Caring for Souls

Ps.142:4 - I looked on my right hand and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

What a statement…no man cared for my soul. Could there be relatives of this man alive today? And what could be the depths of that ordinary word “cared”? We know what it means to care for your material things, and we know what it means to care for your health, and we know what it means to care for someone personally. We know what it means to care for people’s physical needs, and we know what it means to care for national security, and we know what it means to care for our pets. We know what it means to care about doctrine, and we know what it means to care about compromise, and we know what it means to care about moral issues. But do we know what it means to care for someone’s soul?

I am not sure I have every really cared for someone’s soul. I surely have desired and prayed for many people’s salvation, and I have cared for people’s eternal destination, but have I ever actually cared for a person’s soul? What is a person’s soul? Think about that in much deeper and spiritual terms than we usually ascribe to it. A person’s eternal soul. It is that mystery that is in essence the person themselves and created in the very image of God. The image of God? That is another spiritual teaching that can be part of an informal Bible study but whose truth is deeper than can be plumbed in a lifetime. So the soul is that which was implanted at birth by the Creator and is made after His very image. It is the eternal part of every person that God chose to create despite the fact that our Lord was well aware of the awful consequences that would follow. What kind of love creates with the full knowledge of the sufferings that this creation would bring to the Creator Himself? Selah, selah.

Like Eve being formed from the rib of Adam and yet a distinct different soul, could it be that we came from the very heart of God and were created by His Word in the image of His Word? Our souls came from God Himself and with that they are of infinite importance to the Father of Lights. God cares for souls. Proof? Take a little stroll outside the eastern gate of Jerusalem and when you reach a place used to bring death, look up. With the eyes of your spirit you can see the Creator Himself enduring humiliation and the enemy called death for…souls. Anyone who has by faith bowed before this cross is enlightened by the Spirit about Who this dead Jew really was and what He was actually doing. Unsophisticated? Yes. Does it fit inside intellectual philosophy as to the existence of God? No. The Golgatha project is the standard by which all other souls must measure themselves in the ministry of soul caring.

So again I must pause and attempt to bring the ethereal concept of caring for a soul into the realm of the three dimensional. It cannot be done completely. Spiritually caring for souls goes beyond the visible universe and must be journeyed through the Spirit Himself. But how many of us are consumed with caring for those divine images that brought God to death before He ever spoke the first creative Word? So often we mentally depict God as a personal sovereign who is apart from feelings akin to us, but the Word teaches us that God has emotions although perfect.

We could never fully comprehend how it must grieve the Father when a soul is chained and led away from Him forever. Do you not realize that God sees and knows every soul personally? We see columns of souls marching in great hordes into a lost eternity, but the Father God and the Savior God sees and knows each soul individually and personally and with a perfect love that must generate such grief we can only surmise within the tortured limits of fallen imaginations.

The Father remembers the day He made each soul. He recalls the earthly life that each soul has lived. He remembers the times that he wanted to reach out to each soul only to have them either reject Him or being uncared for by His children. To imagine what God must see and feel on the day of eternal judgment is beyond us, but to never ponder it and let the Holy Spirit use that truth to create in us a caring for those same souls must also grieve our Father. How many people in our neighborhoods can say that no one cared for their souls? Do we know their names and consistently pray for their souls? Have we reached out to their souls by genuinely doing some acts of kindness to their outward man so that our caring can penetrate their very souls?

Think about a sick man confined to his bed. His loved ones take turns caring for his every need and they serve him out of love and nothing is considered an inconvenience. Even if his health continues to get worse it does not alter their care because their ministry is to him not just his symptoms. How often do we attempt to care for someone’s soul like that? Caring for their physical needs, caring for their emotional needs, caring for their material needs, all in a ministry to care for that which came from God’s heart, their souls.

And so flesh encased souls walk among us needing much care and do we care? Those souls are eternal and precious to God’ heart and do we care for them? Not just do we care, but do we care for them? Soul caring is not taught in Sunday School and it makes only rare and fleeting appearances from the oratorically polished pulpits of the evangelical world. You see, soul caring can only be learned in the prayer closet and there is no auditing the class, it must be tested. You cannot take that class until you count the cost and then register. Before you can care for souls you must first care about souls. Oh it seems like such semantics but in the Spirit realm it is the essence of what it means to be a follower and imitator of Jesus the Christ. I fall short and I’m only repeating what I believe the Spirit has shown me, I certainly am not teaching as an expert and I have come to realize that in caring for souls I am a freshman with many, many classes from any degree.

Is God calling His body to care for souls? Not just prayer repeating belt notches that are presented on some tote board, God forbid, but a living ministry of caring for that which images our Savior, the One we purport to serve and obey. And just not having a world wide view that blurs the individual walking among us, but a daily leading of the Spirit Who guides through the dispatches of prayer. What possibly could Jesus have meant when He said that if we give a glass of cold water in His name we have done it unto Him. Incredible. He did not say that we did it for Him, that is surely true, but He said we have done it unto Him. I must return to safer theological shores, I am beginning to drown. I know one thing, the Spirit desires to lead us back to God’s original redemptive plan which began with the first Adam and was finished with the Last Adam.

All that is left is to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus and in so doing returning unto the Father those who were birthed by Him, not by our own works, but by keeping ourselves in the love of God and letting the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ care for the souls that His Son died for through earthen vessels like us. And if we allow the Spirit to accomplish that through us the excellency of the power will be of Him, and certainly not of us.

What shall it profit if a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

And here is a video with a young girl, blind at two years old, singing a song about "Someone Searching for Someone".

Let the Spirit help you care.