How do you measure the condition of your soul?
Checking the condition of something is very common:
- With vehicle tires, basically you check the tread depth and condition of the sidewalls.
- With a house appraisal, a professional compares the house with others in the area, checks for soundness of all, inside and out, top and bottom: roof, floors, plumbing, electrical, heater/AC, utilities, paint…, and if deficiencies are found – the house value plummets.
- With a vehicle, it’s condition and the model specifics are measured against industry standards.
- With adopting a pet puppy, you choose the type you’ve settled on, evaluate “is it healthy and energetic”, and subjectively, you want the puppy that gravitates to you.
- With a spouse-to-be… well, we won’t go there.
So, how do you measure the condition of a soul? What about your soul? What is the condition of your soul?
Good Fruit – Bad Fruit
“The unhealthy tree bears bad fruit”
“The healthy tree bears good fruit”
– words of Jesus in Matthew 7:17
You’ve got’a really examine a fruit to see if it’s good or not. Ever wash one to eat – and then see the rottenness, feel it’s hard, unready state?
the nasty worm hole in the apple
the hard as a rock fruit, inside and out
the bleeding bruise on a peach
the mushy part that makes me squirm
the dark yucky waste inside that beautiful avocado
These days there is so much rottenness in the world, in people’s souls. So much. If you were a house – would you be of much value? If you were a pet puppy, would you be adoptable?
A soul, of course, is of so much more value than a mere house or pet puppy. And so, since each of us has a soul (is a soul) it behooves us to examine how our soul is doing.
The condition of one’s soul is attacked by so many negative pressures around it.
- The world wants to tear you down and demean your value.
- The flesh by nature tends to spiral out of control, taking one down and out.
- The Devil is a roaring lion seeking to destroy you eternally.
Sinning will always degrade, belittle, deflate, weaken, and destroy your inner soul. Sin is beguiling, attractive, a big deceiver, and full of hollow promises. The flesh lurks in the dark corners of your mind – and snaps out, ugly and fierce. Sin’s snares are always ready to tear apart your soul.
What are the snares around you? What is always there, for you, always trying to draw you astray — into the miry clay? What are you doing about it?
Slip sliding away
I get deeper and deeper
it started so sly so unassuming
what’s wrong with that, I said
and soon I slipped
I was away
away
away
a wayward orphan
on my own
I felt so lost
The snares are sly. We start to use expressions and words, and we find ourselves saying what before we never would. We watch an objectionable movie. And then another. We allow irritations to build-up, negative thinking, attitudes, little judgements condemning others, and harshness begins. “What’s wrong with that?” we say. And soon we are slip sliding away. The snare has wrapped itself around us.
A Healthy Soul… who we are in Christ
There is a special kind of “feeling” coming from a healthy soul. You see it in their face, the way they look you in the eye with kindness. You feel it coming from their presence, how their body moves – their head, their hands, their feet, their gestures, facial “countenance” (Google).
Seeing lots of good fruit coming from deep inside your soul?
love [unselfish concern for others],
joy,
[inner] peace,
patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting],
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
self-control
– Galatians 5:22-23
As it’s commonly defined, I’m not comfortable calling this an “aura” 1, but the word attempts to explain what we emanate from who we are inside. Who we actually are does come through loud and clear as souls connect.
It’s not so mystical, this part of me. It’s really not “a field” around my body, but rather it’s my soul itself within this shell that emanates what is inside it.
What is there connects with other souls somehow. All that I am connects on many levels – emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual.
From deep inside – my soul reveals itself. What I truly am comes out. It shows itself to other souls as we touch in passing.
My soul has effect upon all around through my mood, my emotion, my character, my physical “bearing”, my expression, my action or inaction.
“Examine yourselves….” In varying degrees we are all slow to perceive what we are inside our self. We need to do as the Apostle Paul exhorted us:
2 Corinthians 13:5
Test and evaluate yourselves to see whether you are in the faith and living your lives as [committed] believers. Examine yourselves [not me]! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves [by an ongoing experience] that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test and are rejected as counterfeit?
We are so slow to see how we are perceived. We’re all little lunkheads. So little time is invested back into our soul – to know who we are and how we’re doing.
Is your soul sick? Or are you healthy? Getting healthier? What in you is healthy? What in you needs God’s healing touch, some tender loving care and attention?
“Be real“
FOR MORE:
Is this you? …a somewhat lengthy study of 1 Thessalonians 5:1-24
Footnotes
- (Google: “emotional, mental, and spiritual levels form an energy field around the body known as the aura”.)
Leave a Reply