This will make more sense if it is seen as a continuation of the thoughts I have been recording these past few months, and I have reached the point of understanding God's interventions in day-to-day affairs as being through those men and women who can hear His voice and be moved to carry out His will.

So how can we hear His voice?

It begins with being born of the Spirit, to use a phrase from the Bible. This is essentially a response to God's voice heard through preaching or read from the written word of God (or both, of course). As we open our hearts to His voice, and invite the Saviour into our hearts, so that part of us that was dead (again I am quoting the Bible) becomes revived, and our spirit becomes a living part of our life.

To begin with we are spiritual babes, and need the sort of food that babies can digest. This is how Paul spoke (with some obvious regret) about some of the church at Corinth: 'I could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.' (1 Cor ch 3 vv 1-2).

Notice the word 'flesh'. This is all part of the Bible's description of the tripartite make-up of every human: body, soul, and spirit; with 'flesh' referring to all those physical parts of us, all the senses, the natural (and unnatural) appetites.

I have already written on this subject, and it will do no harm to read the definitions of body, soul, and spirit once more. The key thing is that there is a fundamental difference, a total new birth, when a man or a woman opens their heart to God, and receives this 'quickening' of the spirit. It is through the spirit we can hear God's voice.

But we need to address our spiritual growth with as much care and concern as we naturally do our bodily and intellectual growth. We need to be spiritually fed, and I know of no Christian who has felt able to dispense with a daily diet of reading and pondering on the word of God, and of opening their heart to listening (all alone and uninterrupted) to the voice of God through prayer. This need to be alone with God was experienced by Jesus too, and it is as essential to the spirit as food and water (and sleep!) are to the body.

God is pretty sparing in His use of angels these days. He really does want His people to be giving Him their full attention by the simple means already provided; and there is even greater strength in numbers: 'where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them'.

So we feed our spirit, and come to rely more and more on this 'inner voice', in other words we learn to 'live by the spirit'. And this is the crucial thing I am learning and want to share with you all.

There is a great deal of emphasis these days on human psychology, and on 'therapy' and 'counselling' as the response to all the problems human beings can encounter. It is the new religion, intellectually respectable and more or less unchallenged. It may do some good, but it cannot reach down to the real problem we all face. Let me define the problem for myself, and so perhaps for you too, dear reader.

In terms of personality analysis one can do all sorts of psychometric tests and personality typing, and come up with some interesting answers. In Myers-Briggs terms of definition, for those who would understand all this, I am ISTJ. This means more Introverted than Extroverted; more reliant on the Senses than iNtuition; preferring Thinking rather than Feeling; wanting to make Judgments and go beyond just Perceiving. And this analysis would propose a further 15 types, with the diametrically opposite to ISTJ being ENFP. Now I find that all this is helpful in making me stop and think about personality in general, but I am also brought up with the thought that it does not go deep enough.

Here is why, expressed in the words of Paul: 'I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me, that is in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do...Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?' (Romans ch 7 vv 15-24).

I really do not think that Paul, and Ovid (43 B.C. to 17 A.D.) 'video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor (I see the better things and approve them; but I follow the worse things)', and I are the only three humans to have experienced this dilemma. I believe we all do. And Paul records the answer: 'The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death...To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace' (Romans ch 8 vv 2-6).

The Bible, as ever, does not mince words. We are all in a terminal condition, spiritually. We need help, and that help comes not by a tinkering with what have got naturally ('the body, the flesh, the physical'). That part of us is not where we should look for the answer; it is itself the problem!

I hope this does not sound glib. For forty years and more, since being 'born of the Spirit' at the age of 21, I have found 'walking not by the flesh but by the spirit' (to use Paul's phraseology again) to be the hardest thing there is; and there are times, many times, when I have failed, and fail still. In my heart, though, there is the certain knowledge that I belong to God, and that 'the life of the spirit' is all He is offering me, or asking of me. And 'the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.' (Galatians ch 5 vv 22-23). This is what every ISTJ needs, I can assure you. How about you?