(1 Thes 5:23, John 16:33, Galatians 5:25)
Life is messy. Every day huge messes interrupt our lives and
we do our best to deal with them, but life is messy.
I guess, for me, the next logical question would be, “what is life?”
Well, it should be no surprise at this point that when I try to figure this stuff out I first search it out through the Bible. So what does the Bible have to say about “life”?
The first time we see the word ‘life’ (in the KJV, at least) in the Bible is in Genesis 1:20: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” Now, admittedly, most other translations will translate the original Hebrew words as ‘living creatures’, but I think the KJV translation will work in this instance because living creatures really are life. But let’s dig a little deeper…
What is the Hebrew word in this verse which is translated as ‘life’? Interestingly, there are actually two words in that verse which are added together to be translated into that one word. Two words, you say? Yep, even defining ‘life’, it appears, is going to be a bit messy. The two words which make up ‘life’, or ‘living creatures’ are ‘nephesh’ (H5315) and ‘chay’ (H2416). I’m not going to list out the entire definitions to these (though, I’ve provided the Strong’s reference numbers [or you could use the Brown-Driver-Briggs, if you want to get a little better understanding of the words] if you want to look them up); I’m going to do my best to give a concise paraphrase.
Nephesh: Breathing creature or vitality. This is the soul.
Chay: Beast or living thing. We’ll call this ‘a body’.
This actually is a really cool pair of words for us to use. You can’t have ‘life’ without a soul, but you can’t have ‘life’ on God’s green earth without a body. Life is a body and a soul. But it goes deeper than this. Yes, man has a body and a soul, but man also has a spirit. Now this can get into some pretty deep theological territory, but I think we can sidestep the whole concept of properly aligning our body, soul and spirit (although, if you would like to look into this, you’re in for an amazing time) and we’ll keep it on a more personally applicable tone. You can’t have life without the spirit.
Or, more accurately, you can’t have life without the Spirit.
There have been enough moments in my life that have felt like life was spinning out of control. In hindsight I can say that these have been times where I’ve focused too much on my body or my soul, and not my spirit.
I guess what I’m getting at is that life in control (not spinning out of control) is life lived focused on the spirit. And your spirit is how you are connected to the Holy Spirit of the Living God.
Now, I don’t want to promote the idea that if you’re “right” with God then you’re never going to get depressed, or anything like that. In fact, the Bible explicitly tells you that you’re going to have trials and tribulations. But the best way to live “life” is to stay “in the Spirit”. I know, the Christianese can get confusing (or, at least, annoying). But if the spirit is the part of ourselves that makes us more than breath and a skin-bag of bones and guts, it only makes sense that this is the part of ourselves that we should be focusing on when we’re trying to make life better, right?
So when life starts to get messy, take a step back and put a little focus on your spirit life. Life may not get less complicated but it’ll get a whole lot less messy.
I guess, for me, the next logical question would be, “what is life?”
Well, it should be no surprise at this point that when I try to figure this stuff out I first search it out through the Bible. So what does the Bible have to say about “life”?
The first time we see the word ‘life’ (in the KJV, at least) in the Bible is in Genesis 1:20: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” Now, admittedly, most other translations will translate the original Hebrew words as ‘living creatures’, but I think the KJV translation will work in this instance because living creatures really are life. But let’s dig a little deeper…
What is the Hebrew word in this verse which is translated as ‘life’? Interestingly, there are actually two words in that verse which are added together to be translated into that one word. Two words, you say? Yep, even defining ‘life’, it appears, is going to be a bit messy. The two words which make up ‘life’, or ‘living creatures’ are ‘nephesh’ (H5315) and ‘chay’ (H2416). I’m not going to list out the entire definitions to these (though, I’ve provided the Strong’s reference numbers [or you could use the Brown-Driver-Briggs, if you want to get a little better understanding of the words] if you want to look them up); I’m going to do my best to give a concise paraphrase.
Nephesh: Breathing creature or vitality. This is the soul.
Chay: Beast or living thing. We’ll call this ‘a body’.
This actually is a really cool pair of words for us to use. You can’t have ‘life’ without a soul, but you can’t have ‘life’ on God’s green earth without a body. Life is a body and a soul. But it goes deeper than this. Yes, man has a body and a soul, but man also has a spirit. Now this can get into some pretty deep theological territory, but I think we can sidestep the whole concept of properly aligning our body, soul and spirit (although, if you would like to look into this, you’re in for an amazing time) and we’ll keep it on a more personally applicable tone. You can’t have life without the spirit.
Or, more accurately, you can’t have life without the Spirit.
There have been enough moments in my life that have felt like life was spinning out of control. In hindsight I can say that these have been times where I’ve focused too much on my body or my soul, and not my spirit.
I guess what I’m getting at is that life in control (not spinning out of control) is life lived focused on the spirit. And your spirit is how you are connected to the Holy Spirit of the Living God.
Now, I don’t want to promote the idea that if you’re “right” with God then you’re never going to get depressed, or anything like that. In fact, the Bible explicitly tells you that you’re going to have trials and tribulations. But the best way to live “life” is to stay “in the Spirit”. I know, the Christianese can get confusing (or, at least, annoying). But if the spirit is the part of ourselves that makes us more than breath and a skin-bag of bones and guts, it only makes sense that this is the part of ourselves that we should be focusing on when we’re trying to make life better, right?
So when life starts to get messy, take a step back and put a little focus on your spirit life. Life may not get less complicated but it’ll get a whole lot less messy.
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