Rebuilding The Real You: The Definitive Guide to the Holy Spirit's Work in Your Life

By Jack W. Hayford

Rebuilding the Real You, Jack Hayford’s landmark teaching on the Holy Spirit, unfolds a clear picture of the process by which the Holy Spirit works in the life of the believer. For anyone who has experienced times of brokenness, the book is a handbook on restoration, enabling the reader to identify and effectively deal with obstacles, walk fully and fruitfully in Spirit-filled life, and rejoice in God’s faithfulness. Containing life-transforming dimensions of renewal and personal restoration, Rebuilding the Real You equips the reader with the tools necessary to rebuild their soul, restore their hope, and remove their shame. With a help like that, you can live every day with confidence, assured of God’s Word triumphing in you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charisma House
• Release date: Jan 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781599799285

Jack W. Hayford

Jack W. Hayford is currently the President and Rector of the King's Seminary in Van Nuys, California. For 30 years he served as the founding pastor of the Church on the Way. He is also the president of the International Four Square Church. Among many of his more than 40 books, are: "Foundations for Living" and Bless Your Children", awarded with the Christian Publishers Book Award.

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REBUILDING THE REAL YOU by Jack Hayford

Published by Charisma House

Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group

600 Rinehart Road

Lake Mary, Florida 32746

www.charismahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from the Amplified Bible. Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are from The Living Bible. Copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Design Director: Justin Evans

Cover design by studiogearbox.com

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Hayford

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hayford, Jack W.

Rebuilding the real you / Jack Hayford. -- Rev. ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-59979-471-6

1. Men--Religious life. 2. Bible. O.T. Nehemiah--Devotional literature. 3. Christian life. 4. Hayford, Jack W. I. Title.

BV4528.2.H38 2009

248.4--dc22

2008041840

E-book ISBN: 978-1-59979-928-5

First published by Gospel Light, copyright © 1986. Revised edition published by Jack Hayford Ministries, copyright © 2003, ISBN 0-91687-36-5.

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Rebuilding the Real You

Part One: What Needs Rebuilding?

1 Meeting a Forever Friend

2 Established, Strengthened, Settled

3 Temple and Spirit, Walls and Soul

4 Partnering With the Holy Spirit in Prayer

5 What Holiness Is Really About

Part Two: The Rebuilding Process Begins

6 Resources and Authority

7 Angels and Adversaries

8 Breaking Loose From Condemnation

9 Two More Gates and a Life-Giving Pool

10 Invitation to Build

Part Three: Rebuilding to Last

11 People Who Need People

12 The Adversary

13 Strategies on the Wall

Part Four: Strong and Secure

14 Built Up to Grow Up

15 Glory in the Gates

16 Facing Tomorrow With Joy

17 The Practice of Worship

Appendix A

Map of Jerusalem and Spirit/Soul/Body Diagram

Appendix B

Historical Notes

Appendix C

Making Sure That You Have Been Reborn

PREFACE

THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH has become a kind of handbook on personal restoration for millions of people who have studied it with me.

Buried as it is at the end of the Old Testament historical books, it seems to be an unlikely prospect for contemporary relevance. If I had planned to teach a series on the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the individual believer, it would never have occurred to me to turn to Nehemiah.

I never would have expected much from this short, crusty arrangement of ancient historical events, except for a peculiar confluence of two events that took place many years ago while I was serving as senior pastor of The Church On The Way in Van Nuys, California.

After church one day, Dan, one of our congregation’s elders, stopped me. Jack, I was thinking about the number of people who are reborn but who have such a great difficulty getting their lives together. I felt the Lord impress me that I was to encourage you to bring a series of messages on that subject—something about the repairing of the human personality.

I stared back rather blankly, then replied, Well sure, I’ll keep open to it—try to keep sensitive, that is.

That’s good enough for me, Pastor, Dan replied. I’ll pray for the Lord to give you something.

Three weeks later, my wife, Anna, and I were invited to minister in Illinois. While there at this midwinter conference, we were provided with a picture-postcard setting for our accommodations— on a small hilltop in the country, surrounded by snow-bedecked trees. It was a scene from a Currier and Ives print, delightfully suited for a few days away from our daily responsibilities. I decided to do some aggressive Bible reading.

Now, by aggressive I mean the rapid coverage of long passages of Scripture. It’s so easy in the daily study of briefer passages to miss the grand panorama of whole segments of the Word. So it was there, comfortably ensconced before the fire in a cozy setting, that I spent hours at a time reading with reasonable speed through the twelve history books of the Old Testament.

I swept through exciting territory—the dynamics, the drama, and the disasters of Israel’s rise and fall as a kingdom. Then I came to Nehemiah.

I seriously pondered skipping it.

Of course, I had studied the book during my formal training and had read it a few times in through-the-Bible pursuits. It was, to my understanding, simply the historical record of the efforts of one man to assist the Jews who had returned from Babylonian captivity in the rebuilding of the walls of the city of Jerusalem. I knew the content: I was aware that there were several chapters with nothing more than boring lists and historical reviews. I was about to go on to the next book when I was prompted to stop and reconsider.

As I did, I prayed, Lord, I don’t ever want to take any part of Your Word carelessly. I’m going to read this brief book rather than skip past it, but I’m asking You a favor: as I read, would You show me something fresh in it? Thank You, Lord. In Jesus’s name, amen.

I meant the prayer, but my faith was not particularly active in terms of my feeling expectant as I began to read. So as I started, I wasn’t looking for something special, new, clever, or insightful. What happened was simply the result of our loving Father’s gift to me.

I had read about three chapters when suddenly a sense of holy surprise came over me. I paused, musing, This wall-rebuilding process is very close to being a picture of the way God restores people. Immediately Dan’s words flew back to mind, and I laughed to myself, I’ll bet he’s been praying. I finished Nehemiah and Esther, the remaining books of Old Testament history, scratching notes in the margins as I read and becoming very deeply impressed with the possibilities of the subject.

I came home and began an extended sermon series in our midweek services at the church. The tapes of that series became a staple in our church’s pastoral counseling ministry, and they were distributed widely. Our staff provided the tapes to assist people to recover from distress resulting from past experiences. Through the ministry of World MAP, a mission assistance agency, I was allowed to present the teaching series not only at one of their summer conferences but also through their global tape ministry to leaders on every continent. Mail began to increase, attesting to the validity of these insights from Nehemiah. The Word of God was working in people’s lives.

Then, through the widespread ministry of the Christian Broadcasting Network in the early 1980s, I was invited to do the series via a weekly telecast, and the teaching reached out to countless more people. In my visits around the country, I started hearing from people everywhere I went about God’s grace at work in them through that series on Nehemiah—so unlikely a source, yet so alive because it is His eternal Word. Later, the Trinity Broadcasting Network carried an even more expanded video edition to millions.

I cannot begin to enumerate the number of dear people who have expressed the life-transforming, Christ-glorifying dimensions of renewal and personal restoration they have experienced through the study to which I now invite you. I feel like a third person, looking in on a teaching session, watching the Holy Spirit take truth and apply it from His eternal Word into your situations. It’s a privilege to be the delivery boy of this message. How fulfilling is the prospect; this study can enable the Holy Spirit’s highest and greatest ministry to be realized in you.

Introduction

REBUILDING THE REAL YOU

THIS IS NOT A self-help book. Neither is it a structured Bible study of the Book of Nehemiah.

But this is a book about help, or better yet, about a Helper. The best part is that the help He has is for you, and the Book of Nehemiah can provide you with a picture of how He wants to help you.

Therefore, far from being a self-help book, this is a book about how to partner with the Holy Spirit on your personal renewal project, which is something that He has wanted to help you with since before you were born again.

Self-help books usually mislead because they promise too much and provide too little. In all self-improvement books, the fundamental grounds for hope are humankind—you, me, us, we. As self-helpers, we may not be all that bad, but we’re not really good enough. When you start with human beings, all you’re going to get is human help. Even though the presumption survives that people have what it takes, the evidence is in; the fact is, it isn’t enough.

This book’s foundational proposition is that there is a genuine possibility of personal restoration and fulfillment for everyone, regardless of what your past may hold, but that personal restoration can only occur at the invitation of the Holy Spirit and under His ongoing tutelage.

We have all experienced something of brokenness: hearts, homes, health, finance, dreams, relationships—all as breakable as bones, though harder to set. We may not all be basket cases, but it’s certain we all need the Doctor.

The Doctor is God, who is larger than any brokenness and is the fountainhead of life itself. He is the Father of love, and He has the right to speak with authority to His children. He has given us His Word, and He enlivens it to our human hearts.

He sent the Messiah, Jesus, and He has proven the Messiah’s miraculous capacity for meeting our needs by raising Him from the dead and sending His Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts. In the context of the reality of the Messiah’s resurrection, there is nothing impossible for your life or mine.

The Holy Spirit has come to glorify Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus is glorified most of all through our human personalities. The Father created us in splendor, in His own image, but that splendor has been badly marred. Jesus came to redeem the Father’s original intention in us and through us.

I believe that you believe this too, because I believe everyone has faith: As God has dealt to each one a measure of faith (Rom. 12:3). I am not saying that everyone’s faith is perfect, accurate, or functional. But it is there.

In fact, it takes studied effort and a deep commitment to not believe, for faith can rarely be crowded out of a human soul. Disaster may burn it, tragedy may smash it, injury may bruise it, or arrogance may denounce it. But faith, like seed buried under concrete, is difficult to keep down permanently.

Your faith is probably ready. Your faith may be active, alive, and vibrant enough to respond to the truth of God’s eternal Word and His risen Son.

Let me encourage you to welcome a new dimension of help into your life—the help I referred to at the beginning and that comes in the person of a Helper.

His first name is Holy, and He is the Spirit of God, called the Holy Spirit. He is as truly and completely God as either the Father or the Son. He is deeply personal, all-powerful, and ever present. He wants to make Himself known in the details of your life.

He is one of the Three-in-One, but don’t worry if you don’t understand such theological elements. He doesn’t mind our human limitations, because the Holy Spirit—indeed, God in any aspect of His person—is fully secure enough to be comfortable with our finite understanding. He isn’t running a heavenly quiz to see how much we know, for in the last analysis, our salvation and our destiny will not be resolved by how much we know but by whom we know.

His mission—and He’s decided to accept it!—is to maximize your potential by helping you to truly get it all together. I think your perspective on both yourself and the Holy Spirit will be broadened and deepened as you pursue these pages. As we examine how the seldom-read Book of Nehemiah presents a beautifully encoded picture of the Holy Spirit’s person, style, and ministry, we will be able to participate in the rebuilding of our own souls.

The Helper is ready to bring you to fulfillment and to your highest destiny.

HISTORICAL NEHEMIAH—PICTURE

OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

The Book of Nehemiah was written about four and a half centuries before the birth and life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and yet the Holy Spirit, who is timeless, was making sure that we would have a vibrant portrayal of His work in human lives.

The Bible says:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

—2 TIMOTHY 3:16–17

This clearly argues against the opinion of some teachers that historical books of the Bible cannot be sources of establishing truth, in other words, doctrine. The New Testament word doctrine (didaskalia) simply means teaching. There are at least three types of teachings most Old Testament historical books contain:

1. Facts concerning the past

2. Moral and spiritual lessons

3. Pictures of New Testament truth

Nehemiah contains all three, and my expositional approach to this book includes an unfolding of a very clear picture of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit assisting the believer in rebuilding the broken places of human life. This is consistent with the expository style of several New Testament writers and is verified by the clear statements of the Word concerning the content of the Old Testament as it bears on our lives today:

For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.

—ROMANS 15:4

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.

—1 CORINTHIANS 10:11

I have not tried to cover of the Book of Nehemiah exhaustively, since much of its content is historical information only. Nehemiah contains 13 chapters and 406 verses. Of the verses, 189 list names, 38 recite earlier history, and 179 describe Nehemiah’s actions. In this book, I have elaborated on less than half of the actual content of the Book of Nehemiah, concerned as I am largely with Nehemiah himself, his work, his leadership, and his influence.

The Book of Nehemiah begins in the year 446 b.c., ninety years since more than fifty thousand Jews had been released by the edict of Cyrus, ruler of the Medo-Persians. Through the leadership of a remarkable man named Zerubbabel, they had returned to Jerusalem. To say they returned refers to the Jews as a people, for, in fact, very few of the contingent who returned had ever been there before.

The returning exiles were actually the children and grandchildren of people who had been taken captive during the conquest and ultimate destruction of Jerusalem by the renowned Nebuchadnezzar, dreaded monarch of ancient Babylon. Consistent with