How To Love With All Your Soul.

Remember that Children’s Church action song “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength”? Where you’d have to point to your chest for your heart, your head for you mind, flex for your strength and point to your sole for your soul? Well, that was misleading. Ok, I’m being a little sarcastic, but for the longest time I didn’t know what my soul really was.

Watchman Nee’s definition of the soul as your will, mind, and emotions: what you choose, what you think, and how you feel. He writes that the soul is the organ of our free will and is the connection between our physical responses and our spiritual choices. In Greek, the direct transliteration of ‘soul’ used in Luke 10:27 is psuche (psoo-khay) and means “the vital breath, breath of life” (Strong’s Concordance). The soul is the direct aftermath of God breathing His gift of life into a person.

So, how do I love the Lord with my soul, this direct aftermath, this point of merger between my spirit and my body? Our soul is in constant connection between two worlds – two worlds that were not originally meant to function apart.

When God created Adam and Eve, He gave them free will, the ability to choose. So later in Eden, after the pair had eaten of the forbidden tree, God asked them “where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). Their responses to God tell Him exactly where they are: afraid, ashamed, separated.

Well a couple thousand years later, we are no different. Our soul can feel worn out at the separation of spirit and body. So what can I do? How can I love the Lord with all my soul? What is one way I can love God in this way?

If Adam and Eve and I feel afraid, ashamed and separated from God, what is the opposite of these things: confident, exposed and connected. These words melded together equal vulnerability, which comes from the Latin word for “wound”. Defined, it is the state of ‘being open to injury’ sounds like a place I run from, not run towards.

I often hear vulnerability compared with weakness and associated with a carelessness and emotionally driven nature. Why on earth would I want to invite the world in so that it can rip open all that is flawed and imperfect and weak? Why on earth would I allow others the opportunity to hurt me, use me, abuse me, condemn me, and persecute me?

Ironically, this perspective that vulnerability equals weakness is fed by an insecure view of self, a view that says, who do you think you are; a view that feeds on fear. I came face to face with this realization when I am in prayer. I found myself like Adam and Eve, covering my nakedness and being dishonest with myself about life. My inhibited prayers made me feel fake in my conversations with God.

Obviously God knows state of my heart, but how much more powerful is it when I can grow my relationship with God through honesty. I know vulnerability is important to the Father because God is love and there is no fear in love, for true love forgoes the worry of pain and gossip. I know vulnerability is important to the Father because “He made [our] hearts, so He understands everything [we] do” (Psalm 33:15). He sees us and has created us to be seen. I know that vulnerability is important to the Father because God gave me the choice to love Him or love self; the Divine was vulnerable in creating free will.

With vulnerability, we are honest with our condition, our failings, our flaws, but we live in a culture that peddles ideas of openness and honesty through multiple filters and lenses. In her talks on expanding perception, Dr. Brene Brown, a forefront research professor on vulnerability, addresses the term as a place where we have to be seen for whom we truly are – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Vulnerability is an untamed beast that lives outside of certainty, belong our control. It is the greatest form of letting go.

The difference between people who choose to be vulnerable and those that don’t is that those who are vulnerable see themselves as worthy: possess a strong sense of belonging and of love (Dr. Brown). It all begins with you. It starts with looking in the mirror and saying I am doing life with that person and I choose to love that person.

Studies show that vulnerable people are the ones who live in a wholehearted way. It is these people who possess the courage to be imperfect and to find strength, hope, beauty and joy in their imperfections. It is these who have compassion for themselves as well as the next guy. They are kind to themselves – mentally, emotionally, and physically. These people are connected with others as a result of authenticity - a willingness to let go of who they think they should be and embrace who they actually are.

I first need to be vulnerable because vulnerability is what makes me human, and from there I attract other ‘humans’ who also wield this double edged sword: vulnerability can lead to “shame and fear and unworthiness… but, it is also the birthplace of joy, creativity, of belonging, of love” (Forbes, Brown).

Vulnerability is not something that can be owned overnight; rather it is a journey or a playground experience of sorts… I learn to say sorry first, to love wholeheartedly with uncertainty, to allow emotion to flood my eyes and forgive myself for what else. It is a journey to believe that you are enough, to practice gratitude and joy in the moments full of terror and uncertainty, to let yourself be seen for who you are and what you are becoming.

Vulnerability co-exists with depending on God (2 Corinthians 3:1-6). It is in the places of relying on the Father that we are able to uncover the places where He can do His work through us. Proverbs 2 addresses the discernment/wisdom we need to function out of when being vulnerable with others. The fruit of vulnerability creates wholeness, not brokenness. This wholeness does not mean getting what you want. This wholeness is becoming a stronger person.

The thing is, while the world may say vulnerability will isolate you and keep you from connecting with others, in turn, it actually makes you relatable and real to people, and it is here that community is born. When we lay down our walls that protect us and guard our years of trying to look perfect, to act right, to do well, we actually gain freedom.

At the end of a long life, the image you control on social media or at work will not measure up to what Jesus sees. We no longer have to hustle for our worthiness. Now we can stand up in it and own who we are and what we are becoming. No longer do we have to armour ourselves with perfectionism, cynicism, control, intellect, and so on. Now, we get to arise as children of the King, of heirs to a great inheritance, of sons and daughters of a loving Father. We no longer have to function from a place of striving, but rather, from a place of strength.

Three Questions to Intentionally Check up on Your Soul

1. Have I had an honest 'vulnerable' conversation with someone I trust and who is a safe person in the last week?

2. Have I spent one on one time with the Lord in prayer, worship and the reading of the Bible in the last week?

3. Am I seeing evidence and/or growth of the fruit of the Spirit in my life (Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control)?

#faith #christianity #soul #luke1027 #believe