How's Your Soul?: Why Everything that Matters Starts with the Inside You

by Judah Smith

John wrote 3 John to a man named Gaius, who was a Christian, a friend, and possibly a church leader. John wrote, “Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul” (verse 2).

God wants to bless you. God wants to give you health. God wants to give you enough money for your needs, plus some extra to share with others. God wants to prosper you externally just like he’s prospered you internally. Those applications are good and true. I agree with all those things. But in this application, we often take for granted that our souls are healthy. That’s a given. We assume that once we are saved, forgiven, and accepted by God, the “inside us” is taken care of. We have peace with God, so we must have peace with ourselves. We are right before God, so we must be right inside ourselves . . . right? And we move on to the rest of the verse. But is it well with our souls? Is the inside us really steady and stable and secure? Do we ever stop to think about that?

We can be the most popular, prosperous, pretty people around, but inside we can still be empty. Until our souls are at peace, until our souls are stable, until our souls are healthy, those external things won’t bring us the satisfaction we long for. Are our souls healthy? That is the question we should be asking.

Our typical fix when we find problems on the inside is redoubling our efforts on the outside. Maybe you’ve tried this. It’s far too easy to make life all about the outside me, the external me, the physical me. We fall into the trap that if we can be healthy, wealthy, popular, productive, and influential, then life will be good. So we throw ourselves into the chase, thinking that internal happiness will come from external success. If we just try hard enough, if we just wait long enough, if we just reach the next level, we will feel at peace.

Genesis 2:7: “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Think about that verse for a moment. Adam’s body was created first, but it was by definition lifeless. It was a corpse. His system had not been booted up. The lights had not come on yet. He was merely a shell or a form. He was not alive. When did mankind become alive? When—and only when—God breathed into him. At that moment Adam became a living creature, a living soul. That is incredibly significant. God’s breath is the essential characteristic of the human soul. Anytime we speak of the human soul, we are speaking of God’s breath. The two are inextricably connected.

If you find in your heart a longing for God, then you are in the right place. You are on the journey, and God will help you find him and find yourself in him. Whether you and I agree on what we think about the Bible and God and sin and heaven is not the issue—the issue is that we are drawing closer to God.

It’s amazing how big of a deal we become in our own minds sometimes. It leads to so much anxiety and fear. Do you know where worry comes from? From thinking we are in control. True rest is unattainable for people who are obsessed with leading their own lives. But rest is one of the primary postures of those who know Jesus, because we have a God who is in control and who is taking care of us. Psalm 127:1–2 describes how useless it is to overburden ourselves with the cares and concerns of life: Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.

the second element in the Bible’s description of this original, sin-free environment is that God had an assignment for Adam. He had a job. The difference is that before the intrusion of sin, there was no anxiety, toil, or sweat in that job. But Adam still had something he was required to do. God created humans to bear responsibility. The Hebrew word translated work here can also be rendered serve.2 Often when we think about serving, we think in terms of sacrifice, but serving actually benefits the servant the most. Serving makes your soul feel good. It makes you feel alive on the inside. Your soul finds fulfillment, health, and life when you live beyond yourself. Responsibility is good for the soul. I sound like my dad right now, but it’s true. Sometimes we equate a lack of responsibility with living free, but that’s not freedom. That’s not how our souls operate. We need assignments, we need work, and we need activity.

Don’t wait for a certain role to come along. Your soul’s happiness and health are not dependent upon a role. Your soul was designed to do whatever you do with everything within it. It needs responsibility to be healthy, and there is a good chance that responsibility is right in front of you.

A soul without restraints is an unhealthy soul, and the results are obvious to those around us. I believe God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there because when Adam and Eve walked by, the limitation was good for their souls. Their souls felt protected and secure. Their souls felt directed and guarded because they had the ability to say, “I can, but I won’t; and that’s good for me.”

Freedom within limits. That would be the garden of Eden. That is where the soul is at its best. God designed restrictions and limitations as a blessing for your soul. You and I are not God. We need constraints and restraints. We need checks and balances. God knows that, of course, and he built restraints into the form and function of every facet of life. Contrary to popular belief, not all rules are made to be broken and not all limits are meant to be tested. We need to grow in maturity until we can distinguish what restraints are healthy and submit ourselves to those restraints.

We are, by nature, relational beings. We were meant for community. Even the most introverted, solitary personality types need at least some level of human interaction in order to maintain healthy, thriving, vibrant souls. It is unhealthy for our souls to be isolated or without relationship.

Consider carefully the relationships in your life. A lot of people take relationships as they come, with little analysis or long-term thought.

Friendships and relationships are more important than that. Be careful and be intentional. Let God lead you.

All I know is that the inside me is not always as stable as I’d like. My second-born child appears to be a lot like me, and I feel for him. If you are a parent, you know what I mean. The quirks in your kids that bother you the most are the ones they inherited from you. You recognize them instantly because you’ve dealt with them your whole life. You just want to warn them, “A dark road awaits you. Turn back now.”

I think King David, who wrote many of the psalms, was an emotional kind of guy. He was a warrior, he was a king, he was a fighter—but he was also a lover and a poet. He was complicated, just like us.

we tend to ponder the huge, galactic questions about the existence of God and pain when we are at our lowest points. That is the worst time to try to answer those questions, by the way. You can ask them, but don’t attempt to answer them. Don’t make massive conclusions about the reality or goodness or presence of God in the middle of an emotional meltdown. For that matter, don’t take out a loan, get divorced, get married, or do anything else overly life-altering just because your emotions are crying out for escape. In the journey of life, emotions make great companions but terrible leaders.

this is actually what life on this troubled planet sounds like and feels like. High highs and low lows. You don’t even have to be an emotional person. You could be a cerebral person, a math person. Regardless, you are going to feel emotions. We all have them. God gave them to us. And it can be really challenging and alarming when we find ourselves on this pained planet called Earth and we can’t seem to find any stability or clarity.

Just because you lead people and help people doesn’t mean you are always going to be healthy on the inside. If anything, the pressure of public influence increases the unhealthy tendencies of our souls. If we aren’t careful, it can make us defensive and isolated. Instead of looking for help when we need it, we pretend to have it all together.

Scriptures like Psalms 42 and 43 remind us that God knows exactly what is going on inside us. God is the master architect of the complicated, confusing, and even contradictory constructs that we call our souls. Maybe our souls surprise us—but they don’t surprise God. He isn’t shocked or scandalized by the up-and-down tendencies of our hearts. He isn’t embarrassed just because our feelings get out of hand. He sees the craziness and chaos, and it doesn’t bother him a bit. He knows us better than anyone, and he loves us more than everyone.

If God designed the human soul, then it’s only logical that he would know how to fix it when it is out of alignment. Yet sometimes we are so embarrassed by our emotions and so freaked out by our feelings that we avoid the one who knows our souls the best. So we try to fix ourselves on our own. But the results are usually underwhelming, because it’s surprisingly hard to feel better just because we want to. It’s difficult for our souls to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—whatever bootstraps are—because emotions are so complicated and even subversive. The p...

when we find ourselves tumbling down melancholy rabbit holes of discouragement and depression, we have to choose. Either we believe that nothing matters, or we put our hope in someone who is bigger than us—God.

God is our God. He is our salvation. His full attention is toward us. It is hard for our finite selves to fathom that the most powerful person in the universe could be intimately involved in our everyday lives, but it’s true. And this reality and knowledge and awareness will rescue us from the cycle of despair.

God is not just the God of the universe. He is your God, your salvation, and your hope. He is available to you. His attention and care are perpetually toward you. They will never be removed from you. You can talk to him. You can involve him. He knows your feelings and emotions better than you do. He knows what you are going through. He knows your ups and he knows your downs. The reality of God’s care for you makes you healthy on the inside. It enables you to rise again, to believe again, and to walk again.

God is our souls’ source of stability. I am convinced that our inner needs for security, strength, and solidity can be met only when our souls find their homes in God. Hebrews 6:17–20 describes this reality: So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

The author of Hebrews wrote to two main groups of people. The first group was composed of people who were four inches from giving up. These people were thinking, I’m done. This is too difficult. This is too painful. Following Jesus has cost me in so many areas. I’ve lost friends and loved ones. Jesus isn’t worth this. So the writer told them, “Don’t give up on Jesus.” The second group were those who wanted to just add Jesus to their conglomeration of spiritual concepts and ideas. They wanted to believe in Jesus, but they also wanted to keep the Law and the Ten Commandments. They had a hybrid spirituality that tried to mesh faith in Jesus with other spiritual paths. The author wrote to tell them, “Jesus is enough.”

Storms hit, and we say, “Jesus, I don’t want to stay here. I don’t like this at all. It’s windy. It’s rainy. The waves are big. Where is my heavenly helicopter?” And Jesus replies, “I’ll be your anchor.” We want out. We want an escape. We want someone to remove us from the storm, but Jesus wants to be our strength and stability in the storm.

I’m sure Peter at that moment did not feel like a saintly figure in a medieval painting. He was cold, wet, terrified, and intensely human. And Jesus says, “Why did you doubt?” If we’re honest, we’ve all had moments like that. We read scriptures that encourage us to trust in God and they sound great on paper, but then we look around and we get overwhelmed. I’ll tell you exactly why I’m doubting, we think. Have you seen the wind? The waves? Did you hear the diagnosis from my doctor? Do you read the news? How can I not doubt? I’m sinking right now, and I have no idea what to do. Jesus is saying something with this question. By the way, he is always saying something when he asks a question. Jesus’ questions are absolutely rhetorical. They are sneaky statements designed to help us reflect and learn. Jesus doesn’t want Peter to list out the reasons he panicked. “Well, Jesus, since you asked, here are the four things that are freaking me out right now . . .” That’s not what he is saying. He is reminding Peter, “You really have no reason to doubt, because I am here. I am with you. I am caring for you. I am your anchor and your rock and your God.”

God is love, and God designed our souls to thrive within the context of authentic love. Just like our need for hope and our need for stability, which we looked at in the previous chapters, love is a fundamental desire of our souls. We naturally seek to be loved and to love. Our souls find security and happiness and identity in this concept called love. And while that looks different for different people, ultimately our souls cannot be at home without love. God is the original lover. He is the perfect, consistent, all-encompassing personification of love. He defines love and he is the source of love. He is the one who created the concept of love and the one who introduced us to love. Love and God are meant to go together.

One of the greatest examples in the Bible of a quiet soul is David, the most famous king of Israel. He was a warrior, politician, family man, visionary, musician, and songwriter. If anyone knew what it meant to face constant stress and pressure, it was David. Yet David’s most lasting legacy is not the empire he built, the enemies he defeated, or the laws he passed. Arguably his greatest legacy and gift are his songs, recorded in the book of Psalms. They are a heartfelt, passionate, authentic expression of his journey with God. And thirty-five hundred years later, his words and emotions still resonate with our souls. I think this ancient king understood something that our frenetic twenty-first-century culture desperately needs. He knew how to have a quiet soul. Psalm 131 in particular gives us insight into David’s unique ability to maintain a quiet and restful soul. This psalm is part of a collection of fifteen psalms called the Songs of Ascent. They were traditionally sung by Jewish caravans on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate their annual religious feast. The Songs of Ascent were their road trip playlist. Here are verses 1–3: O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore. Notice especially verse 2. ...

even with all his opulence and popularity and fortune and fame, he found a way to quiet his soul. If King David could develop a calm soul in the middle of the craziness and chaos of ruling a kingdom, maybe there is hope for you and me.

There are only three verses in this beautiful, short, potent psalm. But they give us several keys that we can apply today. The first verse starts like this: “O LORD my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high.” That is a radical statement for a king to make, especially in that culture. He was the most powerful person in his nation. He would have been treated like a god. But he is saying in this psalm, “I know there is a God and I am not him. People treat me like a god, but I am not going to buy into that.”

The principle here is this: if you want to have a calm, quiet soul, you have to recognize that you are not in control. That realization is fundamental to being healthy and peaceful on the inside. I am not in control. I am not in charge. Ultimately, I am not dictating my days. God, you have numbered my days. You have ordered my ways. I make my plans, but you direct my steps. Lord, I trust that you have my best interests in mind.

Is God really God? Do we actually believe he is in control and that he loves us? If so, then we don’t have to play God. We don’t have to be in control. We can find rest for our souls in quietness and confidence. Yield your ambitions and dreams and desires to God. That is a safe place and a sane place. Let him be God. It’s his job, and he’s really good at it.

In Psalm 131:1 David went on to say, “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” Essentially he is saying, “There’s a lot I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know all the facts. I don’t understand everything. And I’m okay with that.”

Do you want a quiet soul? Do you want a peaceful spirit? Then draw lines. Draw limits. Create a margin and a buffer for your soul. Every day there will be issues, topics, and drama that cross our paths but are not necessary for us to understand. These things are on a need-to-know basis—and we don’t need to know. Let me be very practical here: gossip is something you can immediately eliminate. You don’t even need to pray about that one. People around you undoubtedly have a few hidden secrets and closet skeletons that you just don’t need to know. And if some well-meaning soul tries to inform you about something that is none of your business, just say, “Thanks, but I don’t need to know that. I love him. I believe in her. I don’t need to occupy my mind, will, and emotions with issues that God hasn’t asked me to fix.” Drawing lines and setting limits isn’t irresponsibility. It isn’t selfishness. It’s wisdom. It’s okay if we don’t know all the news and all the details, if we don’t know about every person who is hurting in the world, and if we don’t know all the gossip, because God is really good at being God. He knows everything, he is in control, and his grace is enough.

David continued: “I have calmed and quieted my soul” (Psalm 131:2). The Hebrew word translated calmed in this verse literally means “to make level.”1 It is used in the Bible in the context of leveling an uneven field (Isaiah 28:25). David was saying that he has intentionally leveled and settled his soul. I think David was recognizing here that his internal levels were off sometimes, and it made him inconsistent in his soul. It happens to all of us, and David was no exception. He was aware of the perceptions of people around him. He heard the barrage of both praise and criticism. He was under never-ending pressure and responsibility and stress. I think David faced the same question we do today: Do I live according to who I really am, or do I live according to who people perceive me to be or want me to be?

David was dealing with all that, and he tells us, “I need to level myself out here. I don’t want to forget who I am. I don’t want to become inconsistent and imbalanced in my soul.” He continually reminded himself, I might be the king, but I’m still just David. I used to be a shepherd who lived simply and loved God deeply, and I was happy. Now my job title and influence have changed, but I’m not going to lose perspective. I’m still me.

I think the greatest leveler is worship. I talked about this in the first chapter. Worship reminds us of who God is and who we are. It was one of David’s secrets. He had his share of problems and mistakes, but he was a worshipper. And as his soul worshipped, it stayed level, grounded, and authentic.

Do you know what David was saying? He was telling us that he has a calm and quiet soul because he is content with who God is. I think David was writing this song and he was saying, “I have fame, I have riches, I have opulence, I have influence—I have it all. But everything pales in comparison to you, God. I am like a weaned child, a child who spends time with his mother not because he wants something but simply because he loves to be close to her. I just want you, God.”

We read Hebrews 6:19 earlier. It says, “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” I love those first three words: “we have this.” The writer of Hebrews used it to set up an explanation of who Jesus is and what he accomplished on our behalf. Listen to that language: we have this. We don’t have to go get it. We don’t have to earn it or deserve it. We already have what we need. And we know that God will continue to provide what we need in the future. But more important, we have a God who wants—with every ounce and fiber in his being—to hold us in his arms. We don’t need an agenda or a to-do list when we approach God. He likely doesn’t have much of an agenda either. He just wants to relate. He just wants to be with us, like a mom and her child.

I think you were designed for this. You were wired for this. Of all beings in the universe, you are the human being; you are the primary being; you are the object of God’s affection and desire. You were designed to be alone with God, to enjoy God, to feel God, and to experience God. I think it is intuitive in your makeup and your system.

in the middle of all your coming and going and doing, you can, like King David, let God level and calm your soul. Even in a world where the volume is deafening and the velocity is dizzying, you can discover sanity, rest, and ease. You can discover a relationship with God that revolves around not getting things from him, but simply being with him. And in that space, you will find a calm and quiet soul.

Paul’s attitude was, “Wherever you want me to go, God; whoever you want me to talk to; whatever risk you want me to take; whatever prison they put me in; and whatever persecution I come under, I will do whatever you want me to do. I’m yours.” Some people think surrender is a sacrifice. I see surrender as the safest place to live. If God is leading, then all the pressure is on him. A surrendered life can say, “God, this is your fault. You’re the one who got me into this mess, so you’re the one who will need to get me out. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m in way over my head. But God, I am totally surrendered to you. This is on your schedule, so this one is on you.” What a safe place to live, and what a beautiful place to live. We are just along for the ride. It’s fun—and at times frightening—but ultimately the weight and pressure are on God, because we are simply doing his will.

Do you want to live an effective life? It’s not as complicated as some might say it is. First, yield to God, your Creator and your Father. Turn over control of your ways and your days to him. And second, receive from the community that God puts around you.

God is inviting each of us to have an effective soul and an effective life. His invitation is available to everybody. It’s not going to be a life without challenges and difficulties, but in the end, we will be fruitful, faithful, and full.

Our actions, decisions, and emotions are the natural result of what we think about ourselves. They flow from the perspectives we have of our identities. But often we don’t stop to evaluate our self-perceptions. We don’t think about who told us who we are or whether they were right or wrong in their assessments. God wants to give identity to our souls. He wants to change us from the inside out and make us new people. He wants to help us see ourselves for who we are in him and then live accordingly.

This great God is on our side. We are not subject to the same chance and fate of every other human being on the earth. We have been transferred from the kingdom of fear, luck, self-effort, and darkness into the kingdom of light. We follow a God who is far above all authority and power, far above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. There will never be a greater name than Jesus. This is the God we follow. And if we follow this God, we are secure. We are safe. This God is reliable and he is trustworthy. We can find rest, we can find peace, and we can find ease in him. We will live differently once we understand this. It will change the way we see ourselves and our futures. We will begin to expect good things, because the God who rules the universe is with us and for us.

The biblical progression is first grace, then faith, then works. That is the divine order. God gives us his grace, and we respond in faith, and eventually our faith and relationship with God produce a healthy, holy lifestyle.

It can very quickly become discouraging to look back on the week and ask yourself how consistent you were. If your disposition and personality are anything like mine, that is the last thing you want to do. But that is just what Paul was saying we should do. “I want you to consider your lifestyle. Not your Sunday morning behavior—your everyday behavior. Examine the constancy and continuity of your soul’s walk. Are you stable? Are you consistent? Are you doing what God wants? Are you making progress?”