Our theme for this month: “Taking care of your soul”
Our Bible verse for today: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you.” Jeremiah 31:3 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “God longs for deep fellowship with His people”
In our devotional a couple of days ago we spent some time considering the truth that not only does God bless us, but we in turn can bless Him. We can and should bring joy to the heart of God. Throughout the course of this month we’ve also focused on the truth that it is our soul which makes it possible for us interact with and to have fellowship with God.
An important truth we frequently forget is that God is a person, complete with feelings and emotions. Way too often we memorize facts about God, we consider great truths about Him such as His being omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, but that doesn’t really make us feel any closer to Him. Such statements about God are cold and abstract. They’re little more than theological truths which we can read about in a textbook.
But from the first chapter of Genesis all the way through to the last chapter of Revelation, the Bible describes for us a God who feels and loves, who experiences joy and sorrow, a God who knows the full range of emotions which we as humans also experience. The great Christian writer A.W. Tozer once explained it like this, “In the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.”
In Jeremiah 31:3 we read of God’s everlasting love for His people. We read of how He continually reaches out and extends faithful love to those who are His. How do we get to know God like that? How do we learn to interact with Him on that emotional level, with both Him and us experiencing the full range of feelings and emotions in a two-way interactive relationship? That’s the job of the soul and it can only happen when the soul is healthy.
This brings us back to the classic disciplines of the Christian faith. There simply is no substitute for prayer, Bible study, worship, meditation, service, fellowship, and the other practices of the Christian faith, all of which place us in a position before God whereby He can nurture our soul and interact with us. There is no substitute.
When we read the Bible we need to stop approaching it like it’s a textbook which provides us with information, tips, and techniques. Instead we need to read it as a story about God the person. We need to note His feelings, His emotions, His joys and sorrows. We need to see Him longingly and continuously reaching out to people and drawing them into a deep relationship with Himself. And then we need to respond to Him on that level. This is the life of a healthy soul.
God Bless,
Oak Hill Baptist Church 