Up until now, Jesus has been showing you WHAT all the benefits of General Spiritual Growth and Victorious Christian Living are. He helped you examine its power, its blessings, its superior methods, and its wonderful effects on your life and on problems like addiction issues. From here on He will be helping you dig into HOW to go about taking advantage of these dynamic principles of God, because these principles are going to set you free. BUT, you need to understand four things about you. They are expressed in Mark 12:30 (NIV) Love the Lord your God with all your HEART and with all your SOUL and with all your MIND and with all your STRENGTH.

You have four major parts to you that God needs opened to Him. Let Jesus help you understand these four parts of you called: your HEART, your SOUL, your MIND, and your STRENGTH. Your body has a brain that your MIND uses; your brain is in your body and your mind is in your spirit. A part of your brian contains a storage system that is often called the subconscious mind. It is the part of your brain your HEART uses. The subconscious mind is in your body and your heart is in your spirit. Your SOUL is the mechanism that ties your body and your spirit together. You have to have it to live here on earth; it is your human life; it is how you as a spirit being are able to access your brain so your mind can tell your body what to do. If you lose your soul, you lose your life. You have to leave the planet and go see your Maker.

Here’s how you need to start looking at yourself:

• A spirit being is WHAT you are; it is the real you and CAN base its decisions on spiritual concepts.


• Your heart is WHAT you are basing your life on now; it makes its decisions and communicates with you through feelings and emotions.


• Your mind is WHO you are becoming; it bases its decisions and communicates with you through reasoning and logic.


• Your body is WHERE you live; it is animalistic and bases its decisions on selfish, self-centered, and pleasure oriented experiences. It has a will, desires, and animalistic drives that have to be brought under your and Jesus’ control.

1 Cor 2:12 (NIV) We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit Who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. What happened when your were born again was, you became a child of God. John 3:6 (NIV) Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. Your first parents were human; they caused you to be born with a fleshly body which was human. When you were born AGAIN, your heavenly FATHER caused you to be born as a spirit being. John 4:24 (NIV) God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. This birth empowered you to be able to comprehend and understand spiritual concepts. Now you can be trained in how to live as A CHILD OF GOD!

1 Cor 2:13 (NIV) This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. Most of your life you have been being trained on how to live as a human. You have been trained by the world using human wisdom. It is vital that you understand that human effort and world training WILL NOT work in living the Christian life. Jesus has to RETRAIN you on how to live your everyday life as a child of God. The REASON God had you be born as a human on this planet was to give you “life classes.” As a human, you won’t be able to do much damage to yourself or those around you. But, you can be taught how to get God’s character and attitudes so you can be trusted with His power as a spirit being.

Right now you are stuck on this planet as a human for training purposes. It is like being in a childcare room where children are only given those things that are safe for them to “play” with. The “toys” provided you are human, worldly and temporary; they are like the toys given to children. The things on this planet are similar to those things you will be using as a mature, adult child of God; but, they are just spiritual “toys.” If you don’t learn the PURPOSE of these spiritual “toys,” they won’t get you ready for your REAL life as a child of God. So, Jesus is here ready to train you in on how to be successful now and how to get ready to be successful as a mature, adult child of God in eternity.

1 Cor 2:14 (NIV) The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. Prior to salvation and justification, you were only able to learn human things. Then you obeyed Romans 10:9-10 and in an instant you were born again; your abilities changed drastically; you were instantly empowered by your heavenly Father to comprehend spiritual words, concepts, principles, and truths. BUT, all your life you have mostly been taught human wisdom and world training. So, the day after you were born again, here is the way you started out your new life as a Christian: Rom 7:15 (NIV) I do not understand what I do. For what I WANT to do I do not do, but what I HATE I do.

1 Cor 2:15 (NIV) The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment: For the first time in your life you KNEW how to treat yourself, other people, and God’s plan. The things of God started making sense to you; you started WANTING to do the right things and started HATING doing the wrong things. BUT, you immediately started using the ONLY training, systems, principles, and belief systems you had. All you knew was how to live as a human; all you had been trained with was world training. All you believed in for how to live life was human and world belief systems. So, when you tried using all these things, here’s what happened: Rom 7:19 (NIV) For what I do is not the good I WANT to do; no, the evil I DO NOT WANT to do--this I keep on doing.

1 Cor 2:16 (NIV) “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ. Now you have the mind of Christ; you CAN understand spiritual principles; you CAN be trained in how to live the POWERFUL child of God life. You have the mind of Jesus; you have the Holy Spirit inside you ready to explain the Bible to you; and, you are being led into these studies by Jesus so you can give up your human, world training and learn God’s way of doing things. As a child of God, you need to learn how to win over this life and how to get ready to do awesome, supernatural things in eternity.