Imagine that our desires are like the bull in the field with all the cows. How do you get him to want to leave such a desirable place when he seems made for the occasion? Or your television has so many program offerings and only 24 hours in the day to watch. How do you tell your soul it can't have any more when even continuous watching would not be enough? We won't even talk about buffets: Or will we?

Hopelessness is a cancer to the soul. It feeds off of every good thing in the soul and makes a mockery of it all. But the person who is caught up in the web of this hopelessness usually has no strength left to fight it off. That is exactly why God created a type of Gatorade for the soul. It is called HOPE and it is readily available for anyone.

We have hundreds of home testing kits to let us know what is happening with our bodies. But where are the tests for our souls? The soul is that amazing bridge between the physical and spirit realms. The soul is the central core of our being, the part that separates us from others more completely than any other part. In this first message in the series "The Proper Care and Feeding of Your Soul" we go through the basic understanding of the soul, and how to tell if you have a healthy or unhealthy soul. Subsequent messages will focus on how to make the soul more complete and healthy

A young girl wrote an online advice columnist complaining her parents were opposed to her seeing her much older boyfriend she had met online. "But I get knots in my stomach when we're together. He makes me feel dizzy and I sometimes even feel faint after we kiss" she proclaimed. "It must be love" was her conclusion. Actually that sounds more like the flu. Or malaria.

But that kind of love is easy compared to the real love that God wants us to show. The real love is sacrificial, difficult and demanding. But the real reasons it is difficult may be more surprising than you think.