We are spiritual beings with a soul, housed in a body. This truth is very important to understanding our identity as God’s children. There are many people that are struggling because they have no sense of purpose and they don’t know who they are. For them, life seems like a maze that they just can’t seem to figure out. One of the main reasons for this is because they are more concerned with the outside than they are about their own internal landscape. As God’s spiritual children, we must nourish our souls with His Word because this is what makes our souls increase and expand in the love of Christ. The love of Christ allows us to live with power and that’s exactly what God wants, but we’re so busy running that we neglect our souls and don’t give ourselves time and patience to grow in faith. If we continue that way, we’ll become spiritually malnourished, and that’s not good. We should do everything in our power to keep that from happening.
1Thessalonians 5:23(NLT) tells us, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Most of us rarely think about how we’re functioning internally. We get up in the morning, do our grooming routines, and out we go, but in 1Thessalonians 5:23, our Heavenly Father calls our attention to the reality that we have a spirit, a soul, and a body, all three have different functions that work together beautifully when our minds and hearts are spiritually in the right place.
The mind
Even in our mother’s wombs, our brains are absorbing information, and once we’re born, our minds are like a sponge. There’s nothing that you and I see or have seen throughout our entire lives that isn’t recorded in our brains and cataloged in a place within that most of us never tap. This knowledge about the mind is very instrumental in helping us understand the passage in Romans 8:5-8(NIV). It says, “5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”
Living in the flesh is living with no regard for the care of the human spirit and human soul through the nourishment of God’s Word. It is a mind that is chiefly occupied with pleasuring the body, and that is not how God created us to live. We are to live by the Spirit. Through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has rescued us from living by the flesh. Romans 8:11 (The Message) tells us, “When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!”
Because of Christ, God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, lives inside us, and the Spirit empowers us to live successfully, without sin. However, our minds are not always onboard with that. There’s a war going on inside us. The Spirit is leading us to do what God wants, but the mind is wanting to satisfy the flesh. We are the ones who determine who will win this war within.
1John 5:4(NLT) says, “For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.” Jesus Christ has already won the victory for us. He won the victory over sin and death, and the way that we walk in his victory every day of our lives is to have faith in all that God accomplished for us through His only begotten Son. Well, how do you have faith? First, you must understand that faith is a mind thing. If you’re incapable of thinking, you can’t have faith. So, our minds must be changed, and we are the ones to change them. God tells us in Ephesians 4:23 to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and this means we must change the way we think so that our thoughts line up with the truth of Jesus Christ.
The heart
Some of us have seen horrific things. Some of this might have taken place in our childhoods, when we lacked the mental and emotional strength and defenses to adequately handle it. Some of us have stored memories of abuse, of seeing our mothers being beaten by our fathers. We might have seen men, some in the church, that were adulterous and chauvinistic. We saw relationships where men and women were verbally abusive to each other, and we saw women who used their bodies to get what they wanted. Either in movies or reality, these images were processed by our brains, and for some of us they are imprinted on our hearts.
Only God can define the heart of a person, and only He truly knows it, but to the extent that we can, He commands us to examine our own hearts. When we do, we must take some of the things our eyes have seen into account, because some of what we’ve seen and experienced is paralyzing our faith. We’ve seen our friends get cheated on and mistreated. We’ve seen our mothers’ hearts get broken by the man they loved most, and because of this, we’re afraid of relationships, but will not admit it to ourselves. We’ve got stuff operating down deep, and it’s telling us the wrong things about who God is and who we are through Him.
The command
The thing that must come full circle for every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is that no matter what we’ve seen or experienced, our Redeemer commands us to have faith in God. You cannot erase the horrible things you’ve seen, heard, or experienced, but you must crucify them! You must nail them to the cross and leave them there. Our past is not greater than God, and our past can’t hold a candle to the future He has in store for us. No matter what our loved ones and friends have gone through, faith is the game changer. 2Corinthians 5:17 declares that we are new creations in our blessed Lord; the old is gone and all things have become new. Walk in that truth! Make up of your mind to nail your past to the cross. Jesus crucified it there, and he commands you to live a life filled with his power, love, strength, joy, and peace!■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“When What We’ve Seen Paralyzes Our Faith”, written by Reverend Fran Mack. Edits by Kim Times and K. Stephens for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2023. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.