Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. I Thessalonians 5:23 (KJV)

We’ve been discussing the three-part nature of man. You might say that the spirit is the inner part, the soul is the middle part, and the body is the outer part. The soul is the second part we’re dicsussing, and it is made up of three parts: mind, will, and emotions.

Mind

The mind is the intellectual part of you. It thinks, learns, remembers, and reasons.Your mind, renewed by the Word of God can prove what your spirit man receives from God. A mind renewed by the Word is spiritual and will think in line with the Word of God and what the Holy Spirit reveals. You think like God, which is what it means to have the mind of Christ. A renewed mind is positive, creative, clear-thinking, and can solve problems and generate ideas. It can possess knowledge and use it correctly. Your mind is yours and you can choose what to think. Do not confuse your mind with your brain. Your brain is the physical “organ” used by your mind to process information and think.

Will

I believe the will is the strongest part of the soul. Why? Because when you feel sad, you can choose to think good thoughts and it makes you feel good. And you can choose to love someone even when your emotions don’t feel like it. And with your will, you can choose what to believe, no matter what your mind says. By your will, or your ability to choose, you can pray, fast, love, give, forgive, and worship God when your mind and emotions aren’t in it. You can choose to do something by faith, then your mind and emotions catch up to what you’ve chosen to do. Our wills make us free moral agents. God will not violate man’s will, so we can choose to serve God or not- to go to heaven or hell- and God will uphold our decision… even if it’s not what He wants for us. However, He does everything possible to persuade man to align with His will for him. Our wills are to be surrendered to the will of God.

Emotions

The feeling part of our soul is the emotional part. Your emotions are tied to what you think. Positive thoughts produce positive emotions, and negative thoughts produce negative emotions. That’s why God tells us to think on good, positive things. Some people are constantly negative because they have become so accustomed to thinking the worst. Emotions move us towards something- either good or bad. Protect your thoughts and be careful of what you allow to enter your thoughts- because those thoughts will influence your feelings and moods. We disrupt wrong thoughts by speaking to them and casting them down. Emotions, even positive, joyful emotions, cannot rule us. We cannot be guided and directed by emotions because they change very quickly and can be deceptive. Emotions are an important part of experiencing life as long as we do not allow them to control us. God has emotions and He gave us emotions to enjoy life.

The soul connects us with ourselves and helps us interpret and carry out what God has downloaded in our spirits. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the body, or the physical, part of mankind.