When you are born again, your spirit becomes one with the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit within you is holy and perfect, He will only communicate thoughts of holiness to you.

“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” — Romans 8:16

Moreover, the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to glorify Jesus. Therefore, the thoughts He communicates will always aim to honor God. As a result, your born-again spirit will not tell you what you want, but only what God wants. Your soul, on the other hand, reveals what you want, love, think, and feel. The soul will not tell you what God wants or feels. Its role is to look after your interests.

When someone disrespects you, your spirit will want to forgive—because it is like God. But your soul will push you to react, to respond—because it exists to defend your interests. It’s your soul that will prompt you to boast or to belittle others, because its desire is that you, and you alone, be seen.

However, this tendency of the soul goes against the will of God. Your soul will therefore have desires that oppose those of your renewed spirit. It must be restored, because as long as it remains in that state, it is sick, deformed, and unable to help you obey God.

YOUR SOUL HAS BEEN DEFORMED

It is essential to understand that our soul can—and must—be restored. Before being born again, we lived in sin, and that sin destroyed and deformed our soul. None of us has a healthy soul when we come to Christ. Since childhood, our soul has been wounded, misshaped by sin. Harsh words, painful experiences, and failures have all left negative marks on our soul.

Society has instilled in us a worldview and human relationship patterns that often don’t align with the Word of God. Some people have learned never to trust anyone. Others were raised with the law of merit: if you want something, you must earn it—nothing is ever free.

Some have grown up in environments of extreme poverty and cannot even dream or hope to buy or build a house. Others, by contrast, were pampered and overprotected by their parents and struggle to handle rejection or criticism. They were kings or princesses to their parents and cannot tolerate being told “no.”

One way or another, our soul has been deformed—meaning it no longer has the shape God originally intended. Our past has left a mark on our soul, and that mark must be removed so our soul can regain the form God designed for it. In other words, our mind, emotions, and way of thinking have been shaped by what our soul experienced before we were born again. That is why our soul must be re-educated in the light of the Word.

This text is an excerpt from the book “MY FIRST STEPS IN CHRIST” written by Elza NGALESSAMI.

We invite you to read the next article: “OUR IDENTITY DOES NOT DEPEND ON OUR CIRCUMSTANCES.”

REVEALS. REVEALS.