Ministering to the Human Spirit. Dr Rob Ruckert

On this episode of Discovering the Truth I had my good friend Dr Rob Ruckert back on the program. Rob does not really need an introduction at this point. He is on our BRIDE DID coach list, he works with a lot of survivors finding victory in Jesus Christ, and he himself has walked out healing from SRA and the cult he was born into. He is an incredible man of God.

We get so many emails on this one subject. People want to know what it actually looks like to minister to the human spirit. Rob and I have both talked about it for years, but it was time to sit down and just answer the practical questions. Here is what we covered.

Rob laid it out clean: 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says, "May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless." Three parts. Not two. Not a synonym for the soul. The spirit is the eternal part of you, and Rob believes our spirits were in the heart and mind of God before creation itself.

Here is the key. The spirit has its own mind, will, and emotions, separate from the soul. The soul depends on the brain and body to be conscious. Your spirit does not. Near-death experiences prove this all the time. The body is on the table, the soul is offline under anesthesia, and the spirit is up there having a real conversation with Jesus, remembering it, and bringing the memory back into the body when it returns.

A lot of teaching out there says the spirit is automatically perfected the moment a person gets saved. Rob does not agree, and neither do I. 2 Corinthians 7:1 says, "Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." If the spirit could not be contaminated, Paul wrote that verse for nothing.

This was the first thing Rob taught me years ago, and it changed how I do ministry. You can pray about a person's spirit all day long. Nothing much happens. The moment you turn and address the spirit directly, "Spirit, I see you, I want to talk to you, will you come forward," something shifts. Rob's own spirit was first ministered to in March of 2005 by a woman named Ilsa. She asked the soul to step aside and invited his spirit to come forward. It felt faint at first, way at the back of a corridor. By the third session his spirit was walking up to the front and the presence was tangible.

I use a word picture for this. Think of the body like an airplane. The cockpit is the pilot's seat, usually that is the soul. Behind the cockpit door you have the cabin, with passengers, locked bathrooms, even luggage you cannot get to. When the spirit walks up, opens the cockpit door, and introduces itself, there is a conscious awareness that another presence is there. That is what engaging the spirit looks like.

Romans 12:6-8 lists the seven redemptive gifts: prophet, servant, teacher, exhorter, giver, ruler, and mercy. These are wired into the spirit before birth, given by the Father. Isaiah 11 describes the sevenfold nature of God, and our spirits, made in His image, reflect that.

Rob walks through every portion in what he calls a roll call. "Prophet, will you come out? How strong are you?" Maybe a three. "Servant?" Silence. So you ask why. Sometimes a portion is scared and needs more affirmation. Sometimes a portion is in spiritual captivity, and you have to find out the legal door that put it there, often a covenant or agreement made with a higher-level cosmic being that has to be renounced and broken before you can rescue that portion home.

We have both seen portions of believers' spirits in captivity to Lucifer, Abaddon, Kronos. Christians, walking with Jesus, yet a piece of them is bound. Isaiah 61 says He came to open the prison doors. Not just physical prisons. Prisons of the mind, prisons of the spirit, prisons of any kind.

A lot of teaching out there says the soul is pure evil and needs to be crushed. Rob and I both push back hard on that. The flesh, the sinful nature, that gets crucified. But the soul was created by God, called good, and is being sanctified, not destroyed. The soul just has to learn to submit. The spirit was designed to be in the driver's seat, empowered by the Holy Spirit, ruling lovingly over the soul and body.

The conflict shows up here. Most people's souls have been in charge their whole lives. Their spirit has been faint or in hiding because of wounds. When you start strengthening the spirit, the soul resists. Sometimes the soul is furious at the spirit, especially in trauma cases where the spirit left during abuse and the soul felt abandoned. That conflict has to be worked through, not skipped. The soul needs to be brought to a place where it can trust the spirit to lead, and forgive what it felt was abandonment.

Rob teaches the seat of dominion, an internal throne in the spirit located behind the prefrontal cortex. When a person's spirit is whole, the portions are strong, and the conflicts are resolved, you ask the Lord if it is time for the spirit to take its seat. Some people see a regal ceremony, some see a comfortable chair. It is the place where the spirit plugs in and takes authority over the soul and body, under the authority of Jesus Christ.

The spirit also receives weapons, armor, and gifts. I have given people's spirits a flask of oil of anointing that never runs out. I have come back weeks later and asked, "Where is your oil?" and heard the spirit say, "I lost it." or "It was stolen." Armor gets stolen too. Sometimes it is in a closet. I do not know what the closet is, but apparently there is one.

The goal is a spirit strong enough to fight without me. Trained, equipped, on the seat of dominion, plugged in. That is when life starts to change. Callings get fully engaged. Gifts get revolutionized. You stop trying to live out of your soul when the spirit was the one designed to lead all along.