Body Soul and Spirit Awareness

BODY SOUL AND SPIRIT AWARENESS 

God uses the number three to depict his wonderful creative design in many things in the Bible – The number three speaks of perfect order and design and perfect unity and function. We see this in the Three in One Trinity of Father Son and Holy Spirit, symbolised in the Bible in the order of our cosmos of Sun, Moon and stars. We see it in Noah’s Ark of salvation in the upper, middle, and lower decks. We see it in the eternal expression of his nature in Faith Hope and Love. And today we will be looking at his perfect design of humanity in Body, Soul, and Spirit. 

1Thessalonians 5:23 Now may the God of peace himself (peace - Eirene – oneness and harmonising) sanctify you (set you apart – re-purposed, re-designate) completely (to reach the end goal) and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord. He who calls (invites) you is faithful; he will surely do it. 
That is a great prayer and a great promise about what God wants to do in us.

HUMAN CREATION
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground (Body) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Spirit life); and man became a living soul.
In the first instance of human creation the body came first from the dust of the ground then the spirit of life and then the soul or inner life which had to become formed throughout a person’s life. In the generations that follow Adam and Eve the body gets passed on in seed and egg form along with a latent soul. The soul is the thinking, feeling, determining inner life with potential formation. The spirit life is created in the image of God and bequeathed to each individual life (designated to be joined to God’s Spirit).
And God said ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ (Genesis 1:26) 

THE BODY – HOW AWARE?
People of all cultures have always understood that there was an outer life of bodily activities and an inner life of thinking and feelings and choosing, and that these were distinct and yet somehow, they merged together and affected each other - inner thoughts and feelings affect bodily sensations and bodily sensations affect inner feelings and decisions. Only the Scriptures speak with authority about this truth concerning the harmony of our whole being as God’s creation. 
With Jesus a human body was passed on through his mother, but the seed of spiritual life came directly from Heaven and a perfect human soul was formed by his loving obedience to his Father – a perfect pattern for our New Creation life.

Hebrews 10:5 when Christ came into the world, he said … a body have you prepared for me, for I have come to do your will, O God
Jesus didn’t come just to know the will of God in his inner life but to do the will of God in his body.  
Mark 1:41 Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ (compassion = splagchnon- spleen)
His inner heart life felt the compassion and his bodily senses felt this too (spleen) then his hands reached out and touched and healed.
Christianity also pays vital attention to the significance of the body in relationship to being - and doing - serving God and one another in the will of God. 
Paul says the way to serve God and worship him is let our bodies express his good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2)
Paul said, ‘It is no longer I that live but it is Christ that lives in me and the life I now live in the body I live in the Son of God by faith.’ (Galatians 2:20)

THE SOUL (Greek - psyche). VERY AWARE!
The soul is the will, the emotions, and the mind. The soul is created in potential form in each individual to form the character of the soul. Our soul suffers throughout life in the challenging journey of character formation 
The will and the thoughts and emotions also link the soul to the body through bodily sensations when we choose to bring awareness to them. Just consider in your own experience how much your emotionally charged thoughts and stresses impact the state of your body and think about how the stresses upon your body affect the state of your soul in your thoughts and emotions and your will. 
Jesus spoke about the weariness of the suffering soul and the burdens that weigh it down. ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Be yoked and let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28)
This suffering is created by humanity’s mindset of separation from God – the original missing of the mark (the original sin) When Adam and Eve chose to not trust God but to do their own will instead of being yoked with God in doing his will together with him.
When we respond to his invitation of ‘come to me’ we embark on a lifetime journey for the soul, a journey of the transformation and healing (saving) of the soul through the Holy Spirit. (1Peter 1:9)
This new way of living was not available in the Old Testament. The only way that God could bring any change of the soul to Israel was through the work of the Law and the Ten Commandments (Psalm 19 - The Law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul). 

THE SPIRIT – BECOME AWARE!

Our spirit (Greek = pneuma) is our essential being. It is our unique identity like a spiritual fingerprint. It is the seed that contains the potential for our future temperament and gifting and personality. It is God’s original idea of who we are created to be, but we impose our flawed and deficient idea of who we are (our identity) upon our own soul. those ideas come from what is reflected to us from other people or from our own imaging instead of from God – and that causes much suffering for the soul.

We have been joined in our spirit to the Spirit of life of a loving Father God through Jesus who heals our souls through the love that flows to us from the Holy Spirit. Jesus sowed his Spirit life as a seed into humanity through his death and resurrection, and by the sending of the Holy Spirit from Heaven into the earth on the day of Pentecost.

THE MIRACLE OF RECONCILIATION
2Corinthians 5:18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, which is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not charging their sins against them, and has committed to us this word of reconciliation.

The word used for reconciliation here is katalasso, which means ‘a mutual changing of two different yet similar things into an entirely new entity’ (Strong’s Concordance) 
Katalasso is a combination of two words – Kata and allasso
Kata denotes the qualities of intensity and of exceeding. 
Allasso means ‘the mutual transformative exchange of two things to create a new thing’ 
Let us look at the spiritual equation of katalasso,
God in Christ + Humanity + catalyst of forgiveness/love/mercy = A New Creation.
God was eternally changed from pure Spirit Being into Human Spirit being in the incarnation of Jesus as a New Creation.
Humanity was eternally changed from mere human being into ‘God with us humanity’ in the death and resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit. This is for all of humanity and is waiting to be catalysed by our faith into the New Creation of Christ in us which becomes the expression of God’s love and goodwill in the Earth. 
Lead has been changed into gold for all eternity. 
This is our salvation – the healing of our soul, and this is what God desires for all of us.
God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Timothy 2:4).
Paul is the only one who makes clear the meaning of the word Reconciliation and the supernatural miracle work of reconciliation upon humanity through Jesus. Unfortunately, the word Reconciliation is not given its due in the Scriptures.
The apostle Peter uses the word Longsuffering to convey the meaning of Paul’s word Reconciliation and he unfolds its meaning superbly.  
Longsuffering is the ‘withholding of judgement on sin so as to allow time for the work of grace to bring about repentance’

2Peter 3:9 [God] is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish (apollymi; ruin, waste, render useless) but that all should come to repentance. (metanoia – change of mindset)
Peter goes on to say a few verses later.
2Peter 3:14 … be diligent to be found in Him in peace, without spot and blameless; and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation - as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.
So Paul and Peter see eye to eye in these things.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BODY SOUL AND SPIRIT
It is necessary that we have correct order in the relationship between body, soul and spirit for us to be whole and to function properly in both our inner and outer life.
Paul writes that God’s order is for our spirit to lead and order our soul (Romans 8:14). An ordered soul then leads our body into ordered behaviour. It makes sense that our spirit as our essential being should do this. He goes on to say that some people allow their bodily senses to control their souls in a disordered self -gratifying way, which leads to wrong choices and bad behaviour. 
Paul said. ‘I discipline my body and keep it under control (1Corinthians 9:27)
Our soul sits between the body and the spirit and receives information from both our body and our spirit and responds and reacts to both of these sources of information. 
Our physical ear hears music, but our inner soul responds mindfully and emotionally to it and we even may wish to sing in tune with it or move in rhythm with our bodies.
Our spirit is touched by the God but it is our soul that responds and chooses to obey and our bodies can also have a spontaneous physical worshipful response of weeping or on our faces before God or jubilation or contemplative stillness before the Lord. 

THE SPIRITUAL HEART AND MIND
Unlike any human being before him Jesus had his mind and heart fully embedded in his divine Spirit. He was the ‘fulness of the Godhead bodily’. His Divine Spirit spilled into his soul so that his thinking, feeling, willing and doing were directed by his Divine Spirit.

Humanity originally had its mind and heart functioning between the soul and the human spirit (no indwelling Spirit of Christ). But since Jesus reconciled us (katallasso) we can have a new spiritual reality of being joined to the Lord in one spirit with him (1Corinthians 6:17) and our mind and heart can find their home in our New Spirit that is joined in Spirit with the Lord (if that is preached and heard and believed). This is in the New Covenant promise as seen in Ezekiel.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. (Ezekiel 36:26).
We are also told by Paul that now we ‘have the mind of Christ’ (1Corinthians 2:16). We are being renewed in the spirit of our minds so that we can discern the will of God for our daily lives (Romans 12:2). This is our faith in the work of the Holy Spirit within us to change us into his likeness – being transformed.
When we know that our new heart and our new mind can operate in this realm of New Creation life it means that new desires will emerge in our hearts and a new spiritual understanding will come to our minds. These are different to the natural desires of the natural heart and the natural understanding in the natural mind of the human soul.
The Bible says therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's (1corinthians 6:20) That means that our Body and our Spirit belong to God but we are responsible our souls in its formation of character.

We set our New Creation hearts of faith on God to the highest level of intent that we can, to know his love and to live in it. It will never be perfect but God says ‘I know the measure of intention in your heart and my mercy will make up for the shortfall’. and we set our renewed minds of faith to fully understand how to know and to walk in his ways   and believe in his supernatural work in us. But we trust in the love and mercy of God to get us home. ‘He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it’. (1Thessalonians 5:24).
It simply means that we trust the love and power of God to complete himself in us. 
We get our spiritually renewed minds upon God and his goodness instead of upon ourselves and our neediness. 
We become God conscious and not self-conscious - and our soul becomes healed, saved, transformed, completed, and our bodies can do what they were created to do. Just do it.