That your soul may prosper

The prosperity of your soul leads to the glory of God - Soul 001

Hey, Friend!

Another Tuesday, another conversation. Welcome to this weeks installment of Temple, today we will be jump starting the 'soul series’ and I’m super excited to get into it. I am, as always, very glad and excited you’re here. Let’s go!

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3 in 1

Short story, when I was thinking about Temple and the parts of our being the community would focus on developing I thought of body, mind and soul and that’s because that’s the perpetuated statement, right?

What I found though as I was researching (read surfing the internet) I realized that saying soul and mind is a repetition because our mind is in-fact a part of our soul. That is how I settled on ‘body, soul & spirit’ even though it didn’t easily roll off my tongue at first (I’m a marketing girl, okay). What I learnt very quickly was that as human beings we have three part ; a body, which connects us to the physical, a soul which connects us to the physiological realm and then the spirit which of course connects us to the spiritual realm.

What I’ve also discovered is that soul in itself has three parts, the will, the mind and the emotions. All of these parts are created to glorify God, what we think, what we choose and even our feelings are meant to be honorable to God. But this isn’t our default setting as humans, because of how dynamic we are our mind and emotions be difficult parts of ourselves to navigate. That is why Paul in the scripture above prayed that our souls may prosper.

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A look on the inside

The state of our soul determines the outcome of our lives and as such we must endeavor to work on the inner part of who we are so that we can ultimately honor God. Your mind affects your emotions and your emotions affect your actions (will) that being said I believe that as Christians we have a responsibility to work towards the health of our soul.

God created our soul with purpose in mind, our emotions are not our enemies. Feeling sad, happy, angry, and any other emotion you can think of is not a sign of dysfunction; it is, in fact, a sign that you are operating as God created you. The problem I believe is in not responding to these emotions in the right way, it is in not having the tools to navigate the different things that life throws at you. I was talking to a friend and we jokingly (not really) said that Christians have a tendency to just slap a Bible verse on something they don’t understand or unable to process. It’s our version of sweeping things under the rag.

Yes, I know that scripture is the source of our identity but it also is not a band aid to be slapped on a wound that should instead be cleaned and treated. Cleaning and treating wounds is messy, but that’s the only way to actually heal the wound. Any other short cut always comes back to bite you 🥲

I say all this because I have seen and I myself has also experienced many mental struggles, struggles that I am continuing to work through now. These are not a result of demonic attack (because some are) they simply are just a result of the environment I’ve grown up in. As children we learn behavior from the adults around us, we learn to cope and manage things based off of the way the people around us handled or even mishandled things. As we grow it this becomes our default setting so to say, it is the only way we know to do things.

These learnt ways of living are not always what’s best for us, some of them must be unlearned. And this journey of unlearning and learning is a hard one that can only be done by the help of God and also a lot of deliberateness on our side.

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God who sees you

When I decided to write these letters, I knew I always wanted to have them banked. But for some reason, I couldn't pen this particular one down; I'd experience writer's block whenever I tried to write it. Today, 10/10/23, just happens to be World Mental Health Day, and for me, this was an El-Roi moment. To start a series that will primarily focus on mental and emotional wellness on this day is no coincidence. I believe with my entire heart that God wants believers to have knowledge and be equipped to handle these kinds of issues. The beauty of this whole journey is that, unlike the world, we are not embarking on this journey without help; we've got a Helper and Friend to guide us through it.

I am a full-time advocate of vulnerability and creating safe spaces for people to express their emotions without shame and I intend to share this passion with our community.

Here's a quote I love:

"Emotions are good indicators, but they are not good leaders."

We will work through the indications of our emotions to come to a place of understanding and wholeness. Amen? Amen.

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Temple recommends

This week I think I’ll share two songs and a podcast that you should subscribe to.

Song - God you keep on blessing me by Brenden Praise ft Free 2 worship

Song - He understands by Chandler Moore

Podcast - With the Perry’s (The Jesus and Therapy episode)

In the comments tell me what you thought or simply just hit reply to this email. And don’t forget to put us on to something we should watch, listen to or read. That’s it from me!

See you Tuesday.

Love,

Ruth Musange