Caring for the Neglected Places in Your Soul
One of the age old practices in our culture is that of presenting who we are as our vocation. We present our occupation title as a means to inform our new acquaintance of our function. In essence, we unknowingly begin to associate our vocations or contribution to society, as our worth. This may seem small, but in practice we often neglect places in our soul by living from these self-sustained versions of ourselves instead of our true selves in Christ. In today’s message, we will work to discover the places in our soul that we have chosen to cover up and see God’s call to uncover those places. Eldredge notes that “there’s an enormous difference between relief and restoration.” Our hope is to choose a new path towards reunion with our true identity and God.
Wisdom calls people to take care of themselves in order to protect themselves from harm. This is no less true of our souls as it is our physical bodies. Often we allow places in our souls to grow neglected. How might this damage our ability to live life to the fullest?
Our souls endure so much just on a given day. We take on the worlds pain, just by watching the news. Plus we have our own losses to carry. How might this constant barrage of hard and painful information shape our souls?
We can easily run from the pains that collect in our souls. We can work overtime to avoid feeling loss. We do so by simply trying to ignore those places because it feels too painful to bear. Is there unattended loss or pain that has caused places of neglect in your soul? What sort of consequence comes from having a shrinking soul?
When we allow our vocations, responsibilities or our titles to inform us of who we are, how might this exacerbate the problem of a neglected soul?
Without knowing it, we can easily create a false self that consists of what we do as way of defining us, instead of whose we are. What are the dangers of finding our security of in what we do, achieve or accumulate?
Read Proverbs 4:23. We see the wisdom of protecting what is essential for us to flourish as God’s people in this verse. Based upon today’s message, how are you doing practicing soul care? What changes should you make to properly order your life and help your soul avoid neglect? Write down some next steps.
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