Possess your soul

"In your patience possess ye your souls" (Luke 21:19).
Jesus told His disciples to "possess their souls". What does it mean to "possess one's soul"?
The context in which we find this statement, is a rather sinister one. Jesus prepared His disciples for hard times ahead. He knew His time on earth was drawing to an end, and He told His disciples that they would be tried and persecuted for their faith; He talked about difficult times ahead. And in the middle of this, He told them to "possess your souls". Before we look into what it is, let's look into how they were to do it; they were to possess their souls by their patience. Jesus told them to be patient during whatever was ahead of them, and through this patience they would "possess their souls".
To understand what Jesus meant, we have to know how a human being is made up, so to speak. A human being consists of three parts; body, soul and spirit. (See 1 Thess. 5:23).
The body is the outer "shell" if you will, it's what we display to the world, it's our "coating". The body doesn't have a will of it's own, but does what it's told to do by our soul and our spirit.
The spirit is the innermost part of our being, it's the part that is being saved when we accept Jesus Christ into our lives, or being born again, as we like to call it. It's where God resides. When God talks to us, He talks to our spirit.
The middlel part is our soul or our mind, as some people like to call it. The soul consists or our thoughts, will, and emotions. When we are born into this world, we have our own thoughts, will, and emotions. And whatever our mind thinks and wants to do, that's what the body does. Whatever our mind feels, that's what the body feels. An unsaved person is being led by his or her thoughts, will, and emotions.
However, when that person gets saved, God comes into his or her spirit, and He begins to work by His Spirit through that person's spirit into the person's soul or  mind. And the more of God's Word the person feeds into his or her spirit, the more the Spirit of God has to work with to change that person's thoughts, will, and emotions into God's thoughts, will, and emotions.
Back to Jesus and the disciples. Jesus knew that the disciples would encounter difficult times, and what He said to them was something like this, "When I'm gone, you will face some difficult times. But be patient, let the Word that I have given you be strong in you, let My Spirit that I will send to you, be your guide. Don't let what you face take your faith away from you. Let your spirit be stronger than your soul. Don't lose your soul, possess it!"
"Can I lose my soul?" Yes, you can. Let's look at someone who lost his soul,  "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?" (Luk.9,25) "His very self" is his soul. This man was busy taking care of everything but his soul. He was busy gaining "the world" (material things? friends? a good job?) but he had no thought for the eternal things.
I want to "possess my soul", and I hope you do, too. It happens through patiently obeying and living according to God's Word.