You’ve Got Mail-
Hello, hello,
Something quite funny has happened — without even meaning to — and I wanted to share it with you.
Recently, I mentioned that I’d managed to buy two new books using the paid-subscription part of this Substack thing. And no, this isn’t a plea for anything. It happened organically, which honestly shocked me as much as anyone — especially given the diabolical grammar errors and random ramblings you all have to wade through when reading my words. Dare we even call them articles?
Anyway.
I ended up in conversation with another person here on Substack who told me about a book that deeply changed his life (apart from the Bible, of course). A quick thank you for the recommendation, Sebastian, if you ever read this.
I’d posted previously about Brother Lawrence and Thomas à Kempis, and I used what came from the same little pot — from the subscribers — to order the book Sebastian recommended which was: The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee.
What made me smile was this: I’d owned that book before. A couple of winters ago, actually. But I’d given it away to someone I know, who then passed it on — along with other Christian books — to people who needed them in prisons.
That book made its own quiet journey.
Like a little mustard seed.
From one hand, to another, and another — to people who desperately needed it, even if they didn’t know they needed it right then and there, .
I thought nothing more of the book for the last few years.
Until that comment the other day recommending the very same book.
To be honest, I was excited to read it again for myself. It really is that good. I wanted to approach it through the eyes of a growing believer, not the person I was back then.
I think I’ve said before that I see this Substack as a kind of letter type thing. A “dear diary” maybe. Or like writing to an old friend you once knew well, who moved away apart from there’s another one added every now and then which can be nerve wracking for me : \ , and this is our letter| comments so we can catch up, actual christian connections whilst being in the world but not of it — as and when we choose to open it.
I’ve turned off all notifications just for my own sanity. You should too.
We should be able to come and go freely from being online.
People who truly care who aren’t Ai algorithm slaves truly, don’t mind your absence trust me.
Life happens and comes before Substack and the rest of it.
I remember telling you previously that as a child, I hated reading. I struggled with it and outright refused. Somehow, as I grew, that did fade. I actually began to enjoy it — slowly, imperfectly. And now I continue to try. Apart from the genealogy part of the bible with all the names .. don’t lie you know its a lot we’ve all skipped through you know that! - I felt guilty then went back through it name by name and you can imagine how they were pronounced given my track record .
I do thank Jesus for increasing my love for reading and starting me off with the psalms and proverbs, because He’s the one I want to read about most I can honestly say after reading the bible first time old to new I retained nothing… literally nothing,
So any way, I now often find myself on a quiet quest — digging through old books written by people long gone, those who picked up their own cross daily like us and had already fought the good fight of faith, just to see what it looked like for them.
But back to Watchman Nee.
Thanks to you lot, I ordered the book. And within a day, it was marked as delivered.
Just not to me or my house.
Like anyone would these days, I immediately checked the tracking. The book was nowhere near my house!!. Not outside. Not with a neighbour.
The tracking showed a photo — and there I saw the copy of The Spiritual Man sitting perfectly packaged on a stranger’s doorstep, in an apartment some where far away, based on its location I could see.
Long story short 🙂
God gave it to someone else……. Again!.
That mustard seed was sat waiting outside the stranger’s door.
I started thinking: what if I’d never posted about those books? ( trust me, I almost didn’t.)
What if Sebastian had never commented?
What if, what if, what if…
And then I stopped myself.
Instead, I thought about how amazing it is to simply be a stranger in the world — someone God can use in the ordinary, unnoticed ways. No fuss. Nothing massive. Just small things, so that He can be seen.
The person who opens that door will never know who sent the book or who it belonged to.
I don’t know the person who recommended it. I didn’t know the person I brought it from or the many home and hands its passed through and
We didn’t know each other when we created these accounts.
And yet — here we are part of a chain of events, little things, Watchman Nee wrote it in the past. A stranger told me what they had read that helped them in the past, you brought it in the present, I looked for it and God is now about to Come forth in that person future.
So To be the stranger.
To be unnoticed.
So Christ can be seen Christ can be revealed.
We can let God who himself began a good work in us, finish it!.
One day outside of time and eternity all will be revealed and we will laugh in a good way! at the ways in which Christ did his thing through each of us who were connected in little tiny ways in Christ.
A little bit about the book for those interested-
Written in the early 20th century by a Chinese Christian thinker who later died in prison, The Spiritual Man is not a self-help book, a moral guide, or a religious manifesto. It’s an attempt to explain why human beings often feel divided inside — pulled by instinct, emotion, reason, and something deeper they can’t quite name.
Nee’s central idea is simple but unsettling: you are not just a body and a mind.
He argues that human beings function on three levels:
Body — instincts, habits, physical drives
Soul — thoughts, emotions, personality, will
Spirit — the deepest layer, capable of awareness beyond self
Even if you don’t believe in God, this framework may feel familiar. Most people know what it’s like to think one thing, feel another, and yet sense — quietly — that neither quite touches the core of who they are.
Nee claims that most of modern life is lived almost entirely in the soul:
endless thinking, reacting, desiring, striving, defending identity.
And that’s the problem.
The Core Problem: The Self Is Too Loud
Nee isn’t attacking intelligence or emotion. He’s pointing out that when the self becomes the center of everything — self-expression, self-protection, self-improvement — it eventually exhausts itself.
According to Nee, much of what people call “spiritual” is still just the soul in disguise:
emotional highs
moral effort
intellectual certainty
religious performance
None of these, he says, actually change the source from which a person lives.
That’s why people can improve their behavior and still feel hollow.
Why they can succeed and still feel restless.
Why knowledge doesn’t bring peace.
The Radical Claim: Something in You Must Die
This is where The Spiritual Man becomes uncomfortable.
Nee insists that genuine transformation doesn’t come from adding something to the self — more discipline, more belief, more effort — but from the breaking of self-rule.
In his Christian language, this happens through the “cross.”
Translated into plain terms:
the ego loses its throne.
Not destroyed — but dethroned.
Only then, Nee says, does the deeper part of a person become active. He calls this the spirit — not personality, not conscience, not emotion, but a quiet capacity for truth, humility, and alignment beyond self-interest.
Why This Isn’t About Religion
Here’s the surprising thing: The Spiritual Man is deeply suspicious of religion.
Nee warns that religion often strengthens the very thing it claims to heal — the self. It gives people spiritual language, identity, and confidence without touching the root problem.
That’s why the book isn’t motivational. It doesn’t flatter the reader.
It strips them.
Nee is essentially asking:
What if your best qualities still aren’t enough?
What if your inner conflict isn’t something to manage, but something to surrender?
What if peace isn’t achieved by control, but by release?
Why the Book Still Matters
Even outside Christian belief, The Spiritual Man speaks to modern burnout, anxiety, and fragmentation.
It challenges the assumption that:
more self-expression leads to freedom
more knowledge leads to clarity
more effort leads to wholeness
Nee proposes the opposite:
wholeness comes when the self stops trying to be the center.
You don’t have to agree with his theology to feel the weight of the question he leaves behind:
What if the deepest part of you has never been allowed to lead?
That’s what Watchman Nee was trying to convey.
Not how to become religious —
but how to stop living from the surface.
Good night and God Bless for now : ).
