Ask God: Our desire in this life is to live a peaceful, happy life. Being filled with the Holy Spirit helps us walk with God, seek His will, and receive the joy that comes from knowing the Lord. By understanding the difference between the carnal man and the spirit man, we are better able to receive from the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

This series is intended to provide knowledge of living in the Spirit and to move us closer to a peaceful and happy life.

Good Evening Reader,

As we grow in the knowledge of the Word of God, we profit by knowing who we are. Understanding Carnal Thinking versus Spiritual Thinking will lead to a deeper understanding of who we are and how we can find our spiritual purpose here on earth.

God Bless.

Elvin

Spirit, Soul, and Body: Discovering Who You Really Are

Series 1 of 6 — The Spiritual Man vs. The Natural Man

Marcus Bennett had been a Christian for eleven years, and he still couldn't explain to his own son why he sometimes felt so close to God on Sunday morning and so far from Him by Tuesday afternoon. His son, home from his first semester of college, had asked him a simple question over dinner: "Dad, when people say 'my spirit is troubled' or 'I feel it in my soul,' are those the same thing? And what does any of that have to do with the guy at church who cusses out his coworkers but still says he loves Jesus?"

Marcus didn't have an answer. He had read his Bible for over a decade, but no one had ever sat him down and shown him, plainly, what the Bible actually says about the spirit, the soul, and the body — and why understanding the difference changes everything about how a Christian is supposed to live.

If you have ever felt that same gap — years of church attendance but no real framework for understanding what happens inside you when you became a believer — you are not alone, and you are not behind. You just haven't been shown the blueprint yet. That's exactly what this lesson and the following series are all about.

The Problem: We Live Confused About Who We Are

Most believers walk through life with a vague idea that they have a "spiritual side" and a "physical side," but nothing more specific than that. This vagueness creates real problems. When a Christian sins and feels crushed by guilt, they don't know whether that guilt is godly conviction or something else. When they pray and feel nothing, they wonder if God has stopped listening. When an older saint tells them "the flesh is weak," they nod along without understanding what "the flesh" even means in Scripture.

This confusion isn't just uncomfortable — it's costly. Paul warned in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." If we don't understand the difference between the natural man and the spiritual man, we will misread our own hearts for the rest of our lives. We'll blame the wrong things for our struggles, and we'll miss the tools God has already given us to walk in victory.

Our objective as Christians should be to discover our spiritual purpose for being on this earth. God has a plan and purpose for each of us. Too often we tell God our plans and ask Him to bless them. Instead, we should ask God to reveal His plans to us. When we know His plans for our lives and apply our physical resources to carrying them out, we enter into a state of mind that is peaceful, satisfying, and gives us great joy.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Here's the deeper frustration underneath the confusion: many Christians secretly wonder if something is wrong with them. They see other believers who seem to walk in constant peace, and they compare their peace to their own daily battle with anger, anxiety, or temptation, and they conclude that maybe they just don't have enough faith. That's a heavy, false burden to carry — and it usually comes from a simple misunderstanding of how God designed a human being.

You were not created as a simple, one-part creature. You are far more intricate than that, and once you see the design, your struggles will start to make sense instead of feeling like a mystery.

The Guide: What Scripture Actually Says

The Bible doesn't leave us guessing. Paul wrote a clear prayer over the Thessalonian church that gives us the blueprint: "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23, KJV).

Notice the three distinct words: spirit, soul, and body. Paul isn't repeating himself for emphasis — he's naming three real, distinct parts of who you are. This is called being a tripartite being, which simply means "made of three parts."

Let's define each one in plain language:

The Body is the easiest to understand. It's the physical house you live in — skin, bones, organs, the part of you a doctor can examine. Genesis 2:7 says, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground." Your body came from dust, and one day it will return to dust. It's real, but it's not the deepest part of you.

The Soul is your mind, will, and emotions. It's the part of you that thinks, decides, and feels. When you're excited, worried, determined, or heartbroken, that's your soul at work. In Hebrew, the word is nephesh, and it shows up constantly throughout the Old Testament to describe a person's inner life.

The Spirit is the part of you that connects with God. Before you were saved, this part of you was spiritually dead — able to sense there was more to life, but unable to actually commune with God. The Hebrew word for spirit, ruach, literally means "breath," pointing back to Genesis 2:7, where God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." When you were born again, God made your spirit alive so you could finally know Him personally, not just know facts about Him.

Hebrews 4:12 shows us that these parts, though connected, are genuinely different: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Only God's Word is sharp enough to show you the difference between what your soul is telling you and what your spirit — indwelt by the Holy Spirit — is telling you.

An Illustration: Two Rooms in the Same House

Think of it this way. Imagine your body is the house itself — the walls, the roof, the front door. Your soul is the family room, where you think, plan, feel, and make decisions every single day. It's the room you spend the most time in, and it's often loud and busy.

Your spirit is a smaller, quieter room down the hall. Before salvation, that room was locked and dark — you knew it was there, but you couldn't get inside it, and God couldn't either. When you trusted Christ, God unlocked that room and moved in. Now He lives there, in your spirit, and He wants to influence everything happening in the family room of your soul.

This is exactly what can happen to believers. Before coming to Christ, they are ruled entirely by their soul — with fears about safety, and anger toward those who had wronged them. After the cross, something changes. It wasn't that the soul disappears; mind, will, and emotions were still there. But now there was a deeper voice in the quiet room of the spirit, gently reshaping how you think, decide, and feel. The living room didn't vanish — it just started taking direction from a wiser, deeper source.

That's the picture Paul paints for every believer. Your soul isn't your enemy, and your body isn't evil. But God designed your spirit to lead, your soul to follow, and your body to obey. When that order gets flipped — when the body demands and the soul rules while the spirit is ignored — that's when a Christian starts living like Marcus Bennett: saved, but confused, and worn out from a battle they can't quite name.

The Plan: What You Need to Do With This

Understanding this framework isn't just information — it's the starting point for real change. Over the next five lessons in this series, we're going to walk through exactly how the natural man operates versus how the spiritual man operates, and how you can practically train your soul to follow your spirit instead of leading it.

But you don't have to wait until Lesson 2 to start. Here's your game plan for this week:

1. Locate the room. Take time this week to simply acknowledge that you have a spirit — a part of you that is alive to God, not just a soul that is active toward life. Thank Him for making that room alive in you.

2. Read Hebrews 4:12 slowly, once a day. Ask God to show you, in real moments this week, the difference between what your soul (mind, will, emotions) is telling you and what your spirit is prompting. Write down one instance where you notice the difference.

3. Practice one small surrender. The next time you feel your soul pulling you toward anger, worry, or a decision you know isn't wise, pause and say out loud: "Spirit, lead. Soul, follow." It sounds simple, but this small act of naming what's happening inside you begins retraining the pattern of your whole inner life.

4. Write down your own definition. In your own words, in a sentence or two, write out what your spirit is, what your soul is, and what your body is. Teaching it back to yourself — or to your family, like Marcus eventually did with his son — is one of the fastest ways to make truth stick.

The Success You're Moving Toward

Here is what's waiting for you on the other side of this understanding: you'll stop being mystified by your own inconsistency. You'll be able to recognize, in real time, when your soul is trying to run the show, and you'll have language — biblical language — for calling your spirit back into the lead. That's not a minor upgrade. That's the beginning of walking as the spiritual man instead of the natural man, exactly what Paul described in 1 Corinthians 2:14.

Marcus finally gave his son an answer that night at dinner — not a perfect theological lecture, but a true one: "Your spirit, soul, and body are three real parts of you, son. And the whole Christian life is learning to let the deepest part lead the rest." That's what the next five lessons will teach you to do, one step at a time.

Elvin

Share your thoughts. Email me at elvin@askgodfor.com. I would love to share with others on this list how you handle difficulties and trials.

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PS. Share your newfound knowledge with you friends.

Reader,

Hosea said his people were destroyed for lack of knowledge. Knowledge give believers and non-believers a choice. When a person does not know, they cannot choose.

Feel free to forward this lesson to your friends and family.

Grow in the knowledge of God.

Elvin

Send your comments to elvin@AskGodFor.com and let me know what you think of the lessons.

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