The soul is comprised of the mind, will and emotions. From the moment of birth sensory input affects one or more aspects of the soul. This continues on until death.

Environment has an enormous impact on the soul. The environment includes region, race, economics, gender, heritage, and family. Every aspect of a life is influenced by these elements. Those experiences can vary so widely that one person has absolutely no understanding of the total make-up of another soul. We catch glimpses, understandings, only from our own perspective, experiences and education.

The beginning of soulful development starts with hunger. Having that satisfied, the body functions, cleanliness, warmth, and a sense of need soon develop. Yet before even those things begin, one-thing springs up within the soul that cannot be grasped, cannot be described and may take years to complete the meaning of it’s affect on the human soul.

Love.

Bonding between the mother and child at the earliest stages of development have proven that children who bond early with the mother become stable, secure, and develop a strong sense of self worth. The child does not know what love is by word or deed. It is given and felt in areas that may never give voice to reason. It is an inborn instinct than is as old as life itself. A baby has the capacity to love without knowing how to show it. The closest a baby can come to saying I love you is a smile. The smile of a child melts the heart of the strongest man. You have done nothing to earn that love you just receive it. Hold on to that thought, we will be coming back to it later.

As we grow life gets more complex. As we begin to express our needs, we discover that issues of satisfaction are much more complex than in those early days, when mother could satisfy every desire, simply and immediately. We find that mother’s attention is divided, between those other big people you saw every day and yourself. Long before we understand the complex issues of sharing, we develop the root of all our problems.

Selfishness.

"I want what I want because I want it and I want it now." It is the basis of the terrible twos. Some learn faster than others that whining and crying doesn’t get results. Heaven forbid if a child discovers from a parent that it does work. That child will forever have problems making his way in the real world, once he is out from under the umbrella of parental protection and provision.

What comes next in the development of exercise of will is coercion, the manipulation of emotions to solicit desired results. Emotions become a strong tool in the developmental toolkit of life. It ranks above skill in the arena of provision. We all learn to exert our will through the use of emotions. Revolution ceases to exist without it. Justice has no place in the world without it. Change halts without it. Economies crumble without it. Emotions paint our vision of this world, and that leads us into my next topical arena.

The eye is the window to the soul.

With the eye one first learns to covet. You desire with the eye even before any other sensory input is allowed to be involved. The eye is the number one sensory input. With it you can observe things you cannot yet feel or smell, touch or hear. Your life is one giant screen of colors, textures, shapes, actions, and perceptions. What you see is so much more complex than the mind can process audibly. Things seep into your mind at a level called subliminal. Ones emotions can be influenced and exercised without a conscience thought response.

Now things really start getting complicated. The possibilities are so vast, huge libraries contain only a fraction of the possibilities of expressing human interaction. In order to boil it down into a formula that fits everyone, you only need two elements. Sensory input and a receiver, the soul. The range of possibilities is too great to try and cover what can happen in any person’s life. What can be described is the process that transmits the outer world to the inner person.

As an example of the thin line between external input and internal response, let us look at puberty. Puberty is one of the most drastic changes that occur to the human body, naturally. The sudden introduction of hormones into a body of innocence is a compelling force that can lead to difficult adjustments. Even the well informed have to deal with the substance of change, and how it can become a driving force in behavior. It doesn’t have to be that way but more often than not, it is a significant factor in behavioral change. At this time in a young person’s life, peers, whom they have to interact with, are going through the same experience. Some teens deal with it better than others, learning to control their emotions to obtain the object of their desire. It becomes obvious through this example that some of our sensory inputs come from within our own bodies. Visual sensory input can and does stimulate physical reactions. That physical reaction, even though it is within the body, is still external input.

Carnal reactions are not part of the soul. They are not a function of the mind, will or emotions. They are influences upon the soul. They can be strong influences upon the mind, will and emotions. For some people they can be controlling factors. Some people become slaves to carnal influences. Addiction can come in many forms. Nearly anything can become an obsession, an addiction.

Before we get sidetracked, I would like to draw us back into the realm of the soul and make one point. At the same time we are going through all these learning, growing, dealing processes, we paint a picture of our world and where we fit into it, with our mind’s eye. We paint a self-portrait. That self-portrait is the result of the success or failure we have interacting with our environment. Our will takes an important part in determining that self-portrait. You might even call it the paintbrush of self-imagery. It determines if we view ourselves as winners or losers, victim or victor. How well we succeed in dealing with others and our own emotions, plays a vital role in determining self esteem, pride, contentment, and can even go so far as to be a determining factor in judgment, decision making.

So far everything I have described applies to every person who ever lived. The one thing in common for each and every person in this formulary is this, you are on your own. There is no one on the inside helping you deal with your emotions. Whether it is failure or success, you and you alone have to deal with the results of your actions, reactions, and how the world responds to you. You may have friends who encourage you, parents that support you and teachers who guide you but when it comes right down to it, they are all sensory input you have to deal with and make choices to believe or disregard.

Those who succeed in dealing with this process will have the hardest time understanding the subject of this article. They won’t see the need for change. They feel good about themselves. They are content with things just the way they are. No one has their best interest at heart and they have been successful in subjecting their carnal nature to their own will, by whatever means works for them. Their motto is, don’t mess with success.

I am now going to introduce you to the Lover of My Soul.

His name is Jesus Christ.

Up until now all intimacy has been external. Sensory input dictated intimacy. So how can Jesus Christ be intimate with my soul?

John 14:16-18

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

We who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are no longer alone. We are born again, in the Spirit and that spirit, the Holy Spirit, dwells within us.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

You might ask at this time, "Why should I accept his Lordship?"

That gets us back to the part about feeling good about yourself. No one looks to God for help when everything is going fine. It is when you come to a point in your life when you see yourself for what you really are, that you say, "I can’t take this anymore. God I need help!" Guilt is a great motivator for change. A person has to come to grips with their self-righteousness and admit what they really are before they seek help.

Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Here is the essence of the Gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ died for every persons sin. Everyone is the same in the eyes of God. No matter how well your soul subjected your carnal nature to your will or whether you lost the battle of wills to temptation, we are all the same, rotten filthy rags, no righteousness of our own.

1 What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?

2 For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.

3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

4 Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.

5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

6 Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,

7 Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

Our faith, believing in Jesus Christ, becomes the basis for righteousness.

But what is righteousness?

It is defined as our right standing before God. "By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5:2) Grace being unmerited favor.

You might ask, and rightly so, why God would offer His Grace, and a right standing before Him, to anyone who is unworthy. You’ve heard the answer and seen the signs. It is the most quoted scripture in the entire bible. You can probably quote it without having ever read the bible itself. It’s John 3:16.

 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

I’ll entertain one more question on the subject for you.

"How do I know God loves me?"

Remember the first point I asked you to remember, because we would be getting back to it later? Now is the time. "You have done nothing to earn that love you just receive it." In the same way that the baby feels and expresses love, you shall know that God loves you. How did that baby know that his mother loved it? Because the mother loved that baby before it was ever born. She loved it and nurtured it from the womb.

But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

You cannot reason your way into the kingdom. You cannot work your way into the kingdom. The only way in is to love God because He first loved you.

1 John 4

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Propitiation, substitute, Jesus died so that we might live.

 

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.

14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.

16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.

John 14:16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

The world can be a lonely place. You don’t have to go through it alone.

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