The Father’s Beautiful Landscape!
Christian disciples should think of their soul as spiritual land where God is providing a dawning light. He wants us to expect His dawn’s light to rise in us and shine in our heart-land, the territory that impacts our outward life. The spiritual heart for Christians contains both our new spirit and our existing soul. While the human spirit is “born again” in Christians, our soulish land must be walked daily WITH God’s Holy Spirit. Hopefully, in God’s light.
Let’s talk about the soulish land of the spiritual life.
THE SOUL is a Spiritual Land
Every person has a unique experience on this planet that makes up our soul: our unique family and upbringing, our unique social environment, our unique time in history, our unique financial profile, and our unique set of governing influences to name a few. All these things culminate in who we are and are only complicated by our unique learning style. One person learns better by hands-on experience. Another learns better with eye-to-text materials. And so forth.
If we could take a survey of our soul, its ups and downs, its twists and turns that got us to where we are now, it really is unique terrain. Like the person peering out the window as they drive across the country, it is full of hills and valleys; perhaps peaks and depressions. Full of different vegetation and inhabitants.
We may feel our hilly terrain is unlike any other’s. “I didn’t have flat-lands.” We love the mountain top times, but “the times in the valleys…,” the mind winces trying not to think about those.
But one thing is for sure, most of us are tempted to think, “I can’t change who I am.”
This is absolutely not true.
It’s true that each of our journeys in life is unique. This makes our soul, our personality and way of being, special and precious, especially to God, our Creator. In creation, God knew our individual lives would be unique expressions of Him. God knows our soul and sees it as a beautiful possibility. The Creator is the one who said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). He would be the Father of our kind. Human beings would be His children. And He would enjoy every different and precious aspects of His nature in us.
God is not surprised by our individual journey– our unique soul. The English word “soul” in translated from a Greek word “psuche” from which we get the body of science related to human psychology– think personality, emotions, thinking, attitudes, and willfulness. He knew about them all. He knew the potential of the beautiful landscape of the soul wholly submitted to His Spirit.
Christian souls should be the Father’s beautiful landscape–each with our specialness and His powerful touch of life.