May 18

Transformation of the CORE – the Soul

May 18, 2008 Rev. William “Buck” Day

A man has Super Bowl tickets on the 50 yard line. He sits down next to a man and says, “That’s amazing to me. Someone would spend all that money to buy a ticket to the Super Bowl and not use it.” The man that was sitting there said, “Well, that’s my ticket. It was supposed to be for my wife. She passed away.” The guy at this point started to backup a little bit, he said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” The other man said, “Well that’s O.K. This is the first time my wife has missed a Super Bowl since we have been going every year since 1967.” The guy said, “I’m sorry to hear that, couldn’t you have invited a relative or a friend to come with you?” He said, “No. They are all at the funeral.”

This man took his game seriously. He was a fan, wasn’t he? He was a fan. Being a fan is a great thing. But when being a fan goes over the line, it becomes what is called fanaticism. Fanaticism many times is systematic of something much deeper. When we allow fanaticism to define our existence, and fanaticism is not just about sports, fanaticism can apply to many things, from music to gardening to you name it; but when we allow fanaticism to define our existence because it is so important to us, because it is so deeply ingrained in who we are, many times that reveals that our soul is out of alignment with God.

Our soul is the critical part of our makeup before God and that is our course today. We are in the last part of Transforming our Spiritual CORE – the Soul. We are going to look at that today and we are going to start with John Wesley. John Wesley was a man who frequently asked questions of his small group gatherings that he had. Those small group gatherings overtime became what we now know as the denomination of Methodists. One of the questions that he frequently used was the question: How is it with your soul? How is it with your soul? He used that questions with others that were designed to begin to bring about some honest reflections of what a person was feeling and experiencing; what was happening in the person; and how that matched their outward behavior. That was the method that he applied to spiritual growth, thus the name, Method – ists.

And it is a great question. It is a great question as we conclude our series today. How is it with your soul? It is a great question because, as we have been working through this diagram from Dallas Willard, we see here that the soul is on the outside; but that is a bit of a misnomer. The soul is on the outside in this diagram because it really overarches all the other areas of our humanity, because the soul resides at the very deepest levels of who we are. So even though it is on the outside, it is really at the very depth of our being. That is what we want to look at today is this idea of our soul. We want to maybe get a little bit better idea of what it is and how might it become captive to Jesus Christ. So as we do that today, I want to invite you to let that question settle over you: How is it with your soul? …because we’ll come back to that.

How is it with your soul? …because souls in general don’t get a lot of air time in churches, do they? I can’t think of another message I have ever heard of someone talking about the soul in particular; but it should be thought of because it is an important part of you we are. One of the ways we can think of it is as this kind of executive center of who we are. It is that place inside of us that interrelates all of those other areas so that we form one life. It differs from the will in that the will is more about choice. If you were here for that message, you will remember that. It is that ability of a human to kind of begin to cause something to happen that would otherwise not happen. It is that idea of initiating. The soul on the other hand organizes the whole person. It encompasses every part of ourselves. When we think about the soul, many times it is referred to as a person – or probably in the third person – many times as is the case here in Psalm 42. But we know that the soul is not a person, is it? It refers rather to the very deepest parts of who we are and it operates without conscience thought or direction from us; but, the soul shows itself in our lives. The soul shows itself in the details of how we choose our feelings, our thoughts, our body actions and our social context and how they interact with one another. That is where the soul begins to show itself.

Maybe one of the ways that would be helpful to think about this is the idea of a computer. A computer runs and it has an operating system that kind of coordinates all the functions of the computer so that it functions as a whole. That is the soul. But there are also programs that we use that come up on our screen. Those are the kind of dimensions that we have been talking about to this point. But behind all those, coordinating all those is the operating system – that is our soul. That is what we want to look at today.

So as we think about this idea of transforming the soul, how do we do that? Well I think there are a couple of things that we need to start with and one is to acknowledge that we have a soul. There has been a lot of kind of pop psychology that has kind of downplayed the soul, although it is beginning to make a comeback if you look at some of the stuff in our culture. So we need to acknowledge that one: we have a soul; and that two: it needs to be rooted in God. That is one of the reasons I picked Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is a great psalm but it speaks to that idea; and along with it Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is one of those great psalms. We will look at it here and we will look at it later; but in these, it talks about the idea of water, the value of water. When water is viewed in scripture it is always referred to in conjunction with life, with nutrition, with bringing life to its surroundings. It provides the nourishment that we need, the strength, and the renewal for all that is around it. So when our souls are rooted in God, we are nourished by God’s waters. It feeds our soul the way it needs to be fed. Now the soul is hard for us to try and conceptualize, get our heads around; and that is why many times we see it used in metaphorical language when it is referred to as the soul. In fact sometimes the book of Psalms is actually referred to as the Book of the Soul.

So what I want to do is I want to kind of look at some verses out of Psalms to kind of begin to give us a little flavor how scripture, at least in the Psalms, views the soul. I would invite you, there are some verses on the back of your bulletin that you can use as a devotional this week, but you could even just simply make the book of Psalms your devotional for this week. Get a concordance and look up the word soul. Then read through all the references out of the psalms that refer to the soul.

So we want to take a look at some of these and see if we can begin to get a better picture of this idea of what is the soul? What is it all about? So here is some here and I will leave those up and let you read those. The first one really talks about this idea that God is the one who delivers our soul from death. Our soul is the one that rejoices in the Lord. Our soul longs for God. There is something about our soul that desires to be connected with God. God is soul’s “refuge,” it says in Psalm 57. The last one is the idea that our soul is to rest in the Lord – that is part of what we are to be about as God’s people.

But we also know that our soul struggles particularly when it is out of alignment with God and the psalms speak to that a little bit, as well. Psalm 31 talks about how the soul can waste away and how it can lose hope, and even a soul that is full of trouble is not far from death. So what does that tell us? What does that tell us about the soul, about your soul, about my soul? I think it speaks to this idea that one, we all have one, it is a very important part of who we are. It could even be considered the center of our Christian lives. I think it also maybe speaks to this idea that we need to nurture our souls, we need to kind of care for our souls and bring them along as best we can.

Our souls must be cared for and brought under the loving and nurturing control of the Lord. So our souls need care. How does that happen? If they are operating pretty much in the background, how does that happen? Well I think one of our scriptures from this morning points the way and that is Psalm 19. For it says that “the law of the Lord revives the soul.” I think that is a clue for us. “The law of the Lord revives the soul.” This is where Psalm 1 second verse comes in, it says, “Happy are those who delight in the law, who meditate on it day and night.” The law of the Lord is an important part for us as followers of Christ to get a hold of, because the law of God is a gift to us, just as it was a gift to the Israelites in the Old Testament. For the law is meant to help us connect with God. It is where our hearts can be instructed and where we are enabled to walk with God in new ways. The law really enables us to be realigned – to have our souls realigned with God – that is what the law of the Lord does for us. As we think about the law of the Lord, we also live by proclaiming that we are saved by grace, don’t we? I am saved by grace and I am no longer under the law. The law does not have control over me. And it is true. But, that doesn’t mean that we ignore the law. The law is still an important part of who we are as followers of Christ. What did Jesus say about the law? He said, “I didn’t come to abolish the law,” it is still in effect, even for those who are followers of Christ. He said, “I didn’t come to abolish it but to fulfill it.” He said, “I came to fulfill the law.” We must too. We too must fulfill the law. That is Christ’s call on you and me. We have to live up to the law now. But we live up to the law in a different way. We live up to the law in the power of the Holy Spirit, not in our own strength. That was the mistake that the Pharisees in Jesus’ day made.

So how do we do that? How do we “delight in the law?” How do we embrace the law so that in the end our soul might find rest? Well track with me on this, if you will. Jesus I think speaks to it here in a pretty well-known verse from Matthew 11. Let me read this to us because I think this is important for us to read. “Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,” and check that next line out, “and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

What Jesus is saying here is that we are to yoke ourselves to Jesus’ way. When we yoke ourselves to Christ and his way, we find rest for our soul. For in Jesus’ day, the souls that were around him were crying out. They were burdened. They were way down because they were attempting to live out the law in their own strength because that was what the Pharisees said they had to do. So they continued to try and refine it, and what happened by the Pharisees adding more and more regulations is that it just became heavier and heavier and it crushed them and their souls were crying out. So Jesus comes and he says that is not the way it is supposed to be. He says come to me and you will find a different way to fulfill the law and in doing that you will find rest for your souls. Jesus says, yoke yourself to me and as you do I will not make your load heavier but you will learn from me a new way. A new way that in fact lightens the load. That new way of following him is called grace, to live a life of grace, for Christ bears the load for us.

So as we learn from him, it brings rest for our soul. It says there “learn from me and you will find rest for your souls.” Well what does that mean? How do we learn from Jesus? What is he referring to there? I think that what he is talking about is taking on the yoke of discipleship, of becoming a follower of Jesus, becoming a student of Jesus, to walk so closely behind him and with him that you become his shadow – you become like Christ. As you do that, as we become a follower of Jesus and pour ourselves into Christ, what happens is we learn to keep the law because Christ kept the law. We learn to love the law as Jesus loved the law. We learn to delight in the law because we are living under the grace that we find in the discipleship in following of Jesus. And in that, we eventually fulfill the law, we fulfill the law.

So the law in that is something that we no longer have to bear. We don’t have to be held down under its weight, but rather it becomes something that we joyfully fulfill because of the life that we are now living by following Christ. When we are yoked with Christ in discipleship, all of a sudden we don’t have to worry about what happens in our lives. We don’t have to worry about what happens in the outcomes in our lives, about what we are going to do or where we are going to go, for Jesus takes those things. As we seek to live up to Christ’s standards, that becomes the goal – to emulate Christ – then the other stuff will take care of itself. The outcome then becomes Christ’s worry, not ours. And the result is rest – rest for our souls. Rest from having to achieve; from having to strive to do our best in and of our own strength. Jesus says that’s no more. We achieve in Jesus and our results come from following Jesus, not attempting to do them on our own; because that is not anything we can live up to anyway.

So that is one part of it and then beyond that as we live this life of grace under the law and we begin to fulfill the law, guess what happens to our soul? Our soul then begins to reorient itself, realign itself with God and God’s desires, and the law at that point becomes the guiding principle on which the soul operates. That is kind of the default mode for the soul. And when the soul is in alignment with God, because it overarches everything else in our lives, all of a sudden all those other areas will begin to align themselves with God as well and the result is that our lives will begin to reflect Christ.

That is the rule of the soul – to coordinate to make sure everything works together; and when the soul is aligned and resting in God, all those other pieces begin to come together as well. Go back to our example of the computer system. When a computer system has a virus, a virus typically is acting on the operating system in the background; and if it is not dealt with eventually, the computer will slow down and eventually maybe not even work. But, that would be equivalent to when our souls are not resting in the Lord, when we are not living under the law. But when we live that by being a follower of Christ, our souls align with God and it’s like the virus is removed from the computer and it runs at peak performance. That is what happens. That is what God is calling us to in this whole process of transformation that we have been talking about.

We started what seems like a long time ago talking about the need of having a vision for who we wanted to become like. We said that the vision for us is the person of Jesus Christ. That is the person we are to emulate, we talked about that, I think, in February, a long time ago. We talked about the value of intentionality, the idea of intentionally choosing to become like Christ, that’s one of those things we have to do. Then we talked about the means for making that happen was beginning to employ spiritual disciplines as one of the key factors for that transformation to begin to happen. Then we have looked at the five pieces of our humanity and how those all work within that context. Before any of that can happen, before any of those changes can begin, we have to understand that we are totally and completely helpless to make any of these changes in and on our own, because of our own waywardness from God. We have set ourselves up as our own God. We have called ourselves the one in charge of our lives. When we do that we will never accomplish any of the things that we have been talking about in this whole series. Dallas Willard has a term for that. He calls that person “a lost soul.”

So my question to you again today: How is it with your soul? How is it with your soul?

To that end, would you pray with me?

Lord God, you have put your call on us. You have called us to take on your yoke, your yoke of discipleship, so that we might learn from you, that we might learn what it means to reflect the holy God in our lives; and Lord we want to do that. I think everyone in here wants that today, but if we are really honest with you and with ourselves we know that we miss the mark more often than not. For some of us maybe it is just plain laziness Lord. We just enjoy the way it is right now more than really choosing you to continue to allow you to come into our lives to change us. And Lord, if there is that person here today, I ask that you would move in their heart, that you would reveal to them the need to make that commitment to hunger after you; whether it is to commit to the study of your word, whether it is to pray more, whether it is to take on something else, like a ministry. Lord whatever it is, I ask you to lay it on their hearts right now. And Lord, for others, there are probably some here that have simply never have made that commitment to you; have never really said “I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Lord I want to put your yoke on me because I am tired of carrying it all by myself. It is too heavy. It is too much. I can’t deal with the outcome. It will just break me.” And Lord, if that someone is here today, I ask that you meet them. You meet them and show them the lightness of your way, the grace, the love, the acceptance that is found in you. So Lord if that is the case for someone here, may they make that commitment today to you. Give them the courage to tell somebody about that. Lord we are your people and we know that we fall short, but we know that we find everything that we need in you; for Lord we have been blessed and we have been blessed for a reason. We have been blessed to be a blessing. So Lord let us embrace that more fully than ever. We ask that in your name. Amen.