Christ revealed himself to us and with our assent entered our hearts and gave us life (Jn. 10:10). He changed us forever – we went from being dead in our sins to being alive spiritually, transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His beloved Son (Col. 1:13). That salvation is the beginning of something wonderful. Once his Spirit is deposited into our spirit, we then must develop our souls, maturing and building habitations for him. However, “many of us prefer to stay at the threshold of the Christian life instead of going on to construct a soul in accordance with the new life God has put within” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest). We may fail to go on to build a soul because we are ignorant of the developmental process of spiritual formation.
What is our soul? Dallas Willard (Renovation of the Hear) defined it: “The soul is that aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self. It is the life center of the human being.” All the inner powers within our being, our whole personality and capacities, constitute our soul. Psalm 103:1 declares: “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name.”
We can think of the soul as joining the voices from each part of us--will, emotions, imagination, conscience, desires, intuition, mind--designed to blend in a beautiful orchestra. But if one voice is dominant or one recessed then we have imbalance of soul, even cacophony of voices that indicate disorder within. He wants to transform our inner voices, our soul’s way of speaking and moving, into harmony. We need to be renovated and re-formed, and this means he must penetrate the deepest layers, every part. These deep places of our soul, that “within” us, is complex and has had a life of its own, developing apart from God. But He knows our depths, and how to re-shape what has been misshapen and malformed causing developmental disorder.
Often unhealed memories emit dark messages of rejection, unworthiness, powerlessness, hopelessness and lack. This is right where he wants to meet us to heal the inner voices of our soul. He is able to heal the deepest pain! He is able to unite our whole being (Ps. 86:11) because of the Cross. His process is spiritual formation, that the Presence of Christ is formed in us. How do we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this? As we ask him to heal us, we must be willing to forgive others, cancelling their debt and be willing to face pain, anxiety, anger and grief. Our voice is then transformed by listening to his voice and allowing him to remold us. He knows how to bring all of us into balance, harmony and wholeness to the praise of his glory. “The gifts of this Presence—the power to know, to say, to act—is ours, and we become the masterpiece of harmony God intended us to be... In union and communion with Him, our once fragmented souls are drawn together in one harmonious whole…We are no longer divided within.” (Leanne Payne, Broken Image). What a cause to give thanks to our Maker!
Pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, speak to my heart, change my life, make me whole.”
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