THE BEAT e155 Re-release – Soul Talk that Starts with Praise (His breath. Taken in. To refresh me.) (originally published March 12 2025)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd.

Season 2 Episode 155

THE BEAT | Re-release –  Soul Talk that Starts with Praise (His breath. Taken in. To refresh me.)

Quick Take 

Hey human, in this episode we come in for a closer look. Soul talk. A heart-to-heart beginning of a search for deeper wisdom on what our soul is. What it isn’t. And why I am something of a warrior about it. Join us. Thanks for listening.

 How is Jesus moving your soul today?

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

Think of today as a spiritual appetizer. A preface, a prelude, an intro, a prologue. I am convicted to take on a very sacred word to me, the word “soul.” And by sacred, I mean a place I mentally and spiritually enter that makes me tremble.

But I have to begin. Today.

I have to acknowledge and move beyond my current understanding and pray to God for wisdom in this.

It’s not an uncommon word. It has many contexts. What are we used to hearing?

Words and phrases like…

Soul food

Soul train

Soulful

Lost souls

Saved souls

Sell your soul

Soul music

Soulmate

Window to the soul

Heart and soul

Old soul

Soul-searching

Bare your soul

Bless my soul

Sensitive soul

Soul brother

And, soulful. I love that word. It beckons a deeper understanding, an authentic connection that is unexplainable, undeniable, and unhindered. It stands true.

I don’t quite know how to explain this right now, but my strong will has laid claim to this word. I acknowledge the secular definitions. I see little value in debating all the definitions, but I probably will. But what I am affirming today is that I have somehow become a self-proclaimed guardian of how others use it as God intended.

I confess this because it makes me anxious, it makes me angry that it is used in compromising contexts that offend and dilute the efficacy of salvation. The sovereign nature and power of God. And all the promises within his nature that ride on this word, soul.

Why? Because without a soul, who needs saving. I can just die my physical death and cease to exist. Let mortality have its way. I am just gone from earthly life. But the counter to this is infinity, that I was brought to life by God’s breath in my nostril (remember Adam). And by his breath, my life is taken away.

Let me stop and flag the value of focusing on something that makes a person anxious. Anxiety feeds on a person’s energy, first mental, then physical. If we were to identify and confront the principles, concepts, and as the social world calls them, “triggers” and turn to God for the answers, it would be amazing. That’s why I am facing this. So, I can give it back to God.

The root cause of my anxiety over the word is to some extent in its collective use. When I hear references to saving, preserving, caring for the “soul of our nation” I get angry. If you are listening to this and thinking that I am turning the corner onto a political landscape, I am not. Both our past, and our current president have used “soul of the nation” to describe some type of collective existence that determines the fate of each of us based on who our soul is as a country. Sounds dramatic, but there is only one collective body that God has made a covenant with, Israel. When he sent his only begotten Son the intent of our God, his Will was illuminated because his Word became flesh.

There is a reverence, an eternal weight to my soul that I want to fully embrace. A deepness.

And I start by defending God’s right to it, as the Creator of it. And with this comes his sovereign hand on it.

I am something of a warrior about this.

That brings me to an even deeper anxiety, that the word soul is compromised, diluted by secular slang. A cultural stutter.

I pretty much don’t want anyone to try to define it, touch it, reduce it, use it in any way for earthly means. I do not want to be included in any type of collective meaning.

So, I guess, what my anxiety is shouting is this:

Back off.

Give me room to clarify. Give me time to think about it. Give me grace, Lord, to pray over it. And give me ears to hear God on it.

What am I saying? 2025 will have episodes that circle back around soul talk. A check-in on where I am on this pursuit of wisdom about our souls. We will grow from this, human.

Today is my first stop. I’m really quite taken aback by this. My first stop is to clarify where I am right now on defining my “soul” as God intended. A starting point.

We Were Made to Bear God’s Moral Image (Packer)

I am making my way through Knowing God, a beautiful cornerstone of Christian theology, by J.I. Packer. He was a student at Oxford at the time C.S. Lewis was teaching.

Packer says this about the soul in Chapter 11 titled Thy Word is Truth:

“We are familiar with the thought that our bodies are like machines. Needing the right routine of food, rest and exercise if they are to run efficiently, and liable, if filled up with the wrong fuel—alcohol, drugs, poison—to lose their power of healthy functioning and ultimately to “seize up” entirely in physical death. What we are, perhaps, slower to grasp is that God wishes us to think of our souls in a similar way. As rational persons, we were made to bear God’s moral image—that is, our souls were made to “run” on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control, and service to God, and our fellows. If we abandon these practices, not only do we incur guilt before God; we also progressively destroy our own souls. Conscience atrophies, the sense of shame dries up, one’s capacity for truthfulness, loyalty, and honesty is eaten away, one’s character disintegrates. One not only becomes desperately miserable; one is steadily being dehumanized. This is one aspect of spiritual death.”

Conscience atrophies. That’s clear. We have a choice, right? And it is a process, right? Packer sets the premise straight on the outset: we were made to bear God’s moral image. By this I step on the toes of cultural indignation; when words like truth, honesty, discipline, self-control and service are spoken of as if God is not relevant, not necessary, much less that he is the origin of decency, compassion, and service to others.

But that is exactly the point.

God is the image we are bearing witness to.

Because the definition of the soul lives in Psalm 139 for me. That there is no collective soul other than how we each live within the infinite soul of God, that we are sustained by who he is as the great “I am.” Before anything existed as we know it.

I am nestled within God’s soul as a believer. And Jesus put me back there.

And, I am full of a soulful God, that my spirit helps care for someone else’s soul in the undefinable love of God within my spirit. In my relationships I perceive that God has given me the power to be a soul caregiver.

I have two scriptures that anchor me on this right now that call out a clear distinction between soul and spirit and create fertile ground for spiritual growth.  And fertile ground for conversation.

Hebrew 4:12

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

And that “penetrating” discernment is called out by apostle Paul:

1 Thessalonians 5:23

23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The soul is our emotions, mind, and free will. It is our inner identity separate from our flesh and blood. The soul is our personality according to God’s vision of Psalm 139. It is what God created before the universe that makes us unique, and part of the DNA of humanity, the human chain of soul to soul to soul.

My soul is the house within which spiritual transcendence is possible. Because God is spirit.

John 4:23-24

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

The spirit is my connection with God, communication with God. My spirit is of the Holy Spirit, the power and the realm of transcendence. The passing through of God’s infinite goodness to my ability to love someone in the spirit of his love is all about tending to someone’s soul. Because our free will also means the soul is where sin nature lives and the ability to do evil works.

To Take Breath, Refresh Oneself

I am sure it is no surprise that my search starts in the Old Testament, where God’s power in his story begins for us. The Hebrew word “neefesh” means soul, and is defined as “to take breath, refresh oneself.” So, I will be on that discovery next.

But what I get from it right now, how it inspires me, is that my soul is all about God’s breath into Adam.

So, it makes sense to me that I start by praising my Creator.

Like David did in Psalm 103 when he summoned all his “inmost being” to praise God.

Hear this with me, human.

Psalm 103

Of David.

1 Praise the Lord, my soul;

    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the Lord, my soul,

    and forget not all his benefits—

3 who forgives all your sins

    and heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit

    and crowns you with love and compassion,

5 who satisfies your desires with good things

    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6 The Lord works righteousness

    and justice for all the oppressed.

7 He made known his ways to Moses,

    his deeds to the people of Israel:

8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious,

    slow to anger, abounding in love.

9 He will not always accuse,

    nor will he harbor his anger forever;

10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve

    or repay us according to our iniquities.

11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

    so great is his love for those who fear him;

12 as far as the east is from the west,

    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

13 As a father has compassion on his children,

    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;

14 for he knows how we are formed,

    he remembers that we are dust.

15 The life of mortals is like grass,

    they flourish like a flower of the field;

16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,

    and its place remembers it no more.

17 But from everlasting to everlasting

    the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,

    and his righteousness with their children’s children—

18 with those who keep his covenant

    and remember to obey his precepts.

19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven,

    and his kingdom rules over all.

20 Praise the Lord, you his angels,

    you mighty ones who do his bidding,

    who obey his word.

21 Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,

    you his servants who do his will.

22 Praise the Lord, all his works

    everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

Thank you, King David.

Ultimately, my soul is what God created me for. To have the deepest, most fulfilling relationship with him.

And the next one on my path.

Neefesh. His breath. Taken in. To refresh me.

It’s soul talk. With more to come.