Christ is the Way to Wellness of Soul
Ten Things Your Soul Needs
You have a mind that is phenomenal. It can think and reason and calculate; it can imagine and dream and envision. You have a body that is amazing. It is made of over thirty trillion cells, all working miraculously, without much help from you. Your heart and lungs and liver are all doing their thing right now, even as you read. You have a will, a power to decide and to act and plan and execute and accomplish. Your soul is interacting with all of these dimensions of who you are.
But your soul is more than an operating system; it came factory loaded with a lot of needs. Your embodied soul is durable and tough, but very needy. Your soul was intricately designed with several needs; there is no debating them or escaping them—they simply must be met. God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, created your soul with each of these relational needs that only the Trinity can fulfill. And because God is good, all that we need God has provided as free gifts. Fulfilling these desires is an act of grace.
There are at least ten God-created longings of the soul:
1. To see my body as sacred
2. To be wanted, desired
3. To be loved without condition
4. To be intimately connected to God
5. To be forgiven forever
6. To be alive and empowered to adventure
7. To be holy, virtuous
8. To own my story
9. To be called to a life of purpose
10. To be glorified and live forever
First, our souls, which are embodied, long for our body to be regarded as sacred. Harm to our bodies is harmful to our souls, because they are united.
Second, our souls long to be wanted. When you feel welcome, when you feel as if other people really desire you and are glad you are there, your soul feels joy and peace.
Third, our souls also want to be loved, not for anything we do, but for who we are. We all know when people are showing affection or appreciation for what we have done. The soul’s longing to be loved is to be loved for absolutely no reason.
Fourth, our souls long for God. And we connect to God, to the spiritual realm, in so many ways, not just in church. A piece of art, a wildflower, a calming or exhilarating song, connect to our souls.
Fifth, our souls long for forgiveness. Just as our souls cannot endure being unforgiven, our souls rejoice when we have found real forgiveness. When the wrong we have done has been acquitted, our souls find release.
Sixth, our souls also long to be fully alive. They long for an adventure. Our souls want to be a part of something thrilling.
Seventh, just as our souls reject sin, they also long for holiness. Our souls have been preprogrammed for purity. They long to be clean. When I walk in holiness—when I do the next thing I know to be right—my soul feels whole. I am living into who I was designed to be.
Eighth, our souls come into this world in a time, a place, a family, and a culture. Our lives become our story. And our souls long for our story to have meaning. We want our lives—with their pains and losses, as well as joys and successes—to matter.
Ninth, our souls also long to live a life that makes the world a better place. For most of us, we long to feel like we are called to something, to be a part of something. We are born with a set of gifts, with a specific temperament, and certain talents and passions that come together to form our unique calling.
Tenth and finally, we long for glory. Not merely the fame and glory that come in this life, but to be glorified in the next. Our souls long for eternal life. Every one of these longings has been met in God and by God. There is nothing we have to do to earn that fulfillment—they are all a gift.
Christ is the Way to Wellness of Soul
Our souls, while eternal and enduring, cannot endure deadness and boredom, rejection and sin. And our souls are very, very needy. In fact, the needs of our souls are far greater than what this world can give. As John Ortberg writes, “The soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give. . . . The unlimited need of the soul matches the unlimited grace of God.” The good news is that the God who created our needy souls has, by grace, provided all that our souls will ever need. We cannot achieve or attain these things our souls need. They have to be given to us by God, as a gift. And God has provided all of those things in Jesus.
People may love us, or they may not. To fulfill the deep needs of our soul, we must look to Jesus. When we come into faith in Christ, when we are born from above and enter into the kingdom of God, our lives become “hidden with Christ” (Colossians 3:3). In this sense, the “Christ-form” surrounds our soul, as seen in figure 1.2. In Christ alone we find what our souls are looking for. In Jesus alone we find wellness for our souls. In Christ I discover that I am desired. In Christ I learn that I am loved. By the work of Jesus on the cross, I find that I am forgiven forever. And through Jesus’ resurrection, I realize that I am risen with him. By the work of Jesus I have been made holy; by his victory over sin and death, I discover that I am free.
In Christ I learn that I have been gifted and called. “All I have needed thy hand hath provided,” as the hymn says. God’s amazing grace has saved a wretch like me. “My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! / My sin—not in part but the whole / Is nailed to His cross and I bear it no more; / Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul.”
This is an excerpt from The Good and Beautiful You: Discovering the Person Jesus Created You to Be by James Bryan Smith. This book is now available at OMF Lit Bookshops, shop.omflit.com, Shopee, and Lazada for P325.
The Christian faith is not only about belief and practices, it is also about the kind of people that we become. Yet some of the biggest barriers to our transformation come from our toxic self-narratives. These narratives shape the way we see ourselves and the way we interact in the world. God designed us with a deep longing in our souls to be wanted, loved, alive, and connected to God. Healing our souls requires more than knowing what God thinks about us. Our healing comes not through reason alone, but through revelation.
“The best practice I have seen in Christian spiritual formation” was Dallas Willard's endorsement of the Good and Beautiful series a decade ago. Now this fourth book in the series, The Good and Beautiful You, addresses the self-narratives that hinder spiritual growth and the desires of the soul that only God can satisfy. James Bryan Smith reminds us how Scripture reveals the beauty and goodness of our own souls and how we long for healing that only God can provide. Complete with spiritual practices that help us live into that reality, The Good and Beautiful You will serve as a welcome companion on your journey to discover who you truly are in Christ.