Shelley discovered something during her PLL journey that I’ve been pondering ever since her Holy Spirit Eureka moment and I really want you to understand as well. It could make this abundant life a little easier to grasp.
She thought that when she became a believer, she needed to relinquish and remove everything about her. She thought in dying and being raised up that she was now gone and Christ was to reign. She was spending a lot of time denying herself, but it wasn’t resulting in the abundance Jesus promised and it was confusing and discouraging.
That’s because she was trying to kill the wrong thing!
When we die and are raised to new life in Christ, it is not the soul that is to die, it is the flesh. The soul – your precious, uniquely formed personhood, or what we like to call your “essence” – is intact. It doesn’t go away! It will remain with you forever. Scripture calls this the Nephesh – the seat of desire – of all that animates the flesh (our body).
God changes the order of things. Let me see if I can put it to you in a simple diagram:
You’ll notice that in the left hand column, the desires of the flesh hold the pre-eminent position of driving all activity in a person’s life. And in the process, the soul gets trampled by these desires. The flesh is hard wired for destruction. It will not live. It will die. The flesh is in charge, the soul follows the desires of the flesh, leaving the Holy Spirit supplanted by the flesh desires.
In the right hand column, the Holy Spirit is in charge. The Holy Spirit provides instruction to the soul through prayer, the Word and wise counsel. The soul then, as an act of its will, says to the flesh (body), you will not rule and rob me in this moment! I don’t care how good it might feel, I don’t care how bad you are craving this, you, flesh, are not my identity any longer! You were born into the first Adam and you will die. Therefore, I will listen to the Holy Spirit who intends to show me abundant life in my new identity in Christ. The flesh is supplanted by the righteous instruction of the Holy Spirit and the soul “animates” the body to behave more and more like Christ.
1 Corinthians explains this so well! Pictured is a page of my Bible on this. Orange represents the flesh and blue represents the soul – mind, will and emotions. You are an eternal being – God created your soul for live forever.. Adam is described as being a “living soul,” but whose identity was in the flesh (born of sin). That meant his soul (the seat of his mind, will and emotions), would die an eternal death due to the consequences of sin.
God says we must lose this life (my soul) in order to experience eternal life. This is where it got confusing for Shelley. She thought she had to stop being Shelley! But the reality was/is, that she needed to submit her soul (her eternal self) to the Father so her soul would animate like Christ.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole word, but loses his soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:24-26
Matthew 16:24-26 shows us that the soul (your life) can be lost if focused on trying to save it in our own way – it stays dead in its transgressions and has only an eternal death to look forward to.
The converse is also true – that it can be saved if I deny myself (and my desire to save myself) and follow Christ (and His desire to save me) I know look forward to an eternal life of my soul. In either case, I am still me. Once in Christ, I exchange my desires for His desires. This is a life long process of aligning our soul (our life force) under His Holy Spirit. My essence (soul, life source spiritual self) remains intact but transformed in this process – it’s called sanctification. Shelley’s desire to live by this Matthew 16 instruction was inspiring, yet it was also suffocating her. She was no longer able to move in her faith. She was frozen in time and space! She knew to stop living out of the desires of her flesh, but what was she to start living from?
This is what PLL helped her to understand! She had an essence to her, just like Peter, John, Paul, Barnabas, Priscilla and Aquila. And that essence doesn’t die! These famous biblical characters didn’t stop being themselves; they started submitting all desires – ALL desires – to the authority of the Holy Spirit. All. This is the beautiful realignment of the soul under Holy Spirit! C.S. Lewis say is so well in Mere Christianity:
The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of “little Christs,” all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him.
The soul is no longer trampled by the flesh. The soul is able to breathe and dance before the Lord as it begins to live out the design God originally created for him/her. Yes, the flesh will scream, but that’s not you! That’s that which was born of the earth and into the first Adam. The flesh must be replaced by the rule of the Holy Spirit.
- Personal story to illustrate – I hate inefficiency. I like to expedite things. I like to get as much done with as little use of time and other resources as possible. Hmmm – this felt good and right. As I grew in Christ, I became uneasy with my approach. I thought about the oil that was poured out on Jesus (John 12:3) or about the Leader whose daughter was dying and Jesus delayed (Luke 8:49). My understanding of efficiency and being expeditious was severely challenged by the “a day is but a thousand years and a thousand years is but a day” God I served (Psalm 90:4). If flesh was in charge, I would trample people, I would miss way more opportunities to love than I already do and my ego would become arrogant and boastful. Spirit in charge restrains this quality in me to align with the work He is doing.
- I have a sense of tremendous loyalty to the people I love. I will do anything for them. How does Holy Spirit instruct? Learn to make it for their highest and best good and not just anything I want to do for them. If flesh was in charge, I would do too much, create dependency and soul would become resentful. Spirit in charge protects from that.
- I’m getting older. I cannot do things that I used to be able to do. I have moments of sadness about that. Then I remind myself that my body is a perishable seed that cannot inherit heaven. God’s instruction for me right now is to take care of it as my temple, but do not try to preserve it as a means of defying the natural path of decay. Spirit gives me a sense of renewal and joy even though outwardly I’m wasting away.
Those are very simple stories. There are far more personally disruptive stories of God showing me His better way. And when shown that, I get to decide, does my desire to have what I want in the moment yield to the desire to follow God in this moment? How will I align my heart; my life? I am still me whatever decision I make, but what becomes animated in me demonstrates whether the Holy Spirit or the flesh are dictating the actions of the soul.
When it starts to feel complicated, check your spiritual alignment and ask who/what is in charge right now? It is not complicated. It is simple. But it will require that you kill the desires of the flesh. Each decision becomes an identity crisis. Do I choose to identify with Christ or with my flesh? Here are some examples of things I’ve been slaying lately:
- Not allowing my eyes to look upon violence.
- Not permitting myself to worry about the future.
- Not complaining about ____________.
- Not wishing that/for ____________.
- Not holding back forgiveness for ______________.
- Not expecting others to understand _____________.
In doing these things (or not doing them) I am still me! My essence is intact – I am Cheryl who loves people with a passionate personality and a zeal for adventure. But these qualities are not allowed to be expressed with the flesh in authority (well, less and less that is – I’m still a work in progress!). The Holy Spirit is in charge. The Holy Spirit restrains/constrains. The Spirit instructs. And as the Holy Spirit is allowed by me to do so, I experience abundance.
Through what we call the Heartland process, Promised Land Living helped Shelley to know who she was in Christ! This changed everything for her. She started showing up to her conversations with people. She smiled bigger. Her shoulders relaxed. And yes, the flesh was supplanted by the glorious, eternal and perfect authority of the Holy Spirit. As Holy Spirit was given permission to sit in the seat of authority, transformation took place, a relationship that had long been broken was restored, and Shelley is now able to minister in a way she longed for for many years.
Spiritual alignment is powerful. We believe that part of finding that alignment is understanding who YOU are in Christ. That is the function of the Heartland Process. Alumni – Do you still have your Heartland Statement? If so, maybe pull it out this Christmas and ponder who God designed you to be. And better yet, I wonder what you will look like as the flesh is supplanted in more and more areas of your life by the Holy Spirit. If you don’t have your heartland statement handy, maybe reach out to your Coach Presenter who coached you through it and see if they still have a copy of it. I know I’ve saved just about every Heartland Statement over the past 20 years!
Would you like to dig into this realignment process – check out the upcoming groups under “courses” tab!
