What is the weight of the spirit? What do you have to do to have weight in the spirit?
1 Samuel 4:16-22 (KJV)
The man was well advanced in age and his sight was getting affected and he could not see. There is a messenger that came from the battle ground where the armies of Israel were fighting against the Philistines. He was saying there is a great slaughter and a number of people have died. He is sharing this information with the priest that many people died but amongst the people killed were Hophni and Phineas. To add to this, the presence of God has been taken. The presence of God was represented by the ark of God. The 98 year old man was not pushed from the seat, but fell when he heard the glory of God had departed. The daughter in law after hearing that the ark of God was taken, her father in law and her husband were dead, went in labour. Never underestimate what you hear, it does something to you. The labour pains came upon her because of what she heard.
The scripture is one of the devastating accounts we read in the Bible, it is dramatic and challenging. There is a man we are hearing of and he was a high priest of that time. He is the one who spoke to Hannah and said to her “may God grant you what you have asked Him” and she gave birth to Samuel. He raised Samuel and he was a general in the things of God. He was blind, he was obese and he was old. He died slowly because of what he heard; he knew what happens in the absence of the ark of God.
Glory in Hebrew is kabod it means the weight or the honour or what makes a thing honourable or what makes the thing have weight. If there is the glory of God then there is the weight of God. The moment there is no glory it means there is no honour. A person who has the glory has the weight of the spirit. If a person does not have glory he has lost weight and he does not have a covering that protects him from bad things happening to him. He will be a city without walls which is vulnerable to all attacks. What we go through has everything to do with our weight, are you a heavy or a light weight? If the glory has departed at any given time the devil can throw an arrow and it will hit you. When the woman heard the report she knew Israel had lost weight because it lost three priests at once and also the Ark of the Covenant.
There is a reason why the glory was lost; the ark was the representation of the presence of God at that time. If the presence of God was to be captured it meant you were not going to have weight. The glory is from having the presence of God. If you have the glory of God you will have the weight of the spirit. If you have no weight of the spirit it’s easy for people not to pay you or even gossip about you. What causes words to lack power is lacking weight of the spirit. You have to know that weight governs a lot of things. If you don’t have it you will always be a victim of circumstances but if you have it you will become a victor of circumstances.
How do you increase the weight of your spirit or guard against the loss of your spirit? Weight departed because the ark was taken. The ark was the presence of God. The presence of God determines the weight you have. How we yield to His presence or how His presence takes place in our lives differs from person to person. The more God overtakes or possesses areas of your life the more He expresses Himself through your life.
Psalm 51:11 (KJV)
David when he sinned against God he said take not your presence from me. He prayed for one thing, His presence. He knew that the Philistines would not defeat them if they had the presence of God. The Philistines would introduce activities that would make you lose the presence of God. The activities will cause you not to have the presence of God. You are defeated because you are praying alone. It says we don’t know what we ought to pray for but the spirit himself intercedes for us. You can’t help yourself God helps you to leave certain things. The salvation can be an on-going process where you are continuously being processed to have victory over certain things. The devil reintroduces things that drive out the presence of God so that you are without weight and you are without glory.
Daniel 5:25 (KJV)
The disaster that happened in Babylon was that the king thought he had defeated Israel and took their vessels and used them for their feast. The error was they thought they had defeated Israel when the Lord had delivered Israel to them. The king began to enquire of the meaning and he was told that tekel means you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. You need to make sure that you have weight in the spirit. To do this you have to pray, read the Bible and experience a continual infilling of the Holy Spirit.