Message for Sunday 18^th August, 2013

The abundant life of the soul

Text: 1Thessalonians 5:23: “… and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The soul realm of the tridimensional man as we saw last week is the realm of consciousness in man. It is made up of the mind, the will and the emotions of man. It is the window through which man’s spirit sees the world and the spirit realm. For a clearer understanding of the soul, let us break it up into three parts namely the mind, the will and the emotions.

The mind

The human mind is the most complex computer in the entire world. The brain which is the physical representation of the mind is referred to in science as the magic trees of the mind because the neurons that make up the brain are nerve cells that look like trees. The brain is said to process four hundred billion actions per second. We have a hundred billion nerve cells in our brains and each nerve cell can grow up to two hundred thousand branches. This means we have around three million years’ worth plus of space in our brains to build up memories. These trees like nerve cells of our brain take up a beautiful form that can be likened to a well-watered green tree or an ugly form which can be likened to a withered grey tree depending on the kind of thoughts you dwell on because thoughts are actually things. In fact it is these thoughts look like trees in the brain! 

The mind is the part of man that thinks and reasons and stores up information in the name of memories and data. It also has the ability to process information and observations and eventually come up with a conclusion known as judgments. This in turn influences our emotions and our wills as we shall see later in this study. The judgments that the mind produce are either sound or unsound depending on how much influence the Holy Spirit and the word of God has over such a mind. In other words, depending on how spiritual the mind is. This explains why several people can attend the same Church at the same time and hear the same word of God but turn out differently. The extent to which a person can benefit from the word of God is the extent to which they have renewed their minds. Remember that at new birth, only our spirits are saved; our souls and bodies remain the same (John 3:6; 2Cor.5:17; Rom.12:1-2 and Jas.1:21). The bible tells us what to do with a part of our soul known as our mind to enable us save our souls from the spectacle colored by a wrong belief system due to our traditions and natural experiences prior to our new birth experience.

In Romans 12:2, we are told to renew our minds so that we can see clearly. Until you see clearly or view things from God’s point of view, you cannot rightly divide the word of truth and your knowledge of scriptures would be tinted by traditions of men and unbelief which make the word of God of no effect! The result would be your inability to make sound judgments in the issues of life and therefore not being able to enjoy the abundant life the Lord has already achieved for us.  See Matthew 15:3-6; 22:29; Mark 12:24; 2Tim.2:15; Col.2:8, 16-23.

The importance of developing our souls to match up with our spiritual upgrade to the class of God cannot be overstated. In Isaiah 55:8-11, God was showing the distinction between His thought level and that of the natural man and therefore, His ways and the ways of natural man. We can see from this text that the ways of God are far higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts.  He went on to show that because of the high level of His thinking, His word never returns unaccomplished. This is why the Apostle Paul says that no word of God is void of power. If we are to operate successfully at this realm of abundant life to which we have been called, we must of necessity upgrade our thinking pattern to line up with that of God. The quality of your life therefore is determined by the extent to which you are able to upgrade your thinking pattern to match up with that of God. How do we get to do this? The bible tells us. We can renew our minds with the word of God to enable us live up to this new life otherwise known as the abundant life; the life lived in the realm of divinity. The process of mind renewal can be achieved by taking the following steps. 

1.     The New birth experience: The spiritual rebirth otherwise known as the born again experience is the foundation for mind renewal otherwise, we would merely experience a form of godliness that denies the power of God. No matter how much a plastic seed looks like the original, it can never germinate even when given all the right environment for it to do so. This is why your membership of a Church without the new birth experience that initiates you into the family of God does not grant you access to the abundant life. The best you can get from operating the principles of the abundant life without first laying this foundation is leanness to your soul in spite of the blessing that robs off on you and you do not want that. This is what gave rise to men like Hitler and Stalin whose lives could best be described as efforts in futility resulting in colossal wastage of lives and property. Until God gives you a heart of flesh which describes the New Creation Spirit, you cannot experience mind renewal which results in God’s word being inscribed in your heart by His Holy Spirit. Thus your soul cannot be saved. See John 3:3-6; Romans 10:6-10; James 1:21; Ezek.36:26-27; Jer.31:31-34; Heb.10:15-17.

2.     Read the word, meditate on it until understanding is hatched and share it until it becomes a part of you, then study it until you can teach it. See 1Tim.4:13-16; Joshua 1:8; Ps.1:1-3. Scientifically, we are made to understand that every single thing we hear or everything that comes into our brains through our five senses, we think about them and then we make choices and convert them into a structural thing in our brain known as thoughts which look like trees. Scripturally, we are wired for love – righteousness, peace, joy, kindness, longsuffering etc. and not bitterness, unforgiveness or any form of carnality. If we believe what we hear that conflicts with the truth of God’s word, we become prone to deception and all the negative emotions that will cause the trees of our minds (the tree like neurons that make up the nerve cells that constitute the brain) which we talked about earlier to wither and look like grey withered trees. The result would be all kinds of sicknesses and diseases. Medically, most incurable illnesses like cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, insanity etc. have been associated with negative emotions. Recently, a Doctor was teaching at a service I attended and he said there is a research going on now to prove that breast cancer in women results from the negative emotion of unforgiveness. On the other hand, if we open up to divine information, they build us up and enhance the value of our souls. This makes the word of God indispensable in our quest for mind renewal. See Gal.5:16, 17, 19-23; 1Cor.13:4-8 etc.

3.     Be an addicted student of the word and other literature relevant to your needs. Read books of great minds thoroughly influenced by God; listen to teachings that edify and encourage godliness and attend seminars and conferences relevant to your purpose and destiny. When you read resource materials of those who God has enhanced their thinking in an area where you are ignorant, you rob minds with the great and the result is an enhanced mind which helps to raise the lid on your thinking capacity and makes you more prone to rightly dividing the word of truth and less prone to wrong interpretation of scripture. Consequently your life is enhanced because you cannot be greater than your thought life. See 2Tim.2:15; Prov.23:7a; 20:13. When Apostle Peter addressed the Sanhedrin when they were called to question for preaching in the name of the Lord following the miraculous healing of a crippled man at a gate of the temple, the elders observed from the general demeanor of Peter and John that they had been thoroughly influenced through their association with the Lord. Think about what your life would be like when you are thoroughly influenced by the word and the Holy Spirit! See Acts 4:13.

Next week, we shall continue on this topic by looking at the will and the emotions and how to bring them to their potentially upgraded state.