BONUS: Marked by our Soul

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” —Mark 8:36

Loving God with all of our soul sounds very important, but what exactly is our soul?

Our soul lies deep down inside of us and is our very core. It’s the invisible part of us that connects us with God. It is where we are most at home, and it’s the most fundamental driver of who we are from the inside out. If you strip away all of our outward actions and how we choose to portray ourselves (or how others may define us), the soul is our truest self.

To love the Lord with all of our soul, we’ve got to be faithful in private. We’ve got to be devoted to the things that drench our soul in Jesus and be willing to drop the things that don’t. It’s spending time in prayer confessing what’s in our soul, not just in our mind. 

As we pray for our kids to love God with all of their souls this week, let’s pray that they learn to love him with the very core of who they are—not by what they intellectually believe about him, or how they serve him, or what they communicate to others by their faith, but truly learning to love Jesus from the core of their being. 

Pray for the Lord to reveal the depths of their soul and teach them how to love him with all that they are. 

Lord, we confess to spending a disproportionate amount of time worrying about our earthly bodies, usually at the expense of our soul. Please teach [name] how to love you from their very core, giving priority to the only part of us that will live eternally. 

God’s word speaks: Psalm 119:81; Psalm 63:8; Deuteronomy 4:29; Matthew 10:28