Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Notice here a division of assets. Soul and Spirit are not the same thing. Joints and marrow are not the same thing. Thoughts and intents are not the same thing. Paul described it in a very confusing way that often leaves a reader bewildered.

Romans 7:18,23 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

We are both flesh and Spirit and it is the Word of God that separates one from the other. The Word is the Sword of the Spirit and the Spirit has the power to do the work for God because He is God.

Being God, loving and merciful, He will not destroy us, but a skillful surgeon is He that does not use any anesthesia. The truth hurts but how are you to distinguish soul from Spirit if the flesh does not cry out in pain?

How can the Word work as the Sword of the Spirit if you allow the fleshly mind to determine what Truth there is in the scriptures? “I got this!” has to surrender to “I know nothing.”

1 Corinthians 8:2 And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.

How big is the ego that tries to tell God what the scriptures mean?

Philippians 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Picking up where I left off yesterday, I had not been living the resurrected life that Paul spoke about. Everything had been about feeling special, knowing God was on my side. Why else would He have worked super natural events in my life? Maybe it was because it was the only way He could get my attention.

The first part of my life was filled with an ego that was designed to hide the real me. Heaven forbid anyone should ever discover who I really was underneath the bluster. Little did I realize that the façade of ego would manifest itself in my new life by taking on the Super Christian mentality.

So what is a resurrected life? How do we transition from self-effort to God-effort? For me it had to begin with tearing down self-imaging habits and being vulnerable and real with others. That is a difficult thing to do for someone who has been hiding his whole life. I didn’t trust people and you cannot have true fellowship without trust. That was a huge gap in my life that I had to cross in order to live the life Christ had built for me.

Romans 9:22-24 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

It wasn’t until I realized that this resurrected life was prepared for me to enter into and that it was for me to find out how to enter into that life. That could not happen with the old attitudes and behaviors.