Continuing in Chapter #2…
The Bible clearly tells us that our soul is the county-seat of our heart and emotions; what we feel – our joys and sorrows, the effervescence of happiness and the lows of discouragement. Our soul encompasses our heart’s hurts and wounds, desires and longings, and our sense of pride or worthlessness and everything in between.
The New Testament Greek word psyche – do you see all the English derivatives from this Greek word such as psychology, psychiatry – also means our minds, our thought-lives, and our intellect. Everything that passes through our brain including our ability to make decisions.
Our soul is such a tightly-woven combination of both the way we think and our emotions that the Bible often uses the phrase the thoughts of the heart (verses). Because we literally cannot disconnect our minds and hearts from one another, if our thinking is skewed and unhealthy, there is a good chance our emotions about certain things will be too. If we are still living in wounds from our past that broke our hearts to some degree, our emotions will most likely affect how we think about certain things.
God made us in His image. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit created us spirit, soul, and body 1 Thessalonians 5:23. We get that we have a body with all its muscles, its bones, its tissues, its cravings, and its weaknesses. However, knowing the difference between our soul and spirit is imperative. This understanding brings us clarity as to why we can be Spirit-filled believers and yet struggle. Often, only the Word of God can discern between these two unseen parts of our lives (Hebrews 4:12).
The believer’s spirit – filled with the Holy Spirit – cannot be enticed by the devil and his strategies, but the soul – our hearts and minds – can still fall prey to the enemy’s advances. We wonder why we behave and react the way we do, especially when we know what we are doing is displeasing to God. We may also question why faith is a struggle at times, isn’t that our spirit realm? Yet we learn from Paul’s writings that the devil can set up places of ensnarement – what we would call a stronghold – in the broken places of our soul and though our spirit can’t be touched by our adversary, our soul’s brokenness can surely hinder our communion with God.