The power of Soul Care and the Holy Spirit!
Testimony’s from Sunday Night: John D, Marcie G. and Kathy M.
Opening Video Illustration: Denying God – selling your soul for money.
We have been talking about Soul Care – I have been asking the question “How is you soul?” I had a person come to me and say “They sold their soul to the devil – I informed them you may have sold your soul to Devil but Jesus has bought it back for you – do you want it from Him?”
Series: Acts Too – Soul Care
“How is your soul moving into this new year?”
Jesus said in Matthew 16:26: “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
Jesus said in Matthew 22:37: “Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Jesus emphasized the importance of your soul not just in eternity but it’s health in the here and now! Your eternal and spiritual success this year depends on the condition of your soul!
John Orberg states this about our souls: “If your soul is healthy, no external circumstance can destroy your life. If your soul is unhealthy, no external circumstance can redeem your life (Pg 40, Soul Keeping).
Definition of the soul:
My definition: The soul reflects the sum of your Spirit, Soul and Body as a whole being. It is the link between spirit and body and is the operating system of your life. It encompasses your mind, your will, your decision making process, your perceptions, your emotions, your spirit, your feelings, your physical appetites, your addictions, your desires and it is the control center in your life and it will always impact your daily life. It has been defined as “life” in the Bible in certain passages and as that which longs after God or for a substitute for God like and idol. You don’t have a soul you are a soul!
Hebrews 4:12-13: For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
God knows the condition of our souls – He sees them and He knows them!
Ortberg: The soul is what integrates separate functions into a single, organic, whole creature. That’s why the search for harmony and integration and connectedness is a “soul” function. The soul is the deepest dimension of our existence. It captures the reality of life before God in a way that the word “self” does not. Think of the difference between the words “soul-ish” and “selfish.”
I add “Spirit” which refers more generally to the power or energy that comes from the Holy Spirit – the connection point with God if it is not connected with God it is connected to evil spirits. The soul is more intertwined with the Spirit and the body and lies at the core of our mindset and our will. But a soul connected to God and His Spirit is a soul that really has “Life.”
Question: What does the Bible say about our souls?
Ortberg: The Bible speaks of the soul often—although more recent translations are much more likely to substitute words like ‘life’ instead of using the word ‘soul.’ One of the most striking and misunderstood statements about the soul in the Bible is Jesus’ observation: “What does it profit a person if they gain the whole world but lose their soul?” I always used to think this meant it does no good to get lot of money and pleasure if you end up going to hell. But that’s not what Jesus is saying. If a soul is broken or mal-functioning, our wills and our values and actual behavior and our desires and our facial expressions and our secret thoughts will constantly be at war with each other. We will be incapable of soul satisfaction—let alone a meaningful or truly good life. Jesus was not telling people to commit to the right religion in order to get their afterlife taken care of. He was making a brilliantly diagnostic observation about the nature of human life. The above from http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2014/05/29/john-ortberg-shares-every-soul-needs/#sthash.ROIlaGnI.dpuf
We titled our series: Acts Too (Soul Care)
Purpose of the Series:
Acts Too – The book of Acts is filled with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Chapter 2 on the first disciples and signifies the birth of the church. The churches early years are filled with miracles and hardships! It’s filled with salvations and rejections of Jesus! It’s filled with people embracing Jesus and others fighting against Jesus and his disciples. It’s filled with hope and death. It reveals the struggle between good and evil in this world. It highlights the good and the bad of church. But most importantly it shows what can happen in the church if the souls in the church are healthy and connected with the Holy Spirit! It did not matter that they were rejected and persecuted, chased out of towns, stoned, abused and imprisoned. We read story after story of the disciples sharing the good news to receive beatings and arrests but yet even while imprisoned they can still sing and praise the Lord. It was because they had healthy souls which were connected and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We want a church filled with Christians like Acts too! A church filled with people who are being the church and have healthy souls no matter what is happening around them or too them.
Acts 2: 42-47: 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
My vision for 2015 is to have a church like Acts Too with souls that are fired up for the Kingdom and hungry for a move of the Holy Spirit. Souls which are healthy and whole and following the direction of the Holy Spirit for their lives. But for us to get their will require us to do some soul searching and soul care!
Sermon: Soul Care 3
Thesis: You soul needs to be healthy and whole if you want a successful life. But to do this requires soul searching on our part as well as soul care. Soul care is our responsibility so we need to make sure that we do it regularly.
Question: “What does the soul need to be healthy and whole this year?”
1. Our souls need a connection to its creator God or it will find another god (idol) to connect too.
a. John 15:5-8: 5“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
b. Jesus reminds us in this teaching that our connection to the life giving vine is essential or we will die! This teaching describes how people’s souls die – they disconnect from the Lord and all the vital nutrients and minerals are lost and they start a slow death.
c. We must stay connected to the vine to have healthy souls that produce spiritual fruit!
d. If we don’t we will find something else to replace God and that is called idolatry.
i. Kyle Idleman states: “The problem is that the instant something takes the place of God, the moment it becomes an end in itself rather than something to lay at God’s throne, it becomes an idol. When someone or something replaces the Lord God in the position of glory in our lives, then that person or thing by definition has become our god.”
1. Idleman, Kyle (2013-02-19). Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart (Kindle Locations 227-229). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
T.S. – We must be aware that idolatry will destroy our souls – our connection with God – our relationship with the creator of our soul. Our souls were designed to be in God’s presence!
2. The soul needs God’s presence to be healthy and whole!
a. Adam and Eve’s story revealed why God created us – to be in His presence but sin separated us from God.
b. Jesus became our ultimate sacrifice and created a path for the Spirit of the Lord to live within us – in others words to have God’s presence with us 24 hours a day. our souls crave this and need this.
c. Acts describes a church filled with the Holy Spirit – notice the Spirit did not just come on them like it did in the OT he actually filled them up on the inside – this is why their souls were healthy and bold. Why they could sing while in prison and praise God through hardship!
d. A soul filled with the Holy Spirit is a soul that is able to be in the presence of God – It’s a soul that has joy – It’s a soul that is empowered – It’s a soul that radiates the light of Jesus – It’s a soul that loves Jesus and His church – It’s a soul that gives to the Kingdom.
i. Acts 2:2-4: 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
1. A soul filled with the Holy Spirit is a soul that is linked into the realm of the Spirit.
ii. 1 Cor. 6:19-20: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
1. A soul that is filled with the Holy Spirit will honor God with their body.
iii. 2 Cor. 1:21-22: “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”
e. Our souls crave God – they want His presence dwelling in us – our soul has a longing for God’s presence because we were designed by Him that way.
i. Ortberg notes: If you read through the Bible, you get the sense that the soul was designed to search for God. The Hebrew Scriptures — which might be thought of as the Great Soul-Book of human literature — are almost obsessed with this thought.
ii. Ortberg notes: “Indeed, the soul lives in God.” The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.
f. Our souls need to be connected to God’s presence – what changed and transformed the disciples in Acts two – a connection of their soul with the Spirit of God – it was an internal connection not and external one – it changed their perceptions – it drove out their fears of the future.
T.S. – Your soul needs the presence of God to keep it healthy and whole but you also must guard your soul from the disease of “Hurry” you must ruthlessly eliminate the spirit of hurry from your life.
3. Your soul needs rest
a. What does it mean to have a rested soul? Just look at Jesus life and ministry – He reveals to us the importance of finding rest for the soul in life.
i. Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30)
b. John Ortberg states this about the importance of soul care and soul rest:
i. “The soul was not made to run on empty. But the soul doesn’t come with a gauge. The indicators of soul-fatigue are more subtle:
1. Things seem to bother you more than they should. Your spouse’s gum-chewing suddenly reveals to you a massive character flaw.
2. It’s hard to make up your mind about even a simple decision.
3. Impulses to eat or drink or spend or crave are harder to resist than they otherwise would be.
4. You are more likely to favor short-term gains in ways that leave you with high long-term costs. Israel ended up worshiping a golden calf simply because they grew tired of having to wait on Moses and God..
5. Your judgment is suffering.
6. You have less courage.
a. He adds, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all” is a quote so common that it has been attributed to General Patton and Vince Lombardi and Shakespeare. The same disciples who fled in fear when Jesus was crucified eventually sacrificed their lives for him. What changed was not their bodies, but their souls. The soul is not well when we rush so much. If it does not get the rest it needs, it becomes fatigued. Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (pp. 131-132). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
c. Our souls need scheduled times of rest: I went on a soul/spiritual care retreat in Oct which really opened my eyes to my need to find these times of rest. Places of rest need to be scheduled for the health of our soul.
i. John, “Your soul needs rest. It is not always the “world” that squeezes us into its mold. We all too often distract ourselves. Being completely alone with nothing but our thoughts can be frightening, so we will use anything to distract us from experiencing the soul-healing that comes in solitude.” Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 137). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
T.S. – Our souls need rest to be healthy and whole and if we can get our soul to understand soul freedom we will be able to meet any challenge that comes our way.
4. Your soul needs to be free
a. So the statement or point here says our souls need to be free – free from what? Does it mean free to do whatever we want to do? Does this bring true freedom or does it mean something else? Free spirited souls – what does that look like?
i. Running around with flowers in our hair?
ii. Living in a commune?
iii. Not working and living at the beach in a VW bus?
iv. Meditating all day?
v. Going to India or another exotic place to find myself?
vi. Running around naked in the woods or on a beach?
1. Share about the National Geographic show you watched: The naked church in Appalachia – is that freedom? Handling rattle snacks in church is that freedom?
vii. Smoking Marijuana? Doing drugs? Partying?
viii. Living in the woods in cabin isolated from others?
b. The Bible says in 2 Cor. 3:17: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
i. Freedom does not come by me doing whatever I want to do! Instead this usually leads me into bondage. It takes away my freedom.
ii. Freedom comes from the Holy Spirit. It’s internal! It’s soul related!
iii. The Bible also reminds us what freedom is and is not in Gal. 5:13-17: You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.
c. Many young people think that they will be free when they flee the rules of their parents – but they soon discover that freedom is not associated with doing whatever you want to do.
i. You are not free by external circumstances or lawless living – this brings bondage – freedom of the soul is an internal reality.
ii. I think of the underground Chinese church.
1. 1 Peter 2:16-17: Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
d. The later verse hear describes for us what freedom looks like!
i. Romans 8:18-21: I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
ii. Freedom comes from being a child of God who is empowered by the Holy Spirit and living for Him.
1. John Ortberg states this about freedom of the soul: The old masters of the life of the soul used to warn about the dangers of dis-ordered attachment. Desire is good, but when you want something too much, it threatens to take God’s place in your life. It will lead you to make bad decisions. It will put you on an emotional roller coaster. The ability to have anything you want actually can cost you your freedom. Samson had an unquenchable desire for Delilah; the rich young ruler was consumed by his desire for money; Saul coveted the power that came with his throne; Cain gave in to his desire for revenge. How did that work for them? Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 141). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
e. The Bible is filled with stories of individuals who had freedom to choose but they choose the wrong things which actually took their freedoms away.
i. The cost of choosing unwisely with your freedom:
1. Like Samson
2. Like King Saul
3. Like King David
ii. Story from Ortberg: In the movie A Christmas Story, one of the kids is given a double-dog dare to touch his tongue to a frozen flagpole on a December morning. Instantly, his tongue is frozen fast to the icy metal, and from that moment he isn’t going anywhere. He is stuck. A slave to his tongue. Freedom will come, if it comes at all, only with enormous pain. We get double-dog dared all the time. Make it about sex. Make it about money. Make it about security. That tender object stuck frozen to the flagpole is your soul. It craves to be free, but we’re not sure what that means. Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 142). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
f. How free is really free? Some examples to think about!
i. What if anyone could choose for the sake of their freedom the speed limits in our society! What would happen? Would others be free because you go as fast or as slow as you want? You could make stop lights optional. Would that bring more freedom to our society?
ii. What if you could choose to pay your taxes or not – for the sake of freedom – would that bring a truly freed country to live in?
iii. What if for the sake of freedom a person who is married decides he wants to be married but sleep with whoever he wants – does that bring freedom?
iv. Our souls want to be free but an unhealthy soul – detached from God will choose what they think are freedoms but in actuality are bondages.
1. John Ortberg adds, “The soul cries out to be free, but the common perception is that Christianity stands in the way of freedom. It’s all about obeying someone or something that tries to tell you how to live your life. As a Christian, according to this perception, you’re not free at all, but submissive, dependent, and enslaved by your religion. So people wonder — does God infringe on your soul’s need for freedom? Does becoming a Christian mean somebody dictates what you do, what you think, how you live? Even Christians sometimes adopt this view. They may affirm their belief in Jesus as the Son of God and accept his gift of salvation, but retain their “freedom” to decide for themselves how they should live. The soul needs freedom, but what exactly does that mean? That I can do whatever I want? Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 143). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
g. Philip Yancey’s wonderful book: What’s So Amazing about Grace? Describes the pain he experienced over his church’s legalism: “I came out of a Southern fundamentalist culture that frowned on co-ed swimming, wearing shorts, jewelry or makeup, dancing, bowling, and reading the Sunday newspaper. Alcohol was a sin of a different order, with the sulfurous stench of hellfire about it. . . . No short skirts for women, no longer hair for men, no polka dots on dresses for women because they might draw attention to suggestive body parts, no kissing, no holding hands, no rock music, no facial hair . . . it all calls to mind the dog who thought his name was ‘No’ because that’s the only word he ever heard from his master.”
i. I read this book years ago and he reveals how Christianity in certain sects of it have missed the point of what true freedom is!
ii. Freedom comes from the Holy Spirit! From the spirit of God. A person who has a healthy soul and the Holy Spirit could even be free in prison – like the apostle was when he wrote the prison epistles.
h. I like what John says about the misperception of the Ten Commandments:
i. The Ten Commandments were never designed to be a stand-alone list of rules. They come within a relational context. They describe what living up to a certain value and a certain identity and a certain destiny looks like. In fact, in Judaism, they are not called the Ten Commandments. The Hebrew term is aseret hadevarim, which literally means “ten utterances” or “ten statements” because they were rooted in things that are meant to be in God’s kingdom. They flow out of how we were designed, who we were meant to be. We read them as “this is what you have to do,” but God was saying, “this is who you are.” That’s why we don’t so much break the Ten Commandments as we break ourselves when we violate them… When we bind ourselves to God, to a code of morality that transcends our own particular opinions, do we lose freedom, or do we gain freedom? If my soul needs freedom, what does the law have to do with it? I believe the soul is actually revived by law. Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 145). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
1. Did you hear what John said – wow how we have misperceived what freedom is and is not in our world!
i. John highlights more the misperception of what is freedom:
i. Freedom from external restraints appeals to all of us, but I do not believe that it’s the freedom the soul needs. For example, you generally can drink as much alcohol as you want, restricted only by laws prohibiting drinking and driving and public drunkenness. But if you want to get loaded every night in the privacy of your home, you’re free to have at it. Eventually, however, your drinking will begin to cause problems for you. It damages your health. It embarrasses your kids. It hurts your marriage. It threatens your job. You get to a point where you want to quit but you can’t. You discover that you are not free to enjoy sobriety. You’re free to drink as much as you want, but you’re not free to not drink. “I brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Your freedom is not restricted simply by external constraints. There’s another odd kind of restriction. Your freedom gets limited by an internal reality that is a kind of brokenness or weakness or dividedness inside you. You want to stop drinking, but you can’t. You want to live with a happy, cheerful, optimistic attitude, but you don’t. You want to quit yelling at your kids, but you fail. You want to be the kind of person who manages anger really, really well, but you aren’t. You’d like to think you have become unselfish, but you haven’t. You are not free. The freedom you lack is an internal freedom, and this inner lack of freedom is much more dehumanizing, much more tragic than external constraints. This kind of freedom is internal, and it is precious. It is “soul-freedom.” Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 146). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
j. Our soul and its health is what dictates whether we are free or not.
i. John reminds us this, “Remember that the soul is what integrates our parts. If our will is enslaved to our appetites, if our thoughts are obsessed with unfulfilled desires, if our emotions are slaves to our circumstances, if our bodily habits contradict our professed values, the soul is not free. The only way for the soul to be free is for all the parts of our personhood to be rightly ordered.” Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 146). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
ii. He adds, “True freedom comes when you embrace God’s overall design for the world and your place in it. This is why in the Bible you see this strong connection between God’s law and soul-freedom.”
T.S. – Your soul needs to be free by the Holy Spirit and the best way to keep your spirit and soul free is by cultivating an attitude of gratitude in your soul.
5. Your soul needs gratitude!
a. The health of your soul is attached to the attitude you carry each day.
i. Are you a complainer or are you a positive person?
1. Homework: Try an experiment this week when you meet others throughout the day say hi then go right into complaining about something – notice how it makes you feel by the end of the day. Then the next day when you meet others say hi then say positive things about the day and others and see how you feel by the end of the day.
2. Which day will be healthy for your soul and which day unhealthy?
a. Scripture exhorts to be thankful – to rejoice always – why because it good for our souls!
b. Christian are challenged through Scripture to practice the soul care of the soul by being filled with an attitude of gratitude.
b. John Ortberg notes, “More gratitude will not come from acquiring more things or experiences, but from more of an awareness of God’s presence and his goodness. It’s a way of looking at life, always perceiving the good. Gratitude is a by-product of a way of seeing things, and it always involves three factors:
i. First, the benefit. In order to be grateful, you have to receive and recognize a gift that you believe is good. God has given you all good things it says in James and we need to be thankful for these things.
1. James 1:16-17: Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
2. We need to have a heart of gratitude for all the good things that come our way each and every day
ii. Second, gratitude requires that there be a benefactor.
1. Ortberg states, A benefactor is one who does good, a little factory that produces good. To be truly grateful you must not only recognize the benefits or gifts that come your way, but that they are not just random acts; they are not accidents. They are coming from Someone who has good intentions for you. To be grateful as a Christian, you must believe that the good that is in your life comes from God. Not from your own efforts or merit.
iii. In addition to the benefit and the benefactor, there is the beneficiary: the one who receives the good gifts of God. And that’s you.
1. Ortberg states, “You are the beneficiary of the benefits of a God who has your best interests at heart, and this is going on all the time. When we take that for granted or believe we deserve his gifts, then we are no longer grateful; you can’t be grateful for something you believe you are entitled to, and without a grateful heart the soul suffers. Because the soul needs gratitude.”
2. John adds, “The default mode of the sinful human race is entitlement, the belief that this gift or that experience that God placed in my path is rightfully mine. I am owed. Here’s the deal: The more you think you’re entitled to, the less you will be grateful for. The bigger the sense of entitlement, the smaller the sense of gratitude… My sinful mind can convince me that anything I want I’m entitled to, and if I’m not getting something I want, somebody in the universe must be messing up, and they owe me, and they ought to pay for it. In fact, this has led to a proliferation of lawsuits, because when we don’t get something we really want, we want to sue somebody.”
a. Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 172). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
3. Paul says it’s the hallmark of a life opposed to God. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile . . .” This connection is so interesting. Their thinking was futile. They perceived themselves to be entitled, to be owed, not as grateful receivers of grace every moment. “. . . forget not all his benefits . . .”
a. Entitlement says “They owe me! The church owes me! God owes me! My wife owes me! My kids owe me!”
i. By the way this mindset of the soul is called sin!
1. It’s totally self-centered and self-consumed with pride of self!
ii. Ortberg adds, “Whatever I have, I deserve. Entitlement grows deep within us. This is why, for the soul, ingratitude is not just a psychological problem. It’s not just an impoverishment of our emotional experience. It’s a sin.” Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 173). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
4. I sometimes think we need to be intentional about showing gratitude to others.
a. Like writing others letters of gratitude and thanking people for what they do for you!
b. When you do you learn to be more thankful.
5. John Ortberg adds to this idea of doing gratitude experiments by doing the following:
a. The next gratitude experiment is to pray your own benedictions — brief statements that recognize the good that comes from God. You don’t have to start with eighteen. That might be overwhelming. The best way to do this is to first make a list of all that you are truly grateful to God for providing. Then go back through this list and begin with the words, “Blessed are you, O Lord.”
i. Blessed are you, O Lord, for giving me my children.
ii. Blessed are you, O Lord, who gave me life and good health today.
iii. Blessed are you, O Lord, for helping me get through this difficult day.
iv. Blessed are you, O Lord, who forgives me when I sin.
v. Blessed are you, O Lord, for the great sunset you let me enjoy.
1. “Is it really necessary to use those words, “Blessed are you”? While the point of this exercise is to feed your soul with gratitude, there really is something special about these words that is worth considering. To bless someone means to offer happiness or praise to them. When you say “Blessed are you, O Lord,” you are not only expressing gratitude, but you are saying, “I want to make you happy and praise you, God, with my gratitude for what you have done.” It’s a subtle reminder that gratitude is good for both the person expressing it and the one receiving it.”
2. The above from Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 175). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
b. Gratitude and the intentionally of it is a soul care practice that we do each and every day to keep our souls healthy and whole and in connection with the Holy Spirit.
T.S. – We need to make sure we are doing soul care and part of soul care is to cultivate a soul with the attitude of gratitude – we are the ones that must do this because no one else will.
6. You are responsible for your own soul?
a. No one else is!
i. Your pastor is not responsible for your soul.
ii. Your spouse is not responsible for your soul.
iii. Your mom and dad are not responsible for your soul.
iv. Your church is not responsible for you soul.
v. You are!
b. Apparently we believe that by some magic, the law of consequences doesn’t apply to us.
i. I can spend without getting into debt.
ii. I can lie without getting caught.
iii. I can let my temper fly without damaging my relational life.
iv. I can have a bad attitude at work and get away with it.
v. I can avoid disciplining my children without their getting spoiled.
vi. I can neglect the Bible and still know God.
1. Our capacity to live in denial about the law of consequences is huge and is damaging to the soul. In the Bible it takes God a long time to teach the human race about this!
2. Above from Ortberg, John (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (pp. 90-91). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Conclusion:
What do we need to know from this sermon?
Answer: We need to know that our souls will be unhealthy without proper care and the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
Why do we need to know this?
Answer: We need to know this so that we make it a priority to care for our souls and to make sure we allow the Holy Spirit to infill us and empower us in our life. We cannot do proper soul care without God’s Spirit.
What do we need to do?
Answer: We need to care for our souls because no one else will. We need to come Sunday night for personal prayer to replenish our soul and be filled with His Holy Spirit. We need to make sure we are connected to the Lord through the Holy Spirit. We need to make sure we take the time to cultivate the presence of God in our life. We need to nurture our souls. We need to make sure our souls are rested and not hurried. We need to make sure our souls are free on the inside then nothing externally will impact our souls. And our souls need to be filled with gratitude!
Why do we need to do this?
Answer: If we do this then it will not matter what happens around us because our souls will be healthy enough to handle it.
