GIVING IT YOUR ALL
SOUL
[JESUS FREAKS PAGE 96]
-I love this story for so many reasons. And it’s not because people die horrible, torturous deaths you morbid people, but because through the actions of a small group of people, simply saying they will not bow, someone was willing to die on the spot for Jesus.
-this person could see right away what kind of person Jesus turned you into, how He must have been something totally amazing if 39 people were willing to die for Him.
-but the part I want us to focus on is in the middle. These guys were soldiers, they were hardened warriors and they were being tortured by their own government. So here they are slowly freezing to death together and what are they doing? Encouraging each other. Singing. Praising God. Even though their bodies were dying, their souls were very much alive and instead of taking the attitude of why me, oh no, blame someone, they took all the torture and smiled through it all. Their souls were right with God.
-it’s the second part of our key verse for the weekend.
**Mark 12:30 -> 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. (NCV)
-yesterday we talked about your heart, how whatever you focus on, whatever your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be, and if we have love, if we have God at the center of our heart, we should be out living it out, we should be showing that love to everyone.
-well today we talk about your soul, a spiritual part of you that will live on forever if you believe in Christ and have a relationship with Him.
-your soul is your personality, your emotions, the stuff inside of you that science still hasn’t figured out. We’ve managed to find some chemicals in our brains that can affect our emotions, but we can’t find the one part that says I like chocolate and you don’t.
-and I think this is why so many Christians seem to almost neglect this part of their being. You can’t really see it, it’s not like your body, you can see my gut growing, and getting hairy. But in a sense, you can see it. We’ll get there.
-so what are some ways we can be loving the Lord our God with all our souls?
1. ALWAYS PRAYING
-I know you have to have this verse memorized by now, we talk about it all the time:
**I Thess. 5:17 -> 17Pray all the time. (MSG)
-the more time you spend with God, the more you will be like Him and the more you’ll be able to love Him with your soul.
-a few weeks ago at the prayer night we gave everyone prayer knots. If you didn’t get one, here you go [HAND OUT]. There’s a story behind where this comes from. The idea is you choose a small prayer, we chose the Jesus centering prayer, and you say it once for every knot on the rope, and of course, you can use the ropes more than once. So for us, we said do 50 prayers, five times through the rope.
-well the story goes there was a man who wanted to know how to live out that verse, he wanted to pray continually. So he went to a monastery and asked the monks there how to do this. The monks gave him a rope of prayer knots and asked him to pray it 300 times a day for a week. He said it took a few hours every day, but when done the monks asked nothing more of him, told him nothing more, just that he should do the prayer 300 times. After the week, he told the monks he had completed his task, so they told him for the next week he must say the prayer 600 times a day. No reason why, no answer to his questions. But he did it, took almost 5 hours, but he did it. After the week, they told him now, say the prayer 1200 time a day. Basically whenever he was not eating or sleeping, he was saying this one prayer over and over and over. At the end of his time the monks said his lesson was learned, although he said they never really taught him anything. But, when he got home you know what was happening? He was saying the prayer in his head all the time because he had been doing it so much.
-it was totally ingrained in him, his spirit was praying all the time even when his lips weren’t.
-you guys remember the last piece of the Under Armor we talked about, it was prayer.
**Eph. 6:18 -> 18Do all this in prayer, asking for God’s help. Pray on every occasion, as the Spirit leads. For this reason keep alert and never give up; pray always for all God’s people. (GNT)
-praying on every occasion.
-I heard a story of a man who spent years over in the Far East as a missionary. After years there he came back to Canada, a pastor agreed to pick him up at the airport and give him a ride. You know what people noticed about this man? He was continually mumbling. A lo mumble talking to himself. Until one day the pastor was quiet and listened. The man was praying. He was alone in a foreign land that hated God and he needed God’s help so he just started praying all the time!
-to love God with your soul, get your soul connected to God through prayer. Through:
2. GOD’S WORD
-again, if you want more of God, get into His Word
**Ps. 130:5 -> 5I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I put my hope. (NIV)
-to feed your heart, you love and get love. To feed your mind, you read and learn. To feed your body, eat food and drink lots of juice. But to feed your soul, you have to go to The Spirit. The One who is made of spirit.
-I know I harp on it, but you gotta get God’s Word in you.
-because when you’re tired, when you can’t go on, when you need strength, your soul gets strength from God’s Word.
-for the soul, there are tons of Psalms where David (and others) talk about their soul and how that piece of them longs for God. But it also mentions when trouble arises.
**Ps. 119:81 -> 81My soul longs for Your salvation; I hope in Your Word. (ICV)
**Ps. 119:28 -> 28My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to Your Word. (NIV)
-God’s Word gives us strength.
-but is your soul tired?
3. IS YOUR SOUL NUMB?
-has your soul been so tired from fighting for what is right, is it so polluted by everything around it that it is weak?
-I have this old book of devotions written by Charles Spurgeon, a preacher a hundred years ago, so this is going to sound really old, but think about it.
-”My soul, feelest thou this holy shuddering at the sins of others? for otherwise thou lackest inward holiness. David’s cheeks were wet with rivers of waters because of prevailing unholiness; Jeremiah desired eyes like fountains that he might lament the iniquities of Israel, and Lot was vexed with the conversation of the men of Sodom. Those upon whom the mark was set in Ezekiel’s vision, were those who sighed and cried for the abominations of Jerusalem. It cannot but grieve gracious souls to see what pains men take to go to hell. They know the evil of sin experimentally, and they are alarmed to see others flying like moths into its blaze. Sin makes the righteous shudder, because it violates a holy law, which it is to every man’s highest interest to keep; it pulls down the pillars of the commonwealth. Sin in others horrifies a believer, because it puts him in mind of the baseness of his own heart: when he sees a transgressor he cries with the saint mentioned by Bernard, “He fell to-day, and I may fall to-morrow.” Sin to a believer is horrible, because it crucified the Saviour; he sees in every iniquity the nails and spear.” (Morning And Evening November 2 PM)
-are our souls numb to everything bad around us and it doesn’t affect us even more, even in our own lives?
-this is why we have to work hard to keep our soul right, to aim the other way. This is why we have to work so hard to keep God’s commands, they’re for our good and God knows how they feed our soul. Back to Psalms:
**Ps. 119:129 -> 129Your testimonies are wonderful; Therefore my soul observes them. (NASB)
-David of all people knew what happened when you messed up. Because of an affair with Bathsheba, from that point on his entire kingdom was turned upside down and his life was never the same. It helped him realize just how much he needed God and His laws.
-this is one of the reasons why sometimes God allows us to mess up, because I don’t know about you, but if I mess up and someone finds out and I can see how it hurt them, it makes me want to work a lot harder at being right with God.
**II Cor. 7:11 -> 11See what this sorrow—the sorrow God wanted you to have—has done to you: It has made you very serious. It made you want to restore yourselves. It made you angry and afraid. It made you want to see me. It made you care. It made you want to do the right thing. In every way you have regained your innocence. (NCV)
-please don’t think we want you to feel crappy and mess up, but we want you to be the best you can, so let’s not focus on having a numb soul, but having one that is spiritually alive.
-love God with a soul that is alive in Him.
**I Thess. 5:23 -> 23Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. (NLT)
-that’s what we want, God to make you holy.
-to do this?
4. BLESS GOD
-remember me mentioning the Psalms. So many times in there you see this one phrase, “Bless the Lord, Oh my soul.”
**Ps. 103:1 -> 1Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! (NKJV)
-we are supposed to be living our lives and doing things that would be a blessing to God, and that in turn will cause your soul to grow in Him.
-kinda like yesterday, when you love others love grows in you, same with your soul, if you bless God and others, you will be blessed.
-even with Mary, the mother of God, when she was told she would be the mother of God, she sang a song, and it starts:
**Luke 1:46-47 -> 46And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. (NRSV)
-here Mary is about to change history, and what is she thinking? Magnify God. Bless God. How her spirit rejoices in God.
-you want to live a life where your soul doesn’t feel numb, where it doesn’t feel like it’s dying, then bless God.
-it’s the best and easiest way. Talk to God, bless Him, act in a way that is for Him.
-another way:
5. CALM YOUR SOUL
-there are a lot of people who try their best to love God and bless Him, but they’re so busy that it really isn’t possible. They’re too busy and stressed out.
-you want to do something to live for God, slow down and listen for Him. Calm your soul down.
**Ps. 116:7 -> 7Let my soul be at rest again, for the Lord has been good to me. (NLT)
-did you know it is possible for you to live taking only 8 breaths a minute? Some scientists believe that we actually should be breathing like that.
-so why are we breathing so fast? Heart pressure so high? Cholesterol up? Anxiety? Stress? Because we can’t rest.
-and the sad part is there is so little chance to do that in our society. Anyone who’s had a chance to go camping and just walk in nature, it’s just calming, unless there’s a bear, but other than that, it’s calming.
-there’s an old expression that the devil keeps us busy so we can’t hear God, and it’s true, one way we can get closer to God, slow down.
-here we are, a weekend away, and how much time have you spent just walking or talking to God? There’s actually a chance to see what God made, nature all around, why not take a chance and see it?
**Ps. 131:2 -> 2Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. ( NLT)
-have you ever seen a baby right after it eats? It sleeps. Then it poops and sleeps again. Hey, I still feel sleepy after eating and like to take a good nap now and again.
-if you want to know the Spirit of God, you have to slow your spirit and quiet your spirit so you can hear Him.
-but there needs to be more than just quieting yourself. There is another area you need to consider.
6. THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
-we mentioned it last week at youth, we talked about them all this summer in church, they’re important here.
-why? I want you to look at the Fruit of the Spirit.
**Gal. 5:22-23 -> 22But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (NLT)
-there are all emotions that you can put into actions. They are all parts of your soul that you can live out. You can feel love, and you can give love. You can feel joy, and you can be joyful.
-and just like love, these are all multiplying agents. If you give love, more love grows in you, we talked about that yesterday. The same goes for all of them. If you are patient and be patient with people, you find patience growing in you.
-so here’s the plan, I would like everyone to take a little walk, seriously. I can’t force you to, but try. By yourself works better. And think. There’s a soul page in there, think of ways you can help your soul grow closer to God.
[WALK TIME]
