives, contain and are operated by the spirit of error, or Satan (1 John 4:6), and they are members of Satan’s kingdom, the kingdom of darkness. The saved, those who have chosen to accept Christ’s crucifixion as payment for their sins, have repented and been born again to a new life in Christ, are indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus Christ and they are members of His kingdom, the kingdom of light.

To tell people they are spirit operated and not make a clear distinction between the two spirit operators is very dangerous. To unsaved people, this statement puts them in danger of thinking that the god spirit within them is the one true God. This lie gives them a false sense of security and thus they remain in their lost state of sin. The Bible truth is that our operator changes when we accept Christ as our Savior and have a new birth. The spirit of error (Satan) exits at our new birth and Jesus Christ enters (Galatians 2:20), filling us with His Spirit life.

I am not here judging Oprah Winfrey as a person. I do not know her spiritual condition concerning Jesus Christ. She may very well be a born again Christian but one who has not yet received the complete Bible message. All I am saying is that the way she is stating her “get in touch with your spirit” CAN be dangerous. EVERYONE DOES NOT HAVE A “GOOD” GOD SPIRIT WITHIN! In fact, all humans are earthly born with a “bad” god spirit within! We are all born first of “our father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.” (John 8:44). My fear is that Oprah is trying to lead people when she doesn’t have complete direction herself. And, let’s face it, the message of Satan control would not be a very popular theme to present on TV. Even those of us who do know God through His Son often miss the full meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection and what it means for us in our daily lives.

There are two aspects of the Cross. Jesus did two things when He died on the Cross at Calvary. But we usually start out under­standing and knowing only the first experience - the cleansing by His blood. Your sins are washed away by the Blood. I should precede this by saying that the Bible also says, “For ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). So that includes everybody. Everyone comes into the world short of what God intends for every person to be. Why are they short? Because they do not have the Spirit of God through Christ within but rather the spirit of error.

As wonderful as the effect of Christ’s Blood is, it doesn’t fix the problem. Even after being born again, we continue to sin. As a new Christian I thought, “Since Jesus Christ has paid for my sins from the beginning of my life to the end of my life, that should make me so grateful that I would quit sinning.”

But the problem was that I would keep sinning. I kept doing the very things I didn’t want to do. Paul says this in Romans 7. All the things I wanted to do - be nice to my mother, get along with my sister, be a better father to my children, be a better husband to my wife, be a better Christian, witness more, pray more - I just wasn’t doing! So I had guilt and condemnation over the fact that the blood part of Calvary wasn’t enough to keep me from sinning.

Later in my life, I learned the second aspect of the Cross. I had heard some of the aspect many times, and finally the light dawned. I began to have a glimmer of under­standing. The central part of the Bible message hinges around the second part of the Cross: the body death and the body resurrec­tion of Christ. The Bible says that when Christ went to the Cross, “He became sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21).

That’s a mysterious thing isn’t it? Why would He have to become sin? For sin - the root of sin being Satan’s control or influence - to be taken care of in man, then Jesus had to take on man’s sin nature. So when He died on Calvary, you and I died there also. Everybody in the world that has ever lived or ever will live died in Jesus Christ on Calvary.

Am I saying that everyone was automatically saved by Christ on Calvary? No, I’m not. I’m saying that nobody is separated from God because of their sins anymore. They are separated because of their unbelief. They do not accept the truth that their sins are paid for and their sin nature was taken care of on Calvary.

Now to get this clearer in your mind, think about death. The Bible says that on Calvary, all died. What is death? Death means the spirit leaving the body - the exit of spirit. So, when Christ became sin for us, He took on that sin spirit, and in His death and burial the sin spirit was out. As we accept Christ’s experience by faith, what happened to Him happens to us. The sin spirit indwelling us is out. Jesus was resurrected by God’s Spirit-life raising Him from the dead. We are quickened - made alive spiritually - by this same Spirit.

And we have to be resurrected because we have a human spirit, but that spirit cannot operate us independently of a supernatural spirit. So if God didn’t quicken us and give us His Spirit in Christ, we’d still be dead spiritually. We wouldn’t be Satan nature indwelt; we would just be inoperable because human spirit cannot operate our soul/body without supernatural spirit in union with it.

So the new Spirit of God, the person of Jesus Christ is in us. Where is He in us? He is one with our spirit. The Bible says, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17). But you must under­stand that Christ does not become you and you do not become Christ. There forever remains a duality in the union.

One of the problems that arise when we say we are in union with Christ and that we become one spirit with Him is that we have a hard time fitting sin into this equation. It would seem that the Holy Spirit would so dominate our union that His will would then automatically eclipse our freedom to choose and sinning for us would be impossible. If we become one with Christ, are we then unable to sin? Or does Christ sin as part of the union? Of course we must say no to both of these suppositions because from scripture and experience two things are very clear:
Christians (union people) do sin, and Christ has never sinned and never will sin.

So what is the answer? Where do “Christian sins” come from? Where do the sins committed by your Christ/you union come from? Having laid this necessary foundation of the Body and Blood aspects of the Cross, we will next examine how we operate as free Christ indwelt vessels.
The religion of my youth taught me that I was composed of soul and body. The soul was the “immortal” soul - the spirit part of me - that would last forever. My body was the material part of me that would die. I see this two part composition in much of what Oprah teaches except that she calls the “immortal” soul the SPIRIT. She indicates that we are SPIRIT (same as soul) and body.

The Bible says that we are composed of three parts: spirit AND soul AND body (1 Thes. 5:23). We are spirit selves but this is meaningless in the world unless we can express ourselves to other spirit selves like ourselves. Soul and body are the terms the Bible uses for our means of self-­expression. Our soul is the seat of our reasoning and emotions and choices. Our soul is our control box making decisions based on spiritual input from our human spirit within or based on outside Satan spirit influence of the world.

When we accept Christ as our personal Savior, the Bible says that we become born again, or saved. At our center, there is a change of spirits, and the Spirit of Christ replaces the Satan spirit. And this is a forever change - Christ will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). We are forever changed into a forever child in the Family of God. As hard as it is to understand or accept: once saved, always saved! Satan’s nature is now out, and we are free from the sin producer; but if we are honest, we will admit that we are as besieged with selfish and wretched thoughts and feelings as we were before we came to Christ. And because we don’t know any better, we assume we are what we think and feel. Because of this erroneous believing, we are overcome with guilt and defeat at not being able to change or improve either our thoughts or feelings.

We sin in a moment of unbelief when Satan entices us to agree with him that we are independent, self-operating selves. In this state of unbelief, Satan makes our choices for us and takes us into any sin he chooses. He gains the power to boss us from outside ourselves (because we are ignoring Christ within). Our union with Christ is not broken, however, and the control of Satan over us need not last long. He drops the reigns the instant we confess our sin and turn from it.

The way out of this Satan trap is simple but not widely understood and, even more sad, not always practiced by those who do understand it. ALL THE PROBLEMS WE CHRISTIANS HAVE LIVING LIFE HAVE THEIR GENESIS IN OUR SOUL REALM. It’s not what happens to us that should really concern us but rather how we respond in our soul to life’s happenings. Our hurts, fears, joys, successes, defeats, physical states of health and illness cause us to respond with different feelings and thoughts. Some are positive, and some are negative, but all are normal and necessary for us to function as total humans.

Life for many Christians stops in the soul because soul is the only reality of which they are aware. Because soul and spirit are so closely linked together in function, it takes a revelation of the Spirit for us to know the difference between them. Hebrews 4:12 gives us an illustration of their closeness: “For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of SOUL and SPIRIT, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Paul is saying that the two are as imminently connected as the marrow is to the bone. Like the marrow, spirit is the life of the body. The soul, like the joint, which is the vessel for the marrow, is the means by which the inner spirit life expresses itself.

And we must discern between the “thoughts” (the soul reasonings) and the “intents” (the long-range spirit desires of God). For example, there are times as born again believers that we feel like God is far away and we think we are spiritually dry. Both are soul observations, and neither is true in the spirit dimension. The truth is that God in Christ has joined Himself to us, one spirit, so for us to be separated from Him is impossible. Our being spiritually dry is also impossible because God is an eternal well of living water springing up within our spirits. The secret to life is for us as believers to know that we can know and live from spirit truth in spite of any outcry of thoughts and feelings that is pouring in on us from our soul.

It is important that we learn to recognize soul and the problems it presents so we can avoid the Satan sin trap that it so often leads us into. We need to practice saying when thoughts and feelings arise that they are not real spirit thoughts and feelings even though they grip us at the time. I am not saying that we are to ignore our soul thoughts and feelings. It is vital that we look at them honestly, but as quickly as possible move past them and begin to reflect on who and how Christ is in us. And He is going to stay in us through thick and thin, using our soul mistakes to drive us closer to Him and His ways of power and control from our Spirit union. There will be chastisement for our soul mistakes of sin, but only to teach us the glory of children of God and never for condemnation.

God’s greatest desire for us is for us to live life by putting our faith in the fact that it is Christ living despite what we are feeling. God expects us to march into the battles of life, feeling terrified and with sweat on our brow. That was Jesus, wasn’t it? He sweated blood in the garden of Gethsemane even though He knew from the foundation of the world that He was going to go to the Cross. Nonetheless when the time came for His crucifixion, His plea was, “Let this cup pass.” His soul feeling was fear. His soul feeling was pain. The whole point is that whatever the human Jesus was feeling - His feelings were swallowed up in His choice to be controlled by His Father within. This was who He was and what He came to do. You and I can do the same thing. When troubles come, we also can choose to be controlled by the power and goodness of Christ dwelling in our human spirit.

Yes, as Oprah says, concentrate on your spirit alright. But understand the possible two spirits who can dwell there. Understand the function of the human soul. And then -

Get in touch with YOUR Spirit!

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