Soul Keeping by John Ortberg

Author:John Ortberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2014-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE SOUL NEEDS TO BE WITH GOD

If you read through the Bible, you get the sense that the soul was designed to search for God. The Hebrew Scriptures — which might be thought of as the Great Soul-Book of human literature — are almost obsessed with this thought. The soul thirsts for the Mighty One (Ps. 63:1). It thirsts for him like parched land thirsts for water (Ps. 143:6). Like a laser it focuses the full intensity of its desire on him (Ps. 33:20). It lifts itself up to him (Ps. 25:1), it blesses him (Ps. 103:1 – 2, 22), it clings to him (Ps. 63:8), and it waits for him in silence (Ps. 62:1). “Indeed, the soul lives in God.” The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.

In the beginning when God created the world, he planted a garden in the east, in Eden. The garden gets described at some length in the Bible. God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground that were pleasing to the eye, many bearing fruit sweet and good. He decorated the garden with flowers and put fish in the streams, birds in the sky. Eden was the perfect home God created for his greatest creation: man and woman, Adam and Eve. God made the whole earth so that he would have a place to be with man and woman, you and me. The garden God created represents God’s great desire for “being with.”

For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.

One of the most intriguing phrases in the Bible is where Adam and Eve “. . . heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” God is Spirit, which means he doesn’t have a body, legs, or feet. What does it sound like when God goes for a walk?

The point of this remarkable phrase is that walking is something you do with somebody you care about — a friend with a friend, a child with a parent. Two people in love would go for a walk. It’s not really about the walk; it’s about being with someone. This God — this God of the Bible — is a God who wants to “be with.” Our souls were made to walk with God.

But the man and the woman sin, deliberately hiding from God among the trees of the garden. Yet God would not be denied. He went after them — in fact, the whole narrative of the Bible is all about God going after us. Relentlessly pursuing us. As Adam and Eve hid behind the trees God created, he called out, “Where are you?” Physically, he knew exactly where they were.

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