FINDING MEANING IN LIFE Part 2
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…(Psalm 139:14a)
In our last newsletter, I left you with the question, “What is it that would cause a person who has trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior and has the Holy Spirit living inside of them to not have meaning, purpose, security, happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction in life, internally and externally.” In this newsletter, I would like to answer that question.
To understand why a person who has trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior does not have complete fullness of life internally and externally, we must understand the fearful and wonderful creation of man and see God’s wonderful creation of man in the beginning. When God created man in the Garden of Eden, He created Him a tripartite being, which means, there are three parts to every human being. These three parts consist of spirit, soul, and body.
The spirit of man in the Garden of Eden was where God dwelt until the day that Adam, the first man, sinned against God and God moved out of the man. When God moved out of Adam, man became separated from God and needed a Savior to reconcile him back to God, which God provided in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Since the fall of Adam in the garden, every person born into this world is born separated from God and in need of a Savior, and that Savior is Jesus Christ. It is the spirit of man that separates him from the plants and animals because they do not have spirits. An animal has a soul and a body but not a spirit. A plant has a body but neither soul nor spirit. The soul of man is the mind, will, and emotions of man, which gives understanding, sensibility, and self-consciousness. The body of man is of course the out part of man that we see, feed, and care for.
How does this help us to understand why a person who trusts Jesus Christ as their Savior often times find themselves with no meaning and no satisfaction in life? Let me explain. A person can never find meaning and satisfaction in life apart from a relationship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Once a person trusts Jesus Christ as their Savior, their relationship with God begins and the first step to finding meaning and satisfaction takes place because God in salvation has met the greatest need of a person, the need for spiritual and eternal life. But that is just the beginning. Remember, man is a tripartite being and there are two other parts of his life that has needs that must be me in order to find meaning and satisfaction. When a person trusts Jesus Christ as their Savior, they are saved in their spirit, but their soul and body is not. Therefore they become a saved being inside an unsaved body with a fallen nature that has unmet needs.
The wonderful thing about our salvation is the fact that God not only met our need of salvation, but He also gave us His indwelling Holy Spirit and the Word of God to teach us how we can walk with Him and get our needs met in godly ways so that we can find meaning and satisfaction in life. The reason a person who has trusted Christ as their Savior and find themselves with no meaning and satisfaction in life is because they are trying to meet God given desires in ungodly ways which will never satisfy them. For a child of God to find meaning and satisfaction in life, those God given desires must be met in God given ways.
We will begin looking at how a child of God can get their God given desires met in God given ways in our next newsletter. Until then, thank God for His wonderful salvation.