Divine Intentions: God’s Plan For Your Futureনমুনা

SOUL-LEVEL HEALING 

If you could ask the apostle John to pray for you, what would you request?

John didn’t give his dear friend, Gaius, a chance to tell him what he needed. Instead, John wrote, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 1:2 nkjv). Maybe Gaius had a chest cold. Maybe he was having problems with the early church in Ephesus. No matter. John just dives in with a prayer of blessing for his friend, based on the condition of Gaius’s soul. 

Everyone wants to “prosper in all things” and be healthy, but John prays that Gaius’s prosperity and health will equal his soul’s prosperity. This is a contingent prayer of blessing. John is telling his friend that if he wants to improve the quality of his life, he must focus on the growth and flourishing of his soul. 

No one would ask for that kind of prayer. Think about it: what if your whole life truly depended on the condition of your soul? What if your well-being in all areas—from your physical body to your relationships, work, career, finances, marriage, and everything else—directly mirrored your soul’s health? Would you need an ambulance right away? Would you be bankrupt and homeless? Would you be in divorce court or friendless? Or would you be richly blessed? Would you prosper even as your soul prospers? 

Maybe that’s just the kind of prayer we all need. Discovering the connection between your spiritual health and your physical life is a huge challenge, but it also gives us a life-altering breakthrough. It’s so easy to get absorbed in the trivial, to be consumed by the temporary. Most of us chase the wrong things. We deprioritize what really matters and hurt ourselves in a multiplicity of ways. Perhaps John’s prayer for Gaius’s soul is the greatest prayer we can ever say.

The struggle is real, isn’t it? We want to be blessed, but we fail to understand the way God orders things. A blessed soul leads to a blessed life, not the other way around. This is a tough truth to embrace. God’s prosperity starts with the soul. A thriving soul is what will lead you to the life you are meant to have.