How to Function with Unction

Pastor, teacher, and author Adrian Rogers has introduced people all over the world to the love of Jesus Christ and has impacted untold numbers of lives by presenting profound truth simply stated. Thanks for joining us for this message.

Here's Adrian Rogers. Pastor Rogers has prayed a phrase like this several times. He said, And Lord, unctionize our pastor. Lord, unctionize our pastor. Lord, unctionize our pastor. Now, the pastor didn't like it very much because it sounded like something was wrong with him. And so he met the deacon at the door and he said, Now, deacon, you prayed several times for me to be unctionized. He said, What does that word unctionize mean? The old deacon scratched his head and he said, Rev, I really don't know what it does mean, but whatever it means, you ain't got it. And I think that whatever it means, there are a lot of us who don't have it.

So I want to talk to you tonight about how to function with unction. That literally means to have the power of God upon your life, to be energized and directed by the Holy Spirit of God. Now, in order to understand this, you're going to have to understand how God designed you and why God designed you the way he designed you. So look, if you will, in chapter two and verse seven. God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. Now, this is the story of how God made the first man out of the dust of the ground. Somebody said that God made man, stepped back and looked at him and said, I can do better than that and made a woman.

Well, that may be true if you're a lady, you probably believe that it is. But here, God tells us how he made the first individual and he made this man body, soul and spirit. He made man out of the dust of the ground.

That's his body. He breathed into his nostrils, the breath or the spirit of life, and that is his spirit and man became a living soul. Now, the apostle Paul sums all three of these up in First Thessalonians, chapter five and verse twenty three, where he says, And I pray God, your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is a triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And God made us in his image. And so we have a triune nature, body, soul and spirit. Now, I want to help you to understand the difference in the body, soul and spirit and why God created us that way and how God put us together.

And I think you'll get a lot of instruction and hopefully you'll get a great blessing and learn some practical ways to live the Christian life when you understand just why God created us and engineered us the way he did. The very first thing I want you to notice is what I want to call the magnificence of the human body. God formed the human body in verse seven and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. Now, this word to form and when the Bible says God formed man is a word that is used for a potter who would be molding clay. God just made a man out of dirt, out of the earth. For years, people would laugh at that as though that is some primitive, ignorant way that priest's scientific days would describe the making of a man. But in recent years, scientists have been startled to discover that indeed man is made of clay and earth. As a matter of fact, NASA's Ames Research Center reported that these research scientists in analyzing the human body have found out that every element in the human body, every single element in the human body is found in the dirt, in the earth, every one of them. And so if you give the scientists time, they'll catch up with God. They'll catch up with the Bible.

I've said before, when a scientist has a good word to say about the Bible, that doesn't give me any more confidence in the Bible, just a little more confidence in the scientists. Now, suppose you were going to make a body and you were to take these elements and put them together. What would you need? According to the reading that I've done, you need 58 pounds of oxygen. You need 50 quarts of water. You need two ounces of salt. You need three pounds of calcium. You need 24 pounds of carbon. You would need some chlorine, some phosphate, some fat, some iron, some sulfur and some glycerin. And you would take these things, let's suppose you took them into your kitchen and you said, I'm going to make me a man. I'm going to build a man.

I don't think you'd be very successful. If you were to take just one square inch of skin, just one square inch of human skin, the size of a postage stamp, that one square inch of skin would have some three million cells. Every cell, as Paul Doty of Harvard said, more complicated than New York City. There would be in that one little piece of skin, there would be a yard of blood vessels. There'd be four yards of nerves, 100 sweat glands, 15 oil glands, 25 nerve endings and just a little postage stamp of skin. And we're not talking about the micro construction of the skin, but just those things that are more obvious, like sweat glands. If you were to think about the human body and the circulatory system of the human body, the whole heart pumps every minute of our lives 10 to 30 pints of blood throughout 60,000 miles of arteries and veins and capillaries.

I said 60,000 miles. The average man has about 10 pints of blood and that blood contains 25 trillion red cells that carry the oxygen. And there are 25 billion white cells that fight disease. Now, a white cell doesn't live very long. It lives about 12 hours.

The red cells will live for about 120 days. And then this blood is oozing through our body in minute little vessels called capillaries, these tiny tubes that surface the bloodstream. If you were to take these capillaries in your body, in my body, and spread them out, they would cover a one and a half acre field. And they are interconnected so as to supply the nutrients to your body, all of these millions of cells that require these chemicals.

Now, what that would be like, it would be like Federal Express, delivering trillions of packages daily to over 60 trillion business customers over a route of 60,000 miles. That's what your blood system is doing in this body that God has made. No wonder the Psalmist said, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Now, your body knows what each of the cells need, what the nutrients that are needed is and are. And these cells send out signals. And as the little truck in the bloodstream stops at each cell, it unloads those particular nutrients and those particular chemicals that are needed for vitality and for life. That's the reason the Bible says very clearly and plainly in pre-scientific days, the life of the flesh is in the blood. You have not only those red cells, but you have those white cells that have antibodies that are particularly designed to fight disease. And if you get a particular disease, those white cells will go to get the name rank and serial number of that disease.

They will organize an army to go fight that disease and whatever that particular germ or virus is. It is an amazing thing that God has put in to our bodies. The Hebrew word for heart is lev, L-E-V. And it speaks of not only the emotional part of a man, but also may speak of that muscle, which is the most powerful muscle in the body that pumps all of this blood. Hold your fist up about that way and clench your fist and look at it. That's just about the size of your heart.

Your heart is just about that big. If you live to be 80, it will work every day, day in and day out while you're asleep. That muscle is working. Now, if you work with your arms, after a while, your arms will get tired.

If you work with your legs, after a while, your legs will get tired. But your heart, weighing less than a pound, will pump one and a half million gallons of blood every year for the rest of your life. I said one and a half million gallons. In a lifetime, the human heart will pump 40 million times. It will push almost one million pounds of blood through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels that make up our body. Again, I remind you that the Bible says the life of the flesh is in the blood.

Now, some people would have you to think all of this just happened. But the psalmist said, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I have been reading about the complexity of the human eye. The human eye is a marvel. No scientific instrument is as sensitive to light as the human eye. The human eye can see a glow as faint as less than one thousandth as bright as a candle. In the dark, the sensitivity of your eye increases to light 10,000 times.

Now, if you have a camera with an expensive lens in it, you may be proud of that camera. But no man has ever made a lens that is superior or will even equal the lens in the human eye. It changes its curvature to focus on things that are near, the things that are far. The pupil is self-adjusting. You don't even have to think about it.

The adjustments are automatic, requiring no decision on your part whatsoever. And when your eye takes pictures, it takes them in color and develops them instantaneously. And I was reading something very interesting that when a little baby is conceived in its mother's womb, there are optic nerves in the eye that begin to grow toward the brain. And there are nerves in the brain that begin to grow toward the optic nerves in the eye.

There are more than a million nerve endings in the baby's eye and more than a million nerve endings in the brain. And these begin to grow toward each other. Now, you and I get amazed when we see engineers who perhaps will dig a tunnel and will start on this side of a mountain and they'll start on that side of a mountain and they dig through the mountain and that tunnel meets. And we say, isn't that a marvelous act of engineering? Well, friend, over a million of those nerves grow from that baby's brain through the flesh to the optic nerves in the eye and vice versa. And each one of those more than a million finds its counterpart and gets connected.

That is an incredible thing. And some foolish person will say all of that happened just by chance. But every day, hundreds of thousands of people are born with the ability to see. The human eye is an amazing thing.

It has the ability to transmit to the brain over one and a half million messages at the same time. Only God could do that. Psalm 139 verses 13 and 14 says, For thou hast possessed me from my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.

I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I also did some reading about the human ear. The ear is one of the greatest architectural wonders in the world.

No man could ever produce a microphone that would duplicate the human ear. The middle ear contains air. The inner ear contains liquid. What happens is that when there is a noise, the sound waves activate the eardrum. The eardrum is capable of handling over 73,000 vibrations per second. Now these vibrations are transmitted by the means of small bones called ossicles to the fluid in the inner ear. And these act like a piston driving that into that fluid back and forth to the rhythm of the sound pressure that is beating upon those ears. Now the movement of that fluid goes to a thin membrane called the basilar membrane. And this transmit a stimulus to a complex structure called the organ of Corti, containing the nerve endings of the auditory nerves and the ear is so complicated that volumes after volumes have been written just about the human ear.

Now man might design a radio or a television set and everybody says that is a marvel of design. It is nothing compared to the human ear. What about the whole nervous complex of the body? Now beginning with the brain, between your ears there's about three pounds more or less and some of us less of gray white matter called the brain.

It has more than 30 billion cells known as neutrons. And all of these are interconnected in an incredibly complicated way. There are literally millions and billions of interconnections inside your head.

Your brain is a computer that no computer has ever been built that will begin to match it. If you'll think about just simply a boy catching a football. He goes down the fields, let's say some 30 yards and a man throws a football. That boy's wonderful eye that we're talking about sees that ball in the air and immediately his brain begins to calculate. He calculates the speed, the trajectory, the distance and then the messages go to that boy's, all of the muscles in that boy's body. And they begin to coordinate themselves to move into position to catch that ball.

No man has ever been able to create a computer that would even begin to approximate what happens that you and I just take for granted when a 10-year-old boy catches a football. Now we have a body. That body is made of the dust of the ground.

It is God's crowning creation and thank God for it. But remember that God made us body, soul and spirit. I remind you that plants also have a body and I remind you that animals also have a body.

So what makes man different from plants and animals? Man also has a soul. The Bible says that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. So the body is just simply the house for the soul. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 1 calls our body our earthly house.

And 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 19 calls our body the temple of the Holy Ghost. So your body is just a temple, an earthly house that you have while you live on planet earth. Now, you are not your body. You live in your body. But now you have a soul. The Bible says that man became a living soul. The Hebrew word for soul is nepesh and the Greek word would be sukhes, the word we get psychology or psychic or psychiatric from. That is the you that lives inside the house. Your soul is your real personality.

It is your sense of humor, your intelligence, your likes, your dislikes, your idiosyncrasies, your proclivities, all those things that make you the uniquely wonderful person that you are. Roughly speaking, your soul is mind, emotion and will. Now, let me show you how the Bible describes the soul as being mind and emotion and will.

For example, in Psalm 139 in verse 14, we've already quoted that. The psalmist said, I will praise thee for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth, my soul knoweth right well. So the soul can know things. A soul enables us to see, as I just gave you these facts a little while ago about the human body, your soul has enough intelligence to say, yes, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

So intelligence is in your soul. Also, the will is a part of your soul. Psalm 27 in verse 12, the Bible says, deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies.

Now, the word that is translated will there is the same word that is translated soul, and it could be translated, deliver me not over to the soul of my enemies, because the will is in the soul. So if you're going to seek God, how do you seek God? You set your soul to seek God.

You say, I will seek God. So what is your soul? Your soul is your intelligence. Your soul is your will, and your soul is also your emotion.

1 Samuel chapter 18 verse 1, and it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, for Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Love, emotion, is in the soul of man. So you have a soul. Your soul is mind, emotion, and will.

So you see the magnificence of the human body. You see the miracle of the human soul, that God created you, and God gave you a mind. God gave you an emotion, and God gave you a will, because God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. When I was a young Christian, I used to think that soul and spirit were the same thing, that the terms were interchangeable, just the invisible part of a man, that you could speak of a man's soul or speak of a man's spirit, and it was six of one or half a dozen of another.

But that is not true. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 23 that I gave to you before, And I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what is the difference between the soul and the spirit?

Well, let's back up a little bit. Both men and animals have bodies. Men and animals have souls.

Does that surprise you? The Bible teaches very clearly that animals have souls or soulish life. Put these verses down.

Genesis 1 verse 20, verse 21, verse 24, and verse 30. All of those verses speak of animals as having conscious life, self-conscious life. Animals, your pet, if you have a dog, your dog has a mind, emotion, and will. Your dog is a soul, but the dog's soul will die and perish. Dogs do not have everlasting life. Cats do not have everlasting life.

Parakeets do not have everlasting life. What makes man's soul different is the spirit. The spirit of man is inextricably united with his soul. Now, man's soul and spirit are not the same.

Hebrews 4, 12, and 1 Thessalonians 5, 23. They are not the same, but they are inseparable, and it is the spirit that makes man unique. Not his body, not his soul, but primarily the spirit that makes us in the image of God, for God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And when the Bible says that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, God put himself into man. And the word breath is she, which means the spirit of life. God put himself into man.

He did not do that to the animals. And so you have a human spirit that makes you unique for many of the animals. You say, well, pastor, what does all this have to do with the way I'm going to live tomorrow?

Well, if you'll stay and listen for just a few more moments, I'll tell you. Remember that you have a body, and with your body you have earth consciousness, and you know the world, roughly speaking, the physical world beneath you. With your soul, you have self-consciousness. That's your mind, your emotion, and your will. And you know the world within you, and you know the world around you.

That's the psychological part of you. But with your spirit, you have God consciousness. Animals don't pray. Animals don't think of God.

Animals cannot reason because they are not made in the image of God. But we have a spirit that enables us to worship God. Now, let me give you some scripture that shows you how your spirit relates to God. For example, when Mary was told that she was going to be the mother of the Messiah, she said in Luke chapter 1, verse 47, My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. My spirit hath rejoiced. Jesus, when he spoke to that woman at the well, that fallen woman about worship, he said in John chapter 4, verse 23, But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship him. The only way that you can fully worship is to worship with your spirit. Verse 16, And the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Now, your spirit is not identical to your soul, but it can never be separated from your soul. Now, here's the bottom line.

Now, I'm going to draw it all together. God made man of the dust of the ground. God breathed into man's nostrils the spirit, the breath of life, and man became a living soul. You have physical life, psychological life, and spiritual life. With your body, you know the world beneath you. With your soul, you know the world around you. With your spirit, you know the world above you. When your body is right, you're healthy. When your soul is right, you're happy. When your spirit is right, you're holy. Now, how is a man to function with unction?

That's what we said we were going to talk about. How does God intend for you tomorrow morning or the rest of this evening to live? Why did God fashion us that way? Well, here's the key, and here's a wonderful verse.

Put it down. Proverbs chapter 20, verse 27. The Bible says this. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. That's what the King James says, but the original word is the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. What's the difference between a candle and a lamp?

A candle consumes itself, but a lamp is fed with oil. Now, the Holy Spirit in the Bible is the oil that illumines your spirit, which is the lamp. When God wants to turn the light on in your soul, he uses your spirit. It is by the spirit that we know God, and what causes that spirit to burn into flame is the Holy Spirit of God in your spirit, which is the lamp. Your spirit is the lamp. The Holy Spirit is the oil.

Listen to it again. The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, and so here's the way that I am to function. Here's the way you're to function. My spirit, the innermost part of me that animals don't have, that part of my nature that enables me to know and worship God has to give me light. Well, as the Holy Spirit of God is in my human spirit, then I am illumined.

That is the candle of the Lord to give light. The Bible says, The natural man, or the soulless man, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, and he cannot know them, for they are spiritually discerned. A man by mind, emotion, and will cannot know God. That's the natural man. That's the soul.

The soulless man cannot understand the things of God. Do you know how most of the people that you will meet tomorrow will operate? Their mind will say, I think I ought to do thus and such. Their emotions say, I feel like doing it. Their will says, okay, I'll do it. That's the way they operate.

Most of the people that you will meet tomorrow are going to be operating that way. They are soulless. They are the natural man. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. Your spirit is a lamp. The Holy Spirit is the oil in that lamp, and when that Holy Spirit is in your human spirit, then you are illumined on the inside, and then you know the will of God.

Now, when you do this, what happens? There is the Holy Spirit in the human spirit, and the Holy Spirit is speaking to the human spirit, and, of course, the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to do that. He speaks to the human spirit because we're born of water and of the Spirit, that is, of the Word of God and the Spirit of God.

Those are our parents in the new birth. Remember, in the womb of faith, when we receive Christ as our personal Savior and Lord, there's a new person that takes place in us, and the Holy Spirit of God comes into us because until the Holy Spirit comes in, our lamps are without oil. They do not burn.

They do not function. What good is a lamp if there's no oil for it? But when God sends his Holy Spirit back into your heart, then you are illumined, and you know the things of God. It is the human spirit that is the organ of spiritual knowledge, and it is as the Holy Spirit energizes the human spirit that you begin to see and understand the things of God. The Bible says they are spiritually discerned. And read the second chapter of 1 Corinthians, and it says that we have insight into the things of God through the Holy Spirit of God. You say that sounds mystical. It is mystical. The Holy Spirit is to man what instinct is to an animal.

Have you ever thought about the fact that God doesn't give to human beings' instinct? How can animals take care of their young when human beings who are so intelligent need doctors to give birth to children and hospitals and animals just do this almost naturally? Who teaches an animal those things? Who teaches the spider to build the web? Who teaches the beaver to build the dam? Who teaches the salmon to spawn and to go back to the spawning place? Who teaches the birds to migrate? Who teaches all of that?

They don't need anybody to teach them. They have instincts. Men don't have instincts. God gave to man the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a better gift to man than instinct to the animals. But when a man is without the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God is vacant from this man's life when there's no oil in the lamp, then what happens to him?

For further information, read the newspaper. Without the Holy Spirit, we are like a beehive as the bees would be without instinct. And that's why the world is in the mess that it is because we do not have the Holy Spirit of God guiding us. Now, how is a man to operate?

How is a man to function with unction? When he gets saved, God puts the Spirit back into the human spirit. And then the candle of the Lord begins to burn.

The lamp of the Lord on the inside, this man has illumination on the inside. And he knows intuitively the things of God as the Holy Spirit of God teaches him. Now, when the Holy Spirit of God that's in the human heart begins to teach this man, and this man knows intuitively the things of God as the Bible says again in 1 Corinthians the 2nd chapter, what man knows the things of man save the spirit of man that's in him?

When he begins to know these things, what happens? The spirit then begins to talk to the man's soul. What is the soul? The soul is the mind, the emotion and the will. It's a beautiful thing when a man's mind, a man's emotion and man's will is guided by the Holy Spirit in the human spirit. When the Holy Spirit speaks to the human spirit, then the human spirit speaks to the mind, the emotion and the will, the soul. Now, what does the mind, the emotion and the will do? The mind, the emotion and the will speak to the body, the eyes, the ears, the hands, the feet, the countenance. And then what does the body do? The body goes out and lives in the world and what does the body show? The body shows the life of the Lord Jesus.

And that's exactly what we're supposed to do. As the Holy Spirit of God speaks to the human spirit, the human spirit speaks to the mind, the emotion and the will, the mind, the emotion and the will speak to the tongues, the eyes, the heart, the brain, all of these things, the hands, the feet. They express the life of God and the Bible says, let your light so shine that men may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. That's the way we are to function with unction as we understand that God gave us a body. That body is only to house the soul and the spirit and the soul is to be under the leadership and the dominion of the spirit and the body is to be under the leadership and the dominion of the soul and the life of God as God the Holy Spirit speaks to the human spirit and the human spirit speaks to the mind, the emotion and the will.

The mind and the emotion and the will drive the hands, the feet and the body out into this world and it expresses the life of the Lord Jesus and God's life will then be manifest on this earth as He inhabits our humanity and then He expresses His deity and His glory and when that happens, we begin to function with unction. That's what it's all about. That's why God made us that way.

That's why God engineered us that way. Now what does that mean to us? What does that mean to me? It means, friend, that I must be filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Not only must the Holy Spirit of God be in me as resident, but He needs to be in me as president. I need to yield my human spirit, my body, my mind, my will, I need to yield to the Holy Spirit so that He can express the life of God through me. And I hope that you will just tomorrow morning when you wake up, do what I frequently do. At first I didn't share this with many people because I was a little embarrassed about it, but it's just been such a blessing to me, I think it'd be wrong for me not to share it with you. When I wake up in the mornings before I have a quiet time, I spend just a little time with God, just a little thing that I do. I just lift my hands to the Lord and say, Lord, I thank you that you gave yourself for me. Thank you, Lord. Since He gave Himself for me, He died for me, His blood cleanses from all sin.

I can start every day absolutely totally clean with no one confessed unrepentant of sin, and so can you. Thank you, Lord, that you gave yourself for me, okay? Then I turn my hands up this way and say, Thank you, Lord, that you give yourself to me.

Because not only did He give Himself for me, He gave Himself to me. I say, Lord, you are alive in me. Your Spirit lives in my spirit. You belong in me. You live in me.

You dwell in me. And so I lift my hands this way as though I am receiving because the Bible said be being filled with the Spirit. Thank you, Lord, that not only did you give yourself for me, you gave yourself to me. And then I lift my hands as though somebody had put a gun on me and said, Stick them up. Bow my head and say, Lord, I'm reporting for duty. Lord, live your life through me.

Do you see it? He gave Himself for me that He might give Himself to me that He might live His life through me. So I say, Here I am. If you have something you want said today, I'm willing to say it. If you want something done today, I'm willing to do it. I am yours.

I'm not my own. My body is the temple of your Holy Spirit which I have so you express your life through me. And then I just spread out my hands and say, Lord, it's going to be a wonderful day living it with you.

And just try that some morning. It's so simple. Now, that's not all of your quiet time, but that just gets you ready so that you can go through the day and function with unction and every moment it is His life, His Spirit in the human spirit driving the mind, the emotion and the will, the mind, the emotion and the will giving direction to the body, the body going out in this world and expressing the life of Jesus Christ. And people don't see us. They see Jesus. They see God's life incarnate in us and in a Christian, Jesus lives again. There's only one person who's ever lived the Christian life and his name is Jesus. And if it's lived at your residence, it'll still be Jesus in you living that Christian life.

And folks, that's how to function with unction. Now, bow your heads in prayer. Father, I thank you that you made us so fearfully and wonderfully. Lord, when we think about the human eye, the ear, when we think about the heart, when we think about the circulatory system, when we think, dear Lord, about the intricacies of our bodies and the DNA and all of this, we just have to stand back and say, how marvelous, how wonderful, Lord, are your works. Thank you, Lord. Then, God, you gave us a mind, emotion and a will that we can choose and think and believe and act.

But, oh, God, you didn't leave us to flounder. You gave us, dear Lord, a spirit and then you put your spirit in our spirit and you're the oil for our lamp. Thank you for that, Lord. Thank you. Help us, Lord, that we might tomorrow, the next day in all of our lives, be obedient and to function as you designed us to function. In your holy name, amen.