A text from a friend appeared on my phone. It said: “Have you got a minute? Have a ‘writing’ question.”

I don’t recall whether I “had a minute.” But I took the time to answer. I wanted to help, in more ways than one.

The Lord has gone to great lengths to teach me how key it is to live by the Spirit. He compels me to pass that message on. In particular, he reminds me:

• Speak and write by the Spirit – as you recognize and respond to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
• Speak and write by the spirit – as you process in your human spirit what the Spirit of truth is saying, instead of trying to figure it out via your soul.

Words given to us by the Spirit

In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul wrote:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. (vv. 1-5)

“I came to you in weakness,” Paul said. And later, in a second letter: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).¹

An intellectual giant and God-appointed apostle, Paul did not try to testify of Christ by his own power or intellect. He knew that words of life come only from the Spirit.

No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. (1 Cor. 2:11-13 NLT)

Distinguishing soul from spirit

Today, many Christians do not know how to do what Paul did. I didn’t, for a long time. Like so many others, I learned to live, speak and write soul-first, sometimes with a nod to the spirit, but often silencing my human spirit and, thus, quenching the Holy Spirit.

Much guidance on “Christian living” – and many helps for Christian writers, speakers, pastors, teachers – train us that way. This approach teaches a Christianity that either ignores, or tries to exploit, the Holy Spirit. Using Jesus’ name, it calls us to speak and act “from human wisdom.”

Any such approach to learning or teaching about God gorges the soul and starves the spirit. It may also seem to bring success. With regard to writers, for example, words written soul-first produce manuscripts that may get published and may get purchased and read, but can only reproduce after their kind.

Thus, soul-first writing and speaking may ensure an audience, for it can become addictive. It may give readers or hearers more knowledge, perhaps even more Bible knowledge. It may touch them emotionally. Yet it cannot breathe truth into the inmost being.

And the words we receive from the Holy Spirit by way of our human spirit?

They may at first get pushback – sometimes strong pushback – from our own soul, as well as the souls of those who hear us. But what is of the Spirit never disdains or dismisses the human soul. Rather, as we receive in our inmost being what is spirit and life, the words work to stir, inform, involve and transform our mind and emotions too.

A soul-spirit battle

Some of you may be clamoring for a “scriptural basis” for these thoughts. Some may want me to hit Pause and tell in detail what I mean by the paragraphs above. Truth is, I’m having a soul-spirit battle on this very point.

My soul is insisting that I logically explain ideas many Western Christians have never heard before. My soul is urging me to start spouting Bible verses, to convince readers not familiar with these concepts not to reject them out-of-hand.

But my spirit knows that those who can be convinced by logic can also be dissuaded by logic. My spirit knows this teaching will bear most fruit in those who press in because they sense God’s nod in their inmost being, before they understand or feel comfortable with the concepts.

I’ve included more Scriptures and insights in other posts, listed below. For now, be aware:

Learning to speak and write spirit-first requires learning to live spirit-first. It requires cultivating Spirit-to-spirit intimacy with God.

I began learning well before I had the understanding, words or permission from my denomination to describe what was happening. We learn Spirit-to-spirit living as we learn to love, seek, hear and follow the Lord Jesus with our whole heart.

Spirit, systems and self

Know too: Learning to live spirit-first will require bucking any church system that equates obeying the system with obeying God.

As you seek to live by the Spirit, and so to write and teach from the Spirit, God will lead you where such systems forbid you to go.

The opposite is true, as well. When we write and speak to gain approval in a system – when we seek, say, publishing contracts, impressive titles or lots of “likes” or followers – we cut ourselves off from hearing the “words given to us by the Spirit.”

The same applies when we obsess over selling articles or books, or in other ways monetizing “the word of the Lord.” Yet also, we turn a deaf ear to the Spirit when we write sloppily or say whatever comes to mind – and refuse to change a word or even a comma, insisting, “This message is from God.”

Ah, but if something inexplicable, deep in your gut, is crying, “I want to write what honors the Lord Jesus! I want to say what furthers his kingdom!” the Spirit of Christ is drawing you. He himself will teach you, strengthen you, give you words.

Be aware: Learning to live, speak, write spirit-first is a process. It requires your cooperation day by day. As God gives grace, you learn to lean into him until you can respond in faith.

Sometimes it hurts, a lot, to buck systems where you thought you belonged. Yet learning to commune with God Spirit-to-spirit utterly delights and satisfies.

The more you press on, even in the hardest times, the more your spirit rests on the bedrock assurance that comes from recognizing his Spirit deep within. As you own your weakness and refuse self-effort’s emptiness, you find yourself conducting God’s words, filled with his life.

A heart undivided, undeterred

Like all aspects of living by the Spirit, writing and speaking from the Spirit hinge on setting your heart to follow Jesus as Lord. That does not mean striving to live a perfect, holier-than-thou life. Rather, it means learning from the Spirit of Christ to discern between what is weakness and what is sin. Day by day:

• You seek to be who God created and redeemed you to be. You learn to embrace and live from your one-of-a-kind, less-than-perfect humanity, by the power of Christ in you.
• You leave yourself open for the Spirit to confront anything he counts, not as weakness, but as sin. When he does, you receive the desire and power he gives you to confess the truth and reverse course.

The danger of a divided heart

What will torpedo every attempt to live and speak by the Spirit? Entrenched, undealt-with sin. In particular, hidden idols. Lord Jesus! Free us from:

→ Letting anything or anyone vie for your place in our heart.

That includes any organization, position, ministry or cause that we connect with Christ. Even preaching, teaching or writing about the Lord can become an idol. So can the significance, status, power, wealth or anything else that such a ministry may appear to promise us.

→ Letting fear rule us and deter us from speaking or writing the truth.

That includes fear of what people will think, say or do if we bring to light what they do not want to see.

You know this:

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and ________. [You fill in the blank.]

You cannot serve Jesus AND. But you can convince yourself you are serving Jesus alone, when in fact your heart is divided. You can believe you are choosing for Christ, when in fact you are choosing against him.

I was there. For decades. Then, God called me on it. Big-time. He continues to call me out whenever I’m tempted to go there again.

Tragically, such double-mindedness is epidemic in the evangelical church today. In fact, anyone seeking to write from the Spirit must be prepared to face a church culture rife with hidden idols, profoundly denied.

We cannot remain steadfast, and say what carries God’s life, unless we are willing, first and always, to face:

• Whatever is hidden in our own heart.
• The collective sins in our own church culture.

A heart wide open to the Lord

Hear me here. This is not a call to morbid introspection. It’s a call to keep the eyes of your heart wide open and turned toward Jesus Christ. He will show you what you need to see, when you need to see it.

And when you need to see it – but don’t want to see it?

God holds out to you and me the same superabundant grace he offered Daniel. Daniel 7 describes a series of dreams and visions Daniel saw, and found very hard to watch. He testified as much:

As for me, Daniel, my spirit was distressed, and the visions of my mind were alarming me. (v. 15 NET)

Yet God was showing Daniel things he needed to see and tell. So did Daniel shut down? Did he turn away? No. He pressed in to see and to understand what the Lord was showing him. Eight times, Daniel testified: “I kept looking.”²

In Daniel 9, Daniel turned his face to the Lord his God, to confess: “We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled” (v. 5).

Daniel recorded that prayer, and God included it in his Word. So we too can hear Daniel acknowledge and grieve truths hard to face. We can read his cries for mercy: “Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act!” (v. 19)

When God shows you things very hard to see – about yourself, about your world – may you too be able to testify: “I kept looking.”

Instead of turning away or shutting down, keep pressing in to see. And this is key – respond in faith. Strengthened by the Spirit, receive the truth and confess it, to people and to God.

“You need to persevere”

I called the friend who had texted me, and we talked. Afterward, she sent me an email. It said, in part:

Today your words, advice and in particular your prayer have shifted something in me … As we talked I was so blessed in my spirit! You were soooo encouraging to me! It’s as if I was somehow lifted up. You believed that I could do this! I cannot tell you what this did for me inside. 

And your practical words of wisdom cut through the fear of failure, and showed me the way through all of my questions.

In a follow-up email, she said, “Today, I had the house to myself and no agenda except to write! After yesterday’s encouragement I WROTE!!!”

A good beginning. A great start. That’s half the battle.

The other half is crucial too. By the indwelling Spirit, “You need to persevere” (Heb. 10:36).

Prayer for the Spirit’s words

Holy Father, I come to you by the Spirit in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I ask you to raise up a host of writers, teachers, believers who will learn to distinguish soul from spirit and will choose the oh-so-challenging, oh-so-rewarding path of speaking and writing from the Spirit.

I pray for those who have started out on this path, only to be turned aside by experts who led them astray. You know, Lord, that the experts did this without malice or ill intent. They taught what they themselves had been taught.

I pray for those who have started out on this path, only to be sabotaged by their own conflicting desires. Our double-mindedness is deep, Lord, and we can be so very blind to it.

Please, Father: Search out the deflected ones. Find the self-sabotaged. Look on them in your holiness and your love. Open their eyes. Humble their souls. Recapture their hearts.

Find the timid. Find the proud. Lift up those who have not spoken out because they’ve believed the lies that they have no voice and have nothing of merit to say. Humble those who live for a “pride high,” who have believed the lies that their words count more than other people’s, who have sold their words as yours.

Show us how desperately we all need to learn from you, Spirit-to-spirit. Show us how desperately we all need to learn from one another, spirit-to-spirit.

Show us your ways, Lord. Teach us your paths. Transform us into a bold, creative, gracious, tenacious, life-giving, darkness-defeating company who so wield your words that your kingdom is furthered; and your name, highly honored.

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Based on a post published July 25, 2012, titled, “Writing from the Spirit,” and now retired.

Photo by Rosa Parks at Pexels

More about Spirit-to-spirit living, speaking, writing

• Humble your soul, release your spirit
• Living by the Spirit: Moving as one with God
• Spirit to spirit: A matter of life and breath
• Our Spirit-to-spirit birthright
  
  
• Mastering the language in which God speaks
• Mastering the language in which you write
• Book writing and baby birthing

Footnotes

1. In context: “But he [the Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10). ↩︎
2. Daniel 7:4, 6, 7, 9, 11 [2x], 13, 21 NAS. ↩︎