If your soul isn't at peace, then chances are neither is your relationship with God. The two are intimately connected. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah wraps up the series "The Battle for Your Soul" by sharing how you can live in the peace of God, even in the midst of ongoing spiritual warfare. To introduce the conclusion of his message, your most valuable possession.
Here is David, and I want to thank you for joining us today. We're getting down to the very end of this series on the battle for your soul, and we saved this particular message to the end because it's well, it's the. Signature message for the whole series, it is Matthew sixteen twenty six, where Jesus asks this question: What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? And of course, that verse reminds us of many people we've known who given their whole lives to the creation of wealth or popularity or success in some way, and they never had time for God. All they had time for was the world.
They gained the whole world, but they lost their relationship with God, and went out into a Christless eternity. Not a very good trade. Maybe you're caught up in that yourself. Maybe right now that's a pretty good description of your life. I'm so busy making money, I don't have time for God.
The Bible asks this question: What will it profit you if you get everything you're looking for? If you gain it all? If you get everything, and you miss out on your soul, you have lost. That's what the verse tells us, and that's what the Bible teaches. We'll have more of that in just a moment, but first, let me remind you: you can get a copy of this book, *The Battle for Your Soul*, by sending a gift to Turning Point in these last few days of the month of October and asking for it.
It's our way of saying thank you for your investment in this ministry. We ask you to do the best you can, be generous as you can be, but do what you know God wants you to do, and whatever that is, say, "Send me the book," and it'll be on its way. Or you can get the book at a local bookstore. It's available now in all the bookstores, Barnes and Noble, Target, all of the stores that carry books. I'm also glad to tell you that is in every one of the Hobby Lobby stores.
You can get it at their bookstore there in each one of their facilities.
So get your copy of the book and begin to devour its content. It is life-changing because it's the Word of God.
Now here is part two of your most valuable possession. Once you understand the value of your soul, the next question follows naturally: If your soul is so valuable, are you taking care of it? I mean, most of us spend a great deal of time caring for the temporary things in life. We work hard to provide for our families. We invest in our education, our careers, our homes, our retirement.
There's nothing wrong with any of these things; they're all good. But they are gifts from God and responsibilities we should take seriously. But what about the soul? If your soul is worth more than the whole world, and it is purchased at the cost of Christ's precious blood. Then nothing deserves more of your attention than your soul, and yet it gets very little attention from so many.
The good news is that God has not left us wondering how we should care for our souls. Throughout His Word, He has shown us how our souls can be strengthened and refreshed, and kept healthy. In a sense, that is what this entire series has been about.
So, I want to leave you just with three practical things that God has used in my life to nourish my soul, and I believe He will use them to do the same for you if you put them into practice. First of all, feed your soul with the Scripture. If there is one habit that will do more for the health of your soul than any other, it is spending time in the Word of God. Did you realize that when you read this book, you are hearing God's voice? God is speaking to you through the Bible, and just as your body grows stronger every time you eat a meal, your soul grows stronger every time you open your Bible.
And let me just suggest to you: you can't live on one meal a week every Sunday morning. You would never want to do that physically. I don't suggest you do that spiritually. Every chapter you read, every promise you believe, every truth you obey, strengthens you in your soul. Gives you a stronger soul.
David understood that, and one of the greatest passages about the nature and effects of God's word, he wrote a lot of things. Psalm 19. He said, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." Now, the word "converting" means to revive, or restore, or refresh, or bring back to life. Have you ever opened your Bible, discouraged and anxious, weary, only as you read to come across a passage? All of a sudden, that passage from the Bible just makes your heart leap.
You find that you come to an answer that you never thought of before. Your circumstances may not have changed, but you changed because God gave you His perspective on what's going on in your life. And that's only the beginning. David goes on in the same psalm to describe some other things that God's word will do for us. In the second part of verse seven, he says, "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." And in verse eight, he says, "The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes." If you read Psalm nineteen, and you read down through the psalm, you will see there are many synonyms for the Bible: the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, the commandment of the Lord. All of those are references to the Bible. And then the psalmist tells you what will happen if you involve yourself in the Bible. What will take place in your life? God's word revives the soul, gives wisdom to the mind, brings joy to your heart, light for your path, and other words.
There's no part of your inner life that it cannot strengthen. One of my favorite passages. You shouldn't be surprised at this. It's from the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah fifteen sixteen.
Here's what it says: Your words were found. And I ate them, and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.
Now, obviously, Jeremiah didn't eat the Bible. He was describing what happens when we receive God's word in a way that becomes a part of our lives. He absorbed the word of God into his life, and the word of God, according to Jeremiah, became the joy and rejoicing of his heart. Where do people go today for joy? I mean, some look for it in entertainment, others in success and possessions, vacations, the next exciting experience they can come up with.
Jeremiah found his joy in the Word of God. He found that as he read God's Word, his heart was overwhelmed with joy. I wonder if sometimes we miss that today. We open our Bibles looking for some assignment or. To check off a box on our little calendar, but what if we came to the Bible expecting something more?
What if we said, "I'm going to read the Bible today until I got joy in my heart"? You know, George Mueller was one of the great entrepreneurs of the Christian faith in years past, and he said it this way: He said, "Above all things, see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord." Other things may press upon you. The Lord's work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls happy in God Himself.
So I thought you should give it a try. Read the Bible this week till you get happy, and you won't have to read too far because the Bible is filled with so much truth to encourage you.
So if you want a happy and healthy soul. Make God's word your daily bread. Open it every day. Read it slowly. Believe what it says.
But most of all, get to know your Savior, who is the living Word, spoken to us in the written Word. As you do this, you will find that God's Word revives your soul and fills you with joy.
So feed your soul with Scripture. Number two, fix your eyes on eternity. This is interesting. We live for the wrong world, most of us. Second Corinthians four, Paul wrote, "We do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing; yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Now, if anybody had reason to lose heart, it was Paul. I mean, he went through so many issues in his life. There are a couple of passages. In the New Testament, where he lists the challenges of his life, one of them is in Second Corinthians. And when I had cancer some years ago, I was getting get well cards from people all over the world, and was so interesting to see the kind of cards I got.
And one day I got one that was really strange. On the front of the card were the words. Of Paul's declaration of everything that was awful that he went through, he was beaten, he was shipwrecked, and all of this. And this was my get well card on the front of the chip. And I looked at that, and then I opened it up, and on the inside were these words.
So how you been? Isn't that interesting? When we compare our lives to the lives of others, we see things differently, don't we? Paul endured persecution, imprisonment, beating, shipwrecks, constant danger. Yet, in the middle of all of that, he could say, "We do not lose heart." What was his secret?
He tells us that while his outward man was growing weaker, his inward man was being renewed day by day. How many of you know the outward man is growing weaker, growing old? Is not for cowards. Growing old is hard, isn't it? Just as soon as you fix one thing, something else breaks.
You get one system going in the right direction, and you realize that the medicine you took to fix that has destroyed something else you were working on. Oh my goodness! We talk about that a lot—the whole battle of the perishing body. But the Bible says that's not true of your spirit, because your soul is eternal, and what you build into your soul. Doesn't waste away because your soul is eternal.
So, when you put your time on your soul and you build your soul, it is an eternal investment that you don't lose. I know some of you have spent a lot of money working on your outward body. If we added it all up, that people have spent to prop up the outward man, it would be astonishing to us all. And I'm not saying that's wrong. I've said before you need to take care of the body that God gave you.
But oh, how important it is for us to look past that, and to the most important thing about us, and that is the person we really are. Remember, you are not a body with a soul; you are a soul with a body.
So your soul has to become a priority. When the temporary fills our vision, our souls begin to get weary. But when we lift our eyes to Christ and to His promises and to the home He is preparing for us, something wonderful happens. We used to sing when I was growing up this little chorus with eternity's values in view, Lord, with eternity's values in view. We will do the Lord's work, and it talks about how we are motivated by the things we know God hasn't prepared for us.
So, feed your soul with Scripture. Fix your eyes on eternity. Here's the last one. Find your peace in Christ.
Now, folks, this is one we need to test out immediately, right now, today, because if ever there was a time when we need a little peace in our hearts, it's now. My goodness, look what's going on in our country. I remember when we used to fight communism on the outside of the country.
Now we fight it on the inside of the country.
Now we worry about some of these crazy people taking over the things that we have spent our life's blood chasing and building, and we look at each other and say, "What shall we do?" I finished a gift book on Israel. I told my publisher, "What I really want to do is stand up on my pulpit and start screaming." Because of the anti-Semitism that's growing in our nation, and how awful it is, and how bad it is, and how ungodly it is, but instead, I decided to write a book, and the book is called God's Heart for Israel, and it puts together all of the scriptures where God speaks of His love for His people and of the importance of us loving Israel. Israel gave us our Bible. The Jews gave us our Savior. We have the greatest system of law and Jewish purns because of the Jewish people.
God loves the Jewish people. They don't do everything right any more than we do. But for us to hate the Jewish people is to put ourselves in great jeopardy because the Bible says God will bless those who bless Israel and He will curse those who curse Israel. And as you can tell, I'm a little stirred up about that. If I let it get to me, I might lose some sleep over it.
But the Bible says we can have a settled peace from God, and still deal with all these things. Paul dealt with the circumstances in his life; he didn't get a pass. Romans tells us that first of all, we have peace with God. That's what happens when we become Christians. Before we are Christians, we're like this with God.
We probably know in our heart what he wants, but we're resistant. Finally, we come to God, and this resistance becomes unity and peace. If you are a Christian today, you made peace with God, but did you know there is a different kind of peace? There is the peace with God, and there is the peace of God. You can have peace with God, and if you are not careful, you can still let the problems of life and the world tear you apart.
So let me just ask you: Do you have the peace of God? The Bible describes the peace of God as something that is so wonderful that if you try to describe it to somebody else, you can't do it. It's the peace that passes all understanding. The only way you can explain the peace that you get from God is to get the peace from God yourself. Then you will understand it.
Paul wrote about it in Philippians. He said, "Don't worry about anything. Pray about everything. Tell God what you need. Thank Him for all He's done.
Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your heart and your mind as you live in Christ Jesus." The Bible says, "As Christians, when your soul is fixed on God, you trust Him." You know that God is in control, and you believe Jesus Christ, and you know that there is a center of truth in your life. All this other stuff, this crazy stuff that's being talked about, has nothing to do with sanity, let alone truth. But in the midst of your life, you know who your truth is. Jesus Christ is the truth, and He is in your life, and He's your peace.
And if you have that peace in your life. The Bible says it's like having a military guard who walks in front of the door of your heart and won't let any of the bad stuff in, because God's peace is guarding your heart, so that the peace of God becomes your possession. I hope you are cultivating God's peace in your life for your soul's sake, for your sake. There is a story I came across that illustrates what I am trying to say about the importance of a healthy soul. It's about a mountain village that depended on a stream for its water.
The stream flowed through the center of town, providing fresh water for every home. And children played on the banks of the stream, and fish filled its waters, and the whole village flourished because of it. High above the village, an old caretaker quietly kept the springs clean, removing branches and leaves and anything else that might pollute the water. His work was unseen, but it benefited everyone. Eventually, the town leaders decided that his job wasn't important, since no one ever saw him working.
They assumed he wasn't needed, so they let him go. At first, nothing changed, but over time, the springs became clogged, the water turned murky, the fish disappeared. Children stopped playing by the stream, and the village began to suffer. Only then did they realize what they had overlooked. The health of the village depended on the health of its source.
And, ladies and gentlemen, the health of your life depends upon the source of your life. Your source is God, but He meets you in your soul. Your soul is the part of you that relates to God, not your body. Your soul. And it is the one thing that's going to be alive long after your body is gone.
It will live forever. Could I encourage you as I encourage myself? Take care of your soul. It was back in 1873. Horatio Spafford sent his wife Anna and their four daughters ahead of him to Europe, while he stayed behind on business.
During the voyage, their ship collided with another vessel and sank in the Atlantic. Anna survived, but all four of their daughters were lost. When Horatio sailed across the Atlantic to be with his wife, the captain told him they were passing over the place where his daughters had perished, and there, in the deepest sorrow of his life, Spafford wrote the hymn that has encouraged believers ever since. At that point in his life, as he experienced the loss of his daughters, he wrote, "Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul." I hope you can say that today, as we come to the end of this series, that it is well with you.
So I don't mean everything's perfect. None of us. Are where we want to be when it comes to our spirituality. The hunger and thirst after righteousness is a blessing for all of us. But if your soul is restless and if it's burdened by sin and far from God, don't ignore that.
Let it lead you to Jesus, because He alone can forgive you. You can have a soul that is healthy. And the Bible helps us to see that. This week on Tuesday, Don and I are flying to New Hampshire, where I am going to conduct the funeral of her brother Sherman. I didn't realize how long I have known Sherman.
He teased me when I was dating his sister. We have been married for 63 years.
So, over 60 years ago, I met him. The thing I can say about Donal's brother was he never changed. He was just the same. He wasn't what you would call outwardly successful. He didn't have a big house, didn't drive an expensive car.
In fact, I think he drove the same car for years because he knew how to repair them, and he didn't need a new one. He was the chief of the fire department in two of the villages back there, well beloved by the fire people. They wanted to give him a big parade at his death, and he told them no, he didn't want that.
So I've known him for over sixty years, and I've known him as a man who loved God. He read his Bible every day. When I would write a book, I'd send it to him, and he would tell me he read it two or three times. I guess I need to do better, so you don't have to read it that many times. But he he loved to read the books.
They didn't have internet. They didn't have a lot of the things that you think you can't live without. They lived a very simple life. What I know about him was his soul was everything. He didn't live for the outside things.
He lived for his soul, and he loved God. and And it's going to be such a wonderful tribute and privilege for me to say to his friends, "Let me tell you about your friend Sherman and his relationship with God." And I wonder if you project yourself into that situation someday in your life, how will you feel? About how you've lived, you know it's so easy for us to just get caught up with the competition that we have in life, trying to do better than this person or that person, and before we know it, we're scrambling all the time on the outside, and the inside is getting neglected. That's why you have church.
Someone said that a pastor has two roles: he comes to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable, and that's what I've been trying to do to help you understand. That if you don't take care of your soul, you will regret it, and you will be lost in so many ways.
So as we end this time together, having focused on this subject, so many of you have told me you've never thought about this before, and you've never heard a sermon about the soul before, and you never read a book about it before. And I can honestly tell you that's true for so many of us. I think it's almost deceptive of Satan to get us to the place where the most important thing in our life gets buried, and nobody talks about it until oh my goodness, we should talk about the soul because the soul is eternal, and the Bible says if you gain the whole world and lose your soul, what value is it?
So we have focused on the soul. Don't let that stop because the series is over. Give some thought to where you are spiritually, and ask God to help you get a feeding program for your soul going, so it can be strong. There is that old little poem that I've said so many times in this church: Two natures beat within my breast; the one is foul, the one is blessed; the one I love, the one I hate, but the one I feed will dominate.
So, feed your soul. Amen. Amen. Feed your soul. What a admonition that is for all of us.
And I recommend you keep track of how you're feeding your soul, because it will surprise you how easy it is to let that go by the wayside. Hey, tomorrow we're going to return to the interview that we had with Sheila Walsh way back at the beginning of this series, and for the last two days of this, we're going to replay that because more than anything we ever do, those interviews cover the content and the and the purpose of a series. We get more information back from people out there, people like you, who tell us they were blessed so much by the interview and learned so much, and were able to coordinate and get all this material together that we're talking about.
So don't miss tomorrow when we take part one of the battle for your soul, and we talk together with Sheila Walsh about this project. I'm so thankful for you, and so grateful for the privilege I have. To come alongside you with God's truth every day and encourage you, and we'll see you again next time right here on this good station. Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor Dr. David Jeremiah.
Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Write to Turning Point, P. O. Box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California nine two one six three. Visit our website at davidjeremiah dot org slash radio, or call eight hundred nine four seven nineteen ninety three.
Ask for your copy of David's new book, "The Battle for Your Soul," and learn to be victorious in spiritual warfare. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also stream more than 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's messages on demand on any screen on our streaming service, Turning Point Plus. For a monthly gift of any amount, visit turningpointplus.org for details.
This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for the Battle for Your Soul interview with Dr. Jeremiah here on Turning Point.
