Let’s talk about the part of our being that is our soul. Your soul is the real you. It’s the part that doesn’t die when your body dies. We say that the soul is our mind, will and emotions. I want to ask the question here: What do we mean when we talk about the “emotions of the soul”? What do we mean by that? So, some of the emotional needs that we have in our souls, I have listed here. In this example, there are six of them.

You have a need for purpose (or we sometimes think of this as a sense of fulfillment, or a sense of importance, or significance). When it’s not being met, you have hopelessness and nothing to live for.

You have a need for joy. If your joy need is not met, then you have no life and only darkness.

You have a need for freedom. When your freedom need is not being met, then “no freedom” feels like bondage and death.

You have a need for hope. If we don’t have food, we can live for weeks or months. If we don’t have water, we can live for a few days. If we don’t have air to breathe, we can live for a few minutes. If we don’t have ANY hope, we will die in a few seconds.

You have a need for esteem. People who don’t have esteem tend to act in self-destructive ways. They see their life as cheap. They trade it away cheaply—such as a the person who has no esteem and sleeps around a lot. They know they are being self-destructive, but they just don’t care.

We also have a need for belonging because we are created to by God to be connected to Him and to other people.

These are all God given needs. God has put these in you. There is nothing wrong with having these needs. You are created to have these needs. It is part of the design of who you are as a person. All of us certainly have a need for all six of these things. I am sure the list goes on. I just want to talk about six to show you some examples. Now whether you are a Christian or not a Christian, you have these needs. You have a soul and your soul has these needs that God created in you.

The question is, “How do you get these needs met?” That is what we want to talk about today, how do you get your soul’s needs met?

When you are walking by the Spirit, you are getting these soul needs met the way God provides for them to be met. When you are walking by the flesh, you are getting your soul’s needs met in the way the natural man (your fallen nature) wants to get them met.

In our next few lessons, we will talk about the specifics of how to walk by the Spirit as it relates to each of these six soul needs, but before we go on to that, we have another question for you. So,..please click on the “Next” bar below.