Day 12

A Divine-Human Creation:

“The Whole Person”

Roger and Eileen Himes

www.ThePracticalGospel.com

The gospel is the greatest truth, and spiritual motivator the world has ever seen. No wonder Satan works so hard to keep it secret. He doesn’t want us to get high on God every day of our lives. He doesn’t want us to know that the Christian life has more height, breadth, depth and length than we can ever experience in only one lifetime.

The purpose of today is to get you to see just how much of ‘a whole person’ you are. Everything in your body, soul and spirit impacts everything else. You use your body for motion, and your mind for emotion. When everything flows together, THE WHOLE PERSON is a dynamic unity. “You can’t give away what you ain’t got.” If your state of being is on ‘droop’ your spiritual life will be on ‘droop.’ Jesus says, “As you have freely received, so freely give.” The key to the gospel is what we receive.

But many don’t. Many don’t rest. Many don’t receive during the first 7 minutes, so they are dry as valley of dry bones, as Ezekiel says. Non gospel living demands from us and drains us. It doesn’t give to us.

God’s divine gifts are like manna. We see this in the Old Testament. God’s manna, and his other gifts, can’t be stored. Jesus told the parable about the man who had so much he had to build a bigger barn — but that night his soul was demanded of him. We can’t store up God’s gifts. Like manna, they must be received fresh every day. They’re most fresh the first 7 minutes. His mercies are fresh every morning.

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GOSPEL TRUTH #23

The POWER of the gospel creates the PROCESS of God in us, and that process is the seed, the root, and the fruit — spirit, soul, and body.

It must be received like manna, which means fresh each day. You can’t store it up for future use. If you do, like manna, it will grow worms.

Seven minutes is all you need to get the process started, but it’s not all you need to keep it going — to achieve fulfillment, as we discussed. But the truth is, if you will submit to God, and receive his divine seed, you will be so thankful for the results in your life that you’ll want to

receive more. You won’t be content with only 7 minutes.

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Motion and energy, or the lack of it, comes from emotion. We are inside out people. This is true for a lot of people, and it’s true for me. But it’s not true across the board. In some people it takes motion to generate emotion. Both adages are true, for different people. ‘Different strokes for different folks.’

My 7 minutes begins in bed every morning. I wake up talking to Abba, thanking him for the day, and for his presence. I sometimes envision my head on his lap. I just take time to connect with him. I just love on him and worship him, receiving his grace and mercy. I do not let ANYTHING get into me until I’ve connected with God first.

My mind and heart and soul and strength are focused on Father. Then we go shower together. The shower is what wakes me up best. Have you ever thought about showering with God? I do. I mean, why not? He’s seen me naked before. He saw Adam and Eve naked, until they ate from the forbidden tree.

The point is I experience the presence of God.
I do so the first 7 minutes of everyday, that then extends longer.

There is nothing formal about it. I don’t ‘pray,’ in the traditional sense. We just connect. And I begin by transforming my thoughts to gospel thoughts. I used to keep a list of about 25 Bible passages next to my bed that I could refer to if I needed to. I don’t have to do that anymore. We’ll talk more about this later, in a different light.

I cultivate the EMOTION of thankfulness.
I express my gratitude to Father. I tell him of my trust in him,
regardless of unwanted circumstances, problems,
and people that may impact my day.

Thankfulness, gratitude and trust are emotions. They are active, not passive, cultivated by the gospel. Every year in the gospel grows in more intensity, desire and emotion and revelation. All of this evolves into worship. Worship is so MIS-understood by many people. Worship isn’t something we do in a church service, or even something we do to get God to love us and respond to us. Gospel worship flows from who God is in us. It is the outgrowth of a thankful, grateful, trusting heart — that is only cultivated by THE INPUT OF GOOD GOSPEL SEED!

This is what the process of the GOSPEL produces in us! If all you do is receive God’s good gifts, what is there NOT to be thankful and grateful for? In John 17, Jesus says God loves us as much as he does HIM! My worship doesn’t cause God to love me more. I’m sure he appreciates it — but he mainly knows how much good it does — FOR ME! It focuses me right. It keeps other, unwanted things from creeping in. The Bible tells us that fear, and other negative things, cannot exist in love. This all begins in the first seven minutes.

Receiving God’s good, divine gifts transforms my mind (Rom 12:2). Receiving all his ‘multitude of grace,’ makes me realize his love. This is the input I need. One way to do it is to read one of these daily ‘fasts’ each day. Granted, you can’t do it in seven minutes, but seven minutes is only the beginning. The point is you need INPUT: divine, gospel SEED, — before any worldly seed gets planted! This produces divine life-changing emotion!

We are told love covers a multitude of sin. Sin is separation from God, which is spiritual death. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to heaven but that you aren’t growing spiritually, but dying. By entering into the process of the gospel, we enter into a Vine and branch type transfusion of God’s divine gifts into us. This is what we need to be doing each morning the first 7 minutes — or 70 minutes, or whatever.

Paul says, “Awake to righteousness, and not to sin.”
This says the same thing I’ve said now for three pages.
We are not to awake to bad things, but to good things!

Almost everyday I take at least a 4 mile power-walk. This is often a 15 minute mile, which is as fast as I can go without running (which is hard on tall guys like me). Many days I do 5, 6, or 8 miles. I’ve done this for years, even when I worked full time in law, or for a marriage ministry I was with for a time. As a western U.S. tour guide for 8 summers I always did my power walks everyday, with rare exceptions. It has now become a way of life: if I DON’T do it, my day is not complete.

This is the way it needs to be with GOOD GOSPEL INPUT! On my walks, I connect with God while I’m also powerfully using MOTION. Walking is motion, especially at 15 minutes per mile. But so is breathing. Four quick, deep breaths in, through my nose, and then four quick, puffs of air out, through my mouth — in rapid time with my walking. (By the way, I also often do this in the shower for 2-3 minutes, which is the length of time I do this walking). At the same time, I work my hands and arms in time with my breathing. Motion creates power.

Jesus used motion like this. Calculate the distance he walked by noon, when he met the woman at the well (John 4). I doubt I could have kept up with him! He was trucking!

I also use this time to ‘pray,’ in the more formal sense of the term. This is the time I pray for MY needs (petition), and pray for OTHERS (intercession). I don’t bow my head and pray formally, which I seldom do at mealtime either. I just talk to him, and thank him. God doesn’t want this from us. He just wants us to CONNECT with him.

He cares far less about our posture of our physical body, during a 30 second prayer, than he does about the posture of our mind and heart during the entire duration of our day!

I surely don’t have to give him my counsel, and tell him what I think he should do in each situation. That’s a big waste of time — both his and mine. Read what Paul says about this in Romans 11:34-35.

I visualize the faces of people I pray for, and send them blessing, and gospel power, asking God to meet their needs, and to draw them closer to him regardless of whatever they are experiencing. If I know something specific I mention it, but I mainly give God GRATITUDE for working in their lives so faithfully. And I ask the Holy Spirit to pray for them more specifically, in his ways. Romans 8 says he does this for us anyway. I often pray out loud. I don’t have to, but it helps ME. We’ll see WHY this works so well later.

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GOSPEL TRUTH #24

I do things physically to create motion in life, and I do things in my mind to create emotion. You would be surprised how empowering this is. We don’t realize how much of a Whole Person we are!

Our spirit, soul and body is vitally connected. Each influences — often even controls the other. If you have a headache it can affect The Whole Person. If our body is on ‘droop,’ WE are on ’droop.’ So with our soul, which is where beliefs and attitudes reside. Your spirit isn’t totally independent from the other two parts of The Whole Person.

The motion, energy and emotion of our body and soul has a BIG impact on our spirit. It energizes our entire state of being. Paul says, “In everything give thanks.” The emotion of praying aloud in gratitude, not in need, is amazing. This is how trust is born, and trust is our spiritual job. Trust in God is the language of the gospel.

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Trust is only born in gospel belief (John 6:29, Heb 4:2). Belief is only born in a knowledge of the truth. Thus Paul says that God desires all men (1) to be saved, and (2) to come into a knowledge of the truth (I Tim 2:4). If you’re reading this book, I’m 99% sure you’re saved, but it’s only a 7% guess that maybe you live in the knowledge of the truth (according to Christian polls and surveys).

Try implementing some things that have been said today in your daily life. It won’t be a Godly habit overnight. That takes at least 30 days, according to experts. But focus on receiving the seed of God, and visualize it taking root in you — deep in you, as Jesus says it will. This will produce great EMOTION in you. It will transform your inner man, as Paul says. Then use MOTION to change your state of being, including worship and gratitude and thanks to God for all he does for us.

“Without a vision, people perish.”
This is how visions are birthed.

One mistake we so often make is that we go after the things of God without going after God himself. Our passion and emotion should be for God as a PERSON, not for what we can get from him. Matthew 6:33 says seek God’s kingdom first, and his righteousness, and things will be added to you. Don’t put the cart before the horse, by going after God’s things instead of going after God.

As we live like this, things do become better. If you just pray for the things to change (the circumstances of life you don’t like), they often don’t change. God is trying to change YOU — change your focus from things to him. Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good. This does not mean all things are good. Some things in life are crippling, even devastating. But days start going better as we focus on God, and not on the things that so often consume us.