Living With Fear & Walking by Faith Sýnishorn

DAY ONE: 

SETTING THE GROUNDWORK 

God is Father in creation, Son in redemption, and Holy Spirit in regeneration. The perplexity of who God is has had the church in arduous debate for hundreds of years. Some say God is one, not three; others say God is three, not one. In actuality, a God that is omnipresent and omniscient cannot be defined. Great is the mystery of godliness. 

For the purpose of understanding the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — let us describe the makeup of humankind. When God created man, He created him in His likeness and in his image. Man is one being, yet made up of three parts: He is a spirit, has a soul, and lives in a body. Each entity gives a sense of awareness and another level of consciousness. In the spirit, man is God-conscious. When Adam sinned, his soul and body remained alive, but his spirit died. In scripture, death also means separation, not always the cessation of life. Sin separates man from God. In the same way, a person dies naturally, so it is spiritually. The spirit is separated from God. 

In man’s soul, the place that houses one’s memories, affections, emotions, and appetites, there is self-consciousness. When God breathed the breath of life into man, he became a living soul. Man became aware of life. The soul is where man wrestles with God. It is where man is transformed by the renewing of the mind. When the body is dead, man loses consciousness of the world, for the body connects a being with the world. 

In summary, we have God-consciousness in the spirit, self-consciousness in the soul, and world-consciousness in the body. All three entities don’t always align; and we find ourselves wrestling with one or another, which results in inner turmoil. Sometimes, the spirit wants to perform accordingly, but if the soul (mind) is so damaged and wounded that the person is holding onto issues they cannot release, then evil has an opportunity to attack. There is a war for the mind. With the spirit, we become aware of God; but with the mind, we serve the Lord. The enemy wants to create havoc in the place where we serve the Lord.