Why We Need Soul Care
We all have hurts, brokenness, and areas of defeat in our lives. Our souls are wounded, and healing starts with our identity and having a correct view of who we are.
Transcript
How many of you keep a journal or diary? I do. In fact, I started journaling when I was about 11 years old. When I want a good laugh at myself, I reread my entries from those awkward preteen and teenage years. But it’s not that funny, because when I read those old entries, I have the depressing realization that I still have some of the same thoughts and feelings that I did as an insecure adolescent.
How can that be? I’ve been a follower of Jesus Christ pretty much all my life; yet there are still areas in my thinking, feeling, and relating that are wrong, hurtful, and even evil. How can I be a new creation in Christ, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Ephesians 4:24, yet still hang onto old sin habits?
You’ve probably had a similar question when you see the pains, fears, and defeat that are present in your own life.
I’m very excited about this series on Soul Care because we are going to learn how our thoughts, emotions, and motives can catch up to and align with our spiritual reality of holiness and newness in Jesus Christ!
What is Soul Care?
The soul is the essence of who you are as a person and includes your thoughts, emotions, desires and longings, and your will. Your soul denotes who you are and your life as a whole. Rob Reimer, author of Soul Care: 7 Transformational Principals for a Healthy Soul, the basis for this series, explains that even though you are born again and made new spiritually, “your soul can have hurts and bitterness. Your soul can still have sin and demonic strongholds. Your soul can have fears and faulty beliefs about who you are. Your soul can still feel condemnation and shame.”
Soul care is dealing with the issues of your heart and mind and receiving healing, victory, and freedom through Jesus. It can be viewed as discipleship, spiritual formation, or life transformation.
Soul care starts with gaining insight into the things you do and why you do them. That is self-awareness, and Reimer says it is very important because: Self-awareness is a gateway to life change; it doesn’t guarantee it, but you can’t get there without it.
But you can’t gain self-awareness by yourself! Even if you get over the denial, you still have blind spots and other limitations. Having a trusted friend or a therapist to help you can be beneficial, but they, too, are limited in their knowledge.
Reimer says one of the first things we need to know is that “God is smart; He knows stuff we don’t know, and He likes to tell us.” God wants to, and he will shine his light into the dark areas of your soul and reveal the truth about you to you. Healing begins when you can stand in the light with God and admit the truth.
As we read and heard in the Scripture reading of Psalm 139, King David declared that God knows everything about him—including what he would say before he even opens his mouth to speak! David also understood that there is absolutely no hiding from God, for God’s spirit is everywhere and sees everything. And embracing the fact that God knows him completely, David ends the psalm by giving God this invitation: “23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
We have used the metaphor of a house to understand what it looks like for you to be filled with the Holy Spirit. When you allow Him access to and control over every room, that is being filled with the Holy Spirit. However, the rooms of our house are cluttered with bulky furniture, useless junk, and even garbage. Before He can fully fill up the room, the Holy Spirit must clean house and get rid of the junk and garbage.
Self-awareness is our acknowledgment of the junk and garbage that we have stored in our rooms, and it is understanding why we have kept them there.
It might be easy to see our behaviors, but most of the time, we are clueless about the deep motivations behind them. For transformation to occur, we must allow the Holy Spirit to shine the light of truth into the deepest recesses of our hearts to reveal the hidden “offensive ways.”
What does that look like? I’ll use my own experience to illustrate.
I’ve had a lifelong struggle with body image and the desire to be physically attractive. My journal entries as a teenager were filled with self-rejection and questions to God about why He made me the way I am. Well into adulthood, I struggled to be content with my body, and I did not hide my discontentment from God. One day the Holy Spirit asked me, “Would having the body that you desire allows you to worship God better?” Then He said, “You want to be beautiful because you want to walk into a room and have everyone turn and look at you with admiration. You are willing to have men lust after you and fall into sin so that you could feel better about yourself.” That was harsh, and I was embarrassed to admit that what the Holy Spirit was bringing into the light was the truth hidden in my heart. But He didn’t stop there. He had deeper truth to reveal that I had not understood when I longed to be beautiful. He said, “You want to take God’s throne in men’s hearts when you want to be glorified by them.”
Rob Reimer writes that “most life change occurs alone with God.” My personal experience would support this claim. I concur with Reimer when he says: “I can trace all of the life change I have experienced back to the presence and power of God being manifest. God spoke to me; God revealed Himself to me; God encountered me; God filled me. It was these God-moments that produced transformation.
As I was sharing about my encounter with the Holy Spirit, questions might have run through your mind: How is that possible? What does the Holy Spirit’s voice sound like? How did you know it was the Holy Spirit? Can I also hear the Holy Spirit?
Spiritual Exercise: Listening and Hearing
Instead of explaining it, I want you to experience it for yourself. We’re going to do a spiritual exercise here to strengthen your spiritual listening and hearing. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, will teach you all things. I am asking and believing that God will reveal truth to you right here, right now.
As you wait in expectancy for God to speak, you might receive an image or picture. You might see a word or phrase. You might get a sensation or an emotion. You might have a deep sense of knowing. You might hear an inaudible voice. Or you might hear an audible voice. Or as with any exercise, you might not get anything immediately, but just doing the exercise will be beneficial in training you to do the exercise.
Go ahead and sit still for one minute. Close your eyes. Say quietly or in your head, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” And then wait for God to speak.
I encourage you to share with someone today about what you experienced during this spiritual exercise.
Self-awareness by itself is not enough to bring real life change! We must surrender to God and let Him lead us in “the way of everlasting.”
Soul care starts with having a relationship with God, it expands as you are healed and transformed in His presence, and it ends with having deep, authentic intimacy with God and others. It is an ongoing process as we continue to grow and mature. But it is not a haphazard or unexplainable process. There are some basic spiritual truths and realities that guide soul care.
Reimer identifies seven principles that will lead to healing, transformation, and freedom.
Knowing and holding onto your identity in Christ
Confession and repentance
Breaking family sin patterns
Forgiving others
Processing wounds and healing hurts
Overcoming fears
Breaking demonic strongholds
In this series, we will look at four of the seven principles: Identity, confession, fears, and demonic strongholds.
Today, we’ll briefly cover: holding on to your identity in Christ
Reimer writes: “What you believe about yourself is the foundation of your life; it is your identity, and a faulty foundation will create cracks in the soul. If you are going to construct a healthy life, it begins with what you believe about yourself.” Then he provides this illuminating explanation: “Whatever you agree with, you give power to in your life. If you agree with the truth, the truth will set you free. If you agree with lies, lies will enslave you.”
Let’s start with the truth about your identity: You are God’s beloved child.
Listen again to David’s words in Psalm 139: “13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you.
God created you—and you are one of His wonder works! Before you were born, he knew everything about you and the life you would live. He is crazy about you and thinks about you all the time! And He is always with you!
The proof of God’s love for you is that He sent His own son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross so that you could be forgiven of all your sins, be healed and made whole, and live in eternity with God. You did not earn God’s love. He freely gives it.
The issue of your value is settled at the cross. God says you are worthy of the blood of Jesus.
1 Peter 1:18-19 - “18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
Do you see yourself as a beloved child? Do you think, feel, and act as a person who is confident in God’s love? Only when you stand on the true foundation of God’s love can you feel peace, no matter what circumstances surround you.
When you look at yourself, your bank account, your job, your family, your health, the challenges of life, what do you say to yourself about yourself? Your self-talk reveals what’s really in your heart.
All of us living in this world that has been ravaged by sin and brokenness face lies about our identity. We are bombarded with lies from society and culture, family, ourselves, and Satan and his demons.
There are three big lies that can drown out the truth of our identity and worth in Jesus. When we believe the lies, our soul’s foundation is shaky, and we are fraught with fear and anxiety.
3 Big Lies
1. The Performance Lie: my value lies in my performance. I am valued, loved, and acceptable if I do certain things and do them well; but if I don’t perform well, then I am judged, condemned, shamed, and rejected. Do you take on as many tasks and roles as possible? Do you fixate on the one criticism and ignore the 10 positive feedback? Do you feel discouraged, even a little depressed, after a bad performance or some criticism? You could be believing the performance lie.
2. The People-Pleasing Lie: my value depends on what other people think of me. If I serve, help and care for others, if I maintain harmony and keep people happy, then they will love me. Do you obsess about how others will react to your words or actions? Are you self-conscious and focused on your image? Do you feel anxious when someone is upset with you? Do you feel resentful and taken advantage? You could be believing the people-pleasing lie.
3. The Control Lie: my value depends on my control (of people or outcomes). If I can produce desired results or control the outcome, I am valuable. If I can get people to do what I want, then I am secure. Do you get frustrated when things don’t go as planned? Do you try to get people to do things your way and run over them if they don’t? Do you feel anxious and out of control when things are chaotic? You could be believing the control lie.
So what do you do if the foundation of your soul is built on a lie or lies? You have to identify the lies, expose them to the light, and replace them with truth so that their power is broken.
Stages to deal with your identity issues:
1. ID the lie and its manifestation. When I’m standing on the shaky foundation, what is running through my head? What do I feel physically, emotionally? How do I act?
2. Hold on to the truth. It’s not enough to know the truth. In John 8:31-32 Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Every time I’m about to act in a way that is consistent with a lie that I believe, that is the moment that I have to hold onto the truth and act on it. If you are unsure about the truth, then commit to reading God’s Word and invite and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to you.
3. Act in courage (off the truth). How would a deeply loved person act right now? Know your identity and hold onto it! You are God’s beloved child. The issue of your value is settled at the cross. God says you are worthy of the blood of Jesus.
Reflection Questions
Which one of the three big lies (performance, people-pleasing, control) impacts your life the most?
What do you think and feel when you are standing on this faulty foundation of the lie? And how do you behave?
You may also share about your experience during the Listening and Hearing from the Holy Spirit exercise.
