Hi Micah 7:9,
We know that the soul is the result of the combination of body and spirit/breath and it is only with this conbination that we have a soul that gives us consciousness. When God made Adam he came into being as "a living soul" when God "breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life."
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
It seems it is with this "breath of life" that people begin to have life. Job says, it was "breath" that gave him life.
Job 33:4 The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
He also states his life is a breath.
Job 7:7 Oh, remember that my life is a breath!
It seems that Scriptures says that our physical life and breath start simultaneously. So before we are breathing we do not have life, we do not exist.
Here are a few emails, there might be something in them that may help your understanding.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,4544.0.html ----
COMMENT: Once we are born into the human family, we never go out of existence. Before Adam's creation, he DID NOT EXIST, but after his death, he still DID EXIST, albeit in the spirit that God preserved in His keeping just as He does for all that die. They cease to have conscious life, but they most assuredly "exist," else their life was of no value, and nothing would be carried over from this life into the next.
http://bible-truths.com/hagee1.htm ---------------------------------
God didn’t need to do anything after He breathed into him the breathe of life. It was the breath of life from God that caused the man to become a living soul. God didn’t put a soul into Adam; Adam is a living soul. The spirit of man, which God gives to every human, is like a light switch—Switch it ‘on’ and the light glows: Switch it ‘off’ and the light is dark, gone, dead. Put the spirit in the man, and the man is a living soul: take the spirit out of the man, and the man is a dead soul. Do you think that even your children could understand this Scriptural Truth?
http://www.forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,1675.0.html -----------
there is a spirit in man (AND ALL ANIMALS). Nothing can live without "spirit." Spirit IS life (Ecc. 8:8; Ecc. 12:7; Luke 23:46; I Cor. 2:11; etc.). There is no consciousness in our spirit alone. There is only consciousness (soul) when man's spirit is combined with a body. God retains our spirit until resurrection when He puts our spirit into a new body and we once again become conscious or receive back the quality of "soul." We are said to have new "spiritual" bodies, not that we are made "spirits."
http://www.forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,3253.0.html ----------
the spirit is not the soul. The spirit does not have consciousness. The spirit cannot think thoughts, and that is why our "thoughts perish" at death according to David. Our spirit as well as Christ Spirit had to be reunited with a BODY before we or He would have consciousness again. Jesus was DEAD for three days, not "absent from the body" for three days.
God be with you,
Ray