This will only take place when you are born again by the Spirit of God. The day that you accepted Jesus as your Savior you were spiritually reborn. Something took place in your human spirit and God gave you a new spirit.

What happened is that His Holy Spirit came in and combined with your spirit, and, as it were, changed its color.

So your original human spirit was still there, with all the abilities that were in it. But God's Holy Spirit now came and combined with your spirit. He took up residence, and joined and mixed together with your spirit.

Now as a born again believer you have a spirit that is indwelt by God. You have the Holy Spirit permanently living inside of your spirit, and that changes everything.

It means that as you now release from your spirit, you have those natural spiritual abilities coming out under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

But there is a problem, because there are also other spirits apart from the Holy Spirit. We will deal with that shortly when we come to the supernatural.

What is important is that whatever you have in you, whether it is in your body, your soul or your spirit, should come under control of the Holy Spirit inside you.

Walking in the Spirit

In our teachings in Bible Doctrine, we looked at the subject of walking in the flesh and walking in the Spirit.

We saw that walking in the flesh involved living a life that was controlled by our bodies. The soul submits to the body instead of to the spirit.

Walking in the Spirit on the other hand is when our soul submits to the spirit within and brings the body under control. So for these natural gifts to be of use to the Lord, you have to start by walking in the Spirit.

In one of my other teachings, I likened walking in the Spirit to walking in step as soldiers do in the military. Walking in the Spirit means that you must walk in obedience to every instruction that you receive from the Holy Spirit.

So before God can use these natural gifts of yours, you have to be subject to the Holy Spirit. This means that all the natural gifts that are in your body must become subject to the Holy Spirit that is now living within you.

Those natural physical abilities are of no use to the Lord unless they are subject to the Holy Spirit. The psychological gifts, temperaments and personality strengths must now be subject to the control of the Holy Spirit before God can do something with them.

Realize that when the spirit flows outwards it can only flow out via your soul and your body. So God has to use what is in you, which is good news.

Not only can God use all of those natural abilities you got excited about, but He has to use them.

The Fruit of the Spirit

Whatever comes out of your spirit has to come out via your soul and your body. When this happens you produce what is known as the Fruit of the Spirit.

This is caused when the anointing of God that is within, called the internal anointing, begins to flow out through you.

God can then take all of your spiritual abilities, your soulical abilities and your physical abilities and combine them together. He can use them together in some form of ministry, for His glory and for His Kingdom.

But here is the problem. All of your life, your body, your soul and your spirit, have not been in submission to God.

They have been in submission to the world around you; the World System. They have also been in submission to the enemy of our spiritual lives, Satan.

If there has been any spiritual influence in your life before, it probably came from another form of the supernatural. We will look at that in the next section when we discuss the supernatural.

Removing Contaminations

You must come to a place where you give everything to the Lord and remove all the bad influences.

Some of it was caused by bad programming. Who taught you to use your body the way you use it? Who taught you how to use your soul the way you use it? Who taught you to use the creative abilities of your spirit in the way you use them?

I can guarantee that whoever taught you was not serving the Lord.

You were influenced throughout your life, beginning with your parents and others who programmed you, along with the system of this world. All of these have contaminated your body, your soul and your spirit.

So what can you do? You have to give these things to the Lord and let go of them. That means if you have a natural ability you do not have the right to say,

"Lord I have a natural ability to impart knowledge and instruct people. Therefore I want you to use me in this. I know that you will obviously use me as a Teacher."

The Scripture says that God has not chosen the wise or beautiful people of this world, but He has chosen the weak and foolish things to confound the wise.

So when God calls you to the work of the ministry, He will not look first at your wonderful natural abilities. He will not say,

"Well this person is quite clearly gifted in this particular area, so it is obvious what call they should have. Come, let's give them that call to ministry."

He will often do the complete opposite and call you to the one thing that you are incapable of doing. So we must add a word that you may not like; a word that we try avoid all our lives, because it means the end of life.

Death

You cannot escape death, because when you accepted Jesus as your Savior you fully identified yourself with Him in every way. That means you must be identified with Him in His death, His burial and His resurrection.

So you can breathe a sigh of relief, because you do not need to stay in death. The idea of death is not like this:

"You have natural abilities, so God will never use those natural abilities. You have to let them go and give them up forever, and God will use you in something you are totally incapable of doing."

No, all of your natural abilities must be subjected to the death of the cross. This means that you are prepared to take them and nail them to the cross. You must say,

"Lord, I gladly give these up for you, even as you gave up your life for me. So I give up my life, and I give up all my natural abilities for you. I put them on the cross of Calvary."

Burial

After the death there will be a burial. Will He then resurrect them after that?

Maybe He will; maybe He won't. They have to stay in the grave until you come to the place where you are happy for them to continue in the grave.

You make up your mind that you are prepared to never use those abilities again. You are prepared to give up all of your natural gifts and abilities for the sake of the Kingdom of God, His call and the work of the ministry.

Then He will choose which of them He will resurrect. And when He resurrects and brings that gift back to life, it will be changed.

When Jesus rose from the dead He was different. He had a different kind of body to what He had when he died and went into the grave.

Resurrection

Resurrection always involves a change, and that change is always an improvement.

So you have given God your natural abilities and allowed Him to put them in the grave. And when He resurrects them, He resurrects them with the added emphasis of His power and abilities.

He will bring those abilities up to a higher level than you have known before. But if you are not prepared to do this, then you can never use any of these abilities in the work of the ministry.

We have now looked at your natural abilities and we have identified some of them. But do not run off thinking that you know what your calling is. You simply know what you have to die to and let go of.

After that the Lord will show you in His time, which of those abilities He will use; how and when He chooses to use them. He will bring them back to life again and use you, and bring those abilities to a new level.

Other Greater Abilities

He will use you mightily for His Kingdom. But He won't only use those abilities, because He has extra abilities for you that are far greater than all those natural abilities.

These abilities are the supernatural abilities. They are the more exciting gifts that you should want to aim for.

You may have found your natural abilities; but when it comes to spiritual abilities, it is not simply a matter of finding them, but obtaining them, using them and developing them.

We will follow this direction as we continue in this teaching series, and in the next section we will begin to look at the supernatural gifts.

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