The Deliverance Ministry
SOUL IDENTITY: THE REAL YOU
Psalm 139:14 “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.”
Psalm 139 gives us a great deal of details into the creation of the human soul and its complexities, it also speaks volumes of how God is able to bring forth a brand new soul out of nothing into existence.
Psalm 139:13 “For You formed my inward (invisible soul) parts; You covered (wove me, like knitting a garment) me in my mother’s womb.”
Our souls, like our physical bodies, are made of many individual parts that are designed to work together in unity to form the whole person.
Unlike the physical body which is comprised of diverse organs within a skeletal frame that’s held together with muscles and sinews, our souls are knitted together out of a consortium of different strands of personality traits, wills, and emotions, that come together to form the person that we become with its unique identity and temperament.
And just like a knitted garment that snags on a sharp object and ends up pulling on one or more of the strands, which ends up in distorting the complexity and beauty of the original piece, so it is with the human soul.
Psalm 139:19-20 “Oh, that You would slay the wicked, O God! Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men (men of bloodshed who tear at the soul with lies). For they speak against You wickedly; Your enemies take Your name in vain.”
Suddenly the beauty of Psalm 139 is abruptly interrupted by what it seems like an out of place rant by David, but if we understand that what tears apart the human soul is the lies that the enemy continuously utters against it, then we can appreciate the importance of David’s words in regards to what causes the human soul to become fragmented, and in turn, we can learn what it takes to put it back together again.
Job 19:2 “How long will you torment my soul, and break me (my soul) in pieces with words?”
Words of Truth are not only the governor of the soul, but its liberator as well. It cannot get any simpler than that, the lying words of Satan are designed to fragment the human soul to such an extent that it causes such a soul to lose its original design and it makes it out to become a fraudulent entity, a distorted copy of what once was an original and exquisite design created in the image and to the glory of God.
David was an expert when it came to understanding his soul, and why he behaved at times in a manner inconsistent with the anointing that he had upon his life, listen to what he says in Psalm fifty-one.
Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”
David understood that from his mother’s womb Satan had been at work to pervert the original personality that God intended for David to be, that is why within the beauty of Psalm 139 he abruptly inserts his call of condemnation against the wicked ones and their lying distortions and calls on God to slay them for profaning the beauty of the Lord’s name.
Since we were all created, within our souls, in the image of the invisible God, every time that there is a tampering against our soul’s original make up, it is done as a disrepute against the Maker, who stamps His brand name on each and every one of us, that is why David states the following:
Psalm 51:4 “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight—that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge.”
David knew that his sin with Bathsheba had caused harm against many innocent others, but what he means when he says to God that, against You, and You only have I sinned, David is recognizing that the only brand name that He impugned by his actions was God’s name, and by David making a public acknowledgment of Satan’s tampering with what God had originally made good, David in a sense sets out to clear God’s name, that is why he adds: that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge.
So that the burden is on us, when we do not live up to God’s original design, to recognize that it is the lies of the devil that we believed that caused us to cast ill repute upon the veracity of God’s Word.
Psalm 89:32 “Then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes.”
Jesus suffered both, stripes and bruises, at the hands of His executioners on our behalf, the stripes symbolized that which was visible, in our case, our sinful actions that are there in the open for everyone to see. The bruises symbolized the hidden areas within our souls that caused us to sin in the first place. The blunt trauma that a person suffers when struck by a rod is not immediately seen until much later when a bruise appears.
Job said that his tormentors were breaking his soul to pieces with their words of accusation. Lies break, bruise, and deform the human soul, but on the other hand, Truth heals the soul the same way that the medicated ointment heals the visible stripes, but Truth has to be applied to the deep inward parts that comprise our human souls.
Psalm 51:6 “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part (the real you, not who or what you have become) You will make me to know wisdom (liberating Truth).”
Can you imagine that, the real us has been hidden from us all these years by the lies that the devil has perpetrated against us, and we like fools just followed along with those lies, believing something about us that was never true.
Psalm 51:14 “Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.”
Remember what David says in Psalm 139:19-20, he tells those bloodthirsty men to depart from him, for they are profaning the Lord’s name with their wicked lies. After David renounces them, then he asks the Lord to deliver his soul from the blood shedding guilt of believing and following along with their wicked lies.
How do I know what wicked lies the devil has perpetrated against me?
Boy, where do we start? Let us start at the beginning, within the womb.
Job 3:3, 11 “May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, ‘a male child is conceived’...Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish (expire, had the spirit of life leave me) when I came from the womb?”
I found out from an early age that the devil’s problem with me had more to do with where I was than with who I was. You see, I was not born out there in outer space or in another planet, no, I was born here on the earth. I’m an earthling, my soul was placed within a physical body and told to occupy time and space while here on this earth, the place from where the physical body that I indwell was made out of, the dust of the earth.
Had my body been void of a soul when it was born, the devil wouldn't have a problem with it, it would be no more than an unreasoning animal occupying space. For you see my soul, what makes me who I really am is foreign in nature, it originated with God, and it is a product of His Spirit.
As long as I am here on this earth I have authority over the piece of the earth that I live in, because I live in a body that was taken from this earth, the devil is here illegally on this earth, and I have authority, as a human, to expel him from the territory that I occupy.
So that the first lie that the devil tries to instill in every human is that we should had never been born, that is what was at the root of his attacks against Job’s reasoning soul. By destroying everything that Job possessed and then blaming God for it. The devil’s aim was for Job to commit suicide, in other words, exit the territory over which Job had dominion.
Job 2:9 “Then his (Job’s) wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast to your integrity? (our soul’s foundation) Curse God and die (kill yourself)!’”
The devil even got Job’s wife to doubt her own husband’s integrity, imagine how much those words of her cut deep into Job’s heart, is no wonder in the next chapter he curses the very day that he was born.
Our carnal human nature always wants to quit, run away or give up, and if it cannot escape the trials, then it seeks solace in the belief that it should have never been born, but the soul within its original make up is not a quitter, it does not think in terms of beginning and ending, for it has an eternal nature and it cannot be killed, since it originated from God.
Since our souls instinct is to resist quitting or giving up, the only option that the devil has left against our souls is to fragment it. That is to divide it with a lie that diminishes our soul’s great potential to exert God’s dominion over all of the devil’s usurped authority that he stole from the first man, Adam.
Our present world system has been built on a lie, the reality that we perceived as we were growing up was a distortion of the original reality that God intended for us humans to grow up with in a place called Paradise.
Our parents were part of that design in God’s original plan for man, the father was to be a representation of God here on the earth, while our mothers were a type for the church, the body of Christ. Since none of us had a perfect mother or father, our perception of God and His church was never fully demonstrated to us as we were growing up.
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray effectively, this was the very first thing that Jesus addressed: Our Father who are in heaven. Many of us have had good fathers, Joseph, Jesus stepfather, was a good man, but while Joseph was still alive, here is what Jesus said:
Luke 2:48-49 “So when they saw Him (Jesus at the age of twelve sitting amongst the elders), they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, ‘Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.’ And He said to them, ‘Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?’”
Joseph’s business was carpentry, they found the boy Jesus sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions in the temple of God His real father.
When Jesus reached the age of accountability, He had to identify Himself with who He really was, and in which reality He really lived.
John 7:28-29 “Then Jesus cried out, as He taught in the temple, saying, ‘You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true (the real reality), whom you do not know. But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me.’”
Years later, when Jesus is in full ministry, He makes the statement to those who were hearing Him teach that they both know who He really is and where He came from. Jesus refused to see Himself or to portray Himself the way and within the context that the world saw Him. That is exactly what He was trying to teach His disciples, and that is what He is trying to teach us in our present day.
John 7:7 “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.”
What an amazing statement, Jesus tells His disciples that the world cannot hate them, for they have not yet learned how to testify against the world, now later towards the end of His ministry, He tells His disciples that they would be hated by the world; what is this all about?
I believe that it has to do with soul identification, and the concept of who our real Father is, and from where do our souls originate from.
John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
Here is how I see it, Jesus knows that He is not of this world and that He is here on earth on a mission from God to save sinners from their sins and to destroy the works of the devil. The Jews that He is contending with claim to be children of Abraham, but Jesus tells them that if they were real children of Abraham they would do the works of Abraham, vs. 39 and believe in Him, since Abraham was a man of faith.
Meanwhile in the middle are the disciples and those who believed what Jesus was teaching them, but who had not yet entered into the revelation of what they were taught.
How do we enter into this revelation? Adam was the first sinner, I am a descendant of Adam, so I too I am a sinner. Jesus is a descendant of Adam as well, on His mother’s side, but yet He never sinned, for His Father is God who is righteous. Jesus offered His sinless soul as a sacrifice on behalf of all Adam’s descendants, to save them from their sins, and to destroy all the damaging work that the devil instigated against their human souls.
God accepted the sinless blood of Jesus as the perfect sacrifice, and in place of the old testament that declared that the soul that sinned would surely die, a new testament was declared, that if we confess our sins, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us, body, soul, and spirit from all unrighteousness.
1 Corinthians 15:47-49 “The first man (Adam) was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly (born again). And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.”
Our physical bodies will finally bear the image of the heavenly Man on resurrection day, but if we are born again, our souls already bear the image of the heavenly Man, for our souls are spirit. So that it comes down to this, what are we feeding our souls? Remember that it is words that either feed nourishment to the soul or cut it to pieces, truthful words deliver the soul from the enslavement of fear, however, the lie keeps the soul in bondage.
1 Peter 1:9 “Receiving the end (or goal) of your faith—the salvation of your souls.”
John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (nourishment for our souls).”
For me it starts with this: Who is my real father? God is my One and only Father! This is what Jesus meant when He taught in Luke 14:26 that if anyone came to Him and did not hate his father or mother and even his/her own life, that they could not be His disciples. This is how our soul acknowledges that it originated from God, like when the boy Jesus, testified in the temple about His heavenly Father, the issue was not disrespect towards His parents, it all had to do with His soul’s identifying itself with God, who is not of this world.
For He alone created us and He alone sustains our life with His breath, for man does not live on bread alone, but by every Word of God. If we are His children, and we are if we are born again, then we belong to Him, we are His property, our lives have meaning and purpose.
The world tells us that we are insignificant, one of seven or eight billion people on this earth right now, the world wants us to believe that nobody cares for us, that we are worthless, for that is what fragments the human soul, the lies that divide us from within.
The world will say that we are a chip from the old block, that because of our race, or gender, or geographical location, or whatever our status in life is, that we are nothing, and that we will never amount to anything. Those are all lies perpetrated by the devil that keep good people of faith bound to the distorted personality that they have come to know so well.
Adam was naked when God told him that he was good, then the devil came and told Adam that he was naked and that it was shameful to be naked, so Adam felt shame for the first time.
God gave Adam a choice, the tree of life which is the Word of God, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the lies that begins the process of death as soon as they are ingested. The minute that Adam put more value on the lies of the devil, than over the truth of what God had told him, that he was good even though he was naked, as soon as he did that, he was barred from the life giving fruit of the Word of God.
That is why Jesus the Word of God, had to come in the flesh and restore order, by exposing the lies of the devil, and displaying once again the great value that God has placed on every human soul.
Matthew 16:26 “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
We, like old Adam, are continuously bombarded by Satan’s accusations, he never gets tired of telling us that we are naked, and that our behavior is shameful, and that there must be something really wrong with us, and why don’t we just give it up.
Did you know that the devil never told me that my actions would one day lead me to hell until I became born again. Imagine that, for twenty nine years I was lost and on my way to hell, and not a peep from him, boy, but as soon as I got saved, all hell broke loose. All of the sudden everything I did seemed offensive enough to the devil, and grievous enough in his view to cause me to fall out of favor with God.
Then I remember the words of Jesus that truly describes who the devil really is, and a smile comes to my face:
John 8:44 “...When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
Whatever stories the devil has been telling you, remember this, he never, ever, speaks on God’s behalf, for God is Truth, and the devil has no concept whatsoever as to what truth really is.
Maybe you never had a father that loved you, if Jesus is your savior, you have One now! For the Bible calls Him the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. Everlasting because He will never leave you nor forsake you no matter what. He will never run out on you and there is nothing that you can do to get rid of Him. Hide that truth deep into your soul and you’ll have peace.
Did you know that everything bad that the devil ever said about you is a lie? Now if you hesitated when you read that, then you need to read once more those red letters, where Jesus calls him out for what he really is, the father, that means originator of all lies.
All that’s left for us to do is to keep seeking the revelation from the Word of God that will expose those hidden things that keep holding us back from who we really are in the Lord.
Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked (lies) way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Every time that the Lord exposes a lie that we’ve harbored, let us renounce it immediately and replace it with the Truth of the Word of God.
AMEN!