For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12

In waves of revival, manifestations come and go.  Many opinions are formed, shared, and contested with.  But, one thing remains, and that is the Eternal Kingdom of God, the mystery of the Holy Spirit, Christ within, “God With Us”, Emmanuel.

That which we see is not always what it is, and that which we cannot see often goes unnoticed, undiscerned, and hence, under  addressed.

“Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

Matthew 13:54 (portion)

Jesus was a man stripped of reputation.  In a religious community, He was marked as a bastard (born out of wedlock), noted as an outsider (fled to Egypt for several years in childhood), and grew up not handsome, not beautiful, with no earthly comeliness to attract men to Him (Isaiah 53:2).

Yet, when the Spirit had come upon Him, when he spoke, heaven met men, and hearts changed, either for the good, or for the bad.  But, when He spoke, make no mistake, people made a decision.

What is it that makes a good meeting?  Most have discovered that you cannot simply sing the same song, pray the same prayer verbatim, and lean the exact same way, simply to recreate an experience.  I think we all still try to some degree, but, just as it would not work to use the same dialogue every time you were being nice to your sweetheart, God, who is infinitely more perceptive than any person, wants our heart.  He wants the very depths, every time.

Many people have problems with certain aspects of revival atmosphere simply because of the excess of a few.  Some even point out that much of what they see in “manifestations of the Spirit” is actually flesh, aka, fake.  Yet, so long as you are only looking on the outside, you have overlooked one of the most important scriptural distinctions in all things.

Hebrews points out that there is a difference between the soul and the Spirit.  It is the Spirit that is born again at conversion, and that is worked out as we live.  We may still have bondages, strongholds, and blockages throughout our soul, and our body.  This is the place of sound Biblical counseling and deliverance ministry.  But, our Spirits, with Christ, are pure and spotless at our conversion.

John writes, “That which is born of God does not sin.” (1 John 3:9).  Paul wrote, “It is not I that sin, but it is sin in me.” (Romans 7:17), in the place before the faith that overcomes arrives.

If we focus primarily on the externals, which it appears many churches do, we have missed the vital heart of which the Gospel is about.  It is only those that, by the power of the Spirit, through the Faith of Jesus, rise up into the full headship of Christ, into the unity of the faith into the full measure of the stature of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).

Simply because someone is manifesting does not mean it is the Holy Spirit, either.  It could be faked (for a variety of reasons, both sincere yet immature as well as more sinister ones), or, it could be “helped”.  There could be a portion that is genuine, but, out of sincerity, out of hope, out of desire, we may help the bit that is the Holy Spirit and add to it.  We may “go along with” a lesser reaction to the Spirit, expecting it to be as strong as the last one.  We may also go along with a gentle movement of the Spirit in cooperation, submitting our will to what we feel He is leading.

Yet, the division necessary to consider, above all the rest, is, what is soul and what is Spirit?

It is secondary to look at the outward manifestion, although that usually what attracts our natural attention, but what about our spiritual eyes?  What about our knowledge and depth of insight (Philippians 1:9)?  If all we have for “discernment” is what our eyes can see, we are not using a “spiritual gift”.  It may be all well and good, we may see some manifestations, but we will invariably be mistaken, as the disciples were when Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus’ feet.  They saw the waste, the disturbance.  He saw the brokenness, the extravagance, the excessive adoration.  She was honored, they were abased.

Simon the Pharisee saw something similar.  He saw a prostitute touching a supposed prophet.  The true Prophet knew not only his thoughts, but also hers, her faith, her self-deprication, her humiliation, and her deep compulsion to touch the only one who knew life.  A Pharisee says he can see, but cannot.  She cried out in her blindness, and was healed whole.

Most of the objections and excesses pastors and churches have regarding revival boil down this simple, overlooked distinction.  Because we have become so trained through our church doctrines and prayer manuals, our bylaws and our pet christian cliches, and not fullness of the Word, we usually either see one of two things happen.  Either a group recognizes the excess of a movement of the Spirit, the obvious fake, inflated, or hyped up portion, and writes off the whole thing, or they see the good, and find no criteria for screening anything that goes on.

What is really going on is, in any true move, there is the real.  Rather than discerning “real” from “fake”, try to discern soul from Spirit.  Out of the soul, out of fear, insecurity, lusts, attention seeking, pain, and, rejection, people, in their soul, who have not learned, do what is of the soul.  The Holy Spirit is never grieved if this is shut down.  The Spirit is never bothered when a soulish manifestation is “quenched”, no matter how much, again, in their soul, they get angry about it.  In fact, the Holy Spirit might actually agree with such a move.

Yet, there is that which is of the Spirit.  Often, the fake can be discerned much the same way Paul reacted when casting the spirit of divination out of the girl (Acts 16:18), he was “greatly annoyed”.  The false is irritating to someone familiar with the real.  We all see, know, and prophesy in part, and we can get it wrong, but, quite often, but not always (as the disciples saw) if it’s irritating in a certain realm, there is no harm in shutting it down.  Yet, to stop the real quenches the Spirit.  As many point out, you don’t have to worry about “strange fire” that much.  Just let them burn a moment, and it should be pretty obvious whether it’s of God or not.

Jesus said that unless you hate your life, you cannot be His disciple (Luke 14:26).  The whole point of learning the Kingdom is to learn the division of soul and Spirit, to live from your Spirit, and to put to death the misdeeds of the flesh.  It is by learning to live, function, move, and be in and of His Spirit alone, that we do not gratify the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:16), that we learn to love (1 Corinthians 12:31), and that we weather the storms that comes against us without falling (Matthew 7:25).  If you try to build upon any other system, any other creed, any other doctrine, you are destined for a fall (v26), simply because you have not built upon His Spirit.

While it may take time, practice, adoration, worship, much prayer, and fasting, it is not only worth everything (Matthew 13:44), it is the command, teaching, and doctrine of Jesus.  Better to lose your hand and enter life maimed than live without it.  Better to enter life with one eye than not know it.

The ultimate release of the Spirit will come when, as God so love us that He gave us His only begotten son (John 3:16), that we, in turn, surrender our whole self, our whole will, fully out of love and no other compulsion or religious striving and fear, to be wholly His.  When He fully tabernacles within us, making us His Home, the very abode of the Almighty, God in a tent, even as Jesus was, as He was God in God, until our every motivation, our every notion, our ever will is so in concert with His own, that we do only what we see our Father doing.

Without question, any other approach is vain.  Any other labor merely striving.  It is not the gifting that impresses God.  We have no glory, no ability, nor anything that we did not receive.  The only thing that counts, the only thing ever, is faith expressing itself through love.  Until we are willing to secede and forfeit our own efforts, our own soulish life, and live totally by the Spirit, to the best of His ability within us, we will always live in mixture, we will not have complete fruit, and we will not know the fullness of the joy, righteousness, and peace available to us in our union with Him.

Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of earthenware, and some to honor and some to dishonor.  Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work

2 Timothy 2:20-21