WHAT IT MEANS TO BELIEVE WITH THE HEART (PART 2) !

WHAT IT MEANS TO BELIEVE WITH THE HEART (PART 2). To believe with all of our heart is to believe with our spirit, independently of our mind or body. Spiritual things are just as real as material things. In fact spiritual things are more realer than the physical or material. God is just as real as if He had a physical body, Although He doesn't. He is a Spirit (Luke 4:24). Jesus has a physical body now--- a flesh- and bone body--- but not flesh and blood. After His resurrection, He appeared to the disciples, and they thought He was a spirit or ghost. But Jesus said, "handle me. . . For a spirit hath not flesh and bones. . ." (Luke 24:39). On another occasion, while Peter and some of the other disciples were fishing, they saw Jesus on the shore. He called them, and they went to Him and ate fish He was cooking on an open fire. He has a physical body now-- a resurrected flesh and bone body. And Jesus who is now in heaven with His physical body, is no more realer than the Holy Spirit or God the Father are real. Notice we do not say God is spirit, but rather that God is a Spirit. Some people think that God is spirit, meaning some sort of an impersonal influence. Even though we say that God is a spirit, that doesn't mean He does not have a shape or a form in the spiritual realm, Because He does. Angels are spirits, yet angels have a form, or a spirit body. On one occasion when the Israelites were surrounded by the Syrian army, the servant of the prophet Elisha was filled with fear as he saw the ominous host of horses and chariots which can past the city. Elisha merely answered, "Fear Not: for they that be with us or more than they that be with them. In Elisha prayed, and said, Lord . . . Open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw, and, behold, the mountains was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (2 Kings 6:16--17). Sometimes as God wills, angels can take on a form in the material and natural realm where they can be seen. In (Exodus 33) reread that God talk to Moses "face to face "(v. 11), although Moses did not seek God's face, because a cloud was there. "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live" (v. 20). Then God said to Moses, "And it shall come to pass, while my glory passest by, that I will put thee in a cliff of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen" (v v. 22- 23). Even though God is a Spirit, we know that He has a face and hands--- a form of some kind. He is no less real because He is a Spirit than He would be if He had a physical body. Spiritual things are just as real as material things. (2 Corinthians 5:1-6-8). "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. . . Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: For we walk by faith, not by sight: we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."