It is not at all times that the Holy Spirit will lead you, into exercising spiritual authority over the acts and works of the evil one.
We had always been made to understand in spiritual warfare, to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. And that is fine.
But however, it is not all the time that, the Holy Spirit leads us in battle against the enemy.
The activation of your faith is the key to your ability to overcome the enemy. The Bible says:
“For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.”
1 John 5:4 NIV
A passive faith is ineffective against the devil and his cohort.
When we are walking by faith and not by sight in spiritual warfare (2 Corinthians 5:7), we will always walk in persistent victory over the evil one, as we are using the name of Jesus in it.
As we walk by faith, the spirit of the inner man becomes empowered to pick up and identify spiritual things, which must be dealt with by activating our faith.
This often happens as we pray in the spirit.
And it’s important to acknowledge that everything which is spiritual is not necessarily from God.
Your enemy in spiritual warfare is a spirit being, who has the ability to masquerade as an agent of light.
The scripture says:
“And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.”
2 Corinthians 11:14 NKJV
Therefore, your spiritual perception of anything has nothing to do at all, with the gifts of the Holy Spirit in your life.
Spiritual gifts are freely given to us for the edification of the Church.
They have nothing to do with our ability to walk by faith; even though there are certain spiritual gifts, that may not yield results without the operation of the gift of faith itself.
Now, the gift of faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is different from the faith, which comes through our believing in the word of God (see Romans 10:17 and Hebrews 11:1).
The source of spiritual perception.
The power of your spiritual perception emanates from your ability, to work on and develop the spirit in your inner man.
In another word, you have to learn how to develop spiritual skills into spiritual perception.
The spirit of the inner man takes its cues from the spiritual deposits on the inside of your spirit man.
It’s whatever you’re depositing into your spiritual man that the spirit of your inner man will tap into for spiritual perception.
If you’re meditating on God’s word day and night, while praying in the Holy Ghost every day; your spirit man will take cues from those deposits from God on the inside of you.
The Lord told Joshua:
“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
Joshua 1:8 NKJV
The Lord here gave Joshua here the key into spiritual perception for spiritual discernment to lead His people into the promised land.
Joshua would never have been successful without doing this.
Paul while praying for the Ephesian Church wrote a letter to them. His writing to them shows us how this works.
He prayed for them to the Father by saying that:
“May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality].”
Ephesians 3:16 AMPC
The Holy Spirit lives inside of your innermost being or spirit man, and it is from this place that He leads and directs your life as a Christian.
This is the place inside of your innermost being as a Christian, from where the rich treasury of God’s glory can be tapped into.
However, once you’ve received strength and boldness on the inner man, the human spirit does have the ability to do exploits by himself, without necessarily being led by the Holy Spirit.
It is from this position of strength by developing spiritual skills in a believer’s life, that the ability to perceive spiritual truths comes from.
We are able to do this because our spirit man is born again. It is born again by the word of God and the Spirit of God (1 Peter 1:23).
The word of God is inside your spirit man, and God’s word deposits in your innermost being helps you in perceiving and judging spiritual things.
Every believer in Christ Jesus needs to develop the ability and skills in their Christian lives to perceive spiritual truth.
These are the things that has to be developed, as you evolve in your relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately, it is not every believer in Christ Jesus who is Spirit-filled, that does have the ability to perceive spiritual truth. This is because the spirit man needs to be able to grow up into such things.
For example, there are many charismatic congregations that do often get carried away with excitements and entertainments, without the manifestation of the power of God amongst them.
Not all singing, dancing and exciting moments in a Church meeting setting are of the Holy Spirit.
The enemy does have a way of manipulating his path, into the midst of the children of God during these times.
We must therefore be able to recognize such moves of the enemy, in the gatherings of God’s people so as to be able to deal with him immediately.
It is the responsibility of the Church leadership, to act spontaneously in identifying such things, so as to deal with them in any Church service setting.
The spirit of the inner man does have the ability to perceive spiritual truth, that’s hidden for the purpose of discovering it.
The Holy Spirit communicates to us through our spirit man. When He does, He often speaks with spiritual authority into our lives, in order to impart us with spiritual truth.
Sometimes He may be soft, firm or even gentle; but we must realize that He will never speak to our senses or into our head.
He always speaks to us from His dwelling place inside the spirit man of the heart (the bottom of the heart).
That’s what Solomon meant when he wrote:
“The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD, Searching all the inner depths of his heart.”
Proverbs 20:27 NKJV
In other words, God uses the Holy Spirit as the “Lamp Holder”, while searching the inner depths of your heart for the spiritual deposits in it.
If there’s no spiritual deposit of His word in your life, then “the lamp of the Lord” has nothing in your life to use in pointing you to the spiritual truth for your spiritual perception.
And no one will be able to explain that truth to you, until you begin to search for it by yourself in the scriptures and by praying in the Holy Ghost.
It is what you are consuming day and night as a child of God, that the Holy Spirit can use in directing your pathway in life.
God speaks to us through the spirit man inside of us. He searches us to see and to know the intents of our hearts.
Paul wrote again:
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God…
…The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,”
Romans 8:14, 16 NKJV
We are led by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit in our lives into spiritual perception.
This is how we know that we are the children of God. The Holy Spirit always reminds us of our relationship with God, the Father.
He witnesses to our spirit man, about this relationship with God, from the moment that we got born again.
This continues until the spirit man becomes matured enough, to begin independently walking in the reality of who we are in Christ Jesus.
The Holy Spirit leads you by bearing witness, from the inside of your spirit man into exploring spiritual truth.
This is how He trains you to become skillful and strong in perceiving spiritual things.
In most cases when you get a witness in your spirit man, such witnessing will come to remind you of the written word of God, that the Holy Spirit had engraved in your heart through the deposits inside of it.
And often times some believers are reluctant, to act in accordance with God’s will for their lives, due to the fact that it may not make any human sense to them.
In other words, they don’t have the spiritual deposits of God’s word in them to understand such things.
Spiritual truth is not meant to make any sense to you at all. They are meant to be received by believing in them, when we acknowledge them by saying them.
By saying what is from God back to Him, you are telling Him that you are in total and complete agreement with Him about it.
To a believer who has trained his spirit man to recognize and acknowledge these truths, they are part of his lifestyle.
He finds it easier to act on the cues that are being transmitted from the innermost being to his spirit man.
A believer who continuously trains his spirit man to hear God and does what He says is living a blessed life.
We live a blessed life because, the blessing itself flows from the innermost being of the spirit man.
As you’re obeying the leads and cues, coming from the inside of your spirit man, you will begin to see the manifestation of the blessing around you and in your life as a Christian.
Identifying what you’re perceiving.
King Solomon once advised his son:
“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.”
Proverbs 4:23 NKJV
All the issues of your life flow out of your innermost being. As they are springing out your spirit man has the ability to perceive them, so that you may be able to appropriately react to them.
And again, King Solomon wrote:
“He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”
Proverbs 16:32 NKJV
You are the only one who has the ability, to individually weigh what comes into and through your spirit man.
When you’re not paying attention to the witness in your inner man, you are opening your life up to be devoured by the enemy.
Every human being on earth does has the ability, to perceive spiritual truth to certain extent. But unfortunately, it’s not everyone who will accept spiritual truth.
We were created in the image of God; with the same ability that’s in God to perceive spiritual truth (Psalms 139).
Atheists do have that ability also, which is always pointing them to Christ Jesus; even though they will always do their best to deny the truth about God:
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Romans 1:20-21 NKJV
But for many as believers in Christ Jesus, it is often the struggle in the flesh that is impeding their perception of spiritual truth.
That’s why Paul advised us when he said:
“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”
Galatians 5:16 NKJV
By walking in the Spirit of God, you can remove every impediment, that hinders your ability to sense spiritual things around and in your personal life.
As believers in Christ Jesus your life is designed by God, to be led by the Holy Spirit. This is why it is important for you to be filled in the Holy Spirit.
As Jesus once told Nicodemus:
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.””
John 3:8 NKJV
This statement by Jesus clearly explains to us, the power of spiritual perception in a believer.
A believer in Christ Jesus does has a will, that is subjective to the Holy Spirit of God only.
He is moved to respond only to what God says to him.
He sees this as spiritual truth, that must be followed if he wants to be blessed in life.
The power of spiritual perception.
And most especially because we do live in a natural world, our ability to be able to perceive spiritual truth, comes to us in most cases through the wisdom from the word of God inside us.
The Bible says:
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12 NKJV
And secondly through the guidance of the Holy Spirit living inside our spirit man. Anyone without the Spirit of God living in him cannot perceive the things of God.
It’s clearly stated here that you have to be born of the Spirit of God to perceive the things of God. Spiritual perception is in the life of every child of God.
The Bible says also of Paul as he was preaching in the city of Lystra:
“And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked: The same heard Paul speak who steadfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed,”
Acts 14:8-9 KJV
Paul by careful observation of the spiritual truth that’s based on the deposit of God’s word in his life, recognized that this man had faith to be healed; and the man was healed instantly in the name of Jesus, as Paul spoke the word of command to him in activating his faith.
Paul had been used to seeing people being healed before, as faith is activated in their lives. He knew in his spirit man that this man was ready to be healed.
And as Christians we are also able to perceive people, who are ready to receive healing in this way also.
We can say the same of Peter, as he spoke to the man at the Beautiful Gate:
“And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.”
Acts 3:4-6 KJV
This man evidently had faith already activated in him, to receive something from Peter and John. Peter was able to perceive this, in the same way as Paul perceived faith to be healed in the other man at Lystra.
This means that every believer in Christ Jesus, does have the desire in them to be productive in the Kingdom of God.
We are able to do this by obeying the Great Commission of Jesus Christ to us as His followers (Matthew 28:19-20).
We are also able to do this by developing our ability on the inner man, to perceive spiritual truth.
God uses those who follow the inner witness in their spirit man. They are the Christians who are walking by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
The ideal place to start developing the power of your spiritual perception, is by spending quality time daily, praying in the Spirit.
What are you going to do about your ability to perceive the spiritual truth in your home, in your Church, at your workplace or in your community?
Jesus had already put the key in your hand to change your world.
Begin today by using it through prayer and intercession.
Release the power of spiritual perception in your life, by praying always in the Holy Spirit.
