Understanding the Sabbath
Today’s Focus: Dangers of Living by the Soul Part 1: The Carnal Mind
Scripture: Romans 8:6; Luke 16:15
Greetings Kingdom Citizens
Now we know before the fall man lived by being lead by the Spirit of God but after the fall he began to be lead by his soul. This also brought the disease of decay and death into the earth. Moreover man became carnally minded and this is also a diseased state.
Romans 8:6: For to be carnally minded is death: but to be spiritually minded is life and peace
So in the fall, through sin, man allowed death into the earth and also life and peace left Him through the Spirit of God. That life that left man was eternal life because now man was subject to die because of sin. God is life and when you are separated from life you are dead. Man was half-dead if I can say. He is dead spiritually but still alive walking on the earth. He became the walking dead. Now the seat of the flesh is in the soul and let me explain.
The soul only operates through logic but the spirit operated through truth and revelation. The soul can only operate from the five physical senses and at best hypothesize the future based upon past situations and current conditions. This is a very limited scope to life. Spirit does not operate on logic for example: God tells people to march around Jericho seven times and shout and the wall will fall down. God tells a man to go dip himself in the Jordan River seven times to be healed of leprosy. Jesus takes clay and spit and applies it to the eyes of a blind man to recover his sight. None of these situations and there are so many more are logical but God is keeping the fact that it is the eternal that rules in this earth and when the fullness of time comes we will began to understand how these things were done. But if your perception is from the soul then you will believe that these things are impossible and you will lend yourself to logic. Moreover, even the children of God in this generation have a hard time believing the things that Jesus did and that is because when you are lead by the soul, it is hard to believe an act or even the Word of God that comes from the spiritual because to be carnally minded is an enemy of God. Look at this scripture, Jesus was confronting the Pharisees about their mindset:
Luke 16:15: And He said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knows your hearts: for that which is HIGHLY ESTEEMED AMONG MEN IS ABOMINATION IN THE SIGHT OF GOD.
The soul of man under the wrong influence will seek glory and honor of men as a way of validating who they are. The soul seeks this to feel like it is ok. This is why we have such a huge validation problem in world.
The soul is like an octopus when under the wrong governance because it reaches out to grab and blind everything that it thinks is an enemy to its provision and protection. Let me show you. When the soul became dominant in man, its tentacles reached out and covered the eyes of the spirit. Of course we know this was easy when man sinned the man lost the Holy Spirit due to disobedience. No longer could man see spiritually the eternal reality of things pertaining to the earth. The tentacles of the soul then reached out to squeeze the mind of the spirit to cut communication off with God. When communication with God is cut then there cannot be revelation and truth given to you from God (Romans 8:16). This octopus can be suppressed and killed by only one thing, repentance and yielding to the Spirit of God.
In the next message we will look at the characteristics of the soulish life.
Peace, Love and Grace from the Father,
Calvin Calhoun, Jr.
