A New Soul // A New Page, Part 3

It's funny how we embark on each new year with great expectations of new things – and yet, we never take a look at ourselves. Our attitudes. How we function on the inside. That never changes. So why would anything else change? Have you ever heard this? Dit dit dit, da da da, dit dit dit, you may recognise it, it's Morse code. Dit dit dit is an "s", da da da is an "o" and dit dit dit in an "s" again. SOS - Save Our Souls, Save Our Souls. It's the emergency distress signal when a plane or a ship or a submarine is going down. Save our souls, SOS. "Soul" is a word that's bantered around a lot these days. "This place doesn't have any soul", 'soul music' and in Christian circles, "soul" is a very common word but what exactly is our soul? I mean, what do you and I mean when we use the term 'soul'? It's one of those terms that we use a lot and yet we rarely stop to understand exactly what it is. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 23, talks about us having a soul: May the God of peace Himself, sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and your soul and your body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. So, as you and I stand on the threshold of a new year, what's our soul? Is it worth saving? And what does it have to do with our lives and the quality of our lives? Over this week, we're looking at the rut that many of us get into. We have a tendency, this time of year, to think about life and we look at the rut and what we want to do is, we want to change our circumstances, we want to, kind of, run away from some things and ditch some things and improve some things and then our lives will be fine. Problem is that, for many of us, it's not the rut that we're in but the shape that we're in that's the problem. For many of us we're bent out of shape. We've been squeezed into the worlds mould and it doesn't fit so well and so life is uncomfortable and messy. I can run away wherever I like but until I get out of that mould, my life's not going to be transformed, I'm not going to have a new life, nothing's going to change. Yesterday we looked at our bodies. Today we're going to take a look at our souls. So what is our soul? What does God say it is? Well, the Greek word used in the New Testament for soul is actually a word that you and I are quite familiar with. It's the word "psyche". It's who we are and where we experience life. It is indeed the place of life, life itself. The best description I've ever heard is that our soul is our mind, our will and our emotions. It's where we think, where we decide and where we feel. That's our soul. It's that incredible place where we are human beings and it is in our souls that most of our problems in life occur. Yesterday I was talking about the body and the body's really important. The body's the place where the soul lives, it's the physical dimension and you can't separate the two. If my body isn't working properly, it's going to have an impact on my soul. Trauma in the body spills over into the soul. Hormones are the great link between body and soul, you can't separate the two. And if the body isn't being looked after properly then it is going to have a huge impact on our soul - our mind, our will and our emotions – one of the reasons that we really need to look after our body. But today, I want to talk specifically about our souls and the way that we tie ourselves up in a knots, the way we ruin our own lives because when we misuse and abuse our soul, that ends up ruining our lives. Let me explain it this way. If you and I don't look after our posture, the way we sit and stand, if we don't sit straight or walk properly then ultimately, we going to end up being permanently hunched over. If I slouch in front of my computer all day, I'll end up with a sore back and with headache and weakened muscles and it won't be long, another 10 or 15 years, and I'm just going to be living all my life all hunched over. In the same way, it's the same thing with the soul. If I'm constantly angry, unforgiving, proud, lazy, whatever it is, if I keep using my soul the wrong way, my mind, my will, my emotions, that soul is going to end up, well, hunched over, disabled in a sense. The best word I've ever come across to understand that disposition of our souls is our attitude to life. Some people have a great attitude, positive, optimistic, kind, forgiving and others are more like Uncle Scrooge – always angry, nasty, dishonest, always wanting their own way. See how a soul that's caught in that rut is going to ruin our lives? Some people are approaching their lives with a bad attitude; a soul that's hunched over, almost like it's cramped. A mind that's focused on self, a will that's brutal and won't yield and emotions that are all messed up. If I asked you to name three people in your life right now, who have a bad attitude, I bet you could do that in a split second, you just know who they are. And you know something...