Soul Cure: How to Heal Your Pain and Find Your Purpose

Excerpt taken from SOUL CURE: How to Heal Your Pain and Find Your Purpose by Gregory Dickow.

Your Beautiful Immortal Soul

Beautiful thoughts build a beautiful soul. There’s always something beautiful to be experienced wherever you are. — Wayne Dyer

What is the human soul? And why is it so powerful, serving as the title of this book?

The soul is eternal and beautifully ageless. It is the immortal part of every human being, the home of our personality and emotions. (Different from our “spirit’ which is born again when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior).

As I always say, the soul, simply put, is your mind to think, your heart to feel and your will to decide. It is the very deepest part of our humanity, the source of all talent and treasure. Within it grow our intellect, our emotions, our values and our perspectives on life. The soul drives all commerce, art and culture.

In short, your soul is your most valuable possession, with the fingerprint of God upon it, including your precious DNA.

I can tell you that soul power ripples outward in all directions, affecting everything — physical health, emotional well-being, relationships, lies, work and destiny.

It is where every life battle is won or lost. It is where joy and sadness begin. It is where success and failure find their origins. So as the soul goes, so goes your entire life.

At birth, the soul is untouched and innocent.

But then it is damaged and corrupted by the hurts we have suffered, the mistakes we have made and the inherent fallen nature we inherited from Adam and Eve. Still, God has a remedy for that. He gives us new life spiritually when we are born again. He begins a process of healing by renewing our minds and transforming our thinking. As the great psalm declares, “He restores my soul” (23:3).

That is what this book is all about. Healing. Restoring. Enjoying who you are and what God made you for!

After Jesus rose from the dead, He met with His disciples and gave them three things they would later find indispensable.

Then the same day at evening, being the first of the sabbaths, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst and said to them, … Peace be unto you; as my Father has sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit (John 20:19, 21-22 JUB).

Notice the three gifts He gave:

• Peace (“Peace be unto you”).
• Purpose (“As my Father has sent me, even so send I you”).
• Power (“He breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit”).

God gives you these same three gifts to ready your soul for the world you face each and every day. He wants to bring you to a place of peace, a place of purpose (where you can discover your unique giftedness and treasure and share it with others) and a place of power where you can handle anything that comes your way, where you can conquer life rather than be conquered by it). In short, He wants to make you whole inside.

Let’s start with peace, because so many people are trying to find it. The world is filled with worry and anxiety, fear and uncertainty. So the first thing He wants your soul to experience is a true sense of calm. Jesus slept in a boat in the middle of a storm (see Mark 4:35-39). How could He do that? Because He carried His peace inside. And so can you. In fact, when His disciples fearfully woke him up, He rose up and poke to the storm: “Peace, be still,” and then it says, “there was a great aim” (verse 39 KJV). The only one who can speak to the storm is the one who is not afraid of it. And there is great calm when you know that God is with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. As you waken to the fact that God’s love for you is unconditional, peace will flow in your life, like a river.

The second thing God empowers our souls with is purpose — a reason to live. Your purpose starts with knowing that you are loved (which we will dig into in the next chapter) and that you were God’s idea, conceived by God’s love and made priceless by Him. Then it extends to discovering your true purpose on earth — the thing you were destined to do.

Without a sense of destiny and purpose, it is easy to feel lost. In fact, I believe the most depressing thing in life is to live without purpose. People only lose their way when they lose their “why.” Your why is the reason for your existence.

At this moment in time, you might be weary or angry if you are not doing what you were born to do, but when you step into your God­-given destiny — that gift you can give others — you will be amazed at how vibrant you feel. And it starts in your soul.

In fact, when you understand why you were born, you can handle whatever comes your way. You stop running from your past, from our pain and from your mistakes. You stop being haunted by your shortcomings. You stop beating yourself up about what you feel ashamed about or the things you did not do right. Your fears, anxie­ties and insecurities are finally lifted from your shoulders.

Look at this amazing verse: “They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart:’ (Ecclesiastes 5:20 NIV).

We live in regret when we are not occupied with gladness. God wants to occupy your life with gladness — to fill the holes in your heart with His peace, power and purpose.

I love the way it is written in the New Living Translation: “God keeps such people so busy enjoying life that they take no time to brood over the past:’

This is what will happen to you. God is gonna keep you so busy enjoying life that you will not live in the past — not in regret, shame or failure.

His purpose gives you stability and perspective, especially when your emotions fluctuate. After all, they are emotions, always pushing you in one direction or another. This internal motion tries to sway you and force you to make bad decisions.

For example, anger is an emotion that can put into motion the desire to hurt somebody. Fear gets you to run away from something. And anxiety moves you to panic about something.

Depression moves people to take a drug or drink too much or go on eating binges. But when you understand your true purpose, it will fortify your faith and power you through negative emotions. Stop for a second and rejoice: Your emotions are trying to take you one way, but you have the freedom to go a different way. You do not have to give those emo­tions the power to control your choices. When you know this, you stop being an emotionally ruled person. Emotions are like the wind, blowing against you, yet you can still walk in the direction you choose to go.

In short: Purpose gives perspective to your pain and powers you through it. Without it, your pain can paralyze you.

That is why God also gives you power, a resilience and strength built into your soul. As it says in John 20:22, “He breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit'” (NKJV). Why is it so important that we have the Holy Spirit’s power?

Because every negative emotion that stirs our lives comes from a sense of powerlessness.

For example, if we do not feel we have the power to change something, it can cause depression. If we do not feel we have the power to reconcile a relationship, it can cause anger and bitterness. If we do not feel we have the power to get ahead, it can turn into jealousy.

The Holy Spirit calms our emotions, freeing us from a sense of powerlessness. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Acts 1:8 MEV).

The Holy Spirit is the very presence and power of God in our lives. When God said, “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5 HCSB), He had the Holy Spirit in mind. The Holy Spirit is God with us, God in us, God for us and God through us.

The Spirit of God and the Word of God make your soul as strong as steel, both durable and resilient. You have bounce-back power, the ability to rebound from adversity and devastation and carry yourself forward, no matter what the challenge.

…

Published by Chosen Books, a Division of Baker Publishing Group © 2022. Used by permission.

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