Who Guards My Soul?

"The Lord will keep you from all evil; He will keep your soul." (Psalm 121:7)

The One who guards our soul is the Lord God (Psalm 121:5). However, the question that arises is: "Do I have no responsibility?" When I think about the incident with the gasoline yesterday, I have this thought. If my car was almost out of gas, and I prayed to God to reach my destination—the church—without going to a gas station, does that make sense? Surely, the car would have stopped along the road before reaching the church, just as it did before (previously, when I used to go for early morning prayers, the church car ran out of gas and stopped on the roadside). This may sound very common sense, but in our spiritual life, we often ask God for things without taking on our human responsibilities wisely.

In today’s passage, Psalm 121:7, we see that God, who guards our soul, expects us to pray, “Lord, guard my soul!” even when our spiritual fuel tank is empty. Can we confidently say that we won’t fall into the temptation of Satan and sin against God, without having first filled our spiritual fuel? Our responsibility is to live obediently to God’s word, making it “my possession” (Psalm 119:56). Keeping God’s word in our hearts (Psalm 11) is our responsibility to avoid sinning. In other words, to guard our soul, our responsibility is to fill our spiritual fuel tank. Just like when a car signals that it's running low on fuel, we need to realize that our spiritual fuel is running low. In the desert, by hearing the voice of God (Hosea 2:14), we must receive the supply of spiritual fuel.

Today, many of us Christians are serving in the church in a vulnerable state, exposed to the evil forces of Satan that seek to destroy our souls. Although we may appear firm and strong like a cedar tree outwardly, spiritually, we may be dry. Despite our souls withering because we are not receiving spiritual fuel, we continue to drive and push ourselves. I believe this is our reality as Christians. Why, when we pray, do we not experience our souls being revived? Why, after hearing countless sermons, do we fail to experience the supply of spiritual fuel? Why do we know we are supposed to love, yet cannot? The reason is that we have not prioritized guarding our souls and giving our best efforts to reach the fullness of Christ. Because we are not applying God’s word, our spiritual fuel, to make it our own, we are not guarding our souls.

Today, as we pray to God to protect our souls, we ask Him to make us wise in our faith race, always storing enough spiritual fuel so that we can guard our own souls.

With a heart full of gratitude for God's grace, who guards my soul without slumber or sleep,

Pastor James Kim
(This morning, striving through the purification of spiritual fuel so that our spiritual fuel tank may reach the fullness of Christ)