So man is made in the image of God. God is a spirit; we have a spirit dimension to us, so we are a spirit being. You're a human being, you live in a body but you are more than just your body. Your body's called the house you live in, so we have a body we live in. We have a soul where our personality, will, mind, emotions and memories exist. We also have a spirit, and the spirit part of us enables us to communicate and connect with the whole realm of the spirit, so living and operating as a believer is about living and operating from the flow within our spirit. When man sinned and fell, he lost the spiritual connection and had to live out of his mind and soul, so your spirit has a number of functions. Let me just identify for you some of the functions of your spirit, so we can understand them. Number one, your spirit sustains your life. That's something people don't really understand. We kind of think of life as being a fairly natural sort of thing, but notice what it says: the body without the spirit is dead, even so faith without works is dead also.
So very clearly the body without the spirit is dead, so your spirit is what provides the energy that sustains your body. I'm sure there's also biochemical processes and so on, biological processes which are in place as well - but the Bible's very clear. Without your spirit, your body dies. Your spirit is therefore essential to the functioning of your body. If I chopped off a finger I could continue to live; chopped off a couple of legs, still continue to live. So there's a lot you could lose and still live, but you can't live without your spirit, so your spirit is vital to the life that you live on the earth, so if the person's spirit is withdrawn they die. Now the Bible tells us your spirit can be broken. It can be crushed, it can be wounded, so your spirit is quite vulnerable. Your spirit can sense and respond and be affected by what goes on around it, so a person's spirit can be crushed, and when your spirit is broken it affects your health, for example the Bible says that a broken spirit dries the bones. In other words, when your spirit is damaged through trauma, through words, through control, through abuse, then what happens is it doesn't generate the energy that would allow you to live a very vibrant life.
Similarly, if your life is dominated by demonic spirits, your spirit is restricted from flowing, and so again, you don't live the free life and the abundant life that God has intended for us to have. So the second thing we notice is that your spirit energises and inspires your thoughts. Now here's something - remember we got everyone praying in tongues, and we asked you what was the effect of strong praying in tongues, what did you feel happen to you? We come up with actually your body came alive, you felt quite energised. How many felt that? Some of you said this, an interesting thing; you said that your mind cleared. How many had that experience, your mind cleared? Very good. Now notice this scripture here. It says in Proverbs 20, Verse 27, the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. Now that's an interesting thing. The lamp is something that illuminates, so the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord; it illuminates, or it searches all the deep places of his heart.
Here's another scripture, 1 Corinthians 2:11. What man knows the things of man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except the Spirit of God. Now your spirit, we try to describe it in different ways, but your spirit is like an energy source inside you. Your spirit fits into your body like a hand fits inside a glove, so if I was to look at a person, I see through their eyes into the soul and spirit, you're seeing the living person. If the spirit leaves, you look into those same eyes; they're dead and lifeless. Now your spirit provides life on the inside. It also illuminates your mind, so if God wants to drop things into your mind, He will do it through your spirit. The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, so when your spirit is flowing you think clearly. You notice when we got our spirits moving, our heads started to clear? You sit down for a long time, become passive and your body's inactive, your spirit will start to shut down as well. Stand up, shake your body, move, speak in tongues, and your head clears just like that. It's just a very simple thing to understand.