What Happened to My Spirit When I Was Born Again? | Season 05, Episode 2 | Simple Truth Podcast

When you were born again, what exactly happened inside of you? You know that the Bible says you're a new creation, but some days you still feel like the old one. Old habits, they pull on you. Old desires, they still try to entice you. Familiar struggles, they still show up. And it can make you wonder, "What really changed when I gave my life to God? And what does that mean for how I live?" Now, you're told to live spiritually, but what even is my spirit? In this episode, we're going to answer three questions. First, what does it mean for my spirit to be made alive? Second, what happened to me when I was born again? And third, how do I walk in the new life that God has given me? Welcome to the Simple Truth Podcast. I'm Ted Ross. This is season 5, episode 2. What happened to my spirit when I was born again? And today we're going to answer three questions. So, let's start with question number one. What does it mean for my spirit to be made alive? We hear about this in scripture. And the answer is found in simple truth number 81. You were created for life, but sin left you spiritually dead. Let's start with Genesis. Let's go back to the beginning right here in Genesis 2. We're going to see that we were given life by God for a life with him that depends on him. So God gave us life to live our life with him and we're to depend upon him. That's really honestly the relationship that God intended for us from the very beginning to live a lot like Adam before the fall. We've seen this in previous seasons. Genesis 2:7, quote, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being." Verse 17, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." So here we're trying to encapsulate in a short amount of time Genesis 2 we see God formed man and breathed life into him and man became a living being. A living being to have a close relationship with God. But we saw that of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he was instructed to not eat and in that day that if he were to eat it he would surely die. So what kind of death are we talking about? So God formed man. To form man is to shape to form with intention. And it wasn't random. He formed man for a purpose. In fact, each of us have a purpose in our own lives. And it says that he breathed into man's nostrils. This is Adam, the breath of life. The breath of life. It's God's given life. It's turning dust into a living person. It's what animated us. It's God's breath filling us and animating us and turning us into a living being. A living being is a living soul. It's a whole person. That's an interesting, I think, expression in those two words. This idea of God making us whole by breathing his spirit into us by breathing the breath of life and by us becoming a whole person. It says later though in that chapter, his instruction is you could eat of any of it, but if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die. Die, it's to perish. It's to come under death. But it begs the question, what death? Right? If God gave us life in the beginning, what effect did sin have? His instruction that you shouldn't eat of it because you should die. We know that as we read later in the book of Genesis, Adam didn't physically die, but Adam spiritually died. That's the issue that we were seeing there. There was a separation and a disconnection from God, and it happened because of sin. So if God gave us life in the beginning, the effect that sin had is that while we were created for a close relationship with God, sin left us spiritually dead, left us disconnected. And that's what we see that occurs after the fall of Adam and Eve. Let's go to Ephesians 2:1. Here we're going to see that before we were saved, before we became born again, we were spiritually dead. And we were spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. So going from the very beginning in Genesis, we're moving into the New Testament where Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus. Ephesians 2:1 says, quote, "And you," that's you and me, "he made alive," that's God, "who dead in trespasses and sins." It says, "And you, he made alive." That means he made us alive together with Christ. Right? We're made alive. We're spiritually awakened and we're united with Christ. And a part of us that died, that died because of sin, that was separated, that showed a separation and a spiritual death, was invigorated. It was new life breathed back into it. And this is what we're starting to see. He says, "Who were dead." We were spiritually dead. We were separated from the life of God. And we were done so because of our trespasses. Those would be our offenses, right? It's falling away from the right thing. It's doing the wrong thing. It's falling away. what's right, knowing what's right, and falling away from it and doing what is wrong, as well as our sins. That's missing the mark. It's falling short of God's standard. Have you ever wondered why self-improvement couldn't solve your issues? Have you ever wondered where before you were a Christian, you tried to do improvements to yourself? You'd say, "Maybe I'll read this book, or I'll follow this program, or maybe I'll watch YouTube videos, whatever it may be." And you found that even if it helped us a little bit, it really never solved anything. I know I've experienced that self-improvement doesn't solve the issues. And the reason why is self-help only goes so far. What you and I really need was to be made spiritually alive. We saw it back in Genesis. We're seeing it talked about here in Ephesians 2. We see it throughout the scriptures that we needed to be made spiritually alive. And that's why Jesus said you needed to be born again. But why is the question? So, let's take a look at John 3 verses 6 and 7. Here, we're going to see that better habits, they're not enough. They're not enough to overcome shortcomings. Jesus said that what we needed was to be born again, to be born from above, to be spiritually rebirthed. John 3:6, quote, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. So here he says in John 3:6, that which is born, that which is brought forth, that which is given life of the flesh is flesh. What is flesh in this context? It's the physical substance of which we made. It's our human nature. The things that were born from the flesh, they reap the flesh. But that which is born of God's spirit, those things are spirit. God's spirit. It's it's it's him imparting life into our spirit. And he says, "So do not marvel." If the things that were born of flesh result in flesh, and the things that are born of God's spirit are in his spirit, result in spirit, then for Jesus to say, "So do not marvel that you must be born again." The first birth, the physical fleshly birth, it wasn't enough to say you must be born again means you must be born from above. You had an experience with God. You had a first birth. You were born. You were a child. You grew up. Maybe you still are a child. God bless you. But you grew up and then you had an experience with God. Something that wasn't your first birth, but something that results in a second birth. And something changed based on that experience. Your spirit became alive. That's what Jesus is describing here. And so Nicodemus says, "Well, what must we need?" To paraphrase. And he says, "Listen, you don't need to be born of flesh again. What you need to be born is of spirit. You need to be born again. And so if the flesh produces flesh, then where did your spiritual life come from? You had a new birth, right? Where God's spirit made your spirit alive. So as we're here discussing the whole Christian and we're discussing the parts of a Christian, notice we're setting the stage for the various parts what's happening with your spirit. When you became born again, God's spirit brought your spirit to life and you were made spiritually alive. So what exactly is our spirit? Well, your spirit is the God-facing part of you, right? It's the God-facing part of a person through which we do three different things in the spirit. First of all, we connect with God. We fellowship with God through our spirit. That's the part of us that connects with God. Here's an example of which there's many in the scriptures, but let's take a look at John 4:4. It says, "God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." So it says, "Since God is spirit, those who worship God, those who reverence them, those who honor him, they must do so also in spirit and do so in truth, in sincerity. So through our spirit, we worship God." So this is one example here of what the operation or the function of the spirit is. It's a connection with God. It's fellowship with God through which God asks us, Jesus in this case in John 4, he instructs us to worship him through our spirit. Second is sensing God's leading intuition. The spirit of us, our spirit is where we have an intuition where we sense God's leading and sense God's instruction. So something impacts our spirit and we sense it and we gain an intuition in which we say I believe God is leading me to do something. An example of that would be in Romans 8:16 where it says quote the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. The Holy Spirit, God's spirit, the third part of the trinity. He himself, he bears witness with our spirit. He's not bearing witness with our body. He's not bearing witness with our soul, but he's bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. The third part or the third function, you could say, of the spirit is to discern right and wrong. To discern right from wrong, our conscience. Right? And here's an example in Romans 9:1. Quote, I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit. So Paul says, "I tell the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience, right? This component of his spirit. My conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit." That part of his spirit. This is again not his body. This is not his soul. This isn't his mind. This isn't his emotions or his will, but is part of his spirit which includes his conscience. It's bearing witness in God's spirit that he is not lying but telling the truth. In contrast to your spirit as a part of you, there are two other parts listed below. Right? Your soul, we saw this in last episode. What is your soul? Your soul is the inner life of a person. It's where we think, it's where we feel, it's where we choose, right? According to our will, that would be our mind and our emotions and our will. That is part of your soul. And then there's your body, right? It's a physical part of a person. And it interacts with the world around us through the five senses. These three parts make up the whole Christian. A Christian, as we saw in First Thessalonians last episode, is made up of a spirit, a soul, and a body. Which brings us to question number two. What happened to my spirit when I was born again? Which is answered in simple truth number 82. When you're born again, you become a new creation in Christ. Okay. 2 Corinthians 5:17. And here we're going to see that when you are quote in Christ, you are not the same person with just better habits or some kind of better behavior. You're a new creation because God brought new life into you and a new spiritual reality into your existence. Second Corinthians 5:17, quote, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, if anyone's united with Christ, if anyone's sharing in the life of Christ, that's what it means to be in Christ. He is a new creation, new. That means you're new in kind or quality, not just improved. So, you're a new kind of person. You're a new quality of person. You're not just the same person with some adjustments to it. That's why I think it's important to say that when you become born again, you're not just some adjustment in your habits or an adjustment in your behavior. There's something completely new, completely different about it. You're not the same kind of person and you're a completely different quality, so to speak. It says you're a new creation, something that was brought into being by God. So, you're a new kind, a new type of person brought into being by God because your spirit is made alive. It says, "Old things have passed away." Former things, your old condition, that means it's passed away, and behold, all things have become new. Have you ever wondered, "If I'm saved, why don't I feel completely new yet?" That's a question, right? We see these in the scriptures. So, if I am saved, if I'm born again, why don't I feel completely new yet? Because being new in Christ, it begins with God's work in your spirit. If you are made of three parts, if the whole Christian is three parts, you're seeing a dramatic change in one part while your soul and your body are still being transformed. That is the struggle. That's the difference that you see. So, let's take a moment. If my spirit has been made alive, why do I still struggle? Well, becoming born again makes your spirit alive. But sanctification, it's a big word and it's a word we're going to discuss in a future season coming up around the blood of Jesus. Becoming born again makes your spirit alive. But sanctification is the ongoing work of God transforming your whole person. When you became born again, your spirit became alive. You're a different kind or quality of a person, but it's happening in your spirit. And there's still a soul and a body that are still going to be transformed through this sanctification process. In other words, your spirit becomes alive when you become born again, but your soul still needs renewing. Your mind still needs transformation. Your emotions, they still need to be healed. And your body still needs to be presented to God. So, one part of you is completely different, but two other parts of you are relatively the same. And it creates a struggle as the spirit starts to work to gain control to transform you into the person, spirit, soul, and body that God wants you to be. This is why you can be saved and still experience an internal struggle. Before you were comfortable with sin, now when you're born again and your spirit's alive, when you have a conscience, an intuition, and you're fellowshipping with God, sin starts to trouble you. Before you ignored God, now your spirit wants to please God. The struggle inside of you is the tension between your old self, as the Bible would describe, your old man, and the new life that God has given you, right? Your spirit being made alive and starting to want to do the purpose that God has called for you. So, what changed when you were born again? So, here's something we describe is the whole Christian growth map. You'll notice on the left side for those who are watching this on YouTube and we'll describe it for those listening to the audio podcast that we have the body, the soul and the spirit. Sometimes I'll start with the body before the spirit because the body is something everyone understands, right? And then we have vertical columns where we look at for each component for the body, the soul and the spirit, we see what happened before you were born again, what happened after you were born again, and what is ongoing transformation. And so after you're born again, something that God is continuing to do in you day after day after day. So the body before you were born again, it's the same. It's your body. And after you're born again, it's relatively unchanged. Your body before you were born again and after you were born again was relatively the same. Now, something may have miraculously happened in your body when you became born again. And I can't speak to that. That God is God and he's going to do exactly what it is that he wants to do. But for most people when they become born again scripturally it's what's happening is happening in their spirit but their body is relatively unchanged. And then what is the ongoing transformation? Well as scripture says God is looking for you to present your body as a living sacrifice. So while your body before you were born again is one way and your body after you're born again was relatively close to how it was before you were born again. What God is starting to work in you is for you to start to learn to yield your body, yield your members, become presenting yourself as a living sacrifice to God. And we're going to discuss more about the body in two episodes from now. Now, let's take a look at the soul. Before you were born again, here is your soul right there. It was it was your old soul with its its will, its mind, its emotions, you your personalities as we described the soul. So, you had a personality. Then you became born again. And generally speaking, the personality didn't dramatically change. If you're a person who likes to make jokes, you continued to make jokes. If you're a very analytical person, you were probably still very analytical. But what changed in your soul is as your spirit became alive. You started to become curious. Something's happening inside of you and your soul, your mind is seeing what's happening inside of you and it's it's seeing, it's analyzing it. Your emotions are feeling what's happening inside of your spirit and your will is starting to make adjustments. You used to be very self-willed and now you're starting to become God-willed. So, there's a a curiosity and something's certainly happening. And what we see in the ongoing transformation scripturally is God is starting to work to renew your soul, starting to renew your emotions, starting to renew your mind, and starting to renew your will. That's the work that God starts to do. Then before you were born again, what happened with your spirit? You were spiritually dead. We saw it in Ephesians. We saw what happened after the fall with Adam. You were spiritually dead. And then after you became born again, you become spiritually alive. This is what we've been seeing in scripture. And so, what is the ongoing transformation? It's following the spirit. It's being led by God's spirit in your spirit. As Paul was describing, his conscience bore witness. So, in his spirit, he's submitting to do the will of God by the Holy Spirit. So it brings us to question number three. How do I walk in the new life that God has given me? Brings us to simple truth number 83. Here we're going to see right Christians they live by spiritual discernment not by self-motivation. That's the key. 1 Corinthians 2:14. Here we're going to see the Holy Spirit who made your spirit alive also teaches you how to receive, discern, and walk in the things of God. So God's spirit made you spiritually alive. And in doing so, he didn't just abandon you when you were born again. He is also by his spirit through your spirit teaching you how to receive God's things, how to discern what is God and what is not God, and how to walk or execute or obey God's will in your life. 1 Corinthians chapter 2:14, quote, "But the natural man does not receive the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned." The natural man, that's your human, your soulish understanding. It's your old way of processing the world around you. It's your old way of relating to and understanding God and his will and his purpose for your life, right? It's your old mind. It's your old emotions. that your old will. It says that natural man, that old man does not receive the things of the spirit of God. The old man doesn't receive them. That old man doesn't welcome them. The natural man doesn't accept God's things. The natural man doesn't receive what God is offering. That is why it's important that you do not walk in your natural man. You not walk in your old soul, your old way of analyzing and processing and thinking about the things of God. To be clear, you and I were very unwise. And we need to now walk in God's wisdom and learn to understand God's will and purpose and even just God's ways in our life. So the natural man does not receive, does not welcome or accept the things of the spirit of God, the matters, the truth, the reality from God. Our old self rejects God's truth and rejects the reality that God is providing to us, right? Of the spirit of God, of the Holy Spirit, the sacred breath, the holy wind of God. Why doesn't the natural man receive God's things? Because they're foolishness to the natural man. That means they're senseless according to natural thinking. We saw it with Jesus all throughout the scriptures where people would come to him. They'd say, "But what about this? You can't possibly do this. Then Jesus does that." Right? Over and over again, we had people walking in their natural man, interacting with Jesus Christ, our Lord. It's important that you do not walk in your natural man. That you are using your spirit to then be led by God's spirit in your life because your natural man will look at what God has to say and it will be senseless according to the way your natural man thinks. And it says nor can he that is the natural man know them. He can't they can't know the things of God. Why? Because they're spiritually discerned. To be spiritually discerned means that they're understand with the help of God's spirit. You and I want to be led by God's spirit. You and I want to understand the things of God and God's purpose in our life. And we're going to understand those things not through our natural man, our old soulish human way of understanding the world around us. We're going to understand those things through our spirit because our spirit discerns the things of God. Ever try to figure out God's will with your own mind or your own emotions? Right? If I sit down and read a bunch of books, or if I write this out, or if I start to take my will and try to press it upon God, then maybe I'll understand God. Or maybe I'm feeling a certain way, so I chase after my feelings and just hope that God is in my feelings. The answer is your new life. It doesn't require your old mind, doesn't require your old emotions. It requires spiritual understanding and discernment. It requires you to exercise, for lack of a better term, your spirit, the spirit that God made alive when you were born again. Romans 8 verses 5 and 6. Here we're going to see that what you set your mind on shapes where your life is headed. The flesh leads you towards death. If you set your mind on things of the flesh, of the natural man, of the old man, if you focus on those things, it leads you towards death. But if with your mind, which is a a component of your soul, you focus in on the things of the spirit, it brings life and peace. Romans 8:5, quote, "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit the things of the spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. For those who live according to the flesh, those who live according to that sinful nature, to those desires set apart from God, those who wake up and they focus their mind, they put their intellect, they analyze, it's in their thoughts throughout the day. Fleshly things, right? To set your mind is to think, to focus, to set your attention on. What are you setting the attention of your mind on? What are you thinking about throughout the day? What are you focusing on? Because the scripture says that if you're focusing it on flesh, on your old desires, on your sinful nature, then that's going to bring about death, which is separation from life and separation from God. But those who live according to the spirit, they focus on the things of the spirit. They think about the things of the spirit. They focus on, they set their attention on. By the way, it's going to take your will to do so. We don't wake up in the morning and just say, "I'm just going to think about God throughout all the day." We have flesh, our body, and our unregenerated part of our soul. It wants to think about all sorts of things. It wants to focus in on old desires and all sorts of aspects that have nothing to do with God. So, we use our will, which is a component of our soul, which we'll talk about next episode. And we set our mind, which is our thinking, our focus, and we set our attention on the things of the spirit. And we do it because it's good for us, because it's who we are. We are who our spirit is to be honest. When we were made spiritual alive, that is us. Our old habits, our old behaviors, a bunch of old carnal desires, that is not us. That is the mistakes we made in the past. And that's the things, the temptations and the enticements that we chase after. Who we really are is in our spirit. It's connected to God. It communes with him. It fellowships with him. It has an intuition. It has a conscience. That's who you are. You are spiritual. You are not about being carnal. You are spiritual. Jesus came to bring life to you, to bring life to your spirit. So then your soul could be renewed and your body could be presented to him. Because it says here to be carnally minded, to sit around focused on the flesh, to think, to focus, to set your attention on the flesh. Those things produce death. They produce separation from God, separation from life. But to be spiritually minded, to set the things and to focus, to think about, to set your attention on the things of the spirit, it creates life and peace. That's life in the fullest, wholeness, rest. Why? Because God made you and he formed you. As we saw back in Genesis 2, he did it because he wants to have a relationship with you. He wants to fellowship with you. He wants to commune with you. He wants a real closeness with you. He wants you to fulfill your purpose. He wants you to fulfill his will in your life and to perform your purpose. And until you're lined up with what God wants you to do in the spirit, until your soul and your body are falling in line, you're going to feel a struggle because God has formed you to do something and you're not doing it. God has purposed something in your life and he's ready to pour out blessings and he's ready to to prosper you and to strengthen you and to do all the things needed so that you could fulfill God's will in your life. And yet you are resisting. you're resisting against him. Jesus said to take his yoke upon you for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. When you take that yoke, when you put your head as it is with the oxen, and you start to walk at the speed of Jesus in the direction that Jesus has for you, and when you start to not try to pull ahead of Jesus or drag behind Jesus, that's what the yoke for oxen was, folks. When you start to do that, then you'll start to fulfill God's purpose in your life. And you will find a fullness, a wholeness, and a rest because you are now falling in line. And things have fallen right back into order in your life. And that's why it's important to be led by God's spirit through your spirit. Are you focusing on thoughts that pull you away from God? Think about it. Start off the day and say, "I'm going to start to think about what I think about. I'm going to start to take a check on what I'm focusing on. I'm going to start to monitor what my attention is being set on. When I was a new Christian, I found quite often I was super excited about God. My spirit was alive. And I remember let's say I'd go to church. I'd walk and go, "God is so good." And I could just I could just my spirit is energized and I felt so good. But then as time started to proceed, my soul started meditating on all the wrong things. I had all these desires I was focusing on. I had all these wants. I had all these weird, wicked thoughts. I was listening to all sorts of bad music and watching all sorts of bad movies. And I just found myself almost polluting myself where what I thought about, what I focused on, what I set my attention on were really dragging me down. And then maybe I'd go back to church and I'd go to try to worship God. I'd try to submit or I'd fast or I'd read my Bible. I'd start to feel better again. But I was yo-yoing, wasn't I? Right. I was yo-yoing. We often talk about yo-yo diets, right? where someone they do all these things to lose weight, but they do all these things to gain weight, and so they're yo-yoing back and forth. God doesn't have us as a yo-yo. So, do you ever find yourself focusing on thoughts that pull you away from God? I know what that's like, right? I know what that's like. A spirit-led life, it has to start with a spirit focused mind. And that may sound interesting, but what it's basically saying is with your soul, you are choosing to do the things of the spirit. You have a spirit. That spirit is alive. But you're going to take your will in your soul. You're going to take your mind and you're going to start to focus and put your attention and focus your thoughts and set your attention on the things of the spirit. And that is the a critical step to being led by God's spirit. John 15 verses 4 and 5. Here we're going to see that if your spirit has been made alive, your life must now remain connected to aka keep a close relationship with God who gives life. You got that? If your spirit's alive, then you now need to be remain connected to you need to keep a close relationship. That's the story that I was just describing where I would go and I would connect with God, let's say at church, and then I would find myself drifting away in my relationship, basically connecting with other things at other times, right? When the reality is is when your spirit is made alive, you need to reconnect and stay connected to the God who gives life. John 15 verse 4, abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. Verse 5, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing. Wow. John 15:4 says, "Abide in me." To abide is to dwell. It's to remain. It's to continue. So Jesus here is talking to us and says, "Dwell in me, remain in me. Continue in me and I in you." It says, "As the branch," right? A branch, the branch of a vine, a limb, an offshoot, right? You and me on Jesus's vine, we are the limb. We are the branch, the offshoot. As the branch, it cannot bear fruit of itself. A branch can't bear fruit. A branch can't produce or bring forth results. A branch can't do that unless it's connected to the vine, right? Unless it abides in the vine. The vine is a vine. It's specifically a grape vine. That's was very common in Israel. And this was something that people were very familiar with. And they understood exactly how vines worked, how branches work, how fruit was born. And so Jesus is describing us though as branches and himself as the vine. And it says that unless we are abiding, unless we are dwelling, remaining, and continuing in Jesus Christ, we're not going to bear fruit. Okay? Have you ever been trying to live for God without depending on God? I've seen this all the time where someone says, "I'm so excited about God. Here's all the things I'm going to do for God." But you weren't doing it in obedience to God. You weren't doing it with a dependence on God. The reality is the branch cannot bear fruit by itself. And neither can we. We're not going to do things because we're doing it for God. And we're not going to do things because we're independent of God. And we're gonna do something great and come back and God's gonna say, "That's so great. I really just love that you went off on your own and you came up with something. You come back to me." And then God is just so enthusiastic about it. God made you alive by his spirit and he wants you to be led by his spirit. He wants you to remain connected to him and he wants you to continue in a close relationship with him. That's the relationship he wants. So what should I do now? Well, remember if you want to see the benefits of believing the gospel, we discussed this in last season. All the blessings of submitting your life to God, of obeying God, all the benefits of life and peace and joy and hope and strength and prosperity and all the good stuff. If you'd like to start to see more of that in the next seven days, then try this. Day one, remember what God has done for you. I recommend you read Ephesians chapter 2:es 1-5 and thank God for making your spirit alive. Read those verses out loud and thank God for making your spirit alive. He did this when you were born again and it's a powerful truth and it really is the start of a new life. It's a rebirth as Jesus told Nicodemus. Also on day one, remind yourself, quote, "My life with God began with him reaching out to me. It wasn't my own mind and it wasn't my own feelings. When you had an experience with God, you didn't earn it. There's not something you did that was great where God says, "They're so great. I've got to now come and do something with them." It began with grace. It began with mercy. And God reached out to you. And it's a wonderful thing. It's such a privilege, isn't it? The privilege for God to reach out to us. It wasn't our own mind who did it. It wasn't our own feelings that did it. On days 2 through 7, seek to be led by the Holy Spirit. Pray to God. Say, "Lord, teach me to hear your spirit and to walk by your spirit today." Because remember, he caused you to be born again, he caused you to be spiritually alive so that your spirit can submit to the will of the Holy Spirit. And then as your spirit is understanding, as you're communing with God, as you're fellowshipping with God, as your intuition is leading you, as your conscience is telling you what's right and wrong and helping guide you, then your soul can start to make choices, can choose, and your body can fall in line. So pray to God, Lord, teach me to hear and to walk by your spirit today. And when you're tempted or you're pressured, take a pause, take a second, take a step back, and ask God for grace. Ask God for grace to give you the strength and the understanding for you to understand what is his will and then to cause your soul and your body to submit to your spirit and to obey God in that situation. Do that throughout the day. Do that through days 2 through 7 to see this the effects of this, the benefits of this come to pass. In days 3 through 7, walk in the new life that you've been given. God made you alive, spiritual life when you were born again. and your soul and your body. They may still have a lot of oldness in it, more oldness than we would like, but if you submit yourself to God's spirit and obey God, you'll start to see renewal in your soul and you'll see you presenting your body to God. So, in days 3 through 7, treat conviction or grief over sin as evidence of the new life. God may be convicting you about something and saying, "That's not right." Or you may be doing something that's inappropriate. You're finding grief in it. Don't feel bad. Don't feel like you're being judged, but realize the fact that your spirit's alive, and your spirit's not going to let you keep doing all the things that you were doing before. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That's what we're describing here. There's going to be a conviction. It says that the spirit of God comes to convince of sin, righteousness, and judgment in the scriptures that he's going to convict you of things inside of you. Don't look at them as trouble. Don't look at them as things to be ignored or to be quenched. Look at those as evidence of a new life. that your spirit is alive and that your spirit now wants you to do things, to make decisions, to commit yourself so that you can then start to fulfill the purpose that God has in your life. And say to yourself, God made my spirit alive and now he wants the rest of me. Why is there a conviction? Why is there a grief over sin? Because God made you spiritually alive and now he wants your spirit, your soul, and your body. And when he has it, he is going to give you rest and peace and life and joy and hope and every good thing. And it's going to pour out not just in your life, but in the lives of the people around you. I pray God bless you and God keep you. I pray God bless you as you remember what God has done for you when you became born again. I pray God bless you as you seek to be led by his spirit and you start to walk in the new life that God has given you. And don't miss next episode because how can you tell when it's God's spirit talking or it's your own soul talking? And how do you transform your own thoughts and your own emotions? Well, we're going to see in this next episode. So, click into the next episode to see more in this season and like and subscribe for more simple, biblical, and essential truth.