Thursday

Related Verses
1 Thes. 5:23-24, 16-19
23 And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it.
16 Always rejoice,
17 Unceasingly pray,
18 In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
19 Do not quench the Spirit;

Heb. 13:12
12 Therefore also Jesus, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.

Heb. 10:29
29 By how much do you think he will be thought worthy of worse punishment who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has considered the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Eph. 5:26
26 That He might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word,

2 Cor. 5:4
4 For also, we who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened, in that we do not desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

2 Cor. 7:1
1 Therefore since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and of spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Related Reading
God not only sanctifies us wholly but also preserves our spirit, soul, and body complete…In quantity God sanctifies us wholly; in quality God preserves us complete; that is, He keeps our spirit, soul, and body perfect. Through the fall our body has been ruined, our soul has been contaminated, and our spirit has been deadened. In God’s full salvation our entire being is saved and made complete and perfect. For this, God is preserving our spirit from any deadening element (Heb. 9:14), our soul from remaining natural and old (Matt. 16:24-26), and our body from the ruin of sin (1 Thes. 4:4; Rom. 6:6). Such a preservation by God and His thorough sanctification sustain us to live a holy life unto maturity that we may meet the Lord in His parousia. (Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, p. 204) 

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Our spirit is composed of three parts: the conscience, the fellowship, and the intuition. Our spirit is mainly for us to have fellowship with God. When we have fellowship with God, we contact Him. This contact with God spontaneously gives us a sense of God, a consciousness of God. Intuition denotes the direct sense and consciousness that come from God. Through this intuition we can know whether we are right or wrong. If we are wrong, we will be condemned by our conscience. But if we are right, we will be justified by our conscience. 

The first way to preserve our spirit is to keep it living through proper exercise [cf. 1 Thes. 5:16-19]…To rejoice, pray, and give thanks are to exercise our spirit. When we exercise our spirit in this way, we cause it to be living. 

Do you realize that to be quiet is to keep your spirit in a deadened condition? If you allow your spirit to remain in a situation of death, this means that you do not cooperate with the sanctifying God to preserve your spirit. 

Another way to preserve our spirit is found in 2 Corinthians 7:1…“Therefore since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and of spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” This verse indicates that we should abstain from all defilement of both flesh and spirit. We need to stay away from anything that contaminates our spirit. This is the reason we should keep our eyes from looking at evil things, such as defiling pictures. Such pictures defile not only our eyes; they also defile our spirit. This is something I have learned from experience. In 1933 I visited Shanghai the first time. The church had two meeting halls then,…quite far from each other…The ride from western Shanghai to northern Shanghai took more than an hour. The first few times I took this ride in the streetcar, I looked around at the various sights on the main street. But when I arrived at the meeting hall, I realized that my spirit was deadened. It had been deadened by my looking at so many things on the street. From this I learned to close my eyes and pray when taking the ride by streetcar. This preserved my spirit. Because I learned to preserve my spirit in this way, when I arrived at the meeting hall in northern Shanghai, my spirit was living. I had truly been sanctified in my spirit. 

If you become contaminated by looking at certain kinds of pictures, your spirit will be defiled, contaminated, and deadened. As a result, you will not be able to pray unless you first ask the Lord to cleanse you from all defilement. I offer this as an illustration of our need to cooperate with the sanctifying Triune God to have our spirit preserved from deadness and contamination. (Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, pp. 204-205, 207) 

Further Reading: CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, “The Issue of the Dispensing of the Processed Trinity and the Transmitting of the Transcending Christ,” chs. 1, 3