Understand Yourself
By: Pastor Gabe Turner
“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” - Socrates
“The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are. We unconsciously live someone else’s life, or at least someone else’s expectations for us.” – Peter Scazzero
I had very successful football seasons when I was coaching. My final year we were playing Park View Sterling in round one of the play offs and they were stopping one of our key plays, a play that no one could really stop at that point. We won on a last second field goal, but Coach Fischer was talking with their head coach after the game and asked how they made all those stops? The coach said, “We ran an arc motion with that play every time we ran it.”
We really understood the other teams we played through study of film. But we didn’t have as good of an understanding of ourselves.
When I say “self,” I want to be very clear on what I mean, and more importantly, what the Bible says about “self.” Your true self is your soul, but the idea of a soul can feel a little abstract. God’s Word brings clarity to who we truly are and to how God sees us.
Jeremiah 17:10 (NIV)
“I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”
The makeup of yourself as a soul - heart, mind, and body, or your points of interaction with the world. So, I want to share a framework with you for understanding your soul that has been revolutionary for me:
SOUL
Let’s start with the center:
Soul
Heart (Will or Spirit)
You were created by God with a will. Think of your heart or will as the command center of your soul, the CEO of your soul, or the Head Coach/Play caller of your soul. Free will, the power of choice, is one of the most beautiful gifts God has given us. We have the power to choose what is good or evil. To bless or curse. What car to drive. Our profession. What to study. Our major. What to wear. You have the choice to grow or remain stagnant.
One of the most important decisions we make in life is how we spend our time. You choose what to do with your time. That comes from the heart which is why Moses prayed what he did in Psalm 90:12
Psalm 90:12 (NIV)
Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Our heart, or will, is also called our spirit. I think of spirit week in high school. Those who participated had the heart of the school.
Another great example of the heart, will, or spirit, is found in Psalm 51, David’s prayer of repentance after his sin with Bathsheba..
Psalm 51:10-12 (NIV)
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Why heart? Why spirit? Because David knows the heart is at the core of his soul. From the heart, he made a decision to choose not to go to war. From his heart, he made the choice for a glance in the direction of Bathsheba to turn into a second look, and then a longer gaze. From his heart, he chose to call for Bathsheba. From his heart he chose to bring Uriah home from battle, to attempt cover his sin, and ultimately he chose to have Uriah murdered in battle.
11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
When we surrender our hearts to Jesus, the Holy Spirit enters our spirit, or heart, regenerates us, and we are now a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are born again. Romans 10:9. We surrender our spirit to the Holy Spirit. What’s happening? We are surrendering control of our will to God. We are surrendering our hearts to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. How you spend your time is important, but even more important is choosing where you spend eternity… and that hinges the choice to surrender your heart to Jesus.
I would argue that after that decision, the next most important choice you make is choosing what it is that you think on – choosing your thoughts – which leads to the next part of the soul’s framework - the mind. And when we hear mind, this is the makeup of your thoughts and feelings:
Soul
Heart (Will or Spirit)
Mind (Thoughts and Feelings)
With every thought there is a feeling that is associated with it, the mind is never neutral. Let me prove it you… If I say the name Tom Brady… immediately you have a thought and with the thought a feeling… masks… This means we’re always thinking and always feeling. Our thoughts and our feelings are always moving in a certain direction.
Because we’re not intentional with our thinking, many of us have created a world in our minds that is divorced from reality. You’re living in a make-believe world.
“When we leave reality for a mental creation of our own doing, we create a counterfeit world. When we do this, it can properly be said that we exclude God from our lives because God does not exist outside of reality and truth. In doing so we wreck relationships by creating endless confusion and conflict.”– Peter Scazzero
David wrote in Psalm 26:
Psalm 26:2-3 NIV
2 Test me, O Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind;
Look at this order – heart and mind. You can choose what you think about. You can choose what you dwell on. And the heart and mind dynamic play themselves out into our lives.
3 For your love is ever before me, and I will walk continually in your truth.
Your love is ever before me – constant awareness of God’s love. The result – walking/living in truth, our interaction with the world. And this gives us indication of how our self gets formed. This leads us to:
Soul
Heart (will or spirit)
Mind (Thoughts and Feelings)
Body (Appetites and Habits)
Body -- This is the part of us that interacts with the world that we live in. Your body has desires and appetites. It gets hungry. It gets thirsty. You use words. You have body language. Your body has God-given, sexual desires.
Over time, our heart (will) outsources decisions to our body, which is where habits come from. This can serve us really well when it comes to tying your shoes, riding a bike, driving a car and so on. Habits serve us well when it comes to rising early and spending time with God in the morning, or fasting and prayer, or solitude before God. Habits serve us well when it comes to exercise or eating healthy.
But, left unchecked, we develop habits of responding in anger, watching tv or movies that aren’t healthy for us, what we’re looking at online, a lack of self-control with our eating, etc.
My point is that your bad habits, your addictions, your hang ups, your bad attitude, your body language, your facial expressions, habitual sin, overeating, explosions of anger, the lack of self-control in general, all the things that your flesh craves… they are really soul issues.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
And really, all issues in life and leadership are soul issues. Until you understand this, you’re always going to be putting a band-aid on leadership issues rather than dealing with the root.
To lead yourself well you must:
3. Constantly check your alignment.
The idea of alignment is also what we call integrity. Integrated means aligned. Disintegrated – not aligned. Maybe you’ve seen a team, or been a part of a team, where it doesn’t feel or look like they’re on the same page? They’re lacking integration.
Years ago, when we first started our church, I was meeting with a football coach who attended our church and he said something like this – Our team is just not aligned right now. You know how you have this mission, Love God, Love People, Love Life – that everyone knows and rallies around. We don’t have that.” He was saying that there was no alignment.
Apply that same idea to your soul - an integrated soul. Integrity. You’re the same person no matter whether you’re with a group or by yourself. No matter the people you’re with. The soul that is lacking integrity, or alignment, is disintegrated. And that person is disintegrating. A crash waiting to happen. Jesus identified this issue:
Mark 8:36 (NIV)
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
Successful by the world’s standards, but failing in the areas of life that matter most. When something’s off with yourself and not aligned, your soul decays. Your feel like you’re losing yourself, and you need to be brought back to alignment. Here’s the good news. God gives us guidance for an integrated soul.
Psalm 19:7 (ESV)
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
This means to live in alignment with The Word of God. Regardless of what culture says, regardless of what my flesh says, regardless of what my feelings say, regardless of what those around me suggest, I submit to the authority of God’s Word.
Psalm 119:11 (NIV)
I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:28 (NIV)
My soul is weary with sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word.
The Word of God
Soul
Heart (Will or Spirit)
Mind (Thoughts and Feelings)
Body (Appetites and Habits)
This is what alignment looks like. Another Psalm of David:
Psalm 41:12 (NIV)
Because of my integrity you uphold me
and set me in your presence forever.
If you don’t lead out of integrity, it’s eventually going to show up.
Think of the life of Jesus before launching out into ministry. During his testing and temptation, Jesus himself said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
How important is integrity? I love the words of Warren Buffet when it comes to hiring:
“We look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. And if they don't have the latter, the first two will kill you, because if you're going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb.” – Warren Buffet