You Have a Soul: It Weighs Nothing but Means Everything

You Have a Soul: It Weighs Nothing but Means Everything

Jesus said the soul is worth more than the world. The soul is the key to our lives, binding our heart, our mind, and our spirit together. Shouldn't you get pretty clear on exactly what the soul is? And how to care for it? Taken from John Ortberg’s book Soul Keeping, this booklet reveals what the soul’s greatest need is, now and for eternity. Have you ever thought about why your soul is hurting and if that could be standing in the way of your spiritual growth? Ortberg writes that once your soul has been properly cared for, you will find your way back to God from hopelessness, depression, relationship struggles, and lack of fulfillment. Jesus said we could find rest for our souls. Ortberg points us in that direction. John Ortberg is the senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (MPPC) in the San Francisco Bay Area. His bestselling books include Soul Keeping , Who Is This Man? , and If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat . John teaches around the world at conferences and churches, writes articles for Christianity Today and Leadership Journal, and is on the board of the Dallas Willard Center and Fuller Seminary. He has preached sermons on Abraham Lincoln, The LEGO Movie, and The Gospel According to Les Miserables. John and his wife Nancy enjoy spending time with their three adult children, dog Baxter, and surfing the Pacific. You can follow John on twitter @johnortberg or check out the latest news/blogs on his website at www.johnortberg.com . You Have a Soul By John Ortberg ZONDERVAN Copyright © 2014 John Ortberg All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-310-34145-1 Contents It's the Nature of the Soul to Need, 5, The Soul Needs Rest, 21, Sources, 55, CHAPTER 1 It's the Nature of the Soul to Need In the 1991 comedy film What about Bob? Bill Murray plays the title character, a neurotic, phobic, obsessive-compulsive personality with innumerable needs. I quote (from memory): "Problems breathing. Problems swallowing. Numb lips. Fingernail sensitivity. Pelvic discomfort. What if my heart stops beating? What if I'm looking for a bathroom and I can't find one and my bladder explodes?" Richard Dreyfus plays the exasperated, impatient therapist who is stuck caring for him. Your soul is Bob. You are Richard Dreyfus. It is the nature of the soul to need. The will is a form of energy. You can drive and stretch and push the will. The mind has an endless ability to think and feel. You can direct your attention. You can focus and study. The body is your little power pack. You can place demands on your body. You can exercise it, strengthen it, hone it, and force it to run for miles. But it is the nature of the soul to need. The soul is a little like the king on a chessboard. The king is the most limited of chess pieces; it can only move one square at a time. But if you lose the king, game over. Your soul is vulnerable because it is needy. If you meet those needs with the wrong things, game over. Or at least, game not going well. Needy Man A great scholar named Hans Walter Wolff wrote a classic study of how the Old Testament writers understood personhood. He said that the word flesh stands for humanity's bodily form with its mortality, physical strength, and limitations. Ruah , the Hebrew word for "spirit," speaks of human beings as they are empowered — human existence with breath and will and inspiration. Wolff's chapter on nephesh — the Hebrew word for "soul" — he titled "Needy Man." Another name for nephesh is Bob. Your soul is a needy man, a needy woman. Thomas Aquinas wrote that this neediness of the soul is a pointer to God. We are limited in virtually every way: in our intelligence, our strength, our energy, our morality. There is only one area where human beings are unlimited. As Kent Dunnington puts it, "We are limited in every way but one: we have unlimited desire." We always want more: more time, more wisdom, more beauty, more funny YouTube videos. This is the soul crying out. We never have enough. The truth is, the soul's infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God's infinite capacity to give. What if the real reason we feel as if we never have enough is that God is not yet finished giving? The unlimited neediness of the soul matches the unlimited grace of God. Our soul's problem, however, is not its neediness; it's our fallenness. Our need was meant to point us to God. Instead, we fasten our minds and bodies and wills on other sources of ultimate devotion, which the Bible calls idolatry. Idolatry is the most serious sin in the Old Testament, leading one scholar to conclude that the primary principle of the Old Testament is the refutation of idolatry. Idolatry, according to author Timothy Keller, is the sin beneath the sin. Anytime I sin, I am allowing some competing desire to have higher priority than God and God's will for my life. That means that in that moment I have put something on a pedestal higher than God. That something is