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Carnality in Believers - 6/29/2008 12:30:04 AM
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manichunter
Posts: 63
Joined: 6/2/2008
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What is Carnality? What is spiritually?
Key Question- Do you see any carnality within yourself?
Can you answer those two for yourself?
I will attempt to share what I have been taught by God.
Carnality is any personal thought, act, or view produced by a human person that does not ultimately lead to glorifying God and advancing His kingdom, but it brings personal glory and praise to its originator. It consists of everything short of spiritual. It is limited to earthly thoughts and actions; and, it cannot comprehend anything related to the spiritual. To be carnal minded is death and confusion and to be spirituality minded is life and peace.
Ro 8:6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Carnality is ego driven to validate and prove itself right. It wants acceptance and approval for its actions. Carnality resists anything contrary to its establish ideologies. This includes the truths of God and inspirations of the Holy Spirit. It fight against anything that it does not immediately comprehend because it exposes its weaknesses, dependence, and need of trust in God. The carnal mind cannot discern and recognize spiritual deception.
1Co 2:14 - But the natural man does not receive the thingsof the Spirit ofGod, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Carnality wants to understand and filter everything in through logic, deductive reasoning, and theory. Carnality is both an inherited and learned mindset. We are born in a carnal world and we received the same carnal mindset from Adam. Then we learn to be even more carnal as we attempt to survive and thrive. Carnality always believes in something, therefore, it creates a personal world view as it vehicle for living its own life.
1Co 3:3 -for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
However, the bottom line is that carnality does not want to trust God. Why? The carnal is an enemy of God. It is at war with God. It disdains the things and knowledge of God, because it cannot understand and control them.
Ro 8:7 - Because the carnalmind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
Re 22:15 -But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.
To be spiritual means to trust God. There is no distance or measure between carnality and spirituality with the exception of trusting God. Spirituality comes down to either trusting God or not. Spirituality has a different process than carnality. It is not learned but surrendered to. It is the only means by the Holy Spirit that the truth can be distinguish from the lie.
Joh 14:17 -the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
Joh 16:13 - has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
How does one possibly know that they could be operating in carnality?
1.It loves to learn and comprehend knowledge that makes one feel better about themselves.
2.It loves to boast in the knowledge it knows
3.Find it hard to trust God
4.Sees knowledge as means of pleasure, power, and profit
5.Produces strife and pride
6.Is partial and prejudice
7.Hates the truth and loves the lie
How does one possibly know that they could be operating in spirituality?
1.It loves to discovered more about God that enriches the relationship with God
2.Praises God for His inspirations and revelations
3.Trusts God regardless of knowledge
4.Sees the truth as means of communion and share with God and others
5.Produces humility and peace
6.Is not partial and prejudice but just
7.Loves the truth and hates the lie
*Bonus round- carnality is in abundance on a great many of Christian forums. LOL............
What do you think carnality is? Do you see a lot of carnality within yourself?
Prepared and originated by Manichunter......
_____________________________
Where is your Berean spirit. Challege everything to determine if you be of the faith. The devil is a tough foe. The messages have to be hard and piercing. So be it, count all things lost. Now off to the hunt to save souls!
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RE: Carnality in Believers - 6/29/2008 2:39:38 AM
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relady
Posts: 1048
Joined: 4/11/2005
From: Greater St. Louis Metro
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Actually, your definition of "carnal" stretches the original etymology of the word. Just about any dictionary definition and etymology of the word will show that carnal generally means sexual appetites. Merriam-Webster on line gives its first definition as :
1 a: relating to or given to crude bodily pleasures and appetites b: marked by sexuality <carnal love>
So I think to stretch it to mean anything that is not spiritual borders almost on gnosticism.
We are to be in the world but not OF it. To mean that means I flavor the world in a good way, and that I love life and live it abundantly, not just spiritually but in an earthly temporal way as well.
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RE: Carnality in Believers - 6/29/2008 9:15:08 AM
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BerianAardvark
Posts: 371
Joined: 5/10/2008
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Another word for carnality is living in the flesh, Paul defines what it means to be carnal, and spiritual in Galatians.
He does so by listing the results (fruit) of each of the two opposing world views/lifestyles:
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:16-23)
Tim
_____________________________
The Law is for the proud and the Gospel for the brokenhearted - Martin Luther
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RE: Carnality in Believers - 6/29/2008 9:17:56 AM
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SonInMe1
Posts: 3517
Joined: 4/16/2005
From: my mom by God
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Carnal is what the body needs. Food. Water etc.
It is also what the body desires...reproduction and pleasure.
There is a reason why fasting is important in a christians walk. It places even the base carnal need of nutrition under the spiritual umbrella.
We can't stop totally from being carnal in this body...or we would be absent from the body. However, as in all things, even the carnal needs, let alone the wants, are secondary to Christ.
_____________________________
You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
James 4:4
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RE: Carnality in Believers - 6/29/2008 10:36:43 AM
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galadriel2
Posts: 182
Joined: 6/5/2008
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You have put out a lot of information about carnality, Manichunter. I think that carnality is a state of being that is opposite of spirituality, as the text that you quote from Romans chapter 8 brings that out. I would say that carnality is everything in us that comes from us, out of us, that isn't the product of the Spirit of Christ working in and through us. Someone who is spiritual is led by the Spirit and is free. We know this from Galatians chapter 5 and 2 Cor. ch. 3. The Spirit leads us to acts of faith and love, 'faith expressing itself through love', for the glory of God in Christ, it seems to me, so anything that isn't that is from our flesh. Sometimes our flesh can appear pretty spiritual, as well.
This post caught my eye because I put up a post on the current events thread that went over mental illness and some other things and I was thinking that a core problem in Christianity today is our worldliness - which is very similar to carnality, or could be said, perhaps, to be an aspect of it. We think too much like the world. We aren't different enough so as to be able to attract the world to something that is genuine, good, and different from what the world has to offer men.
'Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.' Blaise Pascal....Looks like things haven't changed much from Pascal's day.
God bless all abundantly,
Galadriel2
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RE: Carnality in Believers - 6/29/2008 10:50:15 AM
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galadriel2
Posts: 182
Joined: 6/5/2008
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I will add something else quickly. This was something I read from a book titled 'Gospel Worship' put out by the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs. I was so insightful into an aspect of carnality and dealt with something very subtle: It is about when we are being led by our conscience instead of the Spirit. Don't get me wrong. I am all for listening to your conscience, but sometimes we do things just because we feel guilty and not because the Spirit is leading us to do something. Something that is led by the Spirit to do springs from a desire to be close to God in Christ and when we don't feel that we have met Him in our activity or service or worship or whatever - then the person is grieved. When it is strictly our conscience that is leading us to do something our concern is with silencing our conscience - getting it off our back. Our concern isn't to meet with the Lord and fellowship, walk, with Him. Once we have done our activity or service we will be satisfied because the conscience is quieted, not because we have met with the Lord. Paul says in Phil. ch. 3 'We are of the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh' - We are assured of the complete and only efficacy of Christ's work, in other words. We boast in, rejoice in, and act on the basis, and only on the basis, of what Christ has done and is doing. He is the only one who is good. He is the one who ends up acting through us when we rejoice in Him and act in faith and love.
God bless all abundantly, always,
Galadriels
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