Scripture reading: Revelation 18:10-13
The soul of a man is the very personality of that individual. He has a spirit to lead his soul back to God. He has a body through which he expresses and manifests his soul. However, just like a person who lives in a house and becomes so involved with the house that it becomes his master and begins to drive him towards doing certain things, so also the soul can become the master of the man.
God set a spirit in man, and this spirit should bring man to God. When man receives the salvation of God, his soul is quickened and brought to life and his spirit is enlightened. The spirit begins to show the soul a great dimension of light and glory because the soul is now alive. As the living soul demands life from the spirit, the spirit will continue to pull life from God until the Holy Ghost comes and dwells in the man’s spirit.
Once a believer is baptized with the Holy Spirit, the power that comes forth from his spirit into his soul is great, bringing deliverance. He finds he cannot be discouraged easily because the power of God is so great that the life coming from the Father is enlivening his very soul. His thoughts and emotions are changed. There is an action within his emotions that will enable him to control them.
God has set the spirit over the soul over the body. One of the problems with humanity is that sometimes we get the order of God turned around; the body makes the demands and the soul goes along with it and shuts the spirit out. The Spirit is supposed to be in charge. When a man allows the Spirit of God to take a hold of his emotions and his mind, it means that his emotions begin to respond to God’s emotions. As this begins to happen, then the emotions of the man begin to be controlled and begin to die because he no longer is pleasing his emotions, but he is now pleasing God Himself. There is a control over his emotions that the man of God has, that the average person does not have.
After salvation, some people will give way to God and to His control more than others. Therefore, they will have more of what they need than the others although they are both Christians. It depends on how much you open up to the Spirit. If you can find a way to open up to God, then it means that your soul will be strengthened and enlivened.
In the soul there is another nature that we call the will. This nature is generally like an anchor to a ship. When a ship gets into harbor, the anchor is cast and hooked down onto the floor of the ocean (or the bay) and it holds the ship, so that it cannot be tossed to and fro. The ship will not drift but will remain at the spot where the anchor was cast. The will is an anchor to the soul. However, here lies a potential problem: if the will is anchored in the wrong place, then the soul is held in the wrong position. If the will is anchored in the right place, then the soul is held in a right position.
The next part of the soul is the desires, and the desires of man are something that are never the desires of God. Man always desires something else besides what God desires. When God allows you to receive what you desire, very often, it is only God’s way of allowing you to a point, giving you enough rope in order to bring you around to show you how bad your desires were. If ever we desire the same thing as God desires, then it is God’s desire and not our desire by which we are going, because in man dwelleth no good thing, except when the Holy Ghost comes in. Every good thing in man is of God.
(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 2, pages 198-199)
Thought for today: God set a spirit in man, and this spirit should bring man to God.
Sonlight Devotional 