My Soul Waits for the Lord

Jesus fills the hungry soul with His life, peace and joy. What is our soul? It is one entity in our triune make-up: our body, soul and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The soul is our thoughts, feelings and choices.

One word for soul in the Bible is ”pxyxe" and means to breathe, or to blow. God breathed His breath of life into us and our soul was born. We get our words psyche, psychology, etc. from this root word. The soul is our personality, our identity as an individual.

God justifies us in our spirit through salvation; He will glorify our body with immortality when we see Jesus face-to-face; but He sanctifies our soul in a life-long process to make us as holy as He is holy.

If we earnestly seek the Lord with our whole heart and soul, we shall find Him (Deuteronomy 4:29; Matthew 22:37). We thirst for Him in this desert of life; we long for Him with our entire being (Psalm 63:1).

If we do not seek Him, we may gain the whole world, but we will lose our soul to the fires of hell throughout eternity (John 3:18: Matthew 16:26). The better choice is to search for an intimate union with God with the entire focus of our heart (Jeremiah 29:13).

God created us as an awesome and wonderfully made body, soul and spirit and placed our soul in our innermost being. We find true rest for our soul in God through salvation (Psalm 62:1; Jeremiah 6:16).

When our soul is depressed and disturbed within us, we can put our hope in God, praising Him in the good times and the bad (Psalm 42:11). He works out even the most horrific details of our life for our good (Romans 8:28).

Prayer:

Father God, You created us so that we prosper in life in the same manner that our soul prospers (3 John 1:2). If our soul is overwhelmed and depressed, it affects our body and spirit as well. Help us to see that we will prosper only as we love You foremost in our heart, walk in obedience to Your precepts, keep Your commandments, hold fast to You and serve You with our whole heart and soul (Joshua 22:5).

We praise Your holy name from our innermost being, because You have delivered us from the destructive pathway of sin (Psalm 71:23, 103:1). Our whole being waits for You, and our hope is based on Your Word (Psalm 130:5). Your encouragement of us is sweeter than a honeycomb, feeds our soul and heals our body (Proverbs 16:24).

Thought for the Day:

In our final days on this earth, we will clearly see that God did not fail to deliver any of His promises to us; if we appreciate all that He does for us now and walk only in His will, we will reap the benefits of an eternal life blessed by His love. - Joshua 23:14

Our Patched​ Humanity

Through a lifetime of fighting the circumstances, which life deals out to us, we are so encumbered by bandages that it is hard to function. Our body and soul often end up bruised, broken, patched up and in the hospital - on crutches, just to traverse our day. Our spirit is already dead in sin, and no help to us at all (Ephesians 2:1).

Once we come to Christ through salvation, He heals us from the inside out. Our works of righteousness have no influence over God's love for us or our eternal standing; but they are very necessary for our wedding garment as the Bride to our Savior, King Jesus (Revelation 19:8).

We start to focus more on the spiritual, eternal aspects of life rather than the humanistic, temporal issues. Life is no longer about us; but Christ is now our whole life (Colossians 3:3-4).

Even when our faith wanes, He helps our unbelief (Mark 9:24). Our spirit is perfect; but our soul - our thoughts, choices and feelings - is still in the process of healing and maturing in His faith within us (Galatians 2:20).

God elevates us as His adopted children and we no longer depend on our self (Ephesians 1:5). We turn our faith toward Christ and we live by the direction of His Spirit. His peace floods our soul and our pent-up anger dissolves (Isaiah 26:3).

God's Spirit conforms us to the mind of Christ and transforms our nature to Christ's divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). He exchanges our human weaknesses with God's strength; so we can do all things through Christ's presence within us (2 Corinthians 13:4; Philippians 4:13).

Prayer:

Father God, often when we pray, our mind is full of what we did and did not say or do. We cannot get in touch with our true needs, because we are not listening to our own soul. We are not listening to Your Spirit either, who wants to pray and function through us.

Yet, as we spend our time in complete and anxious-free prayers of praise, we learn to live unencumbered by things of this earth. We enter into a life of praising and worshipping our living Lord. As we trust in You alone, You make all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28). Our faith is built and strengthened as we see Your faithfulness in our life.

Thought for the Day:
Journaling our thoughts, feelings and prayers allows us to empty our soul from its load of cares and concerns; when we look back over what we wrote and the prayers of our year, we see God's hand, working in the details our life.

Salt and Light

 

God made His Saints as salt and light in our world (Matthew 5:13-16). As light, we reveal the hidden wounds in a sinner’s life; and as salt, we create a thirst in their soul. Sinners resent being reminded of their sin, and despise those who keep them accountable. Unbelievers often criticize Christians when we tell them the truth. As ungodliness increases with the growing apostasy in our world (2 Timothy 3:12-13), these people attempt to extinguish our light in order to hide their darkness.

When salt sits in the box, it clumps together and loses its usefulness (Matthew 5:13). It is only as we allow Jesus to pour us out, that we are any good to His Kingdom. Speaking God’s truth will season, cleanse, heal, preserve and prevent decay in the life of those who will listen and believe. Hopefully, those whose thirst we amplify will want to quench it with Living Water (John 7:37-39), which only comes through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ (Mark 1:14-15).

Salt also enhances sweetness, such as bringing out the natural sweetness of melons. Expecting Christians to be sweet as pie, sinners resent the salty truth of God’s word. It is actually those preachers who dilute and sugar-coat the gospel of Christ that steer people in the wrong direction. They falsely imply that life in Christ is all about health, wealth and success. They disguise sin, calling it a weakness or saying it is biologically predestined; therefore, Jesus accepts it.

These lies lead people down the eternal path to destruction, rather than the narrow way of truth. Eternal joy comes from living in the presence of God for eternity. Although Authentic Believers all over the world are persecuted more and more, just like Jesus was during His lifetime (John 15:20), we are not deterred from sharing the truth of God’s Word. We do not merely listen to the Word and deceive our self, but we also obey God’s Word is Spirit and sincerity (James 1:22-24).

Prayer:

Father God, Your Word is truth and shall never pass away (John 17:17). Help us to be lights, which shine into this dark world, illuminating the way for whosoever will to come to salvation in Jesus’ name (Revelation 22:17). Until we walk in and share Your Truth, it simply remains a thought in our mind and does no good for anyone (2 Timothy 3:7). Your Spirit leads us into all truth (John 16:13). Give us the courage to continue to share it.

Thought for the Day:

The power of Christ working in us can accomplish more than we could ever imagine. – Ephesians 3:20