The Pneumatic Mind - Part 1

by Pastor Gary C. Price

This month’s message is evaluating the pneumatic or spiritual mind. Through the Bible, I will show you why it is my personal belief that what the blood supply is to the human flesh, the spirit is to the mind and the soul.

The Bible says that the life of the flesh is in the blood. If you drain the blood out of your flesh, it is going to die. Why? In the blood is the oxygen that feeds the entire body. You breath in oxygen, it comes into your lungs and is then sent to your heart where it is pumped to the rest of your body so that you can live. That is why blood is red going into the arteries and blue blood comes back through the veins. The blue blood has been deoxygenated. After the oxygen is distributed to the body, the blood comes back to be re-oxygenized in the heart so that the process can be repeated. You have outflow and inflow going on all of the time in your body.

In much the same way, I believe that the soul lives, is revived, and is activated by the spirit. The spirit is our ‘blood’ for the soul and makes the soul alive! God’s infused breath - His pneuma - was breathed into Adam to make him alive. God’s breath inspired Adam changing him from a dead soul to a living soul. This allows us to know that a dead soul is defined by the absence of God’s Spirit.

God told Adam that on the day you eat of the forbidden fruit, you shall surely die. This was actually a spiritual death where God’s Spirit left their souls and Satan’s spirit came in. They became dead souls separated from God. This is why we must be born again in order to be reconciled to God. The dead soul we inherit from Adam and Eve needs to be revived, which is another word for born again! We were dead in trespasses and sin; detached from God’s spirit and attached to Satan’s spirit. It is the presence of that wicked, perverse spirit that makes fallen man the enemy of God.

The Greek word for spirit in the Bible is “pneuma” which actually means ‘a current of air, a breath, a blast, a breeze.’ Spirit is air; a wisp that blows by you. If you came out of your body, there would not be anything tangible about you. We would be able to put our hand through you; that is the real you. The “real you” is not the product of an earthly, three-dimensional plain. The “real you” is sitting down inside of this three-dimensional body. If you died, this very essence of you would be expelled from your body. You would be a breath, and that is the real human; a fourth dimensional person that is a spirit.

The thing which has us locked down is we do not recognize that we are spirits. Therefore, the physical world and its elements become reality to most people. That is what deliverance is all about. Through deliverance, we can actually get unchained from the fantasy of this world and be released into the presence of God, where reality is truly found. In a carnal state, man is foolish enough to think that if he doesn’t believe in something, then it is not real. That is why we must have our minds transformed to understand that God is the only reality there is. You and I must align with God. Yet, we must do this knowing that our souls will resist it. Years of sin has programmed the soul to accept Satan as the reigning dictator over life. We must now force our souls to accept reality as defined by God, and not by this world.

Do you know that it is hard for a worldly soul to digest the gospel? The soul will actually begin to regurgitate the Gospel because it is so used to things that are physical and temporal. Until the mind is transformed to be spiritual, it cannot digest the Truth. We must be born again in order to be fed spiritual food by God. When you see people that cannot digest spiritual things, they have one problem: they need to be saved. They have not been born again.

In the born again experience comes an appetite for spiritual truth. If there is no spiritual appetite inside of you, then you need to be born again. A failure to understand what it means to be born again has most people trying to believe they are born again when they actually are not. As a result, they strain to “act” born again, not realizing that being born again is not about acting but being. You do not have try to be born again for when it happens, it is as natural as breathing. It becomes what you are and is not an effort to try to do, be, or look like. Religion will not get you born again. It can only make you into a clone as you seek to perform up to their institutional standards. Ephesians 4:17-18 shows us why being born again is so important:

“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.”

A vain mind separated from God’s Spirit causes a careless hardness to take hold of man. Satanic forces grab the mind, making God the enemy and Satan a friend. In such conditions, people who are really your enemies become your friends and people that should be your friends become your enemies. You do not like the one pointing you to salvation, but you love the person who wants to get high, drunk and fornicate with you. Can’t you see that this is a mind running in reverse? Such a person is diametrically opposed to God. Everything that will kill them and is detrimental, they gravitate to. The things that will bring life, nourishment, good health, and long life, they despise.

This is what we have down here right now and it is a form of retardation. People are diametrically opposed to being normal. We should be energized for the Word of God and de-energized when it comes to the foolishness of the world. Yet Satan has folks’ minds going exactly opposite to that. People can sit and watch TV for hours on end and then start to drag when it comes to the Gospel. This is just one of the evidences that there is something living in you other than you! A normal, born again spirit will be enthusiastically driven towards the Gospel because that is our daily bread. The Word of God is the source of life for those who are born again (Matthew 4:4). If there is no hunger for the food that gives us life, then what in the world is wrong?

The reason people do not have this hunger is because a spirit - contrary to God’s Spirit - has a hold on folks. In fact, this contrary spirit feels so normal that very few people can actually pick up the abnormality of it in their own lives. The frightening part is that people could sit and wallow in this condition not being able to discern that something is wrong. The human mind is being influenced by unclean spiritual forces who have the soul so conditioned that we actually begin to crave the same gratifications as that spirit. The first step to getting out of this condition is to be born again and receive the power of God within. This prepares you to fight a warfare converting the soul back to normal. Your soul will conform to whatever you make it to. At first it will fight, it but if you continually train it to submit to the things of God, it will finally succumb to you. “In your patience possess ye your souls.” Luke 21:19

We must eliminate the controls Satan is using to influence us by killing the remnants of his kingdom on the inside of us. We must pull down the strongholds he has setup in our souls to prevent God’s Spirit from taking complete control. If we are in a spiritual war, then we need spiritual power to enter into battle. This involves engaging in a warfare against unclean spirits to get them detached from our minds so that God can revive and resurrect us to walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. This is the whole fight for a Christian. We are coming out of one life and mindset and going into another. If you look at the journey from Egypt to Canaan land you can see a picture of what we are going through. You can see this spiritual change further described as we continue looking at Ephesians:

“Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness, but ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.”
Ephesians 4:19-22

Now we can see what the old man is like: corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. The word lasciviousness here actually means filthiness, or wantonness; unrestrained desires that are unclean. There is something happening down here that you really have to take a step back and take a look at. This examination is not focused on others, but on ourselves! The Bible says to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith. The spirit world is such that it can make you just know you are right while you are actually dead wrong! That is terrifying! Suicide bombers are blowing themselves up in the Middle East for Allah, believing they are right. Yet it is really an unclean spirit influencing their mind, feelings, emotions, desires, etc. and changing their perception of reality into a lie.

The same thing can happen to a Christian. The devil’s spirits can get our minds all wrapped up and warped until we just know we are right, yet be a million miles away from God. That is why you have to begin to unravel yourself to see where these defiling elements are within you through much prayer and fasting. No one can know his or her own heart the Bible says. It is deceitful and desperately wicked. No one knows himself or herself. So when people say, “If there is one thing I know it is that I know me,” they are lying. The Bible says that we cannot even know our own hearts. God must reveal it! He can only reveal it to the degree that you put yourself in the floodlight of God’s presence to begin to show you yourself.

Have you ever sat alone by yourself and just monitored your insides? Have you ever wondered why you feel the way that you do about certain people or situations? What makes me feel like me? And whatever I feel like as me, am I normal? Why do I feel this way? Why do certain people bug me? What else is in me other than me that is impacting my mind, feelings, emotions and energy levels?

I was watching a guy clean out a septic tank recently and the stench was overwhelming. I asked him, “How do you take that smell man?” Do you know what his response was? “It all smells like money to me.” You can program your soul to accept anything and it will become normal to you. The reason is because you become desensitized to it. So much so that you can stand in the middle of filth and it will not bother you. The soul can take filth, live in it, accept it, wallow in it, and it is normalized.

You would be amazed at what you can become once you are exposed to something long enough. You don’t believe that? Consider some of the sin you did in your life. You did not start off with a desire to do those things. The soul can be molded, shaped, and formed by spirit beings we can’t see with our eyes. That is what is so dangerous about this. You may not be aware of what is happening to you, but the next thing you know you are a completely different person and everyone is left wondering what happened.

That is why we must send a strong message to our children to stop letting the world make a fool out of them. By entertaining the world’s lies, you become a part of it. Young people should ask themselves, “Why is it that they can go run, shout, and jump all day long but when it comes to the Gospel everything gets boring?” Because you like Satan and his kingdom, you are killing yourself. All you have to do is come to yourself and realize that you are in a God-forsaken, damned place. You have to recognize that this is a damned planet and demons run it. Get with God and keep your mind straight in the midst of what the Bible calls a wicked and perverse generation.

The telltale response that shows people are not ready to get rid of these worldly ties is that they dislike you for not accommodating them. They actually get angry with you for moving away from what they choose to remain bound to. A lot a people draw back when God begins to search their hearts. He will start to unravel a lot of hidden agendas and peel back a lot of areas in your life to make you deal with them. We have had people leave this ministry because the wife had committed adultery and the husband did not know. When the floodlight of God’s Spirit began to come close to this secret, she (and as a result, they) drew back in fear.

A Godly marriage cannot thrive where there are skeletons in the closet. People will say, “Well, as long as I confessed it to God it is good enough.” That is a delusion. As long as that thing is kept hidden, the other person’s soul you had adultery with will be sitting at the kitchen table every morning eating breakfast with you. You are joined to them with a soul tie that is locked away in the chamber of your own soul until you decide to repent and break this covenant. Only exposure and eradication can set you free. Priests had to wash themselves before going into God’s presence. We must get free at all costs.

How do you get your mind straight? Ephesians 4:23 says, “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” The pneuma of your mind; the breath of your mind We must be renewed in the air of our minds! You mean my mind has air in it? Yes. Your mind is pneumatic; it is driven by air. So, if you have unclean air you are basically someone who has bad breath in your mind; a unclean mind and unclean thoughts. That is the problem. When Jesus talked about sin, the first thing He mentioned was thoughts. It is the stench of evil thoughts that God smells, the unclean air in the mind. You can pick up these unclean spirits in the nuances of your own personality. Have you ever felt uncomfortable, or funny around people of God? You come around someone who is really seeking God, praying, singing, worshiping God and you just feel strange. You are feeling the inputs from these unclean spirits. The fact that you are in covenant with these spirits means that you will feel what they feel about a particular person or situation. This is what creates so much disparity in churches. Some folks seek God and some folks don’t. Two cannot walk together unless they are agreed.

If you keep returning to the same vomit and can’t break free, that spirit has your number and it can seduce you at will. You get around it, and it will influence you. You have no ability to think your own thoughts because your soul and your will have been subjected to that spirit. It will obligate you and make you feel like you have no right to break free. Beware of your relatives; they are the most familiar spirits for many of us. We cannot know people after the flesh. We must know what spirit someone is of. What spirit is driving that person’s mind?

You do not know what makes you feel the way you do because there are invisible forces at work. How do spirits influence other spirits? Through words and thoughts. Some people can even influence you by projecting their thoughts into your mind. You will even think like they do if you succumb to them. These inputs and controls from other spirits will actually present a barrier in your mind to the Gospel. But it also works the other way around. If we live in the Bible, pray continuously, fast, seek God; we are safeguarding our minds against unclean unregenerate spirits. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” (Isaiah 26:3) Why do people complain that you read your Bible all the time, that all you do is pray, and it seems like all you are concerned about is the church and God? They don’t like tit because you are getting your mind clear. You have to be that way. We are fighting forces, fighting for our sanity.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Romans 12:1-2

God tells us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. Now He says that we are renewed or transformed in our minds by knowledge. Knowledge is what brings the Spirit; the Spirit then brings forth the metamorphosis. We are metamorphosized by introducing a new spirit into our minds. This is why we need a breath of fresh, new air. The Bible speaks of times of refreshing from the Lord. This is a reference to revival; God breathing back in a life giving air to the mind to wake us up and revive us from the dead. Folks need reviving, but we must get inspiration ourselves before we can revive anyone else. If someone is drowning and trapped under water, it is possible to use air tanks to keep them alive. Just keep going down with tanks giving them air until finally they are set free and can get out. The world is trapped under the auspices of death and they are looking for somebody to bring revival to them. We must get filled up first so that we can revive others, and once we are filled we must stay full! When you deal with spiritual things you expend what God has put into you and you have to be refreshed, refurbished, renewed over and over again. Paul said to be continually filled with the spirit. God is inspiring into me and I’m expiring out to others. It must be continual prayer, fasting, the Word, edification, exhortation, and comfort given out. God is not going to give anything to anybody who will not give it out. Everything that operate in God’s economy is something that is given through you not to you. He is not looking for someone who is looking to “get a blessing.” He is looking for somebody who wants to be a blessing. Be a channel for Him to work through.