Cymbala shares a powerful testimony in his book concerning our relationship with the Holy Spirit:

“In the Old Testament we often read that ‘God said such-and-such.’ Likewise, in the gospels there are dozens of places where ‘Jesus said . . . .’ Now the same pattern appears in the book of Acts, only in this case, ‘the Holy Spirit said . . . .’ This, too, is a living, speaking, divine person, the third member of the Trinity. He gives divine leading on what to do in order to advance the church. All of us who say we want to build the Kingdom of God must stop and admit our need of divine leading. There must be a living interaction [Italics added] between us and the Holy Spirit . . . . “

The interaction is between the immaterial Mind of God/his Holy Spirit and the immaterial mind of repentant Man, accomplished through encoded interaction with the neural synaptic networks of the human brain. In my writings I have endeavored to provide a degree of explanation of this created process, a reality in our time.

“The Bible says that ‘with God all things are possible’ (Matthew 19:26), including supernatural things as we recover faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Cymbala)

“A lot of us today would do well to hear again what the aged Paul, sitting on death row in a Roman dungeon, wrote to the young Timothy: ‘God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline’ (2 Tim 1:7). We must never be intimidated by what the devil tries to do, whether by striking out at us as individuals, or at the local church, or at the Body of Christ as a whole. We must instead trust the Holy Spirit to give us the words to speak, and to do so with boldness.” (Cymbala)

“We can rest assured today that whatever God calls us to do, he will also be faithful to equip us to do. Remember that ‘God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful’ (1 Cor 1:9). We are co-laborers with Christ through the Holy Spirit’s work in and through us.” (Cymbala)

It is my hope and prayer that the information I have shared in my books and blogs gives substance to these quotes I am posting from Cymbala’s book.

Cymbala shared that “Jesus once said, ‘Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive (John 7: 38-39). This overflow is what brings blessing to other people and, indeed, the whole world. And no case is too hard for God. The gospel of Christ with the power of the Spirit can transform the hardest cases imaginable.”

Cymbala refers to the sermon given by the Apostle Peter at Pentecost, “the first ever preached in church history under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This is obviously a new Peter - no longer a flop or failure. He boldly awaited the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. Here are men and women, he explains, who have become the human temples of God’s very presence. They have been filled up with the Holy Spirit the way Solomon’s temple was once filled up with smoke. . . . This is the unique note of Christianity.”

And, it is true in our time. The Mind of God and the mind of Man are in intimate, personal communion by the grace of God through the living Jesus Christ who sent the Holy Spirit to repentant mankind as He promised.

Cymbala quotes Samuel Chadwick, a Methodist leader and college president almost 100 years ago:

“The work of God is not by might of men or by the power of men but by his Spirit. It is by him the truth convicts and converts, sanctifies and saves. The philosophies of men fail, but the Word of God in the demonstration of the Spirit prevails. . . . The resources of the church are in ‘the supply of the Spirit.’ The Spirit is more than the minister of consolation. He is Christ without the limitations of the flesh and the material world. He can reveal what Christ could not speak. He has resources of power greater than those Christ could use, and he makes possible greater works than his. He is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of witness, the Spirit of conviction, the Spirit of power, the Spirit of holiness, the Spirit of light, the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of help, the Spirit of liberty, the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of revelation, the Spirit of promise, the Spirit of love, the Spirit of meekness, the Spirit of sound mind, the Spirit of grace, the Spirit of glory, and the Spirit of prophecy. It is for the church to explore the resources of the Spirit; the resources of the world are futile.”

This “supply of the Spirit” (Philippians 1:19 KJV) is the great need of our hour.

I will switch focus now to a book written by Jim Cymbala, Pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. It is entitled Fresh Power: Experiencing the Vast Resources of the Spirit of God.

I remind the reader of my books and blogs that I have presented compelling evidence for dualist interaction between the immaterial Mind of God and the immaterial mind of Man through the material brain’s neural synaptic networks. As we learn more and more about the process by which the immaterial cognitive mind interacts with the neural networks of the human brain we can safely conclude that the Mind of God likewise communes with us via the same mechanisms, at least in part. It is God’s Holy Spirit sent by His resurrected and living Son, Jesus Christ, who enables this intimate communion with the human spirit and soul in repentance.

The excerpts I will post will speak to real experiences with the Holy Spirit described by Cymbala. Cymbala states that “we need the Spirit desperately.” It is time for the church to let the Holy Spirit “get hold of us.” He draws examples from Scripture and from the sidewalks of New York City, showing “what happens when the Spirit of God moves in our midst.”

I am including excerpts from the article by Richard Anderson, Tyson Aflalo and Spencer Kellis entitled, “From Thought to action: The Brain-Machine Interface in Posterior Parietal Cortex,” published in PNAS, December 26, 2019, Vol. 116, No. 52, 26274-26279. This is a very recent work that builds on previous studies by Aflalo and coworkers.

The authors identified the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) as “a high-level cortical area in . . . humans . . . that represents intentions to move. . . . [It is] an area where the initial intentions to act are made [italics added] and then transferred to the motor cortex. . . . We find that the human PPC encodes many action-related variables, and we can decode intended movements of most of the body from a small population of neurons. . . . Intention activity is simply defined as the neural correlate of the planned action.”

This is a sophisticated and important study, and I commend its reading to you. However, I still must point out the absence of reference to the cognitive mind per se. Upon reading this article one could conclude that thoughts are formulated and based in the PPC and its encoded synaptic networks. Indeed, neuronal networks are encoded with structure, meaning and purpose so that specified information can be transmitted through the brain and peripheral nervous system to bring about intended movements, or actions. I have offered in my writings that it is the thoughts of the cognitive mind that generate the initial framework for the instantiation of neural synaptic network codes. I have proposed that it requires an interaction between the immaterial mind and the material components of the brain, in this case the PPC, that could involve wave forms that emanate from the mind, its will and intent - its thoughts. The wave forms become instantiated as codes within spike trains of action potentials in neural networks.

Tyson Aflalo, Spencer Kellis et al have continued their studies to apply motor imagery in tetraplegic patients to brain-machine interface technology. These are admirable studies designed to enable paralyzed patients to move all or parts of neuroprosthetic extremities. This particular article is published in Science, 2015 May 22; 348 (6237): 906-910.

The investigators recorded neural population activity with arrays of microelectrodes implanted in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of a tetraplegic subject, paralyzed at C3-4 ten years earlier with all limbs involved. It was found that “the subject could control the activity of single cells through imagining particular actions. . . . In many cases, the subject could exert volitional control of single neurons by imagining simple movements of the upper arm, elbow, wrist and hand.” The subject’s “neurons coded both the goal and imagined trajectory of movements. . . . [theirs was] the first known instance of decoding high-level motor intentions from human neuronal populations.”

No reference was made by the investigators to a nonmaterial cognitive mind. It was recognized that neural networks that transmitted motor imagery were encoded, and the authors stated that “One unexplored possibility is that the PPC also encodes nonmotor intentions such as the desire to turn on the television, or preheat the oven.” The spontaneous intent to perform such actions as these two cannot reflect neural networks encoded in advance of will, of intent. This point has been made in previous blogs and in my books. I submit that an accounting of such an “unexplored possibility” has to be by an immaterial cognitive mind, the action of which instantiates codes within neural networks through experience archived in memory.