February 28, 2020 by Pastor Bill Kiefer

What Does the Restored Soul Look like? (Part 2)

Psalm 23:3-6 (NKJV) ³ He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. ⁴ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. ⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. ⁶ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever.

In my last post I began looking at the picture of the restored soul we see in Psalm 23. The restored soul is free from fear even in the shadow of death itself. That does not mean that the restored soul is never afraid, it means that fear is not in control. How is this possible? First because the restored soul is keenly aware of the fact that God is with him. If God is with and for us, there is no need to be afraid.

Second, we see that God’s rod and staff comfort the restored soul. The rod is the thing God uses to bring correction into our lives. Correction is not punishment. It is correction. Correction implies training. The rod helps us grow in knowledge, skill and understanding of the things of God. This word also means a stick with which to write. God writes his wisdom on our souls to sustain us. Finally, it is a stick with which to fight. God drives away our enemy with the rod. In time, we can learn to use it as well. James tells us if we submit to God and resist the devil, the devil will flee from us.

This verse also mentions the staff of God. I found the Hebrew word to be very interesting. It is feminine in gender. This implies sustenance. His staff provides all we need. It is also a walking stick. A walking stick does not walk for us but instead provides assistance as we walk. God’s staff will help us walk in God’s ways.

Let’s look at more of this psalm and see what else a restored soul possesses. God prepares a table in the middle of our enemies. This picture implies two things. First, there is something to eat. However, a table for eating meant much more than that in David’s day. To sit and eat is a sign of security. If you were at threat, you did not sit at a “prepared” table. You would eat ready to fight. You would eat food that did not need cooking. A cooked meal at a prepared table meant fellowship and peace. The table itself is significant but where the table is set is even more important. It is in the presence of David’s enemies.

What an interesting picture. David has enemies. They are not far away but right there with him. They have not surrendered. They are not at the table with David, so this is not a picture of an armistice or treaty. They are still at war but because God is the one who set the table, as long as David needs to eat and rest the enemy cannot touch him. That is the picture of a restored soul.

We will always face trouble in life. That has always been so and it has not changed. However, the restored soul understands that God is for him and therefore no one can succeed against him. The restored soul understands that if God sets a table it is perfectly safe to rest, eat and fellowship. The enemy must simply wait. God is the one who will give rest that the enemy cannot take away from us. He may jump, shout and threaten. We do not need to worry. God set our table and we can rest.

I was talking to someone recently who is fighting a battle. This person is winning, but it is easy to be overwhelmed in the fight. There are things that must be done. Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God. God is not going to forsake you because you “don’t read the Bible enough.” Anyone in a faith battle understands that to fill their heart and mind with the Word of God fuels and strengthens our faith. In the case of the battle this person is fighting there are many physical things they must do as well. It is easy to come to the place that we think our efforts are so essential that if we let up for a moment, we will lose ground to the enemy.

We do need to be diligent. However, faith is also a rest in God knowing that he is in control. That is easy when the battle is not raging. It is easy for others to say when nothing is at stake for them. It is much more difficult when we are fighting for our lives and even more so when we are fighting for our loved ones. Nevertheless, the restored soul understands that there must be rest. I told my friend, “God wants you to know it’s alright to rest. He is in control. Keep doing what you need to do but take time to rest as well.”

In the middle of the battle there are times when God will prepare a table in the very presence of our enemies. He wants us to take some time to rest and refresh. We may need to sleep. We may need to get our minds off the battle for a while. We may need to do something else besides fight. We may need to spend some time with him in worship, prayer and the Word in a way that has nothing to do with the battle. If God prepares the table, God takes care of the enemy.

I like to picture the Father coming to us and saying, “Dinner time child. The battle can wait. And as for you, devil, you stay right there, and I will continue to work on you while my child is at the table!”

There will be time to get back to the battle, but when you do you will be strengthened and refreshed. The battle will not be so hard. The worry will not be so pressing. The fear will leave. You will be surprised at how easy it is to overcome a defeated foe. You will never lose by resting in God. Isaiah 40:31 makes the same promise.

Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV) ³¹ But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

My word to you today is the same as the word God gave me for my friend. It is OK to rest. You cannot win by your own efforts. We win by faith in God. There are things you need to do. I understand that but the Father has called us to the table. The enemy will just have to wait. While we eat, God is still at work. Everything is in his hands and he prepares the table in the presence of your enemies.

Therefore, do not be afraid. God is with you and nothing can prosper against you. Greater is the one who prepared the table than the enemy who threatens it. Don’t be afraid to relax. Don’t be afraid to stop thinking about the battle. Just enjoy the meal and see what God will do.

February 25, 2020 by Pastor Bill Kiefer

What Does a Restored Soul Look Like?

We have been looking at the 23^rd Psalm in light of restoration. I believe 2020 is to be a year in which God works restoration both in our individual lives and in the church as a whole. In Psalm 23, the Lord tells us that he will restore our souls. We have looked at many aspects of this. Last time we looked at verse 3. The restoration of the soul requires that we walk in paths of righteousness. This word means to walk in what is right in a moral sense, a natural sense or a legal sense. The peace of God flows from walking in his ways. When we do not, sin has an open door and our souls will be out of place and out of balance.

1 John 1:9 gives us some insight.

1 John 1:9 (NKJV) ⁹ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Someone told me recently that because of grace there was no need for a Christian to repent. However, this verse seems to differ. The only reason we would confess our sins is because we repent of them. John tells us that if we do repent, God is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We are righteous, or right with God, by what Jesus did. Everyone of us commits sin at some point in our lives. This sin will not negate what Jesus did. That is true. Why then does John seem to say the opposite?

This verse is talking about our side of righteousness, not God’s. Thankfully God loves us even when we sin. He does not throw us out of the kingdom. However, when we let sin remain, it causes us to lose our sense of righteousness. We know that something is wrong. If we ever come to the place sin no longer bothers us, we have a real problem. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 4:2 that our conscience can become seared or hardened until we no longer recognize sin. At that point we are at the mercy of the devil.

When we confess our sin, we take responsibility for what we have done that is wrong. We ask God to forgive us. He then applies grace to us, taking away from us the sense of separation that sin brings. He also closes the door to our lives that sin has opened. This is a powerful tool that brings our intellect, emotions and will, into balance again.

I want to add one thing. It says he leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. If we want the peace that passes natural understanding and the joy that overcomes all depression, we must remember that our lives are not our own. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us that we have been bought with a price. Jesus paid for our salvation with his blood. We are not our own. That means we should live to honor God in all our ways. When we do, our thinking will be permeated with the wisdom of God. Our emotions will be touched by the joy that comes from knowing him. Our will comes into submission to his Word and his ways because he is more important to us than we are to ourselves.

Let us move on and see what a restored soul looks like. In verse 4, we see that we can walk in the very shadow of death and not fear any evil thing. Why? The person whose soul is restored is absolutely convinced that God is with him. Sometimes this begins as a statement and attitude of faith. We may not feel anything. However, the more we choose to believe this promise, the more we will feel the reality of it. Paul puts it this way.

Philippians 4:6-7 (NKJV) ⁶ Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; ⁷ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

When we know that he is with us, his peace will come to us in such a way that it will guard our hearts and minds. Even if we do not feel it right away, the more we think on him and his Word, the more it will overrule the things that are working to bring disquiet to our souls.

This is not just a state of mind. David adds something that is very important. He says, “Your rod and your staff comfort me.” What does this mean? The word translated rod means a stick for punishing, writing, fighting and ruling. Gods rod is there to bring correction. This is not something that will hurt us. It is not something that flows from God’s displeasure. It is something that he brings to us for our protection. The sheep who are about to run over a cliff need that rod to turn them back to safety.

It will write for us the wisdom we need to sustain our soul. It is the power of God that fights against our enemies. It helps us rule our emotions, so they lead us to God not away from him. One other interesting meaning of the word is clan. The rod is the protection of the body of Christ to help us maintain our souls in balance.

The staff is a little different. It is also a stick, but this word is feminine in gender. It means sustenance. The name of God, El Shaddai, is similar in nature. It literally means the “breasty one” as in the breast of a mother to a nursing child. That is all that baby needs for food and it looks to nothing else. His staff is a type of all we need. We should never look to anything else until we look to his staff. This word also means a walking stick. It is there to help us walk when we get weak in our intellect, our emotions or our will.

When we are settled in the knowledge that these things are real and that our shepherd is applying them in our lives, no situation, not even the valley of the shadow of death will disturb our soul. Death cannot penetrate his rod nor his staff. They are there to help us in every circumstance. They do many things, but in this psalm, we are promise that they will strengthen our soul, restoring it to a rest in God that will always see us through to victory.

February 16, 2020 by Pastor Bill Kiefer

He Leads me in Paths of Righteousness

I believe 2020 is a year of restoration. Recently we have been looking at what God will restore beginning with Psalm 23:3 in which God promises to restore our souls. We have restoration of the soul in salvation, but we need the touch of God on our soul to bring experiential restoration. In this psalm we see some keys to how he wants to do that. We have seen that there is a place to which God wants to lead us that will help deal with the stress and worry of life. He wants to lead you to green pastures and still waters. As I was writing this, I began to see this place in my spirit. Both of these things describe peace and the peace, of God can overcome any kind of stress.

Today I want to look at another aspect of the restoration of the soul. The third verse says that God will lead me in paths of righteousness for his name sake. The word translated righteousness here means the right in a moral sense, a natural sense or a legal sense. The restoration of the soul requires that we come back to this place. In fact, the first thing David says after the promise of restoration of the soul is that he will lead us in the paths of what is right in moral things, natural things and legal things.

In speaking of Moses, Hebrews 11 says that he chose to identify with the afflictions of Israel rather than partake of the “passing pleasures of sin.” Sin often brings pleasure, but that pleasure is passing, and it always carries a price. Part of the price of sin is the disquiet it brings to the soul. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. I do not believe this just means physical death. It opens the door to the influence of death to our lives. This includes guilt, fear, regret and many other things that will affect the soul of man.

Not only do we see the disquieting effects of sin, but the more dominates us and the more we accept them as normal, the more our soul becomes warped to a mindset that comes from sin and the cultural tendencies that were produced by sin. In America today it is considered completely natural for people to have sex outside of marriage. Yet we morn the proliferation of sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, children who grow up without the guidance they need and myriad other effects of what the Bible calls fornication. This results in an intellectual and emotional life that is out of the place God created for them. It also results in a weak will when it comes to doing anything that goes against the pleasure gods we serve today.

It is out of vogue to say this, but the obvious solution to all of the above things is simple. Walk in the paths of righteousness. God said do not commit fornication, for instance, because it brings results that are not healthy to any part of the human. Sin is particularly unhealthy for the life of our soul. If I walk in paths of righteousness, I do not open the door for the death that came upon man with sin. If I obey what the Bible teaches, my soul begins to think like God thinks. My norm becomes something completely different. My soul finds the peace that David spoke of because I am in balance with what God created.

No one is perfect in this. We all allow sin to get in at times. Condemnation because this is true is not the answer. To accept it is inevitable is also not the answer. If I follow the Lord my shepherd in paths of righteousness, I will find that my soul becomes more and more healthy. It begins to do what it was designed to do. It becomes a clear channel for the direction, peace, wisdom and all the other things that come to us from the spirit of God that dwells within the believer (John 14:17.)

Paul understood this and gave us a word in Romans 12 that will help us with the restoration of the soul.

Romans 12:1-2 (NKJV) ¹ I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. ² And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Here Paul tells us what keeps us from presenting our bodies to God as well as what keeps us from walking in his will. We need a transformation which can only come from the renewing of our minds. The mind and the soul are synonymous terms. Our minds are the seat of our intellect, our emotions and our will. These are the same elements that make up our soul. If we are going to walk as God wants us to walk, we must do something about our soul.

Our spirit is the part that was born again when we received Jesus. According to 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 we are new creatures in Christ. He tells us all things have become new and all things are now of God. Why, then, do so many Christians live like nothing has changed? Why are there so many things in their lives that are not of God? Is it because salvation did not work? Is it because those people are just too bad? Is it because it just does not matter because salvation is by grace? None of those things is true.

The same Paul who wrote 2 Corinthians 5 wrote Romans 12. The problem is not with salvation. It is not even a problem in the spirit of the person who is born again. That part is settled. The problem is that our souls, our minds, have been trained by the society and culture born of sin. They have often been educated by people who do not believe in God or the things of the spirit. Even at its best, humanity largely does not know what God’s word says and if they do it is clouded by religion. We need our minds renewed!

The renewal of the mind comes in two ways. First, it comes by hearing, studying and understanding the word of God. The Bible is not just a book. It is a living thing (Hebrews 4:12.) The life within it is the life of a seed (Mark 4:13-35.) When we plant it by studying, reading, hearing anointed teaching and meditating on the Word, it has the power to rewrite our soul so that it conforms to the wisdom of God not the wisdom of man (James 3:13-18.)

The second part is what David tells us in Psalm 23. He leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. We will never see the restoration of our soul if we do not develop a personal, active and growing relationship with the Lord. The Bible is full of power, but it is the interaction of the Word of God and the spirit of God within our souls that produces transformation.

As we lie down in the green pastures by the still waters, we find relationship which leads to fellowship which produces the renewing of our souls. In this process God takes our hands and leads us in the paths of righteousness. We begin to see how he thinks as he opens his Word to us. We begin to change how we see life. Our whole view of the world changes. The result is a peace that the world cannot understand. It is a joy that is not dependent upon the outward things in life. It is also a power to change what is not in tune with God and bringing it into a place of balance in all areas of life.

This is in no way talking about law. It is talking about relationship and the dynamics that are part of any relationship. The difference is that our relationship is with the God who knows all, sees all, understands all, is all powerful and is all loving toward us.

February 8, 2020 by Pastor Bill Kiefer

He Makes Me Lie Down…..

Psalm 23:1-6 (NKJV) ¹ The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. ² He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. ³

We have been looking at the fact that God says he will restore our souls. The fall of man in Eden caused the soul to occupy a place in our being that it was never meant to hold. We looked at the general results of that in our last two posts. What about the personal results? I think as we look at this wonderful psalm, we will begin to understand. In the verses quoted above we find some of the most beloved words of the Bible. Let us look a little more closely at them. We will find just how God restores our soul.

The first thing we see is David’s proclamation that the Lord is his shepherd. We have already discussed this. David understood what it meant to be a shepherd. There is a wonderful book by W. Phillip Keller called A Shepherd’s Look at the 23^rd Psalm. This book examines these words from the perspective of a shepherd. I encourage you to read this book, but I want to point out a few things starting with the fact that the Lord God Almighty is the one responsible for caring for your life. The true shepherd was so committed to the wellbeing of the sheep that he would die to care for and protect them. Our shepherd as he walked the earth as the Son of God did exactly that for you and me. Paul made a powerful statement to the same effect.

Romans 8:32 (NKJV) ³² He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

Our shepherd died for us and he will give us everything we need. Look at Matthew 6:31-33

Matthew 6:31-33 (NKJV) ³¹ Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

One of the most powerful negative things we do with our souls is worry. There are often many things to worry about. Worry manifests in all parts of our soul life. Our intellects are overwhelmed by the bad possibilities that could happen in our circumstances. We dwell on them until we clearly understand how the bad thing could easily happen.

Our emotions also get involved in the worry process. We begin to feel the feelings that the bad thing will produce. There is a knot in our stomach as we contemplate how bad things will feel. Our will begins to weaken until in the end we have no resistance to the inevitability of the problem happening. Eventually our will is molded to accept that something bad is coming and there is nothing we can do to change it. All of this when nothing has happened yet!

This is a picture of a soul out of control, out of balance and out of place. God wants to restore your soul. He wants to put back in balance what is out of balance. The way to deal with the out of balance soul state of worry is to remember this simple truth. “The Lord is my shepherd! I shall not want for anything. I may not see the answer yet, but my Father knows what I need, and he is working on it.” The more we remember this the less the effects of worry will cripple our ability to trust God.

Another out of balance condition of the soul is anxiety. I know that this is a real thing and I in no way make light of it. I have experienced it. I know it can have a physical cause and that must be considered. Nevertheless, at its root it is an imbalance of the soul. Whether it is caused by physical things, emotional trauma or the everyday pressure of life, it can be dealt with by putting the soul back in order. Medication and the like can produce an alleviation of the symptoms but will rarely solve the problem. What will?

Once again, we see words in this psalm that will help us bring balance to our soul. The main component of anxiety is emotional. What is the opposite of anxiety? Peace. The Bible has much to say about peace, but in verse 2 we see that our shepherd will lead us to green pastures and still waters. Green pastures speak of provision, but they also speak of a lack of stress. We will have enough. There is nothing to be anxious about. Still waters are always a type of peace.

If we turn our attention to the goodness of God in the midst of our anxiety, we will find still waters. We can find an inner peace that will overtake the sense of anxiety we feel. The reality of God our shepherd is that we are already in green pastures by still waters. That is our position in the spirit. We see another phrase in this verse that is important to balancing the soul. It says he makes me lie down in the green pastures.

Our wonderful heavenly Father/shepherd has brought us to a place of peace. Jesus says in John 14:27 that he gives us a peace that the world cannot give. In Philippians 4:7, Paul speaks of a peace that passes natural understanding. There is a peace available to you that does not have its source in your soul. It comes from a deeper place. It comes from your spirit. However, if we will not look deeper than our mind, emotions and will, we will not find it.

God wants us to lie down in the green pasture beside the still water. He wants us to believe that that place exists. It is always there when we need to visit it. The question is will we go there. Will we take a few minutes to quiet our soul? We need to turn off some of what feeds our intellect, emotions and will with anxiety and lie down in the green pastures by the still waters. When we do, we will feel a change.

I had a friend once who was filled with anxiety. He had a business that brought stress to his life. His homelife at that point was not helping. I told him to come to the office 20 minutes earlier in the morning and spend some time praying. That does not always mean crying out to God for answers to our many problems. Part of prayer is to lie down in green pastures by still waters and allow the Lord to minister to us. His testimony some time later was that everything had changed when he started to practice that simple thing.

One more point I want to make is that it says he will make us lie down. That does not mean that he will force us to lie down. It does mean he will help us lie down. When we feel we cannot find the place of green pastures and still waters, ask the Holy Spirit within you to help you to lie down. He will take you step by step through the process until you are at rest in his presence. Begin by praising him for all he’s done. You might sing a little song of worship. It may be a song you know, or you may simply begin to sing words to him as the tune comes. He is not looking for a masterpiece so do not worry about how it sounds. All Fathers love to hear their children sing. Read something in His Word and ask him to bring you revelation. Sometimes you may just focus on Him and His goodness until your mind quiets down and you find yourself lying in the green pastures by still waters. It may help to ask the Holy Spirit to help you visualize that place.

You may feel nothing, or you may feel something. This is not a competition. It is an exercise in accepting a reality and tapping into a deeper place from which to live. It may take some time to get to the green pastures with still waters, but do not give up. That place belongs to you. Believe in it and you will find it. Do whatever else you need to as far as doctors or medicine but know that God the Father/Shepherd has a place waiting for you and once you find it you will always be able to find you way back. That is the real solution to anxiety.

Next time we will look at more from this small but powerful psalm.

February 4, 2020 by Pastor Bill Kiefer

How Can God Restore Your Soul

Psalm 23:1-3 (NKJV) ¹ The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. ² He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. ³ He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.

In our last post we looked at David’s wonderful shepherd’s psalm, Psalm 23. We began to look at this from the perspective of creation. We were created spirit, soul and body. With our spirit we communicate with the realm of the spirit. It is the part of us that is in vital connection to God. Our bodies are the physical house in which we live. They enable us to be part of and connect with the physical world. Our soul was designed to be a bridge between the two. Our soul is the seat of intellect, emotions and will. In the fall of man, the spirit went dark. Our soul became the determiner of morality and the distinction between good and evil.

If you remember the two trees in the Garden of Eden, you can understand the problem. The two trees in the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:16-17 tells us that one of these trees is forbidden to man.

Genesis 2:16-17 (NKJV) ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Man could eat as much of the fruit of the tree of life as he wanted. There is much discussion about this tree. If man found it today would he live forever. I believe the answer is no. In John 17 Jesus tells us what life is.

John 17:3 (NKJV) ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

I am not going to speculate on the physical nature of this tree or its fruit. Jesus said eternal life is to know God the Father. That is what this tree represented. Adam was free to know God. What about the other tree? We get a clue from its name. It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What was the problem with this tree? Did God want Adam and Eve ignorant of what was good and evil?

I do not believe he did. However, this second tree represented this knowledge apart from the relationship with God. The knowledge of good and evil must flow from the life of God. If it does not, it is by nature arbitrary. Today we use the term relative. Good and evil are not relative terms. They are absolutes. The problem with the second tree is that it leaves man to make this determination via his soul. It is God who determines good and evil and when we eat from the tree of inner relationship with God by the spirit, the determination is automatic.

The book of judges speaks of this.

Judges 21:25 (NKJV) ²⁵ In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

This same statement is made in the 17^th chapter, but I wanted to quote it from here because it is the last sentence in the book. With all that happened in the book of Judges, they ended up in the same place they began. To some, this statement is the way things should be. In the context of Israel, the Bible says they had no king. We find in 1 Samuel that God wanted to be there king. Nevertheless, there was a problem with this. Because God could not have connection with man in the spirit, man kept making the wrong choices. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not up to the job.

When man’s soul is the determiner of good and evil, it becomes relative. There were people that God raised up to lead in the book of Judges. Some of them were good and some were bad. They led on the basis of what their minds, emotions and will determined. Some tried to walk according to God’s leading, but when you read this book you will see that most made mistakes. In the end they were in the same place as when they began. Their condition had not improved, and they were not a force for God and his Kingdom.

A king appointed by God was not much better. As you read Israel’s history under the kings, you find that few made the right choices in God’s eyes and only one was called a man after God’s heart. Even this king, David by name, made some terrible mistakes. He allowed evil to get hold of him and he committed adultery and then murder. It was his repentance that set him apart. In the end he acknowledged that he was not the one who must determine good and evil.

Psalm 51:3-4 (NKJV) ³ For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me. ⁴ Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight– That You may be found just when You speak, And blameless when You judge.

As you read through this psalm, you find that David understood that God determined good and evil. He saw that the fruit of his choice opened the door to death and destruction. He is among the very best the old testament had to offer, yet we would convict him and send him to prison for the rest of his life or worse.

So what does David mean when, as a young boy, he writes the words, “He restores my soul.” I think part of what God is saying here is that our souls, our intellects, our emotions and our wills must be brought back under the control of the tree of life.

We were not designed to determine good and evil without our connection to God in the spirit. It is the spirit that communicates with the God of the universe. It is our spirit that then conveys through our soul what the wisdom of God reveals. Our intellect makes sense of it in a way our outward life can use. Our emotions thrill in the beauty of holiness, righteousness and the God who made everything. Our wills keep us moving and living according to what we learn from God in the spirit.

When the spirit, in vital relationship to God is in control, all is in balance. When the soul is the only inward voice we can follow, things are not in balance. Our experiences, our cultures, our hurts, our ambitions, our emotions and everything both good and bad deposited there, produce a competitive and unbalanced view of life. This is what has opened the door to most, if not all, of the misery man experiences on the earth. That was never what God intended.

How can God restore our soul? He does it by restoring our spirit. He puts us back in touch with the tree of life. This will not happen if archeological research finds the Garden of Eden and therefore a physical tree of life. That is not necessary. The tree of life came to earth. He destroyed the power of sin, fear and death. He made it possible to come back to the tree of relationship that was lost in the Garden of Eden. We can once again choose the life of the spirit by receiving Jesus the Christ as our savior and our Lord. Let me close by quoting one more scripture.

John 15:4-5 (NKJV) ⁴ Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. ⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

When we let Jesus in he restores our spirit. When he restores or spirit, our soul comes back into the place it was meant to have. Many things are tied to this. Next time we will begin to look at how this changes how life can be lived.

Practical Wisdom from the Word of God

Pastor Bill Kiefer's Blog

Month: February 2020