Rock 2: Love God With All Your Soul
The human soul is comprised of the mind, will, and emotions. Throughout the scriptures, God seems to use words like heart, mind, soul, strength, and spirit somewhat interchangeably. I’m certain that a Bible scholar would be able to separate the unique meaning of these in great detail. But to the average reader, these often seem to appear in some form of grouping. online
Mind, Will, and Emotions
As a Licensed Temperament Counselor, I have landed on using the term “soul” to describe the inborn, God-given nature of each individual human being, comprised of the mind, will, and emotions. The soul then, is the aspect of our nature that allows us to interact with the souls (mind, will, and emotions) of other human beings.
Then to love God with all my soul might mean to love Him by loving others soul to soul. Love others in the same way God loves us. online
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” John 13:34-35 NIV
In my previous posting I described how our first and foremost responsibility as a Christ-follower is to worship God, to love Him with all our heart, I believe that our second responsibility is to love the souls of others.
Love Your Soul?
Actually, it’s not so much loving others’ souls. It’s actually loving others through the unique needs of their soul. As I’ve written about many times, each human being is created in our mother’s womb with a unique, inborn nature — temperament. And each temperament type is best identified by its unique needs. So, in order to love someone’s soul, I must be attentive to the needs of their soul, what we call “soul needs.”
Soul Needs
No doubt it might sound complicated to know what another person’s soul needs might be. There are billions of people on this planet. And literally hundreds, if not thousands, come through our lives every day. How could we ever learn all of those uniquely different needs? online
Although that questions does hold water, we can still succeed in caring for the soul needs of others without ever knowing theirs specifically. Every human being is created with at least three innate soul needs:
- The need for significance: Communicating value to the individual for who they are, regardless of anything that might set them apart.
- The need for competence: Communicating worth to the individual for what they do, regardless how “good” or “bad” it might be.
- The need for belonging: Communicating love to the individual as a unique creation, regardless of whether we think they “deserve” it or not.
in living every day, every moment, with the mindset that we want to bring Jesus’s love to the soul needs of others, we are loving them — and therefore God — with all our soul.
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