First, a couple of paragraphs on our human makeup. In biblical terms, our “soul” or “being” is who we are: our identity, and our spirit is our God-given, spiritual life force. Hebrews 4:12 tells us the two are hard to distinguish, and that only the word of God can separate them. The body is a no-brainer. (No pun intended.)
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, the Apostle Paul’s description “spirit, and soul, and body” is holistic, the aim of his prayer being the believer’s entire, blameless preservation. In English one word alone matches a particular thought perfectly, but in NT Greek multiple descriptions may be used in a description. For example, “good, and acceptable, and perfect” does not imply that there are three degrees of God’s will: it simply lists three aspects of the one will of God.
Now to the article itself.
I have survived some pretty tough spiritual battles during my ministry, demonically-inspired onslaughts that were calculated to “take me out” — literally. I’ve faced spiritual demonic power in people during ministry in Borneo, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. Yet demons can dress themselves in people, which is how they wreak such havoc on pastors who, being human, often fall short of the expectations of the people they lead.
As leaders we fail to understand the needs of some, and we overlook the needs of others. We offend unintentionally. (What pastor hasn’t preached on a particular problem and quite innocently ended his sweeping gaze on the face of a member known to be sensitive to any kind of criticism?)
When Big Trouble happens at Small Local, the confidence in the leader to whom preaching is a pleasure disappears as swiftly as the morning dew. Soon, the usual invisible but discernible exclamation marks over members’ heads are replaced by question marks. The welcome and affirming “Amen!” becomes a silent, dubious “We’ll see.” Some leave the church. Others question whether staying is the right choice. Some dear hearts leave simply because they just can’t take the conflict.
Unable to preach his way through, the pastor attempts to teach his way around — all the while feeling as though he is swimming through yogurt long past its use-by date. His face says, “I have faith!” His wife’s face says, “I’m hurting.” His children’s faces say, “We’re outta here!”
In mainstream churches, such things are mercifully obscured by form and liturgy. But in Pentecostal churches, a focus on individuality and quantity rather than community and quality — I’m speaking generally — makes pastors more susceptible to collateral damage. In the novel “The Man Who Would Be King,” by Rudyard Kipling, the would-be king (played by Sean Connery) was killed after he was seen to bleed like anyone else.
If all this means nothing to you, well, just thank God and whistle a happy tune! Of course, such battles for leadership are fought with equal ferocity at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of your local drama group, sporting club or school committee. It’s just that a much darker, spiritual element lurks behind church divisions.
I will never forget praying in the spirit for up to two hours most nights for months — just to get through a terrible spiritual attack on me. It was the spiritual equivalent of being bombarded while in a frontline trench. The twisted tales people told! The gossip! The wild rumours! As Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before truth gets its boots on.” Not to mention a secret prayer meeting that was held to pray me out of the church, which was distinct from the weekly one attended by the faithful.
The determined opposition failed because the Lord upholds authority (which is not to say that I couldn’t have handled people better than I did at the time). I believe in The Invincible Principle of 1 John 4:4 today as much as I did then, because it works! (I learned it during a science class at technical college, when our science teacher attached a vacuum pump to an empty 4-gallon drum (can) and proceeded to extract the air from it. Much to my amazement, the drum crumpled before my eyes! It did so because the diminishing air pressure inside it was unable to withstand the increasing air pressure outside it.)
During my time of Big Trouble in Small Local, I wondered why it was that spiritual gifts no longer evidenced in the meetings. Was something wrong with me? It was only when they worked while ministering elsewhere that I realized the problem was not me. (The battlefront is always in your own church; anyone can be a hero somewhere else.) And then one day something happened that changed my whole outlook.
A friend who was an entrepreneur offered my wife and me two tickets to a huge sales convention in Brisbane. We arrived to find thousands of salespersons waiting expectantly to hear from some of the world’s best-known motivational speakers. With the exception of a famous television identity, none were known by me to be Christians. Yet by the close of the first day, I was euphoric and walked out of the building feeling like I was ten feet tall and bulletproof! So, being fairly analytical, I then began to wonder how it was that a non-spiritual event had so wonderfully revived me.
I found the answer in the New Testament, where the word “soul”, which has its origin in the Greek word psuche (English: psyche) and refers to the natural life of the body. W. E. Vine quoting Cremer: “Soma, body, and pneuma, spirit, may be separated [but] pneuma [spirit] and psuche [soul] can only be distinguished.” Cremer refers to Hebrews 4:12, which informs us that only the two-edged sword (cutting knife, really) of God’s word can separate soul from spirit. With this in mind I began a scriptural study of the soul (today studies in inadequacy, insecurity and inferiority form part of Behavioural Psychology).
I found that Timothy struggled with personal inadequacy. I discovered that the Christians at Corinth were so insecure they formed factions around Paul, Apollos and Cephas. (Paul’s answer: “All things are yours” — in the possessive sense; and that they were Christ’s, and that Christ was God’s. How more secure could they possibly be?) And I found that inferiority was behind the “evil report” delivered by the timid twelve princes who had spied out the land. They said they were “grasshoppers” in the eyes of the “giants” in the land — “and so were we in our own eyes.” A classic case of shrinking self-esteem due to contempt and dismissal!
A few years later, I taught what I had learned to an area pastors’ meeting at Ashburnham House, near Hastings, in Sussex, UK, When I finished a mature pastor stood and commented that he wished he’d known these things in his younger days. I also preached on these psychology-based issues from a biblical viewpoint during a week of meetings at a church in North Devon, and saw the Holy Spirit confirm these truths in a visitation of great power at the end of the final meeting.
This to me underlined the importance of scripturally-based psychology, which basically is a sound understanding of Who and What we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Those who’ve read the teachings of Jung, Freud et al would benefit much more if they read the New Testament.) The Christian is a soul, i.e. a living human being, who is renewed spiritually, but needs to become sound psychologically as well as secure spiritually.