Feeding Your Soul

When your soul is in turmoil, it’s hard to see clearly. Fear, anger, sorrow, and despair can distort your perception of reality. It’s hard to keep things in perspective. They can actually magnify your troubles.

Often, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, what you need is somebody to take you by the shoulders, look you square in the eye, and speak some sense to you. Sometimes that somebody is you.

I get this from the Bible. Listen to the psalmist talk to himself: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Ps. 43:5).

This was a man in trouble. He felt threatened and overwhelmed. And in the first part of the psalm, he was doing exactly the right thing by pouring out his soul in prayer to God. But then he stopped praying and spoke directly to his soul.

God is very intentional about what He includes in the Bible. So, when God includes this kind of soultalk in the inspired hymnal for the ages, we’re supposed to notice. God clearly intends us to speak to our souls. So, we need to understand why this is important.

When the psalmists talk to themselves, what are they doing? In every instance, whether in desperation or celebration, they are reminding themselves that their hope is in God. Why? Because in a world of tribulation (John 16:33), hope drains away, and they know how crucial it is to feed one’s soul.

Hope is to our soul what energy is to our bodies. Hope is the spiritual energy generated in the soul when we believe that our future is good, even if our present is bad. Our souls must have hope to keep going, just as our bodies must have energy to keep going.   Continue at Jon Bloom