SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

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 02 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stick around. It’s a short time, only about 30 minutes, but motivation, inspiration, education, all of that is done without any type of manipulation because we don’t try to con people. We’re not trying to hustle you. We’re not trying to raise money. We’re not trying to ask you to join up, fess up, give it up, nothing like that. We’re just asking you to listen up. Listen up as I try to give you the word of God, God’s word from the scriptures, and hopefully it will motivate you to do some changing. Maybe if I can enlighten you, let you see yourself as you really are, then you want to do something about that. I know that I did, and it changed my life the day that I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes people ask me, does this show benefit me? You know, I’m not a pastor. I’m not trying to make a church. But that’s a fair question. Does this show benefit you? And as I expand and add additional costs for production and broadcast all across where I’m at now, I think we’re in 107 cities, I take comfort in God’s grace provisions for me. He provides the finances. He provides the inspiration for the message. And my objective is to make you wealthy, not me, you. Now, not financially, no, but spiritually, yes. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4, 7, we have this treasure in our earthly vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not of ourselves. An interesting word for treasure in the original manuscripts of the Greek New Testament is the word thesaurus. meaning a word treasure, a word treasure. If you listen to me, give you the scriptures, it will make you rich, it will give you a word treasure in your soul. Listen to Colossians 2, that their hearts may be encouraged having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth, wealth, hear it, W-E-A-L-T-H, attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of what? Understanding. resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This show can make you rich in wisdom and knowledge by introducing you to the Word of God and hopefully helping you find a qualified pastor that you can grow and study under and become the person that God wants you to be. Many years ago, after I got saved, I had a lot of questions as a young Christian. I didn’t have a church background and never went to church in my life, so I was not influenced by any organized denomination or religion. But as I grew up and sought the Lord’s will for my life, I had several influential men who tried to direct me into their way of thinking, but it didn’t click for me. They tried to make me into something I was not, and eventually the Holy Spirit led me to a great pastor. a no-nonsense type of guy who actually reminded me of my college football coach, Coach Paul Bear Bryant of Alabama. This pastor was a very tough guy, but he was very fair, the best pastor in the land, in my opinion, and I stuck with him, and I knew he would lead me correctly, and he did from 1968 until today. What I hope to do for you is not be your pastor, but to direct you to that sort of pastor for you, so that his job would then be to teach you and make you rich in God’s word. Because with spiritual wealth, you’ll be dangerous to the enemy. But you will be equipped to see past the scams of Satan, the temptations of the flesh, things that seek to ruin your life. So what about it? Are you hungry? Are you ready to get with it? Are you ready to learn something? Because today I want to give you something very interesting. I’d like to talk to you about an unrealistic self-image. Unrealistic self-image. What in the world is that? Well, of all the apostles, Peter was the most outspoken. And on more than one occasion, he actually bit off a little more than he could chew. For example, in Matthew 16, 21 through 23, Peter tried to tell the Lord Jesus Christ that he would not and should not and could not be killed when he went to Jerusalem. Listen as I read the passage to you. And this is Peter’s unrealistic self-image. From that time, Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and be raised the third day. Then Peter took him to the side and began to rebuke him. Can you believe this? He took him aside and began to rebuke him. And he said, far from it from you, Lord, that’s not going to happen to you. But the Lord Jesus Christ, verse 23, turned and looked directly into Peter’s eyes and said something that shocked him. Get behind me, Satan. You’re an offense to me. For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. That unrealistic self-image leads to unrealistic expectations. And there’s no way in this world that Peter wanted the Lord Jesus Christ to fulfill what he just said was gonna happen. And he was going to stop it if he could. And the Lord said, you get away from me, get behind me. You’re thinking about man, not about God’s plan. Again, Peter messed up in Matthew 26, 31 through 35, where he made a very bold claim. And maybe you’ve done this. Maybe you’ve gone forward in church and you said, I’ll never deny you, Lord. I know I’ve messed up, Lord. I’ve done stupid things, but I’ll never do that again, Lord. If you’ll forgive me and you’ve gone to the altar and you’ve prayed and you’ve wept tears of repentance and you promised God that you wouldn’t do that again. Maybe you have an unrealistic expectation of who you are and what you are with that self-image. So here’s where Peter got a wake-up call. Matthew 26, 31 through 35. Jesus said to them, all of you will be made to stumble. because of me this night, for it’s written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I’ve been raised, that’s the resurrection which we studied last week, or two weeks ago actually, he said, I’ll go before you to Galilee. Now here comes Peter with his unrealistic self-image. Listen carefully. And Peter said to him, even if all of these are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. That’s an unrealistic self-image. He thinks he’s something he’s not. And Jesus said to him, looking in the eyes again, surely I tell you this night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And Peter, still with his unrealistic self-image, said to him, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And so said the other disciples. We know this story. We know that Peter did deny him. We know that when he followed him into the interrogation room that one of the people there recognized him and Peter said, no, no, I don’t know who he is. I’ve never heard of him before. And he wimped out under pressure. Maybe this happened to you. Maybe you just actually surprised yourself. You failed and you didn’t realize you could do that. Have you ever done that? Have you ever surprised yourself? Have you ever done something so wretched and so miserable and you wonder why God could even put up with you? Why could God love me? Look what I did. And you think God dumped you somewhere? He turned his back on you? You’re wrong. The Lord Jesus Christ, even though Peter denied him, did not turn his back on Peter. He made a direct effort once the resurrection to go tell Peter, come here. Listen to this. This is the same Peter who’s taking a snooze while Jesus is praying in the garden before his arrest. In Matthew 26, 36, then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, And he said to the disciples, sit here while I go and pray over there. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, that’s James and John. And he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. And he said to them, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with me. And he went a little farther and fell on his face and prayed, saying, oh, my father, if it’s possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Then he came to the disciples, old Peter, James, and John, the ones that said they would never deny him, and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, could you not watch with me for one hour? This is the importance of every hour of your life every day. The Lord Jesus Christ lives in you. The indwelling of Christ is a real thing. Don’t ever forget he’s with you 24-7. And you can’t afford to go to sleep at the most impromptu times. Keep your eyes open. Look for opportunities. Once again, Peter became impetuous when he drew a sword. Later that night, he tried to fight off the arresting officials who came looking for Jesus in the garden. In John 18.10, Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it out and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his ear. That servant’s name was Malchus. That’s how you get in the Bible, in the word of God forever, with your ear cut off. But this was impetuous Peter, the man who had an unrealistic self-image of what he really was. And he had unrealistic expectations about what he would really do. And he’s just like you and just like me. There’s a very famous football coach who used to coach the Houston Oilers years ago named Jerry Glanville. And Jerry Glanville, coach of the Oilers, said this, Quote, at certain times, we all try to present ourselves as something we are not. The truth is that some believers, some Christians, take themselves way too seriously. I’ve been around people like this, and I don’t like being around them because they’re always very, very, very, very, very serious. Praise the Lord, brother, God willing, brother. And that’s all they want to talk about is the spiritual life and what they’re doing and what God’s doing. And I’m just like, give it a break, dude. Lighten up. God was in business before you got here. And God will be in business when you’re gone. It doesn’t all depend on you. Taking yourself way too seriously is you having an unrealistic self-image. Maybe you’re trying to impress God with how much you love him. Maybe you’re trying to impress God with how much you’re going to do for him. This sort of attitude is often due to subjective arrogance and preoccupation with your own self, which comes from two things, actually. Unrealistic expectations in which you think you never have to take any responsibility for your own decisions. You’d rather blame it on someone else and then fragment your own life. Or an unrealistic self-image, another problem. Unrealistic self-image creates a role model out of who? Out of yourself. How does it do that? Through your own arrogance, especially through your subjective arrogance. This individual that makes a role model out of itself is basically unteachable because in their mind, they’ve justified all their decisions, good or bad, and pointing out their flaws does them no good whatsoever. I have been in the ministry well over 50 years and I have spoken in hundreds of churches and thousands of schools and I’ve met countless individuals. And the ones that you can’t help, the ones you can’t talk with, the ones that you can’t even teach anything to, or those who think they don’t need it because they are really great people in God’s eyes. That’s what self-righteous religious does to you. You think you’re great because you don’t smoke. You think you’re great because you don’t drink. You think you’re great because you don’t curse. You think you’re great because you only watch Disney movies on TV. You get this unrealistic self-image, and we’re going to see where that happens in the Bible later on. You’re going to see where all this shows up before God. This sort of person that has this attitude, thinking they’re great, cannot look into the mirror of God’s word and see his self or her self as they really are because they don’t have any objective reality. They’re totally subjective, totally looking at their self. But if you look into the mirror of the word of God, you’ll see what you don’t want to see. But looking into the mirror of arrogance, looking into the mirror of arrogance, you create a false image but by looking into the mirror of the word of god that false image that self-hero image is destroyed and the believer under enforced and genuine humility can execute god’s plan for his life if he’s teachable there are two things that can be devastating in the creation of the hero self-image the first one is you can often discover your own feet of clay Therefore, you become disillusioned about yourself. And if you remain arrogant and retain the image, well, that’s the end of you. Since your self-esteem is false and not true, you become disillusioned, distraught, mentally disturbed, distracted, even from the execution of the word of God. You shocked yourself. You did something you didn’t think you could do. You had an affair. You stole money. You lied to your spouse. You abused your children. You went into secret and did something you shouldn’t have done. And you’re a Christian. You have been saved and you know that. And now you think God’s mad at you and God rejected you and God’s through with you. That’s not true. God’s not happy with what you did. But that’s why we have rebound because the Bible says if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that’s exactly what you may need to do right now to rebound. Rebound. Because if you have a hero self-image of yourself, then you will expect everybody around you to recognize that image and treat you with reverence and respect and adoration and admiration. And if you have an unrealistic self-image, you’re usually a pain in the neck to other people. I met a pastor one time, a doctor, a PhD, I call it a post-toe digger, and his name was, I’ll just call him Fred. And old Fred said, when you are around my people, call me Dr. Fred. And I’m thinking to myself, what are you talking about, Dr. Fred? He wanted to be recognized and respected. He had that hero self-image. This happens to a lot of people in the ministry, pastors, evangelists. It can also happen to deacons, people at Sunday school teachers. They think they’re something they’re not, and they make a hero image of themselves. and they want everyone around them to recognize that image and treat them differently. The Scripture gives us a solution to this unrealistic self-image. Listen very carefully. You and I must first learn to recognize our biggest enemy other than Satan, and that’s arrogance. Arrogance. Rarely will you hear a pastor speak on arrogance. Think about this. When’s the last time you heard your pastor teach on the subject of being arrogant? But it’s an attitude that will destroy you if you don’t learn to recognize it and if you don’t learn to confess it. Arrogance manifests itself primarily through self-justification. justifying why you are right and the rest of the world is wrong, why you’re right and your wife is wrong, you’re right and your husband’s wrong, you’re right and the preacher’s wrong. This trait of arrogance is very destructive because the person who has unrealistic self-image always manifests that image with self-justification and self-deception. He justifies why he’s right and the rest of the world is wrong. And he’s totally absorbed with himself, lies to himself, convinces himself that he’s something he’s not, unrealistic expectations unrealistic self-image that’s why paul tells you in romans that we must change the way we think you can’t operate like that in the christian life you have to go from being arrogant to being humble and i’m not talking about walking around with stooped shoulders and praise the lord smile on your face hello brother god willing brother will cross the river today That’s not what I’m talking about. Listen to Romans 12.3. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that in order that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Now listen to Romans 12.4. For I say through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but think of yourself soberly, as God has dealt to each one of us a measure of faith. The only way you can change what you’re thinking about yourself is to learn God’s word and get some humility, and that’s called divine viewpoint. That’s called renovating your thinking. And that’s what the Christian life is all about, renovating the way you think. The Apostle Paul had to come to grips with his own failure and his own faults. Listen to what he wrote in Romans 7.15. He said, I don’t realize what I’m doing. I don’t do what I want to do, but instead I wind up doing what I hate. I don’t do what I want to do, but I agree that God’s standards are good. So I’m no longer the one who’s doing the things I hate, but it’s sin in me that’s doing this. That’s his sin nature. I know that nothing good lives in me. That is, nothing good lives in my corrupt nature. Although I have the desire to do what is right, I don’t do it. I don’t do the good I want to do, but instead I do the evil I don’t want to do. And now when I do what I don’t want to do, I’m no longer the one doing it. It’s the sin that lives in me that’s doing it. You have a sin nature. Paul had a sin nature. He recognized it, and he recognized that’s what’s caused his failure. If you think you’re perfect, if you think you’re God’s gift to Christianity, you’re looking in the wrong mirror. You have the wrong attitude. That’s why we study and learn those 10 problem-solving devices so we can recognize our failures. and rebound from our failures, not hiding behind our own arrogant self-justification that actually gives us permission to hate and sin and to vilify other individuals and criticize people that don’t agree with you because you think you’re right and the rest of the world is wrong. You have an unrealistic self-image and you have unrealistic expectations. You know, religious people can be very arrogant. sometimes even more so than the unbeliever. Judging, maligning, criticizing are all seen in the life of the religious person who thinks God’s impressed with their self-righteous lifestyle. Remember, it was these sort of individuals who insisted our Lord be put to death. I think back to when I became a Christian and the people that tried to influence me, tried to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. Brother, now that you’re saved, you know, you shouldn’t go to the movies and watch anything but a G-rated Disney movie. Brother, now that you’re a Christian, you should only drink Coca-Cola or 7-Up. Brother, now that you’re a Christian, you can’t ever smoke again, brother. Brother, now that you’re a Christian, and on and on and on and on the list goes. I remember one time I bought a handgun. For protection, I bought a handgun. And this preacher said, brother, don’t you trust God? And I’m thinking, yeah, I trust God to make the bullet go straight when I shoot it. This unrealistic self-image always has unrealistic expectations, not only of you, but also thinking of God unrealistically. Those unrealistic expectations come crashing down at the judgment seat of Christ. 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 16, and the great white throne of judgment in Revelation 20. At the judgment seat of Christ, believers will be shocked to see many of their good deeds, what they think is good, what they think they did for God, it’ll be burned up as waste. This is the reason human good is not acceptable to God. That means if you expect God to reward you for all the right things you did in the wrong way, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. If your production is not done under the filling of the Holy Spirit, it is no good. It’s human good. It will be rejected and burned up. 1 Corinthians 3.11, after all, no one can lay any other foundation than the one that is already laid, which is Jesus Christ. People may build on the foundation with gold and silver and precious stones and wood and hay and straw, but the day will make it clear to what each person has done. It will be visible. Fire will reveal it, and that fire will determine each person’s work, what’s been done. If a person has built and survives, if what you built survived, you’ll get a reward. And if his work is burned up, he will suffer loss. However, he himself will be saved, but it will be like going through a fire. This is when people think that, you know, I’ve been tithing all my life. I’ve been praying all my life in public. I’ve been a good person. I’ve attended all this. I’ve done that and this. but they did all the right things in the wrong way. Remember, you’ve heard me talk about the protocol plan of God. There’s a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things, and I don’t care if you are praying. I don’t care if you are tithing. I don’t care if you are being perfect attendants. If you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, when you do that, you’re doing a right thing but in the wrong way. Prayer without the filling of the Holy Spirit is wrong. Because the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. And you’ve heard me say this. Ask your pastor, what does it take to be a good Christian? If he can’t tell you, number one, you must learn how to be filled with the Holy Spirit because that’s the secret to living the Christian life. He doesn’t understand it. At the great white throne of judgment, the unbeliever who has unrealistic expectations, thinking that he’s going to be welcomed into heaven on the basis of his moral lifestyle, He’s going to be in for a gigantic shock because his unrealistic self-image brought about unrealistic expectations about how God was going to judge him, that God was going to let him come into heaven because he’s a good boy. Revelation 20, verse 10, I saw a large white throne and the one who sat on it The earth and the sky fled from his presence, but no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, both important and unimportant people, standing in front of the throne. Books were opened, including the book of life. And the dead were judged on the basis of what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead. Death and hell gave up the dead. People who were judged based on what they had done. And death and hell were thrown into the fiery lake. The fiery lake is the second death. Those whose names were not found written in the book of life were thrown into the fiery lake. Books and book. The book of life is when you are born, your name is put in the book of life. If you die without having accepted Christ as your Savior, your name is blotted out and it’s not there. So here you are, you show up before the great white throne of judgment and you say, where’s my ticket into heaven? What door do I enter? Well, is your name in the book? Let’s see, what’s your zip code? Yep, no, not here. But look what I’ve done. Look at all the good things I’ve done. So we open up the book of deeds. And there they are. All these things you did. But all of our righteousness is like a filthy rag in God’s eyes because there are none that are righteous, no, not one. So I don’t care how moral you were. I don’t care how many good deeds you’ve done. You will not walk into heaven because you rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and you died the first death. And you’re about to die the second death being thrown into the lake of fire. The antidote to arrogance is humility and it’s the freedom from pride and freedom from arrogance. And humility or being humble in the unique spiritual life of the church age is simply you recognizing the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and submitting to him. Through consistent perception, metabolization, and the application of the scripture to your life, your arrogance is brought low or humbled. While the filling of the Holy Spirit, grace orientation, both personal problem solving devices, all of these things lead you to live the highest level of function in the Christian life. The mandate of James 4.10 is this one. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord. Don’t think of yourself as something you’re not. There is no substitute for humility in the spiritual life. This mandate to humble yourself, to have grace orientation, to be occupied with Christ, means you must depend on the Lord, and it precedes any effective use of any problem-solving device you may have. Because humility is a way of thinking. It’s a system of life. It’s a system of thinking. It’s a comfortable, relaxed system of thinking, not thinking in terms of inferiority. It’s a state of honor and integrity, and it’s living the spiritual life. Humility is the motivation of your station in life. As per Ephesians 4.1, therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling of which you have been called. Humility. Not living with an unrealistic self-image and not having unrealistic expectations. I hope this is clicking. I hope you’ve looked into the mirror of Word of God this morning and seen yourself as you really are. If so, get in touch with us if you need to. Contact us through our website, rickhughesministries.org or call us at 800-831-0718. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:22

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.