Feeding The Inner Man

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, shares his journey of spiritual growth. He explains that by studying the Word of God and saying yes to the Holy Spirit, he strengthened his spiritual muscle. He encourages listeners to do the same, emphasizing that spiritual growth is a process that reduces the frequency of sin. He concludes by sharing that despite external hardships, his inner spiritual strength keeps him from collapsing.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of nurturing our spiritual self, or ‘inner man’, through daily prayer and resisting temptation. It encourages us to focus less on worldly matters and more on our spiritual growth, getting closer to God. The author also urges us to pray for others’ spiritual strength and make a commitment to remember these prayers. Lastly, it reminds us to stay strong in our faith and continue to be a positive influence in the world.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focus discussion will be on feeding the inner man. When you feed the inner man with the Word of God, and you feed that in, what happens is the inner man has truth in its frontal lobe, if you will, and when decisions come, the first thought is the Word of God.

And the Spirit has a handle to turn you into God’s will. And once you’ve exercised your will toward the Holy Spirit, you’ve strengthened your spiritual muscle, and that’s how you grow. Now people think, well, I don’t know if I could ever get to that level. You see, I’m just sort of a Class 2 Christian. I, and, you know, and you think of a missionary, or you think of a pastor, or somebody as sort of a spaced-out strange, they’re up there on some spiritual level, and, oh, it would be wonderful, but it’s so beyond us.

No, the only difference between you and me is I’m here and you’re there. That’s the only difference. I’m talking and you’re listening. That’s the only difference. Same world, same flesh, same devil bugs me. I have the same infirmities, I have the same spiritual processes to go through to get growth that you do. It just so happens that somewhere along the line, God was gracious enough to give me a good swift kick to begin to apply some of these things, so I could grow to the place where God could use some things.

That’s the only difference. I don’t have some kind of mystical contact with God. I’m not up there on another level, halfway between you and heaven. No, I’m just one of the people. But I, you know, I’ll give you an illustration. When I was in, I used to worry a lot, because in my heart I always felt I wanted to go into the ministry, but I hated to study. And I really did. In fact, I never studied. All through school, I used to, I was very bad when I was little about that. My dad used to break coat hangers on me to try to get me to change, but the older I got, the less the coat hangers hurt.

So, you know. But anyway, by the time I got to high school, you know, I knew that I was smart enough to just get by. So in high school, I would just get by. Just do whatever I had to do to stay eligible, so I could play ball. That was everything, you know. And then I got to college and did the same thing. College was great. You could do a lot of nice things, have a lot of fun, and as long as you stayed eligible, and okay, fine. I just Well, I had gone through an automobile accident, which God had called me into the ministry, and I began to worry about it.

MacArthur, you’re a real slough-off. You don’t put out any extra, whatever has to be done. You just do the basic minimum thing. You’re never going to make it. And somewhere along the line, I decided, well, I better change. And I began to change when I got to seminary, and I began to realize that I better start to learn how to study. And I used to hate it. I mean, I literally hate to study. I could hardly force myself to do it. But I began to walk in the Spirit. And as I began to walk in the Spirit and study the Word of God in my life, the Spirit of God had handles, and then He began to use those handles to lead me.

And one step at a time, I would discipline myself and exercise a little spiritual muscle. And I’d get a little stronger and a little stronger and a little stronger and a little stronger. And you know, day by day, through the years, God has been exercising my will toward Him by the power of His Holy Spirit. And now, you know something? I don’t have any trouble with that at all. I don’t have to worry about that. In fact, you can’t, once I get going at it, you can’t drag me away from it.

You may come in and tell me the most wonderful truth in the whole world, and tell me the most sad story in all the world, and you’ll probably hear a few grunts and I’ll never lift my head up. Because through simply exercising my will to be obedient to the Spirit of God, through the years, God has strengthened my inner man to the place now where the easiest thing for me to do is to yield to the Spirit of God in the area of ministry to which He’s called me. And it isn’t mystical, and it doesn’t happen overnight, it’s the process of spiritual exercise.

Somewhere as a Christian you begin, and you begin to say yes to the Spirit of God. The Word of God is in you. The truth is there so that you can respond to it. The Spirit of God gives you the impulse to what is right to do. You do what is right. You strengthen your spiritual muscle. The next time it’s again strengthened. The next time more, more, more. Finally, it becomes the flow of life. You’re beginning to operate on another plane. You begin to respond most automatically. And you know what happens. I’ve always defined spiritual growth as this.

Spiritual growth is the decreasing frequency of sin. You see, the more you exercise your spiritual muscle, the more you yield to the Spirit of God. The more the Spirit of God controls your life, the less sin there is. It’s never the absence of sin, it’s the decreasing frequency of it. And by the way, the more you grow, and the more it decreases, the more heinous it is when it does show up. That’s what it means to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. And you can start right where you are.

You can start by absorbing the Word of God by saying yes to the Holy Spirit. Maybe you’re tempted to be angry. You’re tempted to be lustful. You’re tempted to be thoughtless. You’re tempted to be prayerless. You’re tempted for whatever it is, instead of saying yes to the temptation. Say yes to what you know is right, and you’ve exercised your spiritual muscle. You’re a little stronger, and that’s the process that Paul is after. And then someday you’ll grow up and be like Paul. You say, oh no, I could. Same God, same Holy Spirit, same resource, same power.

Maybe it’s a different will. You need to exercise your will as he did. The Apostle Paul got to the place where it didn’t matter what happened to the outer man. He grew so far away from that perishing outer man, because the ascendancy of his inner man was going so vertical. He was so far away from it. He could have cared less. Right? Why, when they told him, you go to Jerusalem, in Acts 20, and you’re going to get it, Paul. He said, none of these things move me, because I don’t count my, if I can paraphrase, outer man worth anything anyway.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is simply gain. Get rid of this outer man thing. This thing is just a problem. In 2 Corinthians chapter 11, the Apostle Paul told us a little about his ministry. He says, five times I received 39 stripes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I had been in the deep, in journeyings often, and perils of water, perils of robbers, my own countrymen, Gentiles, the city, wilderness, perils, perils in the sea, perils among false brethren, wariness, painfulness of watching, hunger, thirst, fasting, cold, nakedness, and besides that, the care of the church.

This is typical for me, but look, all that stuff on the outer man never gets to me. He says, verse 30, in fact, I will glory of the things that concern my infirmities. It just helps me keep my concentration on the inner man. Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 9 to 11, I’ll read it out of the Phillips. Listen to it, because it’s very vivid. We are handicapped on all sides, but never frustrated. We are puzzled, but never in despair. We are persecuted, but never do we stand alone. We may be knocked down, but we’re never knocked out.

Every day we experience something of the death of the Lord Jesus, so that we also know the power of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours, and this is the reason we never collapse. He says, we may get it on the outside, but Jesus is giving it on the inside, and that’s why we never collapse. And then in verse 16, he says, the outer man suffers wear and tear, but every day the inner man receives fresh strength. Are you concentrating on the inner man? Listen, you will never get your ignition on until you do.

You will flounder around in impotence until you do. If you want to ever get to Ephesians 3 20, you’ve got to get to Ephesians 3 16 first. You will never know what it means to have exceeding abundantly above what you can ask or think happening in you until you’ve started in verse 16, until it is a daily routine for you to yield to the power of the Holy Spirit. And by that, I simply mean to obey what you know is right before God, as the Spirit of God gives the right impulse in your life.

You say no to temptation. You say yes to the Spirit. You’ve exercised spiritual muscle. You have been renewed that day. You’ve been refreshed that day. And though your outer man got one day older, your inner man got one day stronger. And gradually, you’re growing away from the mundane. You’re growing away, and you’re coming closer and closer to the God of your salvation. Further and further away from the things of this world that don’t matter and less and less preoccupation with them. And so as you’re strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, you’re ready to take the next step.

And we’ll see what that is next time. Let’s pray. While you’re praying and your heads are bowed for just a minute, I want to ask you to do something. Write in just the silence of your own heart before the Lord. Would you just kind of covenant two things? Number one, would you echo the prayer of Paul? And would you just covenant with the Lord that every day this week you’re going to pray this prayer, that you would be strengthened by his Spirit in the inner man? Pray it and then ask God to help you to pray it every day this week.

God, help me to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man. Covenant with the Lord, that you’re going to spend one week at least, concentrating on the inner man, not the outer man. Cultivate the inner man. And then would you do one other thing? Would you covenant in your heart before the Lord to pray for somebody else that you know and love, that they would be strengthened by his Spirit in the inner man? Would you pick out some, maybe it’s your wife, maybe it’s your husband, maybe it’s your son or daughter or your mom or your dad or your best friend or somebody your heart really yearns for.

Would you just make a covenant with the Lord that you’ll pray for them every day this week, that they would be strengthened by his Spirit in the inner man? I believe God answers prayer. I would be so thrilled to know that you are all praying those prayers. First for yourself, that you would be strengthened. And then for somebody else. And covenant with the Lord, that this week you’re going to remember that. Sometimes you might even jot it down so you don’t forget. Put it where you can see it. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of feeding the inner man.

Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].