Look in a mirror and what do you see? A face, a body, maybe a few things you'd like to change. That's what most of us see. And that is exactly where the enemy wants your attention to stay.

One of the oldest deceptions of the devil is to keep shifting our focus away from the spirit. He knows that a man has a spirit, a soul and a body, but he wants you to think you are only the body. He wants you to treat yourself as all flesh. Why? Because your spirit is crucial to your success and your well-being, and a believer who forgets his spirit lives far below what God intended.

So let me remind you who you really are.

God Breathed His Own Life Into You

When God made Adam, He didn't create some other kind of life and put it in him. Genesis 2:7 says the Lord God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." God breathed His very own life into man.

That is a big deal. It is why man deserves respect. God invested Himself in man, and that's why He placed him above everything else He made and gave him dominion (Genesis 1:26).

Adam's spirit was joined to God. It had a direct connection with Him. That is how it was meant to be from the beginning: the spirit is the real man, and the real man walks with God.

One Spirit With the Lord

Here is the good news for every believer. The New Testament says, "But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:17).

When you came into union with Christ as a new creation, your spirit was connected to God as one. Think of electricity. Power can be generated in one city and travel hundreds of kilometres to your house in another. It passes through power stations, power lines and transformers, and it gets converted along the way. But when it lights your bulb, it is still the same electricity.

That is your connection to God. It is one. It is not a weaker copy of His life. It is His life in you.

Your Body Is Your Legal Access to Earth

Now, I'm not saying the body doesn't matter. It matters a great deal right here, right now. Your body is your access and your legal right to live on this planet.

That is why demons fight so hard for human bodies. They can't function properly on earth without one. In the Gospels we even see them asking to go into a herd of swine (Mark 5:12-13). But the body they really want is a human one.

When a body stops working, that person no longer has a legal right to be here. Death is simply the connection between spirit and body being broken. The body stays behind; the spirit goes on to face God.

And between the two sits the soul. Your soul, your mind, is what connects your spirit to your body. Keep that in mind, because we'll come back to it.

You Have More Than Adam Had

When you got born again, God did not just reset you to how things were in Eden. It's tempting to think that, but it isn't the case. Eden gives us a picture of God's original intention, but the life you have now is a different and better life.

The Bible says, "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit" (1 Corinthians 15:45). Adam was given life. Jesus, the last Adam, gives life. And everyone who receives His life becomes a life-giving person too.

So you are not just back to where Adam was. You have something Adam didn't have.

A Spirit That Can't Be Corrupted

Adam's spirit was corrupted when he sinned. God made sure that will never happen again.

The new spirit you've received is sealed. Ephesians 1:13 says that after you believed, "ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise." The Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of God, has come to live inside you. You are His temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). And if sin can't get into God, sin can't get into the spirit He has sealed.

Whatever happens in your body or your mind cannot reach and corrupt your born-again spirit. Why? Because it wasn't your works that gave you that spirit in the first place. You were justified by the blood of Jesus, and that blood covers your sins past, present and future. Think about it: if His blood only covered sins committed before the cross, then nobody born after the resurrection could ever be saved, because all of our sins were still in the future when He died.

That isn't permission to live carelessly. It's the security from which you live right.

Spirit Leads, Mind Follows

Here is how God designed it. Your spirit carries super information. It should influence your mind, and your mind should direct your body. Not the other way round.

Paul says, "we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16). That mind is in your spirit. But if your mind doesn't change, you'll keep living as you did before, even though your spirit is brand new. At worst, your body can influence your mind, but it can never reach your spirit. So the battle is in the mind.

That's why Romans 12:2 tells us to be "transformed by the renewing of your mind." Your soul is the transformer. When you fill it with the Word, it carries what is in your spirit out into your body and your daily life.

The Temple Inside You

I like to picture it the way the Old Testament temple was laid out. Your spirit is the most holy place, where God's presence lives. Your mind is the inner court. Your body is the outer court.

In the temple, the glory sat in the most holy place. In you, the life of God sits in your spirit, and it is meant to flow outward: through your mind and into your body, your health, your finances, your career and your relationships.

"Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

What to Do With This Today

Here's a simple practice for this week:

1. Start with your spirit. Before you look at your problems, remind yourself: "I am one spirit with the Lord. The real me is joined to God."
2. Feed your mind the Word. Pick one verse from this article and meditate on it every morning. Let it renew your thinking.
3. Let the inside lead the outside. When your body or emotions push you one way, ask: "What does my spirit, the mind of Christ, say about this?" Then follow that.
4. Pick one area. Choose one part of your life, your health, finances, a relationship, and pray deliberately for the life in your spirit to flow into it.

You are not all flesh. You are a spirit, joined to God, sealed by the Holy Spirit, with the mind of Christ. Start living from the inside out.

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God bless you,
Michael Adegoke