By Rev. Scott Powell
Abundant Harvest Church of the Nazarene, Pratt
Special to the Tribune
Magnets have polarities. a North and South polarity, simply meaning that one end or side of a true magnet will actually point to the magnetic north pole of the planet. When interacting with other magnets, they will either attract or repel, depending on their poles. A north pole will attract a south pole, but repel another north pole.
I have often thought that our souls respond to our Creator in much the same way, either we are oriented in a way that we are attracted to Him or we are oriented in a way in which we are repelled…we run away and hide as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. Sin shifted something in our souls that pushed us away from God. Yes, souls. We are going to be talking about our souls for a few Sundays. It’s a word that is thrown around often but not often understood.
French philosopher Ernest Renan once said, “O Lord, if there is a Lord; save my soul, if I have a soul.”
Question: What is your SOUL?
There is something deep within you that is responsible for all of you. The Bible uses several words to get at the idea of this:
• Heart- the seat of all our affections
• Mind- our bias, way of thinking, assumptions, and predisposition
• Spirit- our inward person that gives life to our bodies
• Inward Nature- our bent, inclinations, and “inner parts” (Ps. 51:6).
I’ve been thinking a lot about that word…BENT. It’s why I started thinking about those magnets. What is my soul attracted to? What is attracted to my soul?
Christian author Steve DeNeff wrote a book in 2011 titled, Soul Shift and says in his introduction: Most people’s souls are buried beneath mounds of activity, excuses, comforts, noise, addictions, laughter, small talk, romance, therapy, and entertainment. We are like passengers on a subway, moving quickly from one obligation, relationship, or activity to another, seldom stopping to wonder who and where we really are. Sometimes it seems like the church is trying to save souls without talking about them.
You have a soul! And it’s the most important thing about you! It really is the center of who you are…and guess what? It was designed and created by the Master Himself with a dash of Himself in it! We need to pay some attention to our soul! Even more than our body and health! Now, you might think that if ANYONE should know anything about souls, it should be Christians! And yet, sadly…we don’t pay much attention to our souls.
The Old Testament Hebrew word is nephesh and teaches us something very important about how we should view our souls. Nephesh is used over 700 times in the Old Testament. It is most often translated into the word person, which may seem pretty mundane. But let’s look at it’s first use in relation to humanity in Genesis 2:7:
Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. (Genesis 2:7 NLT)
The literal translation though is And Yaweh God (the eternally existing I AM) formed the man out of dust from the ground, and blew (from the depth of His being) into his nostrils the breath of life (everlasting life from the wellspring of life); and man became a living soul (a unique and beautiful person born of the divine).
The result of God’s creative love and intention was our soul.
To be “like minded” to Christ is not only to THINK like Him, but to be oriented the way He is oriented.
One of the works of the Holy Spirit is the rewiring of our instincts and the reprogramming of our nature. It’s true discipleship, not just to get us to ACT like Jesus, but to REACT like Jesus…making our Christlikeness second nature, instead of planned and strategized. Too often, discipleship stops at IMITATING Christ, but the real power is in the actual SHIFT in our very souls where we are becoming CHRISTLIKE.
Remember the magnets? When our souls are reoriented correctly, we are once again attracted to and connected to God.
He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s
sake. (Psalms 23:3 NASB)
