We don't save our soul and leave our emotions and our feelings and our body and all the rest of it out. That's just a way of talking that emphasizes the soul is so fundamental that we can, in some cases, treat it as the whole person because it actually is the thing that integrates all of these aspects of the self and makes them work together. Now, I don't think we can find a passage in the Bible that says that. We have to read and study how it addresses the soul, and we then see that it is the deepest, most vital part of the human self.

Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.

The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best.

The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.

And God has set up prayer in such a way that, if you want to explain it away, you can. That's the human mind. God set it up like that for a reason, which is this: God ordained that people should be governed in the end by what they want.

We don't save our soul and leave our emotions and our feelings and our body and all the rest of it out. That's just a way of talking that emphasizes the soul is so fundamental that we can, in some cases, treat it as the whole person because it actually is the thing that integrates all of these aspects of the self and makes them work together. Now, I don't think we can find a passage in the Bible that says that. We have to read and study how it addresses the soul, and we then see that it is the deepest, most vital part of the human self.

No one need worry about our getting the best of God in some bargain with him, or that we might somehow succeed in using him for our purposes. Anyone who thinks this is a problem has seriously underestimated the intelligence and agility of our Father in the heavens. He will not be tricked or cheated.