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

Choosing to be Vulnerable

Too often I meet people who are destroyed by the unfaithfulness of people in their life. They are abused by a parent, disappointed by decisions made for them by those in authority over them, abandoned by a spouse, traumatized by infidelity, or overwhelmed by grief from some loss in their life.

Through life's trials, I have learned that all people are inherently untrustworthy. You and I fall into that category as well. We never know how we will act or react to a moment of temptation and weakness. Yet, God calls us to love unconditionally.

If we withhold trust and love from others because we are wounded or fear the potential of being hurt, we cheat our self. We erect walls around our emotions and function in life from our mind only.

We refuse to feel anything because life is too painful for us. We do not emotionally invest in anyone, not even our spouse, children or church family. We simply show love by doing acts of service for them.

This attitude makes us feel like we are a success and doing our duty to others. Yet, this is a substitute at best - failing to fulfill us at the deepest levels of our soul.

We hide behind arrogance, which actually makes us more vulnerable and increases our load of unwanted emotional baggage. We collect the incidents of abuse in our soul and hold grudges, forgiving with our mind but never from our heart.

God is the only entity in life that we can truly trust. He always has our best interest at heart. Even if He disciplines us or allows life to bruise us, He never allows life to totally break us (Isaiah 42:3).

This makes life worth the risk of allowing our self to be vulnerable to hurt, in order to experience the joy of unfettered love and acceptance. We can even more freely love our self if we allow our self to love others (Mark 12:30-31).

 

Prayer:

Father God, our soul can only find our true and complete rest in You alone. You are our only salvation and constant comfort and strength. You alone are our rock and fortress. No matter what life throws at us, we will never be shaken as long as we keep our focus on You (Psalm 62:1).

Remind us that it is easier to forgive others when we realize that they are as vulnerable and human as we are. We can actually expect to be wounded by other people, but it hurts less when we have our faith in You rather than in our fellow sojourners in this life. You give us Your agape love to share with the world and it is healing and complete.

Thought for the Day:

God is our only help and shield from the inherent pain life brings (Psalm 33:20), because He alone is our strength in times of trouble (Psalm 37:39), and our courage in this insecure world (Psalm 130:5); we wait in silence before Him and find our hope only in Him (Psalm 62:5).

Victorious Living

 

In this life, we often struggle with victory and are overcome by negative circumstances and trials. We focus on the negative aspects and surrender to Satan's lies, ending in depression and defeat. We cannot allow the devil to win victories in our life.

If we consciously embrace the fact that we are blood-bought children of God, we get a glimpse of what it means to live in abundance in body, soul and spirit. We find this life of freedom only through total submission to Christ in God.

God is our Father and He made Jesus our all, who is above all - even the angels - and lives in every authentic Believer. He also lives through us as we totally surrender our plans, goals and desires to Him.

Jesus and our Father are one (John 10:30); and in Christ we too are one with Jesus and our Father God (John 17:21), led by the Holy Spirit and fulfilled in both this life and the next (Galatians 5:15-25). We no longer live, but Christ lives in and through us (Galatians 2:20).

Jesus came to live, suffer and die so that we might have abundant, victorious life on earth and for eternity (John 10:10). We are born of the flesh and are hindered by the flesh, but as authentic Believers we are also born of the Spirit (John 3:6).

We cannot see the wind, but we can see the effects of the wind. In this same way, we cannot see the Trinity at this time, but we can see and feel the effects of their presence within us and as they use us to further God's Kingdom on this earth (John 3:8).

Jesus made the point with the rich, young ruler that no one is good regardless of how closely we keep the precepts of the law. Jesus even told the young man that only God is good. Only as we recognize God's presence in us can we accomplish anything for the glory of God (Luke 18:19).

Prayer:

Father God, You call all of us who are weary and heavily burdened to come to You to find rest - not as this world gives, but only as You supernaturally give us in abundant supply. As we share Your yoke, we learn from You and You shoulder and take the burden of our load of worries and cares and give us Your light and easy yoke in its place (Matthew 11:28-30).

You are our God of peace and you wholly sanctify us as we totally surrender our life and our burdens to You. We live a victorious life of abundance in You. You preserve our spirit, body and soul - our thoughts, choices and feelings - and make us blameless when we stand before You at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Thought for the Day:

God is faithful, and He calls us to Himself and provides us with eternal salvation for our entire body, soul and spirit now and throughout eternity. - 1 Thessalonians 5:24