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Believe it or not!, Inspiring, Scripture, Wisdom

Spirited Away . . .

Posted on November 18, 2011November 18, 2011 by Katharine

You likely have a spirit.

It may be good or bad, but we all have a “spirit-shaped” hole inside that something will fall into, if it fits.

All people groups from way back to ancient times until about 60 years ago, have known there were spirits out there. Now, only the more primitive peoples still know this truth.

What’s wrong with us?

Is the truth that we are more advanced, that we no longer hold to such “superstitions”?

Or is it that we are merely numb?

Look around you at all the things we gladly keep close by to anesthetize ourselves.

I don’t mean only chemicals, although alcohol has long been called “spirits” for good reason. Look at the TV, the endless games, the movies, and other entertaining things that we freely admit cause us, help us, to forget reality for a while.

Entertain means entrap. That is what the word means.

A trap is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we even use traps to protect our helpless animals from predators.

It all depends on which side of the trap you are on: outside or inside.

If you are stuck in the trap, how do you get out? Some, a very few, are strong enough to open the trap and walk out, but they forever have wounds from being in it, and some have wounds even from their struggle to escape.

There is another way. Someone stronger than you, stronger than the trap, stronger than the trap setter, can rescue you, heal your wounds, and give you strength to join the fight against the trap settter.

But only if you want Him to.

Why wouldn’t someone want to be released and healed from a trap?

I haven’t been able to figure that out.

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Believe it or not!, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture, Wisdom

Do-by-Self Is Done For

Posted on November 17, 2011November 17, 2011 by Katharine

Thirty-seven times.

Paul mentions himself 37 times in Romans 7:14-25.

I try, I can’t, I fail, I wish . . . We could join him couldn’t we! And when Paul calls himself wretched, isn’t there a part of us that says, “Oh, yeh!” We know. We’ve been there. We even have shirts with jokes about our failures:

My get up and go got up and went. My wife and I had words last night . . . but I didn’t get to use mine.

It’s not funny, though, not really, to be depressed or to squabble with a spouse. We laugh because it helps us not cry. It helps us feel less wretched.

But the misery will not go away by itself. We look around for a friend to help, and although a friend might listen and sympathize, really, what can another hurting person actually do to change me? We’re all alike, each carrying some type of misery, each wretched in his own way.

We each do things we knew better and never dreamed we would do, and we each carry around fear and painful memories from it. Like Paul.

And like Paul, we each can find the blessed victory he mentions just a line or two after bemoaning his wretchedness:

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.” Romans 8:1

Why does he say that? Because the “flesh” is just another way of saying the soul, the personality. It’s the part of us we know could be good, except it can’t, the part that weighs all the input and decides–decides wrong. It’s me, myself, and I; Mr. Do-by-self. The wretched one.

That guy.

And the solution Paul found?

Christ Jesus. There is something about Him, something in Him, that is our great escape.

And any who actually want to unload their wretchedness need only let go of it, turn their backs on it.

Turn to Him.

Believe it or not!, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture

Does God Have a Soul?

Posted on November 11, 2011June 28, 2012 by Katharine

Easy question, if you know what a soul is.

Let’s look at it again.

Mind – God most definitely has a mind. He has thoughts, for sure, and says His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. After all, anyone who could think up this whole universe CAN think.

Will – God also surely has a will. Why else would Jesus tell us to pray, “Thy will be done.”? His Word tells us He is not willing that anyone be lost, for instance. Always good, He is.

Emotions – Yes, He has those, too. His Word expresses anger, pity, and joy, among several others.

So, He loves His creation, including us, and He hates sinners for messing it up.

Kinda puts Him in a bind — both loving and hating people.

But He sent a solution to the whole thing, a Way to reconcile His hatred and love.

Pretty great thinking. Awesome, in fact. He tells us: His Son co-signed on our debt.

We defaulted.

So He paid.

And that is the kind of personality He has, the kind of soul He has.

The kind of soul we join our souls to when we go His way.

___________________

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Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Health, Inspiring, Wisdom

Body, Soul, and Spirit in Balance

Posted on November 10, 2011March 17, 2015 by Katharine

: personality (Photo credit: hang_in_there)

We’ve defined the soul and found that it is the personality. According to God, the personality lives forever. Amazing.

We’re not finished investigating all this, though, because, as the soul is made of three parts—mind, will, and emotions—so, also, the soul is one of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. And just as the will decides between facts and emotions, so also, the soul (personality) resides between the spirit and the body.

Deep. I know. But true.

Time for more definitions.

Body – The easy one, the part of us we can see, the flesh and bones, the blood, sweat, and tears. Easy.
But here is a new thought: All living things (plants, animals, and humans) have a body of some sort. And miraculous as the body may be in all its workings, it, at least, is visible. Handy for definitions.

Soul – Not too hard. We defined it last time, and although we cannot see the soul or personality, we can tell lots about it, identify it, label it, even anticipate it according to given patterns.
New thought: Plants do not have souls. Animals and humans do.

Spirit – The tough one. Can’t see it. Most people have to wait for it to manifest to know it is there. God’s Spirit is good and loving. All the others may fake goodness awhile, but will eventually show themselves to be imposters.
Plants and animals were not intended to be spiritual, although spirits can inhabit them, if briefly. Only people were intended to be spiritual, to contain God’s Holy Spirit. All the other spirits fight for a person to own and inhabit.

Not so many people want to know this. Not so many people want to give others some space to know this. Doesn’t make it untrue, though. Throughout the ages, truth never changes. Truth tellers may have to hide, but truth remains, no matter what the attacks.

So the soul is fighting on two fronts.

First, within itself is constant arbitration between thinking and feeling. Second, it becomes the rope in a tug-of-war between physical and spiritual.

Thoughts and feelings, body and spirit, all are nuances and facets that can color responses from person to person, or even within the same person from time to time.

For a small example, let’s take a box of candy. In your mind you know it is bad for your health. In your emotions you associate this type of candy with childhood Christmas favors. You must decide.

If your personality, or soul, is well-trained and healthy, you will forego eating the entire box, having maybe one piece, savoring it and remembering past fun, and stopping there.

If, however, your soul or personality is warped, you may skip it altogether and throw it away, or you may eat the entire thing, perhaps not even tasting much of it.

Still, if your body has an addiction to sweets, you might take over and eat an entire box every night, steal to get the money for it, and lie about it afterward.

If you are so entrapped, though, you might be so scared of the spirits inside yourself that you ask Jesus Christ to save you and put His Holy Spirit inside you, which would teach you to say no to all the things warring against your personality, and He would then have saved your soul.

Unpopular, but no less true for it.

___________________

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Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Health, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture, Wisdom

Psyching Up for the Great Psyche-Out

Posted on November 8, 2011November 8, 2011 by Katharine

What is the soul? Any idea?

Do you wonder, worry, about the state of your soul, desire your soul to go to heaven, or fear your soul will go to hell?

If we have any Bible knowledge at all, we know, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” We sin. We wonder.

It’s not just Christians, though. No, not at all. Most religions at least wonder, if not make claims to know, how to get the soul to a better place after this life, and how to keep it out of a worse place. It’s like we have this built-in KNOWLEDGE that the soul continues in the great beyond.

Yet, most do not know what the soul even IS.

Here’s a clue: The Greek for soul, in the Bible, is psuche. This is also the root word for our psychology – the study of the psyche or psuche. Are lights coming on for you already? Good.

Most who study the soul or psuche divide it into three parts. Everyone likes three parts, but with the soul, it actually applies. Freud (whom we will not be quoting much) called the parts id, ego, and superego, not necessarily in that order. We will call the parts by English names: Mind, Will, and Emotions. That is what makes up the soul, the psuche-psyche, the self.

For today, we will define those terms.

The Mind – The mind is the product of the organ we call the brain, and is the part that deals in facts. It takes in, stores, and/or produces our thoughts. With the mind we can read, remember, rationalize, think ahead, etc. The mind is where we learn, and can be strengthened by learning anything that is true, weakened by learning the false. It’s a big job, yet it is only 1/3 of your soul. What we think is not all there is to us. There also is what we want.

The Will – This is the part that determines what we want. It chooses. It should be in control, well-informed by both the mind and the emotions. It is the scale where the soul weighs the mind against the emotions, facts against feelings, and decides what the outcome will be. The will grows stronger by “exercising the will” and weaker, even unstable, by continuing in indecision. A strong-willed soul may even superimpose its wants onto someone else, if that someone is weak-willed. And stay out of the way if two strong-willed persons have opposing desires: That can even cause wars.

The Emotions – This part of the soul feels sad, happy, attracted, repelled, etc. Genuine smiles come from the emotions, as do tears. Many of the noblest emotions find expression in poetry and drama. With our emotions, we consider the feelings of others, and choose words according to their connotations. The emotions are strengthened by expression, and weakened by squelching. The emotions can be stored for later, as during mourning, when most people take about two years to process all the emotions of a normal loss of a loved one, and longer with a wrongful loss.

Enough for today. Tomorrow, Lord willing, we will use this foundation to build more understanding of the soul.

See ya!

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Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture, Wisdom

And What If I Don’t Wanna?

Posted on November 6, 2011June 1, 2019 by Katharine

What if I do not forgive? What happens then?

Several things:

I am not forgiven. In the book of Matthew 6:14-15, as Jesus is teaching His followers how to pray, He adds the admonition that if we do not forgive others, then God does not forgive us. Unforgiveness sounds like the unforgivable sin, to me!
I bind the sin to my children. In the book of Exodus 20:5-6, God tells us the consequences of unforgiven sin pass down to several generations. It makes sense. If I dwell on someone else’s sin for years, I start acting on this input. But there is more. If I am not forgiven, then instead of being in covenant with God, I covenant with His enemy. How can that bring any good?
I do not loose the sinner. In Matthew 16:19 and 18:18-35, even Jesus’ own followers had questions about forgiveness. (It’s always been a tough topic!) He then taught them: when we forgive something on earth, it is forgiven in Heaven. This very thing happened to Saul of Tarsus, who later changed his name to Paul. When Stephen was stoned to death (Acts 7:60,) his last words were of forgiveness for his killers, one of whom Saul was. What if Stephen had not forgiven him? Would we have the writings of Paul, today?

Here is what I used to teach my children when they were young and beginning to discover that relationship is not always all fun. Sometimes they would experience childish tussles and strike back or hold anger against others. So I said:

“If someone does something bad to you, it hurts. I know.

“But if you just do something back to them, it does not help you. You still hurt, and now they hurt, too. What good does that do?

“If you stay angry and then someone innocent comes along and, because of your hurt that you failed to get rid of, you strike out at that person, you STILL hurt, and that new person hurts, too.

“You are trying to get rid of your hurt by giving hurt to someone else. But when you give it to someone else, it does not mean they can take it AWAY from you. They may take it, but they cannot take it AWAY. You leave them hurting, too, and they may try to get rid of their hurt by giving hurt to yet someone else, who also cannot take it away.

“It’s a little like the flu. I can give it to you, but then I still have it; we both will have it. It just spreads.

“Only One person can take hurt AWAY, and that is God. If you give your hurt to Him, He can take it away from you and make you feel much better.”

Now, maybe that was too simple for an adult, but it is true. It’s what He died for. Why not try Him out?https://homescool.blog/2015/10/25/wrapped-in-a-bedsheet/

TOMORROW: A STORY ABOUT FORGIVENESS!

_________________

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Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture, Wisdom

Dust to Dust Do-Over

Posted on November 4, 2011May 22, 2015 by Katharine

Let’s lengthen yesterday’s list of sins against us:
rape,
lying,
rejecting,
breaking and entering,
laying-off.

Have I hit you yet?

What to do! Outside of calling the police, or suing, which can be legitimate actions, how do we finally get some peace about the hurtful things people do to us?

Forgiveness.

Yes, that’s the answer; that’s how we get peace. And forgiveness is often the one thing we least understand and least want.

Like bad-tasting medicine.

I know.

Just as in yesterday’s post, the first reason is God.

1. God. God requires us to forgive. This is the best reason because when we are wounded and aching on the inside, we don’t understand much—but we don’t even have to think. We just know what He requires and we prepare to go there.

God also promises to reward our forgiveness toward others with His forgiveness toward us, which, if we are honest, should highly motivate us.

And like any good father, God teaches by example. He shows us how to do forgiveness, in the most radical, graphic way.

2. Man. Man wants and needs forgiveness. Who among us is innocent?

To keep God’s forgiveness, we must be forgiving. Since He has shown us His awesome power to forgive, how can we do less than try to imitate Him? That is His thinking.

Forgiveness also frees man to be able to hear God. Before we forgive, all we can hear from Him is how we ought to forgive. Once we are over that hurdle, He can show us so much more.

Lack of forgiveness binds us to the sinner we refuse to forgive. This is so scary. What it means is that when we refuse to forgive sin against us, when we hug it up to ourselves and get it out and look at it every day, we start BEING like that sin.

Look at it this way: With a physical wound, if we treat it correctly, we can greatly minimize the scarring. But if we refuse to remove the dirt, refuse to medicate it, refuse a bandage, and continue picking at it, we make it worse. Bigger. Deeper. Uglier. Longer-lasting. More painful.

With a spiritual wound, we can even pass it down to our children…

3. Satan. Of course, he hates forgiveness, a real no-brainer, right?

The fun thing about this is when we obey God about forgiving, we SHUT THE DOOR TO HIS ENEMY. This is exactly what we need.

The reverse is also true, though: when we disobey about forgiving, we open a door to him and his horrible ways.

Stop by tomorrow for Part 3, about what forgiveness actually is.

I promise you, you will find it WONDERFUL NEWS!

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Image by Andreas Winterer via Flickr