Archive for Soul Care
How God Speaks to Us Through Our Emotions
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What emotions are you feeling right now? Can you name what is happening inside your inner world? Could God be speaking to you through your emotions?
Are you annoyed, ashamed, confused, hurt, depressed, jealous, anxious, fearful, stressed, angry, or sad?
While it may sound like a simple task to name what emotions you are experiencing, I haven’t always been able to do that and I’ve found in my work as a therapist, that many, many folks are not able to accurately name what is happening inside them.
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What Does It Mean to Have Your Soul Restored? (pt. 2)
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The question I have posed, what does it mean to have your soul restored, is an easy one – and a difficult one. Perhaps a first answer would include the return of our soul to God’s intended original condition. Surely restoration of a soul would include its return to its former dignity, if we speak in terms of returning to the glory of a soul as created by God.
This idea of restoration is what we, as followers of Christ, recognize as the ultimate plan of our Father. Glimpses of heaven as recorded in Revelation show us the restoration of all to God’s original plan. Acts 3:21 tells us that God is in the process of restoring all things.
The difficult part of defining restoration of a soul comes when we take a deep look into the mysteries of God.
Restoration is a process, perhaps not so easily defined as we might first suspect.
Every human soul is unique. Every soul has a story which encompasses the fullness of its history. Every human story includes pain, suffering, and the effects of the fall of man and sin which leave the soul wounded and scarred.
How do you feel about scars? In the natural, I don’t really like mine. I have scars from car wrecks, bicycle wrecks and motorcycle wrecks (yes, I had my own little cycle when I was much younger!). None of those wrecks were intentional, of course, but they are part of my story.
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What Does It Mean to Have Your Soul Restored? (part 1)
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Psalm 23 lures us into a picture of calm and beauty. Green pastures. Still waters. Ahh. Makes this country girl want to kick off my shoes and dig my toes into the cool springtime grass. I imagine closing my eyes and lying back on the grassy land. I can almost hear the ever present symphony of birds tweeting, frogs croaking, crickets chirping, as the multitude of God’s creation joins in the song.
And just about the time I feel I am beginning to connect with this calm picture, David slips in this phrase, “He restores my soul.” Oh, yes, awesome, wonderful, restoration of my soul. Troubling, however, is the imagery that follows.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”
“I won’t fear evil.”
“Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”
“You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it, but these phrases seem juxtaposed to the peaceful beauty of the previously mentioned green pastures and still waters.
Are these two ideas connected in any way? And what does it mean anyway to have my soul restored? Is soul restoration needed by only a few or does everyone need it?
What is a soul?
Our soul could be described as our mind and emotions, our heart, character, and personality through which we encounter life and respond to it. Our soul has to do with depth, value, relatedness, and personal substance.
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Exploring the Uncharted Territory of Your Soul
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When was the last time you were angry, I mean really angry, as we say here in the South, “Hopping mad"? What about the last time you were scared out of your wits? When is the last time you felt an overwhelming urge to hide your heart? How long since you felt your spirit recoil when someone touched you or said something particularly uncomfortable or embarrassed you?
We are all such unique individuals. What sets off my personal alarm system may not even ruffle your feathers. Every person is a composite of their life’s experiences. These experiences shape our soul. And although I am almost perfected now, I know some of the rest of you still need some help, so I write this just for you! (okay, so you do know I am using the most extreme form of hyperbole!)
I have found that my “hot buttons”, those things that set off extreme reactions in my soul, are indicators. They may indicate a place where I am wounded or unhealed. They may indicate that someone has crossed my own God-given personal boundaries. They are signals.
One of the most priceless lessons that I have learned in the last three years is that I need to pay a lot of attention to my own alarm system.
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Why You Must Go Back
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God’s ways are mysterious, beyond my understanding and often seem downright contradictory. While in my humanity, I prefer to think in straight lines which lend themselves to defining a goal as completed, a task marked off, I find that God’s ways are usually not pictured best by straight lines. They are paths which appear, at times, intertwined, difficult to map out, going forward, then backward, orbiting around a center, and often perplexing my human mind. The longer I walk with God, the more clearly I see that He is truly not confined to my limited understanding. He is working, often His deepest purposes in me, when I am clueless.
This week, I was meditating on two of the seemingly contradictory ways of God. In the next few days, I want to explore these two thoughts:
1. You must go back.
2. You can never go back.
Huh? Sounds confusing? I hope you are intrigued sufficiently to continue reading for both statements are true and I am not being ambivalent. There are times in life when you must absolutely go back. You must go back, as it were, in your mind, your emotions, your relationships, to moments of the past and experience the moments again. There are some very important reasons for us to go back. And in other ways, we must never go back and in fact, cannot do so, but that is for another day this week.
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