Exuberant for Life: Heart Missing Theology

THE QUESTION
"What's all this spirit stuff?" you might ask.

Great question. The struggle between spirit and soul isn't new. The apostle Paul wrote much about it. Though I have been very drawn to the topic since I first started reading the bible twenty years ago, I felt nudged to stay away from the popular teaching out there. What I did hear made very little sense as I looked at the entirety of scripture. THEN IT HIT ME.

Our theology has missed a huge key.

Sometimes without meaning to we ignore gigantic concepts in the scriptures. I don't think we mean to. Take a look at this:

"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength..." ~Mark 12: 30-31

Notice the sequence.

What's first? Do you see it???

As far as I understand from looking at scripture, the spirit, inner man and heart can refer to the same thing. Hebrew is a spectrum language; if your heart is fond of God, the Hebrew text shows He feels and responds a certain way; whereas if someone's heart is not for Him, He responds differently.

In our culture we tend to have a horrible struggle with letting spirit/heart/inner man get ahead and lead the soul. I think Scott Phillips tells of it well in his song, FLEECE.

Since Jesus agrees with the Old Testament sequence with heart in the lead, I think it's safe to say the order matters to Him. In our western world of theology-loving people who exalt each other for soul knowledge, there exists a terrible ignorance of the heart.

Yes, I know about that one verse people often quote but I won't give it attention here. I will try to cover it later since it has successfully deterred an entire generation from honoring God's most important item on His TO DO LIST. In the mean time, you can take a look at all the verses about the heart while you wait at the edge of your seat for me to write that. ;)

AN ANSWER
My favorite explanation comes from Arthur Burk who sent me Nurturing Your Spirit Basic Seminar Level 1 DVD's.

Click here for more information and to order.

As I watched and listened, I felt the entirety of my whole world shift. To begin, he shares scientific studies and evidence of our spirits working in our midst. Eventually covering how to engage the human spirit, he tells of being challenged to believe God could heal from the chin up.

As I went through the seminar, I recalled to mind an observation I had made over the years as I mingled with God's people from various bodies and backgrounds: some in this culture are NOT yet comfortable talking about certain biblical stuff which is very obvious to some in other parts of the world: namely, the unseen realm.

Wanting to implement quickly, we continued to fill our home with the scriptures on audio 24/7 and learned all we could. I had the privilege to connect with a beautiful person who worked with my spirit. It was strange and wonderful. I devoured Arthur Burk's other materials and listened to everything I could get my hands on.

After a few years progress, here's what I conclude: I am certain God intends our spirit (inner man/heart) to LEAD our soul and that our body helps it all happen. Period.

Getting our spirit to lead in this culture where we ignore it is a challenge. It's like finding an atrophied muscle and learning to work it...not that fun -but so worth the effort! I am a pretty big spirited person and still my soul had to learn the ridiculously difficult work of learning to take orders from my spirit who connects with the Holy Spirit. This entire blog site is the fruit of my soul taking a back seat to my spirit leading. The fruit is juicy.

While I certainly don't understand everything about the whole process, I have enjoyed and appreciated the input from SLG along the way.

Here are some places you might like to peek into if you're of a mind to fill in some gaps concerning a pretty important reality.

Blessings as you adventure, loving God with all of you in the order He chose.

The Flow of Life and Structure of Your Spirit audio download: