SOULISHNESS

     Soulishness is emotion.  It is likened unto a football team when the coach gets the players pumped up on emotion before taking to the field to meet Goliath.  Or like the pep rally when the fans get pumped up. The opponent, meanwhile, remains cool and calm, politely marches down the field and throws up a touchdown; and the faces on the team, pumped up on emotion, has the word D E F E A T written all over their faces; for as their emotions die, so does their game.
    While it is true that Christians have times of joy and happiness, even times when we want to leap for joy upon hearing glad tidings, our emotions, however, do not dominate our lives.
     Soulishness exists in the lives of believers and the lives of churches that rely on emotions. 
     We have been discussing deception, we should also believe that even our emotions can be deceptive.
     Soulishness is our feelings, therefore we want to feel elated, feel uplifted, feel prosperous, feel enjoyment and feel excitement; and if we do not feel these characteristics, we can easily believe that because our feelings were not moved, then there was no movement of God.  And if our emotions get excited, we like to believe that we are experiencing a movement of the Spirit of God.  But what do we do when the excitement stops?
     Ministers, too, can operate out of soulishness by getting congregations pumped up:  by running up and down the isles, leaping over pews, which, in a way, is putting on a show.  For people may not recall the message of the minister because they are waiting to see what he does next.
     There are also churches that believe if they do not have a vibrant musical program, then people will not come to their churches.  Certainly music has its place in church, but music is not the main event.  For if churches use music as the drawing card, people arrive to hear the music and not to hear the Word of the Lord. 
     The danger of soulishness exists in the fact that if people believe they are saved in a time of high emotion, this deception can follow them all the days of their lives; and they will therefore return to churches in order to get pumped up on emotion on a continuous basis.
     The Lord said, my house shall be called a house of prayer to all people.
     So then, if the house of the Lord is to be a house or prayer, how can we effectively pray to God in a room full of noise?
     When Jesus preached, He never had a vibrant musical program following Him from place to place; neither did the Lord demonstrate extreme emotions.  He simply spoke the Word.