The emotion part of the soul-life of a believer is also very likely to be pushed by the enemy into doing his work. Because a believer is eager to have a feeling of happiness and anxious to have feelings of the Holy Spirit, of the love of the Lord Jesus, and of the presence of God, the evil spirit lets him have many strange feelings, exciting him in his natural life. The evil spirit even lets the feeling organs of the body have many strange experiences. All this renders the small voice of the Holy Spirit and the delicate function of the intuition of man's spirit suppressed and unable to work. (The Lord willing, we will discuss these problems in detail in the latter part of this book.)

If a believer has not dealt with his soul-life, he will suffer great loss in the spiritual warfare. In Revelation 12:11 we see that not loving the soul-life even unto death is one of the great conditions for overcoming the devil. The heart of self-love and self-pity has to be turned over to the cross. Otherwise, one will fail before the enemy. Because a soldier of Christ often has a kind of sympathizing and caring for himself and has a deep love of his own life, he loses the victory. This kind of heart causes a believer to care for himself, to "self-examine" himself, and therefore, he will be impeded by the enemy. If the enemy can cause a believer's heart to be filled with anxiety for himself, the enemy will always be victorious.

Whenever we have a reservation about something, we show our weakness toward the enemy. The soul-life must be handed over to death. Then we will have the possibility of defeating the enemy. Satan can work through the unrestricted soul. He can also directly attack the soul which has not gone through the cross and cause the believer to fail. The soul-life is the inside help to the enemy in us. If a believer uses his own strength and refuses to be delivered from the domination of the soul-life, he will give the enemy the chance to take advantage of him. No matter how much a believer understands the truth or how zealous he is in warfare, the soul is always the dangerous spot. The worst thing is that when a believer becomes more spiritual, his soulish portion becomes much harder to detect. The less the proportion of the soul is, the harder it is to find a way to terminate it. Many times in spiritual living it is almost impossible to detect when there is a mixture of spirit with only a slight amount of soulish expression. Sometimes there seems to be not even the slightest difference between being soulish and being spiritual. If a believer is not watchful to resist the devil, he will fail greatly because of his soul-life.

It is outside of the believer's ordinary daily expectation that his soulish life is being affected by Satan's work and is being cheated and influenced by him. But here we must give a warning that in God's ordination we should reject all things we have received from Adam—our life and our nature. It is always dangerous to not be obedient to God.