And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. — 1 THESSALONIANS 5:23

It will help your spiritual growth immeasurably to know the difference between your spirit and your soul.

Many people believe that “spirit” and “soul” are the same thing. Even preachers believe this! They preach about the soul as if it were the spirit.

But they can’t be the same thing. It would be just as scriptural to say that the body and the soul are the same, as it would be to say that the spirit and the soul are the same. But Hebrews 4:12 says that by the Word of God, soul and spirit can be divided.

To help you understand the three dimensions of man, go through this
process of elimination:

(1) With my body I contact the physical realm.

(2) With my spirit I contact the spiritual realm.

(3) With my soul I contact the intellectual and emotional realms.

Man is a spirit. The spirit is the part of man that knows God. Man possesses a soul — the intellect, the sensibilities, the will. And man lives in a body.

Confession: I am a son of God. I am a child of God. With my spirit I contact my Father in the spiritual realm.