Join Rick Hughes in this engaging episode of The Flatline, where he delves into the critical concept of volitional responsibility. Discover how the choices we make every day contribute to our overall well-being or detriment. Using examples from the Scripture, Rick explains the profound impact of aligning our thoughts with divine viewpoint rather than our emotions. With a decade-spanning radio presence, Rick brings wisdom on recognizing and correcting self-induced misery through rebounding and renovating your mindset.
Welcome to The Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good morning and welcome to The Flotline. I am your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It’ll be a time of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and no manipulation. No con games, not soliciting money, not asking you to join anything. This radio show has been on the air for over 10 years now, and we simply want to teach you some information. Information that hopefully will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life, and if you can do that, then you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s really up to you. But my job is to be accurate, to get it correct, not to appeal to your emotions, not to get you fired up, not to solicit anything, but give you information. We believe God’s in it, God pays for it, and thus we’re here every Sunday morning, same time, same station in your area. What an honor it is to hear from you. I get a good many emails from some of you, and some of you will even call us on our 800 number. You can locate that through our website, rickhughesministries.org. But if you call and order anything, be sure to speak slowly and leave a message if we don’t get the phone. But you can always contact us through our website, rickhughesministries.org. And we can provide you with past Flatline shows. We do podcasts this show now. It is available on Spotify and other podcast networks. Spotify is one particularly. You can go to Spotify and download the Flatline and see the show, hear the show right there. Okay, so a lot to talk about. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of our show. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your encouragement. I love hearing from you. I love hearing the emails that come in from some of you. And if the show doesn’t play in your area, be sure to let us know. Sometimes we have problems with stations that fail to play the show, even though we contract with them to play it properly and on time. They have glitches, and they forget, and they make mistakes. So let us know if it doesn’t play, okay? All right, today we’re going to jump into a very unique study that I think you’ll enjoy. Just remember that God gave you two ends. Remember this. One of those ends you sit with and one of those ends you think with. And success in your life will depend on which one you use. Heads, you’ll win, and tails, you’ll lose. This show is about renovating your thinking, changing the way you think. Not thinking in terms of human viewpoint, but thinking in terms of divine viewpoint. That’s why the Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Learning to think like he thought requires that we learn the scriptures. And that’s why Proverbs 2, 10 and 11 says, when wisdom enters your heart and knowledge becomes pleasant to your soul, then discretion and understanding will guard and protect you. It’s there. It’s for you. It’s God’s plan for you. But the Bible clearly says, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So you’re going to have to learn it. It’s not going to jump off the pages into your mind. But if you spend time learning the word of God and applying what you learn in your life, then you can have the most phenomenal lifestyle as you replicate the thinking of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Yes, you are to think like he thought, not in terms of human viewpoint, but in terms of divine viewpoint, God’s plan. So now, our Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated something to us that we all must understand. He demonstrated his volition to obey the Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ was born the God-man, undiminished deity, true humanity, in one body forever. And that God-man is in heaven today, seated at the right hand of the Father, you know that. But he had volition. He could have decided not to do anything. He could have decided to sin, but he did not. He was the Lamb of God, without spot, without blemish, the only one capable of satisfying the justice of God. But he had volition. We find volition in the Bible everywhere beginning with Adam and Eve when God said you can have anything in this garden, but don’t eat of the tree right over there. Don’t eat from that tree. And of course that got misunderstood when Eve said we’re not even to touch it. But the prohibition was there and man’s volition responded negatively. Man’s volition said, no, I will. You have volition and I have volition. We are a product of what we choose. And we can choose to sin and we can choose not to sin. What you choose oftentimes is based on what you think. And if what you think is going along with your emotions, then you may be out of control, emotionally out of control. Emotionally out of control means you’re going to do something very stupid if you’re emotionally out of control. And remember, bad decisions limit future options, and stupid decisions get people hurt. And so you have to make a decision, and you don’t make decisions based on emotions. You make decisions based on what you think. Because the mind responds, emotions just react. Nothing wrong with emotions, they are wonderful, but if you’re going to use a volitional decision, you must base it on truth or fact, not what you feel like you should do. So volition, quote, under the law of volitional responsibility, and that’s the name of this study, Volitional responsibility. This is number 742 hours, 742 shows. If you figure that one up and there’s 52 in a year, you’ll figure how long we’ve been doing this. 742 show, volition, under the law of volitional responsibility. Listen carefully, here it comes. Self-induced misery is created by your own soul’s volition. In other words, you have the potential to make yourself miserable. By making a stupid decision, you can make other people miserable. And responsibility is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as the quality or the state of being responsible, such as a moral responsibility, legal responsibility, mental accountability, reliability, trustworthiness, something for which you are responsible, your responsible behavior. And it’s usually seen with honesty and accountability. And the concept is that God holds each one of us responsible for every decision that we make. We are responsible. You can’t blame a crummy life on crummy parents. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t say the reason my life is so bad is I had bad parents. A lot of us had bad parents. Heck, I don’t even know who my father was. The only thing that delivered me from a crummy life is me accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, getting under the ministry of a great pastor who taught me the Word of God, and then believing what I heard and applying it into my life. to the best of my ability, which doesn’t mean I never sin. That doesn’t mean that at all. But like you, I had to learn how to rebound my sin and confess my sin. And then God was always faithful and just to forgive me. And he does you too. But with this volitional responsibility, what I’m talking about is each one of us are under the law of volitional responsibility. And under the law of volitional responsibility, we have to accept the consequences of our bad decisions. So we don’t have anybody to blame, nobody but ourself. If you point the finger at somebody and say it’s his fault, remember there’s three fingers pointing back at you. Try it, point a finger and see if there’s not three coming back. You are responsible for your decisions and no one else. We are to blame for our misery in our life most of the time. Some circumstances are beyond our control, but 99% of our suffering comes from our mismanagement of our personal relationships, our mismanagement of our personal health, our mismanagement of personal finances. I mean, that’s where most of it comes from. So the law of volitional responsibility applies in several categories. It applies in what you think. You have volition. You can think divine viewpoint, or you can think human viewpoint. That’s up to you. You can go to Dear Abby for your answers about how you should interact socially, or you can go to the Word of God, which says stay away from fools and don’t even talk to them because they’re going to laugh at you. So, I mean, do what you want to do, but there it is. Who do you go to for advice? I would advise you to go to the book of Proverbs. If you’ll go to the book of Proverbs and read the book of Proverbs a few times over, you will get some tremendous advice. But reading oh dear Abby or dear Lucille or dear whoever it may be in your local newspaper, she’s not gonna give you any divine viewpoint. So you have to be in control of what you think. Think, not emote, not emotional. So also you are responsible for your motivation. What motivated you to do this? Was it jealousy, was it bitterness, was it love? What was your motivation? You know, the Bible says if we love God, we will obey God and his mandates are not grievous. So the number one functional motivation for any Christian is love for God. That’s our number one motivation. That’s why we obey him. If you love me, you will obey me, 1 John 5, 3. And then we’re responsible for every decision that we make. We make hundreds of decisions every day. I decided where to eat lunch today. I decided what sweater to put on this morning. in a bitter cold southern morning with the wind blowing. We’re responsible for decisions. And I bet you’ve made a lot of decisions today that you’re responsible for. And we’re responsible for the actions that come off of those decisions. We can’t blame someone else. We did it. It was us. Yes, it was us. So we have to take responsibility for what we think, what motivates us, the decisions we make, and the actions we take. The end result is self-induced misery. If we have negative or wrong thinking, then we have self-imposed misery. Negative thinking includes all sorts of wrong mental attitudes, all forms of bitterness and jealousy and implacability and arrogance, All of these things that you react to in life by your thinking, you have a term. I won’t use it on the radio, but you know the term for when you get angry, PO’d, people call it. You know what I’m talking about? That’s you thinking. You are reacting, not responding. You can respond with forgiveness, and you can react with bitterness. And it all depends on what you’re thinking and the motivation behind it. But negative thinking leads to negative deeds. So negative or wrong motivation is also self-imposed misery. You want to make yourself miserable? Think the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, be motivated to do the wrong thing, and you can get miserable. Self-imposed misery comes from wrong decisions in our volition. And this misery can happen long before we make any decision. If we think wrong, you see, you have to think it before you do it. You are a product of what you think. Some people just emote and don’t think about anything and let their emotions go off. And this is a dangerous person who doesn’t consider the results of his actions. But listen to what the Bible says, okay? So we get this, negative or wrong decisions are self-induced misery. That’s where it comes from. Negative or wrong actions, now we’re talking about what you do, not what you think. Negative or wrong actions are classified in two ways. You deliberately did something wrong or you impulsively did something wrong. Deliberately, self-induced misery, and impulsively, which is usually self-gratification, and it brings self-induced misery as well. so you deliberately disobeyed god or you impulsively did gratified yourself and that caused you to have some misery but let’s look at some verses in case we get confused here here’s a few verses for you proverbs 22 8 he who sows wickedness reaps trouble and the rod of God’s wrath will be ready. He who sows wickedness reaps trouble, and the rod of God’s wrath will be ready. Sowing wickedness is maligning. If you want to look at seven sins that God hates, Proverbs 6, 16, and 17, they’re all right there. Three of them are mental attitude sins, and three of them are sins of the tongue, and one of them’s an overt sin called murder. You might be surprised, but slander, maligning, gossip, judging, this is sowing wickedness, and it reaps trouble. God doesn’t need your help in judging anybody. God doesn’t need your help in maligning, slandering, criticizing, backbiting. That is trouble in the making, and you are responsible for your decisions. So if you wind up miserable, if you wind up getting kicked out of some place because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut, you did it. Galatians 6, 7. Don’t be deceived. God will not be mocked. Whatever a person sows, this he will also reap. So don’t listen to the liar. This is Satan. He’s the master liar. He’s been a liar for always a liar. Lord Jesus Christ identified him as a liar, and he will deceive you. He has deceptive abilities. And if you buy into the lie, you wind up mocking God, and you wind up being a fool. Romans 1, God talks about in Romans 1, 16, 17, 18, 19, people that are fools that mocked God, and God turned them over to their own desires. Because they believe the created one rather than the creator. Whatever a person sows, you will reap. You sow trouble, you’re going to reap trouble. In Hosea 8-7, they who sow to the wind will reap the whirlwind. There’s an illustration of a hurricane or a tornado. And we call it the cosmic vortex. Imagine spinning around the invisible zeitgeist. The spirit of the times spinning around like a vortex, sucking people into it. People that believe the lie, and it just takes them down the road and dumps them out in the middle of nowhere. Life’s ruined. Life’s destroyed. They believe the lie. They believe the lie. The biggest lie is, I love you. That’s the biggest lie you ever heard. Be careful when they tell you, I love you. And sometimes it’s nothing but manipulation. And they that sow to the wind are going to reap the whirlwind. Colossians 3.25, he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality with God. So God is not going to let one guy off and judge another guy. I don’t care who you are. When you mess up, when you go against the Word of God, when you deliberately make a volitional decision that is negative to His Word, you are responsible for what happens. And he who does wrong will receive the consequences of that wrong. In Proverbs 25, 16, if you find candy, eat just enough. Now, this is a good one since Halloween. If you find candy, eat just enough because too much of it will make you vomit. That’s a bad decision, gorging yourself on sweets. And in 1320 Proverbs, the one who walks with wise men will be wise. but whoever walks with a fool will suffer misery. It’s very possible that you can make yourself miserable. You can have self-induced misery by hanging out with the fool. Who is the fool? It’s the person that ignores the Word of God, a person that doesn’t believe the Word of God, a person that turns his back on the Word of God. You must be careful who you hang out with because the Bible clearly says that it will corrupt you if you hang out with the wrong people because they’ll influence the way you think. Once they influence the way you think politically, socially, spiritually, you’re dead in the water. You’re a dead duck. And then they will dump you like used whatever. A lot of people don’t love you. They don’t care for you. They just want to use you. And you’ll figure this out. As you get older, I always tell young people when I’m talking to them, when you’re When you’re 15, you’re worried about what people think about you. And you get to be about 25, you don’t give a rip what they think about you. And when you get to be about 65, you’ll find out none of them ever thought about you anyhow. So keep that in mind. He who walks with wise men will be wise. My suggestion, stay away from fools, fools that ignore the mandates of the Word of God. Fools that make light of the mandates of the word of God. Fools that will destroy you and laugh about it. Stay away from them. A lot of suffering comes to Christians because they’re confused and they lack biblical principles. They don’t understand Bible doctrine. They don’t understand in life. And if you’re suffering from your own wrong decisions, I can make this clear now and get this straight. If you’re suffering because of some stupid decision you made, no prayer in the world is going to make it go away. You’re going to have to go to the solutions that are found in the Word of God or found in the Bible. Yep, you’re gonna have to go to that. You’re gonna have to go to rebound, problem-solving device number one. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So you’re suffering from a bad decision and you want it to go away. Well, the first step is to rebound, confess the sin to God. The second step is to forget it because God forgets when he forgives. Now, Satan will bring it up to you over and over and over again to make you feel like a jerk, to make you feel like God doesn’t love you, to make you feel like you’re a loser. And if God was through with you, he’d bring you home. So like me, you and I both have made many bad decisions and he hadn’t taken us home yet. He will soon, I’m sure, but not yet. So when we fail, we rebound our sin and we get up and we don’t look back. We move forward because many wrong decisions that people make. can even result in mental illness. It can lead them to psychoses, neuroses, and sociopathic behavior. It happens because they can’t deal with the guilt or they can’t deal with the mental attitude jealousy or the hatred or the bitterness. You know, here’s a little insight for you. We’re all born with genetic handicaps. You know, we have parents. If you know your parents genetically, you know maybe what their flaws were, and we have genetic handicaps. For example, if your parents were alcoholics, you know you shouldn’t drink. because you’ll have a tendency to fall into the same trap. Genetics, and we look at that and we say, okay, I’m not going to drink. My parents were alcoholics, so I’m not going to touch it. Well, we’re born with genetic handicaps, genetic flaws, but we inquire, we acquire environmental or volitional handicaps. How do we do that? Well, by putting things in our life that don’t belong there. And this all adds up to the first cause of suffering in your life. So genetically you have this tendency to go in a certain direction, but environmentally you chose. One of them you inherited, the other one you chose. So a volitional handicap is you handicapping yourself by a sin that you deliberately chose to do. A genetic handicap is something that you were born with. Does that make sense? So many wrong decisions that we make from a position of weakness in our own life, you know, we’re not in fellowship with God. We’re not under the filling of the Holy Spirit. We’re not listening to the Word of God. We’re not thinking divine viewpoint. When we make decisions from a position of weakness, we’re out there on our own. We’re standing alone on an island. We don’t have any wisdom. We don’t have any knowledge. We don’t have insight and discernment. Proverbs 2, 10 and 11 talks about that. So you don’t have that. You’re in a position of weakness, and this results in even eventually mental illness. A lot of positions like that can, yeah, it can absolutely ruin a person’s life. It’s acquired from being arrogant and being self-centered, where you make some stupid, selfish, self-righteous decision, and one decision leads to another decision, and the practice of making thousands and thousands of wrong decisions. So, under the law of volitional responsibility, you and I must accept the consequences for every bad decision that we make. That’s why the Bible says the ones that he loves, he chastens and scourges with a whip, Hebrews 12. When we sin, the first issue is rebound, get it out, get rid of it, name it to God. Because if you don’t, then the hammer’s going to fall. And maybe that’s why you’re suffering today. You’ve sinned and you haven’t dealt with it before the Lord. You haven’t confessed your sin to God. You haven’t rebounded your sin. And you’re miserable and you’re getting whacked on the head every day. May I suggest you use problem-solving device number one, rebound your sin. Because the Bible says he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then may I suggest you do number two, renovate your thinking. Stop thinking in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think, Romans 12, 3. Many of these bad decisions destroy people. So under the law of volitional responsibility, you and I must accept the consequences of our own stupid, bad, dumb decisions. Every human being must take responsibility for their decisions. And so we’re not here to blame other people because we’re miserable. We’re not here to blame other people for our unhappiness and our suffering. We take full responsibility based on our own decisions, and that may be related to who we associated with or what we did or what our motives were or what our functions in life were. So keep that in mind. We are responsible for our motives, our associations, our activities. And God holds you accountable. Many, many wrong decisions come from arrogance in your own soul. And so to protect us from being arrogant and destroying our lives, God gives us authority structure. Parents, pastors, coaches, bosses, forms of authority, police officers. And they are there to keep you from self-destructing. But many wrong decisions come from a position of weakness. When you ignore the authority, you challenge the authority, and you can eventually even harm yourself, go into mental illness, self-centeredness, selfishness, self-righteousness, and making many, many bad decisions. So the bottom line is this. You have to control what you think you have to control what you do Are you going to wind up being a slave to circumstances in your life? self-pity bitter blaming all your hard times on somebody else and Arrogance makes an 18 year old person think he’s wise enough to handle life without any insight from his parents. That’s stupid. So who does he go to for insight? Well, his little arrogant friends who are in the same boat. The innocent often suffer with the guilty being associated with someone else who makes a bad decision. Did you know that? Bad decisions limit future options. Stupid decisions get people hurt, as you’ve heard me say. So man manufactures his own problems, and the resulting suffering, God manufactures the solutions and blessings in the middle of the suffering. The wrong decision of sin brings divine discipline, reviles and removes the discipline, and restores the fellowship to God. That’s just a little bit on volitional responsibility. God holds you accountable for your decisions. I hope you’ve been listening. I hope you’ve been paying attention. Because part of what may be going on in your life today is a series of bad decisions that have backed you into a corner and you see no way out. It starts with a rebound. And then you go to renovating your thinking. and acquiring the mind of Christ. The Word of God is the solution. The Holy Spirit gives you the power, and you use your volition to take the opportunity. Until next week, same time, same place, this is your host, Rick Hughes, here with the Flatline every Sunday morning, thanking you for listening and praying that you would come back and join us next week. Thank you.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
