SALVATION OF THE SOUL AND THE JOURNEY TO FREEDOM 

I’m continuing in the six part overview of the course salvation of the Soul and the Life Giving Spirit – this is number five. It is designed to be presented in interactive small groups and that is happening – It is not just a Bible study. However, I am doing the overview as sermon podcasts so that I can make my Scriptural position of the salvation of the Soul clear for the sake of accountability.

We spoke last week about how Adam and Eve had felt forsaken and had misread the nature of God – not thinking or believing that they were loved and not able to trust him for their lives. They created helper parts in their souls – covering up - and the blame game - the woman You gave me – even God was blamed! The human soul was now on its journey of creating countless self-protective and defensive and self-rescue strategies that would become activated in every person to be born in the earth.

Those first unhelpful helper parts were created in the Garden of Eden because of a feeling of perceived forsakenness - but they were not forsaken – God does not forsake us. I will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6. Hebrews 13:5). 

Even Jesus had to briefly go through the feeling of forsakenness in his soul for our sakes on the cross but in his spirit, he knew he was not forsaken. He never departed from God, even while feeling forsaken but instead, he turned to scripture, quoting Psalm 22, demonstrating a path towards hope and victory through faith amidst pain. And every person ever born goes through feelings of forsakenness, whether real or perceived because it may or may not be intentional. Forsakenness sums up the human emotional pain felt in such experiences as feeling abandoned, deprived, overlooked, rejected, mocked, physically mistreated, unjustly judged or criticised, and many other negative experiences. It brings about a deep sense of separation, vulnerability, and lack of connection. 

In childhood, we don’t have the wisdom or insight to understand why hurtful things happen or are said to us so we come up with the best self-protective strategies we can to avoid that kind of pain in the future, and those things get locked into our souls as helper parts early on. The problem is, they don’t grow or mature with us. We think life will improve as we get older, but those old strategies stay stuck at the age they were formed.

That’s why we’re looking into the healing of the soul because many of us carry this deep sense of spiritual forsakenness from childhood onwards, even if no one meant us harm. Just the perception of it is enough. These coping strategies, though immature, helped us survive. They became part of who we are—how we show up in relationships and how we see ourselves. But often, we don’t realize we’re just replaying old patterns. They feel automatic, like they have a life of their own. So we don’t engage with them as evil, because our spirit created them in a time of naivety, but we need them to stop driving our attitudes and behaviour, and remember, our human spirit knows them. So who can help us see what’s really going on? We’re not all psychologists—but God is and His Spirit knows our spirit, and He understands our wounds. That’s where healing begins.

We also spoke last week about David talking to his soul in the Psalms and talking about his inner bodily and spiritual parts and how they affected one another. He said in Psalm 32:3 that when he kept all his anxieties and guilt inside, his bones grew old, and his body dried up and he felt emotional stress. 

I have seen it to be the case that when a person’s determined helper part gets into reaction to something difficult, they also sense a bodily reaction that can be automatic and subconscious. It can be in the chest or the stomach or the throat or the head – or appear as exaggerated movements or overwhelming fatigue. That illustrates that just as our spirit knows what we have experienced in our soul, our body also holds this unique information as a sensation of some kind. A psychotherapist called Bessel Van Der Kolk has written a good book on this called ‘The Body keeps the Score’. He describes how our brain and neuronal system were created to be wired in this way to be physically ‘triggered’ by an inner distress. Each oe of us have our own individual triggers.

I spoke to a fellow whom we will call Reg two or three years ago regarding his stress and anxiety after suffering a physical and emotional collapse at work where he had a panic attack and thought he was having a heart attack. (This is a blend of two people’s experiences with names and other details changed for anonymity) He was put into rehab for weeks and even though he could walk and exercise under supervision he had difficulty recovering mentally and emotionally - or spiritually, even though he was a strong Christian. I knew Reg and respected him as a very successful management consultant who had worked at instructing in management systems and health and safety and managed teams to reconstruct damaged areas after natural disasters.

He said his nature seemed to have changed. He had become irritable at people and resented having to stay in rehab being told what to do next – when to shower, when to eat, what to eat, how far to walk. I said – That’s not like you at all – not the Reg I know. 

He said – ‘Oh but it is, that difficult person is there’. He told me how he felt blocked spiritually and was fearful of having another panic attack and was often very confused. 

I asked Reg if he felt physical stress anywhere in his body when the mental and emotional distress hit him. I’d suspected it might have been in the chest, but he said no it was in the throat where he would choke up and lose his voice. So I asked him how long he had been experiencing that choked up feeling. He said a long time. He sat in silence for a while and then he said ‘When I was ten years old at school I was told by the gym master ‘You will never be anything like your big brother – you’re disorganised and can’t be trusted with peoples safety. It was because I didn’t set the gym up properly that week. My older brother was a good gymnast and always set the gym up to perfection. The gym master said no more gym for you this term. 

Reg felt humiliated and extremely hurt and misjudged. He said that when he tried to explain that it was because he had had to set up on his own because the other boy who should have been helping him hadn’t turned up. But his throat choked up and he couldn’t talk. He promised himself nothing like that would ever happen to him again and he would prove to the gym master and himself and everybody else that he was as good as his brother. He decided to take command of his future and learned to be prepared for any unforeseen event and be able to fix or manage any problem. 

It was then I realised that Reg had created a controlling helper part in his soul at that point in his life.

Reg found that not being in control of what he could and could not do at the rehab centre had brough all this back. His fear of failure had created a controlling manager helper that drove his life – his very successful life, but it robbed him of the peace of God when under pressure to have to solve every problem and foresee every disaster. 

His spirit and his body had just shown him what his soul was up to, just as David spoke to his soul and asked God what was happening in his soul. David only had the Law to help him reorder his soul (Psalm 19), but Reg had the Holy Spirit, and with prayer I was able to encourage him to speak to his soul. Reg spoke to the little ten year Reggie who in his immaturity had devised the best strategy at the time of coping with the feeling of inadequacy and of being unjustly judged. Reg who had created that helper part at ten years of age then asked that unhelpful helper part to step aside after all that time and to allow the Holy Spirit, the true Helper to show Reg how to let Jesus take his burden of fear and panic of not being in control. Reg gave himself to that and God began to speak to him in many different ways and his life changed. His gift of wisdom and management remained but now it was in God’s hands and not his. That was not just repentance from sin – hamartia, it was repentance to life as in Acts 11:18 where the Apostles realised that God had not only granted the Gentiles repentance from sin but had granted them g ‘repentance to life (metanoia zoe).

I want to give you some examples of Helper Parts: See which ones you recognise!

* Inner critics: constantly reminding of inadequacies and the need to work harder.

* Caretakers: shielding from harm.

* Controlling managers: trying to organise tasks to avoid failure.

* Performance helpers: impressing oneself and others.

* Pushy helpers: driving us to work harder 

* Blame game helpers: getting out of trouble.

* Rescuers/escapers: avoiding the harsh reality of overwhelming burdens. These are more tenacious and addictive than other helper parts.

* These are viewed as common categories, but the specifics of each person’s helper parts are unique because each individual has a unique spirit, with unique talents, gifts and characteristics and circumstances.

The ultimate goal is for individuals to become ‘the real person’ that God created not just in his image, but now being transformed after his likeness, and able to embody that likeness in his world. And this aligns with God's desire for us to live in agreement and relational wholeness.