Prepare the Way of the Lord.

Wasn't that the prophet's cry.... Isaiah 40:3-5, Matt 3:3, Mark1:2-3, Luke 3:4-6

Prepare....

Preparation never happens unless there is an anticipation. It trancends hope. It is the action of Faith.

What is the "way" of the Lord now? The prophet speaks of making straight paths - bringing mountains down and elevating valleys. Where is this "way"? In the hearts of people. We are each our own "way" builder. But only the Holy Spirit can be the Master Engineer. We do not even know our own hearts because it is so deceiptive.

So how can we prepare a way when we are not even able to rightfully know where there is construction needed? By humbling ourselves under the hand of God by the Holy Spirit. When we open our lives and bow our knees, our minds, our hearts and surrender our rights to Him, who is our life, then we will have the priviledge to participate in this road construction.

This is by no means a small task. Each have to take his or her own life and open it to the Holy Spirit's search(Ps 139); seeking and searching and inspecting by the light of a candle; so that every mountain can be exposed, every crack filled and every valley elevated. Making a highway is never cheap. It comes at a price. How do we reckon on preparing a way for the Lord without cost?

We have for years cried out for a visitation, a habitation of the Lord among His people. Yet we have seen minimal results to all our fasting and praying. Could it be that we have send the invitations to a place that have no road to it? Could it be that the way are obstructed by landslides and eroded by the constant floods of circumstances. Maybe there are boulders of offense that effectively block the way, the light, the flow.

How willing are we to prepare the way? How willing, do we think, God is to manifest His presence among us? Maybe we've been asking the wrong question and knocking on the wrong door.

Isaiah 57:14-15, Isaiah 62: 10-12, Malachai 3:1-4

Salvation of the Soul - Marietjie Chase

Jesus' death burial and resurrection was for the redemption of the whole man. Yet, the full realization of it, the complete package, is seldom there instantly. Potentially it is there, just like a child has the potential to accomplish great and wonderful things. The oak tree is in the acorn.

At the moment of New Birth our human spirits that lay dormant - dead - since birth, (Rom 5:17, Eph2:1) because of Adam's sin, are quickened - made alive. We wake up from the inside. We experience life in a whole new way. The Holy Spirit's indwelling that brings light to our spirits give us new vision. We feel whole, ecstatic because for the first time we are complete: spirit, soul and body, as we were meant to be. (IThess 5:23, Heb4:12, Matt 8;13, Luke23:46)

So the spirit is quickened, regenerated and receives the indwelling Holy Spirit at the instant of New Birth. (John14:17,6:63; Rom 7:6, I Cor 5:5, 6:20, 7:34,15:45; II Cor 7:1; II Tim 1:14; IPet 3:18,4:6;...)

The unregenerate operate with only a soul and body. Only God through Jesus by the Holy Spirit can resurrect our spirit. This is the meaning of: "dead in their trespasses and sin". (I Cor 2, Rom 7:5, Matt 10:28, John 14:17, John 3:6)

The Bible teaches that our bodies full redemption is yet to come at the time when God will give us new bodies. This body, the temporal body, is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in our spirit, Which is in our body. (I Cor 3:16; Eph 2:22) We are the containers, the vehicles, the carriers of the Holy Spirit, yet still a body made from earth, bound, chained to earth.( Rom 8:1; II Cor 5:1-4; Rom 8:23; I Cor 15:44; II Cor 5:6-8; Heb 10:5; James 2:26)

The part of us that the New Testament refers to as " flesh" resides in our soul consisting of the mind, will and emotions. Just examine the works of the flesh in Galations 5. It all resides and are rooted and resources from the soul.

Our soul's salvation is the process of allowing the life in our spirit to permeate and infect our soul.  It is the process of letting the life of God that has entered our spirit have the whole of our being. We do this by a series of choices. Some calls this process sanctification: the process of making holy and set apart that which is not. (Rom6:22; I Thess 4:3) The soul, as mentioned before, is the will, mind and emotions. Of these the will is suppose to rule.

Renewing the mind (Rom 12:2; Eph 4:23) is a must for any believer. We have to allow the light and life of the Holy Spirit to reach every nook and cranny of our thinking. There is an acquiring of the mind of Christ. We have to think with God, His thoughts. Our minds cannot be contrary to His. In allowing Him to redeem our minds, we arrest every thought that exalts itself against and contrary to the knowledge of God and reject it. For example: there may be a thought process in a mind that says: "no-one loves me, I am useless and unimportant".  This is contrary to what God in His word declares about us. He says that we are His workmanship, created for good works. He said that He loved us while we were His enemies, that He chose us long before we were even born to be in Him and part of Him. So, we receive His word, believe His word and reject our own thoughts on this. The first letter of John, the Beloved, repeats over and over the phrase: "By this we know..."  We have to know, understand and experience the God that we serve. We have to be willing to change our thinking. We have to submit to Him in our thinking we have to humble ourselves and not be high - minded. A washing by the water of the Word needs to happen. Neglect of the Bible and a pride of mind will make this part of salvation of the soul a long and arduous process. This process is NOT our works. It does not require "sweat and tears". It is the work of God in us to change us into His image. Our only part is to co-operate and not resist. (IPet 1:13; James 1:8; Titus 2:6; Eph 2:3, 4:17; Phil 3:19; Col 2:18; Heb 8:10; I Cor 2:16)

The emotions, though not mentioned as a whole, but addressed as love, joy, wrath, anger, etc, needs to be changed by the redemption now indwelling our being as well. Our emotions have to be resurrected by the Holy Spirit. We have to have the love of God in us. Where love  were a pure chemical reaction to the endorphins flooding our brain, with purely selfish motives at the root of it, now our love has been made pure by the great love that He has for us. We love because He loves us.  We now have a giving, unselfish quality to our love. We find that our passions are changing into His passions. We now do not cry over losing our selfish desires but cry and weep over what breaks His heart.  Our joy, our anger, our longings are resurrected to the original intent, making us vibrant, living beings that respond to God and humanity in a sanctified way. Without emotions our entire human experience will be stale and robotic. Just ask Mr. Data.

Often the New Testament use the word " let" when addressing our emotions. "Let not your hearts be troubled... John 14;21. Let not... Eph 4:34. Let... Phil 2:3, Col 3:15. That speaks of control and release.    (Rom 6:13) We can let ourselves be angry and sin or we could direct that anger(passion) in a way that it can accomplish righteousness. Eph 4:26 We could either love the world or we could love God. ( I John 2:5, 4:7) Our emotions have to be flooded by the power of the life of God in our spirits. We have to let Him heal us in our emotions, so that our view of this life and of Him are no longer from the brokenness of our past experiences but as complete in Him. Restored to His image in our feelings.  (Col 3:8; Eph 4:31)  Redeemed does not mean cauterized. He made us in His image and that means we are emotional beings. In Him the emotions have a purpose. Just think of Mr. Data.

Our will, the master of our soul, has such a wonderful, clear message in the Book that it should not be difficult for us to understand. In Heb 1:2 it speaks of Jesus, who came to do the Father's bidding and it uses the phrase " I delight to do Your will". That describes more clearly than anything the status of a saved will. This process is a bit fuller described in Phil 2 where the full - kenosis- emptying of Jesus' divinity is described. Submitting His will to the Father was not a walk in the park for the man Jesus. Just look at His Getsemane experience. It's intensity and strain busted capillars in His face. Hebrews tells us that He learned obedience by the things that He suffered.(I Pet 1;9; Heb 10:39; II Thess 2:13; Phil 2:12; Rom 13:11)

The human will, more than any other part of us, have been in bondage to sin, satan and self. We were slaves to the demonic impulses, lies and deceptions. We have NOT the power of choice prior to being born again. The indwelling power of the Holy Spirit makes us free from the law of sin and death. It frees our will to choose whom we will serve. We now, after redemption, can "let" or "let not".  Because of the great salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, our will can now function as it was designed to function. We can now delight to do His will and do it. We do not have to submit to the impulses of our un-redeemed past. We can choose to respond to this human experience as the new creations we in fact are. The power of the Holy Spirit inside of us, gives us the ability to "will" to do His will. Revelations 12:11 says that they overcome him ( the enemy) by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony and loving not their lives even unto death. ( Romans 6, IPet5:5-6, 4:19;2; James 4:6,7,10;15, 1:18; I Thess 5:18; ITim 1:1; Heb 13:21; Eph5:21; Col 1:9)

When Jesus was asked: "What shall we do that we may do the works of God?" His response was: "Believe..."   We began this journey with God in faith. We, individually, have to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He is Lord of all, that He died in our place as final offering for all sin and that we receive His life inside of us, enabling us to have a personal relationship with God. It all starts by believing in our heart and then confessing with our mouths what we believe. We cannot even begin to imagine that we can "complete our salvation" by our own strength and power. We end as we begin: receive the end of our faith, the salvation of our soul. We keep the faith and in this we work out our salvation. We keep on believing that God is at work inside of us both to do and to will according to His good pleasure. We keep on, believing that we can only live by faith in Him and that we live and move and have our being in Him. As we stand in this conviction of the greatness of our God, we are being changed from one degree of glory into another, into His image. (  John 6:28-29, Romans 17, 1 John 4:15 and 5:5,  Acts 10:36, 1 Peter 1:9, Philippians 2:12-13, Acts 17:28, 2 Corinthians 3:18)

Yes, the salvation of the soul is an ongoing process, it is the permeating of the reality of the life of God deposited in our spirit, to encompass the whole being. It is the culmination of salvation when our entire existence glows with His glory divine.