[Pastor Mike] Sure. Firstly although it's useful to consider spirit, soul and body as three separate things, they are actually quite integrated together. In other words you separate your spirit and soul from your body, then your body dies. The Bible talks that it requires the word of God to separate your soul and spirit, Hebrews 4, so clearly the soul and the spirit are quite closely bound together. When Jesus talked about the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man died and was buried, and the Bible says he awoke in hell virtually. Now in hell he had memories. He remembered his family, he remembered his brothers, he remembered Lazarus, he remembered the experiences. There's no indication it was a parable, so it's quite likely it was a real person, so the insight that we would get from that, is that when a person dies, their soul which is separate but connected to their spirit, carries with it the memories of their life.
Your spirit and soul use your body to interact with the physical world, so my understanding of memories, is that experiences that we have are imprinted chemically in the brain, and so there's a chemical imprint left from experiences. In fact actually your memories are made up of the chemical imprints that go into the brain, but there must be a retaining of them. There must be a mind of the spirit, there must be some way that all of these things are retained in such a way that when you die, even though your brain now ceases to function and returns to dust, the person still has all their consciousness. So it would appear to me as though, according to scripture, your soul and spirit are separate but strongly connected, requiring the word of God to separate and work out the difference. It seems to me as though the soul, when you enter the spirit life, your spirit man, the soul is the person residing therein there, the body seems to be used by spirit and soul as a way of engaging and living in the physical world - quite interesting that demonic spirits, when they enter a person will enter in and get involved in the body part of the person, or around the soul in some kind of way, seems to affect both areas.
So the Bible isn't clear on all aspects of how it works, but it does seem to indicate that spirit, soul and body are quite distinct, yet they are integrated to work together. They will separate at your death, but be reunited in resurrection. How God does it all I really can't answer, I can only give as much as I have learnt from the Bible, or learnt through some of the stuff we've looked at in the science field. Science has been able to identify that your memories for example, form like physical trees inside your brain, and that actually memories, when they shift the shape and formation of those neuron trees will change. Really interesting research has been done lately on that, but beyond that, there's a lot that God doesn't say and I don't know either. So I think, you know, we need to research and look into those areas a bit further - but that's about where my understanding of it is, so see spirit, soul and body quite separate.
The bible refers to each one - you may be sanctified spirit, soul and body. It seems to refer to each one as a separate thing, but I don't think soul and spirit are easily separated.
So my understanding is when a person dies and goes into eternity, their form as their spirit man is identical to the form of their physical body and the soul somehow is directly connected into that so the person's like a living person, except they're not living in a physical body. They have their existence in the spirit world now. That's the best I can explain it I think - hope it helps. [Laughs] Okay, anyone else like to ask some things just about what we've covered tonight? Okay then, we've got time for one more practice, otherwise if anyone else has got a question we'll go for the question or we'll get another practice? Okay, you're all going to have another practice? [unclear 01.55.27]
The thing is you're going to get good if you practice, and keeping on practising, so basically you want to take this position: every time I get a chance to pray for someone I will, and I'll look for the chances. When I get an opportunity to pray, if I know the need the person has - just because they tell me their need doesn't mean that's their real need, or all that God wants to say. I'll listen to God for something for them. We should make it our practice that we're going to do it. Now the thing that seems to be the trouble for everyone is something like this. [Just come on up here] This is where the crunch point comes for almost every person, and so it helps if you can be aware of it. It helps you to realise it's normal to go through this. If I - come here. Can I practice on you? Wonderful. Can I take your hand? Thank you. Alright then, now at this point now, the dilemma is, am I conscious of God or not? If I'm conscious of my failures, I suddenly feel terribly distant from God right now, and I've got to do something, and so now I feel under pressure to perform.
Now when a person's under pressure to perform, they don't flow from their spirit. They will just try to perform, and there's no life in it, so what I'll do is I'll be religious: oh God, just bless her. Father, you know her needs Lord. You just help her tonight and touch her. Now it sounds nice, but there's no life in it whatsoever. I'm actually not engaging her, and I will talk about that tomorrow in one of the sessions, about engaging with people as you minister to them. So what I need to do is just direct my attention to the Lord. Now if you build a devotional life, and you maintain your intimacy with the Lord, and increase your awareness of Him in day to day life, what happens when you come to minister is, it's only a short thing to just relax, just drop into your inner man, into your spirit - oh, thank You Lord, You're there. Now Lord, You know her needs right now. Well just pour out Your spirit upon her. Holy Spirit, just come on her right now, Jesus' Mighty name - become conscious of God, and the presence of God comes on her, and she's starting to feel the presence of the Lord.