Just Be Yourself by Bryan Craig

“For You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”  Psalm 139:13-16 ESV

I’ve been pondering something for a bit.  I’ve written about some epiphanies I’ve had in my understanding of the “soul.”  Scriptures talk a lot about the soul:

Jesus:  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  Matthew 22:37

Jesus:  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  Matthew 11:29

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  Luke 1:46

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Mark 8:36

The founder of Influencers loves to ask this question, “How’s your soul?”

Watchman Nee added some great insight for me about the soul when I read his book, “Release of the Spirit” as he described the “soul” as a person’s, “mind, will and emotions.”  He also said that the “soul” is eternal. Whereas we know that our bodies are not eternal, for we see them decaying right in front of our eyes, the soul and the spirit of a man go into eternity with us.   Another way the soul has been described to me is a person’s “personality.”  It’s the person inside of the body that we know and understand and relate to.  The fact that the soul is eternal helps us understand why we will know each other in Heaven.

I believe our “soul” was made by God.  It is our wiring, our predisposition, our uniqueness that He created in the very beginning.  I’m approaching 60 years old, and as I look back on my life, even my life before I surrendered to Christ, there was me, with my likes, dislikes, my weird sense of humor, my attractions, my way of thinking and processing, etc.  None of this went away when I gave my life to Christ. 

There are certain things I may struggle with that you don’t struggle with and vice versa.  This is due to our soul wiring.  When we surrender our souls to the Lord, He does do a transformative work, especially the more we abide with Him.  And He does give us a new heart.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.  Ezekiel 36:26-27 ESV

But He does not give us a new soul.  I believe He, the master craftsman, is proud of the souls He gave us, and He wants us to use those souls in serving Him and in His purposes for our life.  Most of us spend too much time in “soul-envy” trying to be or wishing to be like someone else’s soul.  We are uniquely made to do things only we can do.

I’ve always liked Rick Warren, the Purpose-Driven Life pastor, who uses the acronym S-H-A-P-E. 

S- Spiritual Gifts

P- Heart (Passions)

A- Abilities

P- Personality (Soul)

E- Experience

He says if we are in touch with these 5 areas of our life, we will understand how/why God made us the way He did.  Then, we will find our ministry, our purpose.  The soul is a big part of this. 

Satan has been called the Enemy of our Soul.  In my experience, He spends much time trying to darken our souls, to seize our weaknesses, to make us feel strange or inadequate if we are different, to discourage and isolate us. 

The Holy Spirit wants to come into our lives and embrace our souls and to fill them with joy and peace and love and to inspire us to use what He has given us for His glory.  He wants us to be confident and strong and courageous in who He made us to be.  We must stop trying to be someone else and embrace the sacred gift of our souls.

I pray everyone reading this will spend some time with the Lord, the One Who created your soul, asking Him to show you the uniqueness of who you are.  I pray you will quit striving to be someone you are not and that you will just “Be Yourself.”   And one more thing:  Jesus said we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and secondly, to love our neighbor AS YOURSELF. (Matthew 22:36-40)  He wants us to love ourselves.