"...even as thy soul prospereth."
Have you ever wondered why God used the parameter of your spiritual health as the fundamental determinant of your health and wealth?
Man as we rightfully know is a tripartite entity possessing a soul, a spirit, and a body.
In as much as the body is the physical agency that carries out the impulse and dictates of the man, the soul; which is the intermediary between the spirit and the body; has to be in alignment with the spirit, for the activities of the body to profit God and His kingdom.
Did I just say profit God? or was I simply at loss for thos are words? You heard me correctly. God, profits from our lives.
If God truly profits from our lives, does that mean that He invested in some way or the other in our lives? Because profit, as we all know, is an expected endproduct of investment. Remember, Ephesians 1:18(AMP) says "And [I pray] that the eyes of your heart [the very center and core of your being] may be enlightened [flooded with light by the Holy Spirit], so that you will know and cherish the hope [the divine guarantee, the confident expectation] to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints (God’s people),” This already informs is that God has an inheritance in us. So, did God invest in us to deservedly expect a profit? Well, let us get back to basics and build from there.
Every business starts with an idea, but any and every idea not developed or birthed into something we can see, feel and touch is, at best, an idea. Nobody rewards (either by way of payment, recommendation, referral, patronage, etc) you for your idea, you are only rewarded for the product of that your idea which could either be a product produced or service rendered, and the quality of that product you produced or service you rendered, is what determines your reward.
Everything we see and enjoy in our world today is a product of somebody's idea that was birthed. The light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison. If he had left it in the realm of an idea, we wouldn't have light bulbs today, except, of course, someone else took up that initiative. Henry Ford invented cars, and the Wright brothers decided to take it further by creating a flying version. Just to mention but a few. This is also a warning, that whatever need you to fail, refuse, or are reluctant to meet, will be met by someone else. Every need must be met. The question is, will it be met by you or will you let someone else take your place. Many needs were met and the brains behind those inventions went from obscurity to limelight. Meeting a need can announce you to your world. Jesus met the need for salvation and is today the most celebrated personality in the world.
God had made the heavens and the earth and was seated in Heaven, from where He ruled the whole world. God then had an idea in His mind. He wanted to extend the frontiers of His dominion to another part of His domain which was hijacked by the fallen Cherub, Lucifer, who rebelled and had been cast down. So God needed to claim back that territory. To achieve the same dominion in that extension of His domain called Earth, He decided to replicate Himself in that territory. This explains Psalm 115:16 The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD'S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. Now, man, a spirit made in the image and likeness of God, has been created and dispatched to earth with a mandate. And when we closely examine this mandate that man was given, we can sum it up into a four-fold agenda, be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and have dominion. That goes to say that, if the man was to achieve the ultimate assignment of dominion, which was what God had in mind that sponsored man's creation, then man had to follow it progressively from the first stage to the fourth.
Let us do a brief recall, as to the order leading up to dominion.
Like I rightly mentioned earlier, first, we had to be Fruitful, second was to Multiply, next was to Replenish the earth and then lastly, to have Dominion.
What then does it mean to be fruitful?
Deductively speaking, being fruitful means being full of fruits.
Every fruit comes from a seed, which goes to say that every seed has the potential of becoming a fruit. But for that seed to become the fruit, it has to be planted in the right soil and exposed to the right conditions, to achieve the expected outcome. Just as every business idea has the potential of becoming a viable business, but only if the idea is planted.
Once a seed is planted and allowed to go through the four phases of death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, it does not come up like a seed, instead, it comes up as a plant. This explains why when Jesus died, He died as the only begotten of the Father, and was buried alone, but when He rose, He rose as the first among many brethren. I know I lost you there, but not to worry, I'll expand on it much later.
Every seed has the destiny of a plant embedded in it, but every plant has many seeds in it. This is the mystery of continuity God by His eternal wisdom programmed into creation. That He didn't need to create anything twice, once it was created, that creation sustained within itself, the capability to produce after its kind. So He only needed to create man once and this principle made sure man continued eternally. He only created an animal, Lion for instance, and in that lion is the ability to produce several other lions. Creating one plant was all God needed to do, because that one plant, had within It, many seeds to ensure its continuity.
One of the principles of seed is that no good seed goes into the ground and comes out alone. This is indicative of the fact that when God sows a seed, He is not hoping to reap another seed, but a plant with many seeds in it. That means, you sow one and reap many ones in one. Confused?
What I'm trying to communicate across is that God sows a seed (one), He is not looking forward to the harvest of another seed, rather He intends to reap many seeds (ones) in a plant (one).
So, when God sows an idea, into your mind, He is not expecting to reap another idea, but a stream of ideas.
When God sows the healing anointing into your life, He is not expecting to reap a healed person, but many healed persons.
When He sows a teaching grace into your life, He is not looking forward to harvesting a student, but many students.
Sometimes, the product of the seed may not be many versions of that same seed, but an improved and enhanced version of that same seed.
Many times, God sows an unlearned person into your life to mentor and guide, with the expectation that at the end of the day, that unlearned person will become erudite. We saw how God sowed distressed, indebted, and discontented people, into the life of David, at the end of the day, God's investment paid off, as He reaped a harvest of mighty men.
I hope we now understand my earlier assertion, that God profits from our lives.
That being said, for our lives to profit God maximally, then we have to pay attention to what happens to the seed, whilst in the ground.
I'll expound on that in my blog on "behind closed doors". Do well to go through what I shared in that piece, you'll be blessed by it.
Having established the incontestable fact that the dominion mandate God gave man was commanded to man's spirit entity, there still lies a problem. The law of territory requires that for an entity to exist in any given territory, it must be made up of the components in that territory. This explains why man is made of dust amidst the many similarities between man and his ecosystem called earth. That spirit entity of man has been given a body entity to do the will of the Father, Jesus asserted this in Hebrews 10:5 "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me". For this spirit and the body to communicate effectively, an interface was introduced, the soul. The soul is the entity in man that is furnished with the tributaries of mind, will, and emotions, to enhance its functionality, usability, effectiveness, and efficiency.
The problem now is, since the spirit is in man and needs the harmony of the soul to be able to carry out the demands of the Father, the soul must be brought to a point where it will transmit the message without adulterating, hijacking, or diverting it.
This soul has to be trained to the extent that it becomes yielded and submissive to the leading of the Spirit of God communicated through man's spirit.
The training of the soul has to be holistic, for the desired result to be achieved. The tripartite force of the will, mind, and intellect must all be in sync, for God to profit maximally from this investment called man.
How then can we bring this soul entity to the place of alignment, seeing that it is the place of great strife and contention? Paul cried out his travail in Romans 7. He lamented how helpless he was against these members warring within him. But our victory is in bringing this soul to the cross also and administering the death protocol on all its faculties, to the end that the soul becomes a vessel unto honor, fit for the master's use.
So how do we address this soul challenge?
Matthew 16:24-26 tells us
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to follow Me [as My disciple], he must deny himself [set aside selfish interests], and take up his cross [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me]. For whoever wishes to save his life [in this world] will [eventually] lose it [through death], but whoever loses his life [in this world] for My sake will find it [that is, life with Me for all eternity]. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world [wealth, fame, success], but forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
The first antidote to the soul menace is self-denial. Letting go of those selfish desires and personal interests. Am I saying you should not think of yourself or your interest? Far from it. Instead, I'm saying you should desist from those mindsets that set yourself, your interests, your desires, your wants, your anything and everything above others. The soul is always self-seeking, so putting it in a place of letting go for others to have their way, is a painful, steady but sure path to victory.
Next, take up your cross. You must be ready and willing to endure whatever comes your way. A student who signs the dotted line on an admission acceptance letter is unknowingly committing himself to whatever he encounters en route to his graduation. The goal of being a Child of God, aside from making heaven, is to become an express image of His person and character here on earth, both in word and in action. And for this to become a reality, you must be ready to go through any and everything the Spirit brings your way. If the Holy Spirit could lead Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, know for a certainty that, if truly you are being led by that same Spirit, you must at some point in your pilgrimage, pass through that wilderness.
Finally, follow Jesus. To follow is to be an imitation of someone. A projector has no image of itself to display, but whatever you program into it, Is what comes out for the viewers to see. If it is Jesus' life you want to live, then you must live it the way He lived it. This soul is not a lover of the cross or inconvenience, so you would always witness vehement resistance when you want to inconvenience the soul. However, fight through the setback and emerge on the other side victorious.
To follow Jesus is to live His life, that is why the first requirement was to die to that your life, then you pick up His life, the life of the cross, the life of sacrifice and then follow Him, live like Him, love like Him, forgive like Him, sacrifice like Him, etc.
Only then can God profit from our lives. The original design was for man to gain the whole world and still gain his soul. So any approach you adopt that makes you gain one, at the expense of the other, is already a wrong template with a guaranteed disastrous end in view.
Beloved, I pray that in every way you may succeed and prosper and be in good health [physically], just as [I know] your soul prospers [spiritually].
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