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

Getting Off the Fence

 

There is a popular saying that runs the gamut of Christian circles every dozen or so years. It claims that we do not want to be “so spiritually minded that we are no earthly good”.

That is a lie from the pit of hell. Look at Noah...He preached for 120 years, and he and his sons spent much of that time building an ark big enough to protect anyone who wanted to be saved.

However, since it had never rained before this time, people scoffed at them as if they were so spiritually minded they were no earthly good.

Many wanted to get aboard the ark after it started raining, but it was too late. God already closed the door (Genesis 7:16). A shallow consent to accept Christ in times of trouble brings no real change to a life and requires no total surrender for the glory of God.

Many who claim the name of Christ are oblivious to the destruction they inflict upon the Kingdom of God by sitting on the fence and exhibiting carnal words and actions (Matthew 7:16-23).

Contrarily, authentic Christians can never be content with participating in ritualistic, religious motions. We seek relevance in every aspect of our life. Even our hobbies are Christ-honoring.

Our spirit and soul are grieved by anything that grieves Christ, because He dwells within us in all of His fullness. We refrain from participating in anything that is remotely sinful.

We exhibit the fruit of God’s Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), which is the result of the refining fire of His sanctifying process in our life. We belong to Christ and we no longer live in the fleshly, carnal, worldly realm of life (1 John 3:9).

Prayer:

Father God, draw us by Your Spirit until we get off the fence and make a sincere and complete commitment to You and Your Kingdom on this earth. We grow in Christ and we are no longer in love with our self or addicted to sin. We lay down our idols – anything, which we want more than You. We submit to the total control of Your Spirit.

We remove our self from the throne of our life and put You in Your rightful place. We get off the fence and wholly commit our life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We make a difference in Your Kingdom by following the leading of Your Spirit moment by moment. We fall more in love with Jesus with each passing day.

Thought for the Day:

As we serve our Lord, we show greater and greater enthusiasm as we allow His Spirit to lead us in service and obedience to Him.

Split Personality

 

If we live life with one foot on the dock, and the other foot in the boat, we will end up getting dunked, once the boat moves from the dock for any reason. The slightest turmoil in the water will cause us to lose our balance.

God says that lukewarm people - those who live with their feet in two separate places at once - make Him sick to His stomach! He would rather that we live up to our convictions and either follow Him wholeheartedly or not at all.

To live any other way is hypocritical and smears the name of Christ in front of the world. Even unbelievers know how Christians are supposed to act, and they lose respect for us and for God if we are hypocrites with a split personality.

God prefers that we live in total surrender to His will and way. He knows that Biblical principles allow us to reap only good things in life. If we have a mixture of both secular and Biblical ideals in our world view, we end up reaping the negative consequences from the corruption we sow.

God wants us to follow Him completely, and to give Him His rightful place in our life. At the center of complete surrender we realize that we no longer live for our self, but Christ lives in and through us (Galatians 2:20).

Our obedience proves that we actually know God (1 John 2:3). He circumcises our heart, cutting away the flesh from our life, so we can live in harmony with His Spirit and one another (Romans 2:29).

We walk in the fruit of the Spirit by the power of the Spirit, and Christ's divine life replaces our carnality and worldliness (2 Peter 1:4).

Sanctification has various fluctuating tempos in our life. Sometimes, the process is fast; at other times, painfully slow. It is constant, however; and God gives us His patience and fortitude to press on through this cleansing process until our personality and goals reflect and are focused on Christ alone (Colossians 3:3-4).

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for making us a new creation by Your Spirit - with the mind and divinity of Christ abiding in us. Keep us in union with Your Spirit and hold us close to You as You use us to further Your Kingdom in the earth (Galatians 5:15-25).

Our spirituality is not complete until You give us our glorified, immortal body when we see Jesus. We need You every hour, every moment of our life. Teach us not to speak with words of carnal, mortal wisdom, but to utter only the Words taught to us by Your Spirit and full of Your glory (Philippians 3:10-12; 1 Corinthians 2:13).

Thought for the Day:

Our goal in life is to bring God glory through our every thought, word and deed, living in the fullness of His Spirit by the power of His resurrection; a surrendered life of one who is born of the Spirit and will never perish. - Peter 1:3-4