Psalm 23 starts out
“The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
We live in a world that wars against our souls. When I say our “souls” I mean the part of us that is our mind, will and emotions. You have three parts to you. You are a spirit being with a soul, living in a body here on earth. Our souls take damage daily. Your and my soul experiences assault, erosion and sometimes outright violence because we live in a world at war. The war? Good against evil. Just pull today’s headlines. There is a collision of kingdoms seen and unseen. There is a wearing away of who we are intended to be. Who are you supposed to be? A part of the family of God. You are His creation but evil separates us all from our heavenly Father through sin.
Our ability to connect with God, connect with others and even connect with ourselves is affected by this. In Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27 and Mark 12:30 we are told to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and with all our strength. Then you are to love your neighbor as yourself. Because our souls take damage daily our hearts can grow cold. They can get hard if we let them. Hard towards God. Hard and hateful towards others. Even hateful to ourselves. Your heart is the center of your soul. It’s a doorway to how you see the world. “As a person thinks in their heart so are they” the Bible says in Prov 23:7.
I said earlier that you are body, soul and spirit.
Your spirit is like sunshine, the light in you.
Your soul is like stained glass that the light shines through. Your PERSONality shows through you by things like your laughter, playfulness, seriousness, patience or impatience, tenacity, extrovert or introvert, industrious, social, talkative, quiet, joyful, impulsive, calm, artistic, creative etc. Our stained glass soul is dimmed by sin. To sin is to miss our mark of living in a virtuous manner. Just look at the ten commandments. NO ONE can keep them perfectly. “For ALL have sinned and fall short” it says in Roman 3:23. It is acting against our own interests by engaging the world in an immoral manner. To sin is to fall short of our potential. Some explain it by saying it is missing the mark of our highest self and best quality of life.
We come into this world in sin because of the fall of man in the Garden. (you can read about it in Genesis chapter 3). And we commit sins as long as we live life and the dimming continues.
But JESUS , being the LIGHT of the world came to save us, deliver us and work from the inside out of us. He cleanses our hearts and RESTORES our SOULS!!!! When we open our hearts and say “yes” to Jesus coming into our life as our Savior and Lord salvation happens immediately. The Bible says it like this in 2 Corinthians 5:17 Amplified Bible “Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away.” Our souls start the process of being restored. The biblical meaning of the word “ restoration ” is to receive back more than has been lost to the point where the final state is greater than the original condition. The main point is that someone or something is improved beyond measure! That’s our Jesus!
When you grasp the idea how precious you are to God; how precious your inner self, your being, your soul is, it becomes a big deal. There is great value to your soul. I’ll ask a question now that is echoing one that is in the Bible. “What will it profit you if you gain the whole world yet lose your soul?” Mark 8:36,37 The Light has come. The Light is Jesus Christ. He is God’s only begotten Son. Some people choose the darkness. (John 3:9) God gives us that choice but He even encourages us to CHOOSE LIFE in Deuteronomy 30:15-20.
If you’d like to Choose JESUS today, it’s really quite simple.
The Bible tells us if we confess Jesus with our mouth and believe in our hearts God raised Him from the dead we will be saved. You could pray a prayer like this . . . . . . .
God, I believe You sent Your Son Jesus. I believe He died on that cross, was buried and rose from the dead. He did that because He loves me. He did that to make a way for me to be saved. I believe it in my heart and I have confessed it with my mouth and I am SAVED. Thank You heavenly Father.
If you prayed this I rejoice and now call you sister in Christ (or brother in Christ). We are family and would LOVE for you to share the good news with us by leaving us a message about it. God loves you and so do we!!!