Summary of Spirit Soul and Body, by Andrew Wommack Oct. by J. Tofflemire
Intro. He described how as a soldier in Vietnam he read the bible a lot and God was renewing his mind. Chap 1. He cited 1 Thes. 5:23 ”Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Your spirit is the innermost part given by God when you accepted Christ; you soul is your mind, will and emotions(what people call your personality), your body is obvious. You can feel both your body and soul, but not your spirit, its hidden. The main way to access the spirit is via the bible; he cited John 6:63 “The Spirit is the One who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” When you look in mirror you see a reflection of yourself. Likewise God’s word is a reflection of who you are in the spirit. He cited 2 Corin. 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” This is the inner transformation, but your soul wasn’t the part of you that got changed.
Chap 2. After being born again, the rest of your life is renewing and releasing. As you renew your mind and believe in God’s word, your soul will agree with what’s already transpired in you spirit. See the diagram as 3 circles with the spirit in the center the next circle the soul and the outer circle, the body. Your spirit is the life giving part; it is surrounded by your soul and has no access to your body. He had a diagram of a valve at the soul to allow access (by renewing your mind with God’s word) to be able to impact the body- your temporal reality. When your soul agrees with your spirit, The life of God in you will manifest in your body. You will then experience healing, power and victory. This greatly changed the author’s life for the better.
Chap. 3 He cites Philemon 1:6 “I pray that your participation in the faith may become effective through knowing every good thing that is in us for the glory of Christ.” Therefore for your faith to work and produce, you must recognize, believe and hold to the good things in you in Christ. When we are saved we become 1/3 complete ; our spirit is complete but not our soul or body. He cites Rom. 12:2 ”Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. “
My note: He became a famous healing and teaching minister; doing many healing miracles, even raising one from the dead. He founded Charis Bible college that teaches many students healing. His students have done many healing miracles and have many testimonies using his teachings.
Chap. 4. He cites Rom. 8:6 “For the mind-set of the flesh is death, but the mind-set of the Spirit is life and peace.” The mind set of the flesh is on the 5 senses and the physical realm. Even in the natural, you’ve learned to believe in things you can’t see. Radio and TV signals are invisible as are germs. There is an entire spiritual realm that exists beyond our natural perception. Your 5 senses can’t normally perceive it, but your soul can through God’s word and the holy spirit. Jesus declared spiritual mindedness produces life and peace as in John 6:63 ”The Spirit is the One who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” and in Isaiah 26:3 “You will keep the mind that is dependent(or stayed) on You in perfect peace, for it is trusting in You.” Peace is an emotion linked to the way we think about potential damage or harm. Worry can lead to disease. He cites Ephesians 4:17-18 “Therefore,–: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles (non-believers)walk, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts.” If you don’t renew your mind and use it to study and meditate on God’s word you automatically will focus on the 5 senses and this can darken your understanding. He also says many Christians have knowledge of God, but don”t really believe the promises of the word and take them to heart.
This makes me wonder- can I an engineer trained in practical science believe in the spiritual? I am learning to and do. The book “God Speaks” has helped.
Chap. 5 He cited 1 Corin. 6:17 ”But anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”. He notes believers are one in spirit with Jesus. Chap. 6 no comments. Chap.7 He cited Heb. 9:24-28 That Christ died once for all our sins. And Heb. 10:10 ”By this will of God, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.” so this include our past , present and future sins. @ Corin. 5:21 notes so we are now the righteousness of God in Christ. Our focus should be on that, and not on being a sinner. Chap. 8 he say the bible doesn’t teach that God accepts or rejects you because of your actions, it teaches that our actions can never be good enough.Every born again believer has a built in desire to live holy. The Law was not given to help you overcome sine, but to remind you of it.You can always boldly approach the Lord. Chap. 9 Once saved always saved camp understands that your spirit in sanctified and perfected forever. Since you aren’t saved by your own goodness, you lack of goodness can’t un-save you. However Heb. 6:4-6 notes you can fall away and loose your salvation. Heb.10:23 cautions “Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” The author doesn’t think many fall away and renounce their salvation, pg. 65 In other words you must be a mature christian, before you can actually renounce your salvation. P.67 As long as you have the conviction of the Holy Spirit you aren’t reprobate.
Chap. 10 He cites Eph. 4:24 you put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.” This is the spirit part. We have already been forgiven past, present and future as in Rom. 6:14 Therefore we don’t have to confess every time we sin, as in 1 John 1:9 p. 70 We need to often renew our minds with the Word. P.70 We bear fruit as a result of our dedication to God. as in Rom. 6:22
Chap. 11 We are given faith as in Eph.2:8-9 “For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift, not from works, so that no one can boast.” He also cites Rom. 10:17 ”So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.” Another translation: ”So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” p.79 Human faith is from worldly knowledge, and p.81 supernatural faith springs from the spirit and heart. Chap 12. He cites Rom. 12:3 “For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.” and noted each has been given a measure of faith He cites 2 Peter 1:1. “To those who have obtained a faith of equal privilege with ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” and noted each believer has been given faith. He cites Mat. 17:20 where if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mtns.
Chap. 13 He cites 1 Corin. 2:16 “For who has known the Lord’s mind, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” We need to draw it out from the spirit into our minds and the physical realm. We need to be careful not to be double minded as in James 1:5 and 4:8 He cites 1 John 2:20 “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge.” This is in the spirit. Chap. 14 He cites Rom. 8:16 “The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children.” He says studying God’s word is vital for achieving single-mindedness and releasing God’s power. Praying in tongues is another powerful way to release the mind of Christ. He cites 1 Corin. 14:4 ”The person who speaks in another language(tongues) builds himself up.” Vs. 14 ”For if I pray in another language, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.” So praying in tongues is a powerful way to build yourself up in Christ. Vs. 10-12 “Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God.” He says Revelation Knowledge(RHEMA) comes by the Holy Spirit inside your born-again spirit bearing witness in your soul. We often don’t understand what we have spoken in tongues so we need to pray for interpreting as in 1 Corin. 14:13 “Therefore the person who speaks in another language should pray that he can interpret.” Just because you pray in tongues and get an interpretation, doesn’t mean yo should always accept it. You must judge every thought by the word of God. As in1 John 5:7
Chap 15 Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a second separate experience from salvation and can be associated with speaking in tongues. Jesus did not do any miracles until he received baptism in the Holy Spirit. If you haven’t received this, you need to. Chap 16 The christian life is learning to walk in the spirit. You must shift from walking by sight to walking in the spirit. Eph. 4:22 talks of putting off the old man. So does Gal. 2:20 “and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Chap 17 He talks of the difficulty of not sinning due to having the old mind and cites Rom. 7:15-18. We need to meditate on who we are in Christ and in the spirit p. 123. He cites Rom. 8:1 “Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Chap 18 He cites Gal. 5:16 “I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” Rom. 8:5 “For those who live according to the flesh think about the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, about the things of the Spirit.” So what you are thinking about will tell you whether your are in the flesh or the spirit. Rom. 8:8 ”Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Being in the flesh will make it difficult to prevail against an ailment. Rom. 8:6 “For the mind-set of the flesh is death, but the mind-set of the Spirit is life and peace.” He told his story of fighting sickness: it was a mental battle for him; but by persisting, he overcame it. So this is a mental battle for us. If you are plugged into the news, TV and internet with bad new, It will make it difficult for you to focus on God and the spirit. John 6:63 “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
Chap 19 Concentrate on seeing who your are in Christ. Philip. 4:13 “I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me.” 1Cor. 6:17 But the person who unites himself with the Lord becomes one spirit with him. pg 34