what is spirituality?

It is a recreated spirit gaining the ascendancy over the reasoning faculties and ruling the whole man. The recreated spirit has been made anew with the Love Nature of the Father. Jesus said, "I am come that ye may have life, and have it abundantly." That Life is the Nature of the Father. A man is recreated by receiving God's nature into his spirit, which makes him a New Creation and gives him a new self. The old self was selfish, but this new self is Love-ruled. This new life is like Jesus. It is the substance and nature of Jesus. It is Love's dominion over man. The Holy Spirit comes into the man's body and brings in more Love. Romans 5:5 "For the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit."
When the Holy Spirit comes in, He brings the Ability of the Father and Son and builds them into us. Their very sufficiency, their strength and wisdom is built into us. He opens the Word and makes it a living thing to us. He reveals its depths and beauty, its riches and its grace. He has taken the great Substitutionary fact out of "theology" and made it a living reality in my spirit. My renewed mind is actually feasting on the fruitage of that Finished Work in my own spirit. The Holy Spirit now is doing the thing that Jesus promised He would do. He is guiding my spirit and my reasoning faculties into the realm of the Reality of the New Creation, and of my union with Christ.
I begin to understand something of the reality of the Finished Work of the Master. My spirit catches gleams of the significance of the fact that He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High. He entered into His rest, and I am invited to sit with Him in the place of rest. I am invited to rest in His rest. What a wonderful fellowship this is. Now I can see what it can mean to have my spirit in such close communion and fellowship with Him, so identified with Him in this Love life, that I lose my consciousness of the past. I live only in the consciousness of my present, my new relationship with Him.
Out of this new and wonderful relationship, faith begins to grow. Faith is not a product of the reasoning faculties.
Sense Knowledge cannot produce faith, except what is known as Sense Knowledge Faith . . . faith in the things that the eye can see, the ear can hear, or we can feel or taste or smell. That is natural faith. That is the only kind of faith world folks have. We have the .new kind of Faith, the Faith that counts things that are not as though they were, and they come into being. We have the Faith that says, I have what I do not see, but I know that it is mine, and I possess it without seeing it. This recreated human spirit that fellowships with perfect Love, and with the Author and Finisher of Faith, becomes unconscious of the need of Faith or of having Faith.
Just as Love becomes unconscious of Love, only conscious of the object of its Love, just so this New Creation has breathed into it the quiet confidence of the Creator. He has abandoned himself to Love, and out of Love has sprung his Living Faith. He begins to act Love, to do Love, and confess Love, and Faith's mighty ability becomes a conscious reality. Here are a few scriptures that may help us see the realities of this mighty thing . . . this New Creation thing. 2 Cor. 10:3-5 (I want to read a new translation) "For though we walk in the realm of the senses, we do not war according to the senses, (for the weapons of our warfare are not the senses, but are mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds); casting down sense reasoning and every high thing that would exalt itself against the Word of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."
When the recreated spirit takes the throne in us and begins to dictate to the reasoning faculties, then there is a chance for the Word to really gain the ascendancy in us. When we learn to cast down sense reasoning, that dominates all of those about us, and we stand there squarely by the Word, regardless of criticism, regardless of the attitude of others, then we know that the Word is the Father speaking to us now. Here is another great Scripture, "Eph. 3:19,20. This Scripture I have given to you several times in this book. I will let Him speak to us again through it. "And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge (that is sense knowledge), that ye may he filled unto all the fulness of God."
Really, that means to be filled with the fullness of the Father. That does stagger sense knowledge reasoning, doesn't it? That the Father would talk about our being filled in our spirits with Himself. His fullness is made up of Love, the Master's Love; Wisdom, that only a few of us have ever participated in; and of Grace that can put up with the most unruly and ungodly; Strength that makes us omnipotent in our spiritual life. To be filled with His fulness beggars description! It means to be overwhelmed with God. You remember in Eph. 5:18 He said, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is riot, but be drunk (or filled) in your spirit."
He would have us drunk with Himself, just overwhelmed with Himself. To be drunk with Love! To be drunk with Grace and with all the sweet attributes of the Father, Himself!
Well, that is ours. We may be filled with the very fullness, the completeness of the Father. Do you wonder how it can he done? Let me read you Eph. 3:20, "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or think, according to the ability of God that is at work within us." (Lit. trans.) The heart almost stops.
Can this be true, that the One who raised Jesus from the dead has come into these bodies of ours and brought into us the Ability that was exercised in that mighty miracle of the resurrection of Jesus?
It is true, He has come in! He has come in with His ability, His wisdom, His love and grace. You remember I called your attention to Romans 5:5, how He shed abroad in our hearts the holy Spirit. The One who brings Love into us has come in and He has brought in that fullness of Love. He has brought in what is told us in John 1:16, "Of His fullness have we all received, and grace upon grace." This is ours. We can never be cheap and small again, can we? We will never go back to the beggarly resources of sense knowledge. We will never go back to the shallow teachings of mere men. How shallow psychology looks now. It is the fruitage of sense knowledge. The religions of natural men are empty, sounding brass, and clanging cymbals. We have found reality at last.
The mysticism of sense knowledge once held us enthralled, but one breath from Him has driven the mists away, and we stand in the fulness of His marvelous Grace. We are New Creations now. We are living in the realm of God. I know a Scripture that fits into this description of the New Creation, it is Weymouth's translation of Romans 5:17 (3rd edition), "For if, through the transgression of the one individual, Death made use of the one individual to seize the sovereignty, all the more shall those who receive God's overflowing grace and gift of righteousness reign as kings in Life through the one individual, Jesus Christ." That is not after death, it is NOW. We reign as kings in this new realm of Life, and we bow to the sovereignty of Love.
Spiritual death has held us in bondage through many years, but at last spiritual death has been swallowed up in Life (Eternal Life, the nature of the Father), and now we take our place in the new realm and reign as the Sons of God. We reign as kings. We are not common any more. We no longer walk as mere men. We don't act as mere men. When we go into the Throne Room to present our needs before the Father, we go in as Sons. We have Love's ability to stand in His presence without any sense of inferiority. His great Grace has made us New Creations, and He has made us out of Himself. God the Father, through the Word, and by the Spirit's power, has recreated us. We are the products of Love. We have Love's ability; we have Love's strength. We can do the work of Love.
From today, I want you who read this book to look upon yourselves and to think of yourselves as the Sons of Love. Stand in front of the mirror and say to the man or woman you see reflected there, "You are now a New Creation, a partaker of the very nature of the Father. You have received the Father's overflowing Grace, and the gift of Righteousness, and now you reign as a king in this new realm of life." You have become a Master where once you served as a slave; an overcomer where the forces of the Evil One once dominated. You are now "in the Beloved." You are as near the heart of the Father as Jesus was in His earth walk.