THE SALVATION OF THE SOUL AND THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLEWe’re finishing up Module One of our Salvation of the Soul series with this sixth and final session. We’ve explored how, in response to early experiences of forsakenness, a person can create a protective helper part in their soul. These strategies becomes embedded and trapped as immature attempts to protect us from harm, leading to more unnecessary suffering over a person’s life. We’ve learned that our spirit can discover and gently engage with these outdated parts, not as enemies, but as once-useful protectors doing their best. With spiritual authority and compassion, we can invite them to step aside and make room for our true Helper—the Holy Spirit—who reveals to us our God-designed self, united with Jesus and the Father. There is a graphic story of a spiritual struggle in Genesis 32 about Jacob who wrestles with God, where God appears to Jacob in the form of an angel. Jacob’s life had been one continuous struggle, creating many unhelpful helper parts in his soul, using his own wits and skills and devious ways to get what he believed was due to him. His twin brother Esau came out of the womb before him, but Jacob grabbed his heel to get there first and it went on from there because it was in Jacob’s spirit to want the blessing of God upon his life - that was his heart, and we discover later that it was not Esau’s heart. But Jacob had lied and cheated and achieved many successes and some failures by constantly putting his unhelpful helper parts to use.He got to the point in in his life after cheating his brother Esau and pretending to his blind father Isaac that he was his brother, to get the first born blessing and  manipulating his father-in-Law Laban that he knew there had to be change in his life that only God could achieve in him. He was about to meet up with Esau again after many years in a proposed meeting for reconciliation, and he was worried that Esau might even exact revenge upon him. He let his family go on ahead and stayed alone and in the night, he finds himself in a spiritual struggle with God in the form of an angel and wrestles with God. In Jacob's wrestle with God, he became both a loser and a winner in the same encounter, just as we do with God because we can't beat God, but we stay in the struggle because God’s blessing means more to us than any other blessing. And Jacob refused to let God go until God had blessed him. So in his willingness to have attitudes and behaviours overcome in his soul, he showed God that he was sincere in his spirit. And then God mercifully affirmed him in that by saying, ‘you have prevailed with God’. So, he didn't beat God, but God still declared him a spiritual winner. His spirit yielded to God and his soul surrendered its many unhelpful helpers, and he won God’s blessing. They had thought they knew better than God in their grasping for blessings rather than faithfully receiving them from God. That is what our helper parts do – until they get to know and faithfully trust God for his best for us. But we can say to our souls to hold fast to the confession of your hope without wavering for he who has promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23). And God was faithful to Jacob with his promise despite Jacob’s wayward ways. God changed not only his nature, but also changed his name from Jacob to Israel, which means prevailing with God. So our spiritual struggle with God is not against God, it's with God, and he says ‘we can walk together’. Israel also means prince. He received a new identity and a new place of authority in the purpose of God for his life. But he also received a permanent limp where his hip bone was damaged when the angel struck him and that finished the struggle, and this left Jacob with a new moment by moment awareness of his vulnerability. Now this is being a real person, and his unhelpful helper parts were no longer hidden, but they were no longer ruling his life if and when they were triggered. He now knew