A Wonder-filled Soul
By Rick Ezell
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30 HCSB).
Have you ever been to a majestic place that takes your breath away? Like the mountains flowing into the ocean along the Oregon coast. Like crystal blue waters surrounding the Isle of Capri. Like the Grand Canyon's vastness and beauty. Like cradling your child for the first time. Those experiences fill one with wonder. They can't be explained; they can only be experienced.
So it is with God. We need to experience Him. People are always trying to prove God. God can't be proved. God can only be experienced. When we experience Him we are filled with the wonder of His presence. Mark Batterson in his book, Primal, states, "One of the greatest mistakes we've made in modern Christianity is approaching God deductively as an object of knowledge instead of approaching him inductively as the cause of wonder."
This was the essence of what Jesus was getting at when He encouraged His hearers to love God with all their soul. The Greek word for soul is psyche, from which we get the word psychology. Soul is the animating principle of life, that which gives life to the body. To understand what the Bible means by soul, we might compare it with what the African-American culture means by soul-it is something you either have or you don't.
Wonder seems a lost commodity today. The catch phrase of modern culture is: "Been there, done that." That cliché suggests spiritual and emotional dullness. We are a people saturated with analysis, explanations, and facts-but void of wonder. Maybe it is time we rediscovered the wonder of God.
May we become less self-conscious and more God-conscious.
Copyright 2013, Rick Ezell.
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