Did you know you are one person but with three separate parts: body, soul, and spirit? 

Your physical body is where you interact with the natural world around you through your five senses.
In your spirit, you communicate with the spiritual world of God.
In the realm of the soul, you bring together these two parts of God’s creation – natural and spiritual – to become a living personality. The soul encompasses your mind, emotions, and the power of free choice. 

It is also where a battleground lies. 

When you accept Christ as Savior, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your spirit, which is the deepest part of you. God’s desire is for the Holy Spirit in you to be released to the world around you. But He must use your soul and body to do so, which requires your agreement and surrender. His desire is that the Spirit would shine through your words and actions, revealing His life and purpose to a desperate world.

However, Satan works from the outside – in. 

His desire is for you to give way to the lusts of the flesh and create strongholds in your soul that block the life and flow of the Holy Spirit within. His strategy is to target your power of free choice with the weapon of deception. 

Satan’s aim is for you to agree with his lies rather than God’s voice. 

Therefore crippling you from experiencing true freedom and hindering your ability to affect your environment for God’s glory.

Every day, you have the power to choose who you want to influence your soul, and often these choices show up in the “little things.” 

It’s that decision to stop and pray when your mind gets locked in a toxic thought pattern.
Or to deny the flesh when the temptation to give in to that bad habit (doom scrolling, anyone?) arises.
Maybe it’s choosing not to deliver that clever, but harmful comeback or to show kindness to someone who frustrates you instead of giving them the cold shoulder. 

Whatever decisions you face, remember these are the ways you give ground to either the Life-Giver or the Life-Stealer. 

And the more you give into one, the easier it gets to make that choice every time.