How To Align Your Soul With The Spirit: Discerning God's Voice From Your Inner Voice Series

I remember early on as a Christian I had a dream. I had listening to different ministries and churches and I was just learning the faith. I remember having a dream one night that I was at this church, big, with many people.

But it all felt dead, empty, and I left the building. Outside the building I saw this beautiful river down in this valley. And I felt drawn to the river. I saw in the river people swimming in the river. And I did the same and began swimming in the river. And it was joyous. And I found purpose in that river. A path to guide me.

I never knew what that dream meant until recently I was thinking about it as a I prepared this message. Most of the modern church is not really led by the Spirit. They are led by the soul. They do what they want to do, and call it Christian. But to be truly Christian is to be led by the Spirit, not by the soul of man. The church today must learn to swim the river of the leading of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise we will never know the power of God and the path of His will.

Have you ever had an experience where you knew that God was telling you to do something? Go pray with that person. Send that person an encouraging message. Pray for this person right now. Go and visit that friend and help them.

But part of you resists the leading of God. And you ask yourself, “Did God really say that? Or am I just making that up in my own mind?”

So you begin to wrestle back and forth, should I do it, should I not do it? What do I do? You feel the conviction of the Spirit more and more. And eventually hopefully you decide, alright, I’m going to do that. And you go do it.

What was happening there? You were wrestling within between your soul and your spirit. Your spirit received instructions from God and told you what you needed to do. But your soul got in the way and started questioning and resisting the leading of the Spirit of God.

This has happened to me many, many times! I’m sure it has for you. Now how about this one, have you ever been super excited and felt that you needed to go minister to this person, but then it went really bad and it was clear after, that it wasn’t God at all, but your own self? Again, the soul got in the way, and attempted to speak for the spirit.

But before we go further let’s talk about the structure of you as a human being.

Did you know that God reveals himself to us in three ways, as God the Father, as Jesus Christ the son of God, and as the Holy Spirit, the indwelling presence of God.

That’s interesting isn’t it?

You also are made up of different parts, you have a soul, your spirit, and your physical body.

That’s our first point today, you are soul, spirit, and body, as one.

Your physical body is just that, your body, your flesh and blood, and cells and organs and your five senses.

Your soul is you, the word for soul in the Greek actually means “breath.” Because it says in Genesis 2:7 that God breathed the breath of life into the man, he gave man a soul.

When a woman gets pregnant, the child is born as flesh, as a baby, but God puts a soul into that body.

So your soul is you. A puff of air you might say. Breathed out by God.

You also have your spirit. Your spirit is your higher self, your intuition, your inner light, your desire for something greater, your connection to God.

Before becoming a Christian, all three were very broken, soul, body, spirit. The soul was darkened and sinful. The spirit was focused on earthly things, broken, unable to connect with God, and the body was cursed and subject to physical death.

But once becoming a Christian, the soul begins a process of change, the body hopes for the promised resurrection after death, and the spirit is filled with the Holy Spirit and learns to be in connection to God.

Second point, even as a Christian we still battle between the Spirit and the self. The Spirit within calls us to live for God, but the flesh within wants us to focus on ourselves and our own needs.

The soul wants to go it’s own way. I battle that myself from time to time. I want to do what I want to do. But the Lord guides us to die to self, and live by the Spirit’s leading.