The foundational assertion of this blog is that the human spirit is dead from one’s physical birth and must first be regenerated and born again by the life-giving, indwelling presence of God’s Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ before true and lasting inner healing can begin. Once this occurs, however, God’s Spirit can then begin flowing upward and outward like a fountain of living water into the remaining parched, barren and dead regions of the human heart bringing new life and true healing to these regions.
As Jesus said, “Let everyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them,” John 7:37-38. Assuming for the sake of discussion in this post that you understand and accept this assertion, we can move on to consideration of the human soul.
In other posts we identified the three primary components of the human composite which are spirit, soul and body. We also set forth the fact that you are a spirit, you possess a soul and you dwell in a body. The Spirit of God gave you your life in the first instance at Creation, and the faculties of your spirit are therefore God-oriented.
It is impossible for you to know God except by coming to Him on His terms in spirit and in truth. Once you know God through faith in Christ, however, then all manner of personal inner healing becomes possible because “…with God, all things are possible,” Matthew 19:26.
Speaking in the broadest terms, the science of psychology concerns itself with the objective study of the human psyche, that is, the totality of the conscious and unconscious human mind or soul. “Psyche” derives from the Greek word for “soul” or “spirit.” The faculties of the human soul are generally described as those of the mind, will and emotions, and tend to be man, individual or self-oriented.
While your spirit came from God, the characteristics of your soul were bestowed upon you by your earthly parents. At your conception, their humanity in very large measure became your humanity, and you are therefore very much like them. You received from your parents qualities like your innate intelligence, basic temperament and talents and abilities.
Your soul is also the seat of your personality, the faculty which distinguishes you from others in the natural world and allows you to communicate, interact and form relationships with others as a unique individual. Your personality is also the means by which you adopt and express your preferences for relating to others, e.g., as an extrovert or an introvert.
According to God’s original design, Man was controlled by his spirit, fully enlightened and informed by the Spirit of God in all righteousness and holiness. Man’s spirit in response to God wisely informed and controlled his soul, and both of these in turn wisely informed and controlled his body. But after Man willfully sinned against God, he was cut off from the light and life of God, his spirit darkened and died, and in the wake of this profound and staggering loss, his soul and body began running amok.
The darkened, corrupted faculties of the human heart were then passed on from Adam and Eve to all subsequent generations, and the defiled, desperately wicked human heart has been ignorantly warring against the Law and Spirit of God for domination and control of all human beings in every generation since.
Contrary to God’s original design, the dominant faculty of your darkened heart and soul at birth was your will which is the seat of your individual volition in all respects. As such, your will is the gateway to your spirit, mind and emotions, and it alone decides what comes in and what goes out of each.
Your will decides how you process the information you receive. It determines what you accept as true and what you reject as false. Your will also decides what thoughts you think and what words you speak, and these are almost always a product of whatever you have already stored up in your darkened heart.
To the extent your soul has not been yielded to the Spirit of God, it is corrupted and crippled by sin. To this same extent, your will selfishly and often wildly dominates your spirit, mind and emotions and drives you to make wrong decisions and engage in self-destructive behaviors regardless of how “educated” and “enlightened” your mind may be. In this condition, you will never be able to consistently make right decisions no matter how desperately you may wish to do so.
The human condition apart from God is hopeless. But stay tuned for future posts about what God has done to bring healing to the hot mess we call the human heart.
Do You Want to Be Made Well? 