have a deceiver, a distractor, and a destroyer.
If
you allow any of these enemies (the devil, the world or the flesh, your sin nature) to control
your life, you wind up with a very sick soul.
These enemies are always trying to gain
admittance, always trying to run your life, but you have volition.
You make choices. And at
points in your life your volition may in fact surrender to one of these three: the world, the
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flesh, or the devil.
Maybe you will surrender and you will commit a sin and this sin is as
obvious to you as to everyone else. It could be something like a sin of the tongue called
gossiping. It could be something like an overt sin like getting drunk or having sex with someone
other than your spouse, such as adultery or fornication. It could be a mental attitude sin such as
worry and fear. You might listen to the enemy and decide all of a sudden that you’re not
interested in learning God’s Word anymore. Maybe you’ve decided that there’s a better way to
live and you don’t have time for the Bible. I cannot tell you how many people that I know and
love that want to learn God’s Word, that talk about God’s Word, but they will not take the time to
study on a daily basis. They are much more comfortable going through the routine without any
reality to it. They love going to church, especially on Easter and holidays. As far as sitting down
with their Bible and taking notes, learning something, and applying it into their life, they just
don’t have time to do it. The world has succeeded in capturing their mind with unbelievable
distractions called family, finances, health, whatever. Maybe you will become proud that you are
a Christian or maybe you’ll forget everything Christ did for you. The soul always has enemies
and the consequences are always the same.
When you use your volition to make a decision to
allow the world or the flesh or the devil to capture your thoughts, then you are out of
fellowship with God and your sin nature takes control.
We all have a sin nature and the battle
is always ongoing. Inside of you, even this very moment as you listen to me, you are either being
controlled by God the Holy Spirit, the Bible calls this being spiritual, or you are controlled by
your sin nature and the Bible says you are carnal. What is the difference? If the sin nature is
controlling you there’s unconfessed sin in your life. If the Holy Spirit’s controlling you there is no
unconfessed sin in your life. I know you’re saying, “I cannot keep up with all of my sins.” No
one can. This is why 1 John 1:9 says,
“If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us
and to purify us from all
[that’s the word again, all]
wrongdoing.”
No, you’re not going to
remember every sin but there are sins you’ve done and you are aware of them. Mental attitude
sins, sins of the tongue, even overt sins and you haven’t gone to your Father and admitted them.
You’re out of fellowship. The sin nature is in control and your soul is sick. This is why
sometimes you feel good and sometimes you don’t, because you get in fellowship and out of
fellowship. Your conscience can kick into overdrive and you can feel awful. You will wish you
hadn’t done what you did but once you have committed a sin, wishing you hadn’t done it doesn’t
do any good. It doesn’t do any more good than it does the unbeliever once he dies and goes to
hell and says, “Oh, I wish I had accepted Christ.” Listen, wishes are not going to cut it. Through
a bad decision you walked away from God’s plan but let’s get this straight. God did not desert
you. He still loves you. He still has a plan for your life. He will never desert you.
He promises,
“I will never leave you, I will never forsake you”
(Hebrews 13:5). You have a simple,
wonderful, grace procedure called rebound and you can refresh your sick soul with this.
You can name your sin to God. You can bounce back from the injury of your soul caused by
that sin.
The Bible uses several things to refer to this. In Psalm 32:5 we are told to
“Acknowledge our sins.”
In Matthew 18:4 we are told to
“Humble ourselves.”
In Romans 6:13
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we are told to
“Present ourselves to God.”
In Romans 12:11 we are told to
“Present our body as
a living and holy sacrifice.”
In 1 Corinthians 11:31 we are told to
“Judge ourselves.”
In
Ephesians 4:22 we are told to
“Lay aside the old self.”
The Bible talks about this a lot. We are
told to
“Make straight paths for our feet”
(Hebrews 12:13). We are told to
“Be in
subjection
unto the Father of spirits”
(Hebrews 12:9). We are told to
“Lay aside every weight that distracts
us”
(Hebrews 12:1). These are all warnings. If you will use problem-solving device #1, rebound,
if you will go to God and admit your sin, if you will name your sin to God, then
“He will be
faithful and just to forgive you.”
You see, rebound is the solution to all sin whereby in the
thinking of your soul you will acknowledge your sin to God the Father, not somebody else. Don’t
go tell your spouse, don’t go tell your preacher, don’t tell anybody. Go to God. Tell God what you
did. He will forgive the sins that you name and He will cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
These are the sins you’ve forgotten about or don’t even realize are sins.
If you will do this, if
you will go to God, be honest with Him, and admit your sin to Him, you will be back in
fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
He will control your soul and you can recover from your
human viewpoint thinking. Human viewpoint thinking that comes with the world, the lure that
people, or money, or circumstances can make you happy. This is not true because unhappy
people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. If you don’t believe this, go to
Hollywood and check them out. If you decide not to heed the promptings of your conscience,
when your conscience prods you to rebound, when your conscience prods you to admit your sin,
if you don’t listen you’re going to fail God’s plan. Your soul will carry the burden of the
consequences of this failure. Your sin nature will command your soul until one of two things
happens. You will either admit your sin to God and rebound or you will keep advancing in your
sin until you die the sin unto death. These are the only two choices, rebound and keep advancing
in your spiritual life, or stay carnal until you die the sin unto death. Now you would think every
believer would rebound but the majority of believers that I meet, they don’t even bother to learn
about it much less use it. Thus, by attempting to assuage their guilt complex, attempting to
manipulate God, asking for favor, they’ll go to church every now and then, show up, the nod to
God crowd, the casual Christian, they think that things are right and wonderful and good.
“Maybe God is like the genie in the eight ball, He’ll pop out and bless me.” This is not going to
happen. The reason you’re going through what you’re going through is because the hammer of
God is breaking you into pieces. Is this happening? Is the hammer of God breaking you into
small pieces? Then it’s time you rebound because God is perfect righteousness, God is perfect
justice, and He will punish us. When we kick out the Holy Spirit, so to say, when we say, “I don’t
want You controlling my life anymore. I want to sin. I want my sin nature to control my life.”
When we retreat from our spiritual battlefield, then the discipline that God puts into our
life serves as a wake-up call.
His punishment serves the additional purpose of encouraging us to
rebound and renounce our sin. Come on, if you hit a mule enough times with a 2 x 4, he might
eventually decide to move and I’m telling you God will strike you mightily until you wake up,
until you rebound, until you move ahead toward spiritual discernment, and eventually maximum
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glorification of God. You are a Christian. You are a child of God. Why are you acting like this?
Why are you puttering around in the world? Why have you walked away from your spiritual life?
Why have you given such small attention to God? The very God that saved you, the very God
that gave you eternal life, why have you turned your back on Him? The solution is for you to
rebound. This is the number one solution and all other divine solutions depend on this to start
with. You can understand Satan’s unrelenting attempt to convince you that, “It’s just a little sin
and it doesn’t matter and it can’t really be a sin anyhow. Maybe you might as well just wait until
the day is over and you finish sinning before you even confess this one, which may or may not
be a sin,” he’ll tell you. Don’t be fooled. If you feel the twinge of your conscience and it tells you,
you have sinned, then God the Holy Spirit is graciously prodding you. He wants you to awaken
to your failure. He wants you to listen to your conscience. He wants you to name this sin to God
immediately, in the privacy of your thinking, to agree with God that what you did was wrong.
Rebound is a wonderful thing.
“If we confess our sin,”
this is a third class condition. If means
maybe you will and maybe you won’t. The word confess is a compound word. It’s from two
words,
homo
, meaning the same and
logeo,
meaning to say. The Greek word
homologeo
means
to say the same. When I say confess your sin, I’m not telling you to get up in the front of the
church. That’s the last thing you need to do because all the busybodies in the church would love
to hear about what you’ve been doing. I’m not telling you to go to the pastor, he doesn’t need to
be cluttered up with your confession. I am telling you to go to God and admit to God your sin
and He will be faithful to forgive you. Are you still breathing? Are you still alive? Doesn’t it
make sense that God still has a plan for you? If he didn’t would you even still be here? I don’t
care what you’ve done in the past. I don’t care how far down the road you’ve fallen. You slipped
and slid all the way into reversionism. When you use to be a halfway decent Christian, now
you’re way down the road, God is in your rearview mirror, and you haven’t stopped to look back
yet. It’s time for you to put the brakes on, time for you to name your sin to God the Father
because if you don’t do this, you will never re-enter the spiritual life. You must name your sin
and then once you name it, isolate it. Don’t add sins such as bitterness and anger and self-pity
and guilt to the original sin that you did. Then forget about it, forget it. Once you’ve confessed
your sin to God, don’t keep worrying about it. Put it out of your mind and move on in your
spiritual life.
Name your sin to God, 1 John 1:9. Isolate your sin, Hebrews 12:15. Forget
your sin, Philippians 3:13, and then move on in your spiritual life, Philippians 3:14.
Now
that you’re back in fellowship, now that the Holy Spirit is back in control, keep learning and keep
utilizing the Word of God. This is what got you in trouble to start with, you quit learning the
Word of God. You would not take time to discipline yourself to listen to the teaching of the Word
of God. Listen to what Paul said, how he rejoiced to the Corinthian believers that used rebound.
He said,
“I rejoice now, not because you are made sad
[in other words, because of the
discipline],
but because you were distressed as God would have it, and it resulted in the change
of mind resulting in the way of thinking which led you to a decision to rebound. For the sadness
as God would have it produces a change of mind, resulting in deliverance
[that’s from the
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anguish of being out of fellowship]
but the distress that the world brings produces death”
(2
Corinthians 7:9-10). Following the world and living in the world brings the sin unto death if we
don’t rebound. But if we rebound, if we recover, if we resume our spiritual life, then you are
guaranteed that you can buy time. You can redeem the time. But unless you stay in fellowship
with God, unless you allow God the Holy Spirit to control your life, you’re going to build up a
big stinking pile of garbage called human viewpoint thinking. It will harden your soul, Ephesians
4:18, scar tissue builds up on the soul. Then if you get enough scar tissue, your body will rot
under the sin unto death.
Rebound or recovery from your sin is not inevitable because it’s
always a matter of your very own volition.
If you’re like me, we can be downright stupid,
especially once sin gets its claws into our soul. Yep, we can. When we don’t choose to name our
sins to God the Father there’s no other solution. Listen, I assure you God never gets tired of
hearing your confession. He never gets tired of forgiving the sins that you acknowledge to Him.
Paul said,
“Where sin increases, grace increases all that much more”
(Romans 5:20).
How
can a soul which at the moment of salvation is filled with the Holy Spirit and living the spiritual
life, how can this soul slide into the void of darkness? The answer is sin and evil, lack of
rebound, lack of recovery, lack of allowing the Holy Spirit to control your life. When you
rebound, when you get back in fellowship, when you put the Holy Spirit back in control, then all
the human viewpoint stinky garbage can be slowly replaced by the Word of God, Biblical
knowledge, in your soul. The focus of your soul will be limited to your Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.
Slowly you can heal your soul. If your soul has been damaged it will take a while to
heal it.
As with any healing it will be painful at first. I’m thinking about a young man that I had
a ministry to that had gotten into drug addiction and decided that he wanted to rebound and try to
get out. He found he could only concentrate a few moments at a time. His mind had so much
clutter, so much garbage, so much scar tissue, and as he began to study God’s Word, maybe only
10 minutes a day and then maybe in two weeks we got him up to 30 minutes a day. Eventually he
could sit down and concentrate for an hour. I’m going to ask you this question, could you sit
down with a notebook, with your Bible, and turn on a DVD or an MP3 and listen to someone
teach you the Bible for one hour? Could you do this or would your mind be all over the place?
Would you be thinking about what you need to do with the kids or what you need to do down at
work or what you want to do here or there? Can you focus? If you can’t focus, you can’t grow.
You cannot grow if you can’t focus and the only way you’re going to be able to focus is to
allow the Holy Spirit to empower you to do it.
You’ve got to make some gut wrenching
decisions in life. You have to remove yourself from the temptations, the old friends, the old hang
outs, the tantalizing habits that you’re use to doing. Healing a soul that’s been injured takes some
time but above all it takes determination. I’m trying to lose some weight and it takes
determination. When my friends sit down and eat cake and pie and ice cream, I can’t say, “Oh
well, let me just have a little bite.” I have to say, “No, I can’t eat any of that.” It takes
determination and I am not perfect. Listen, none of us are going to get anywhere spiritually if we
don’t have some determination. That’s your volition. It takes you determining that you will
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number one, stay filled with the Holy Spirit by using rebound, problem-solving device #1. Then
number two, you will consistently listen to somebody teach you the Bible, not just once a week,
not just twice a week, but daily.
That’s why you hear me always keep harping about getting under
the authority of a qualified pastor that can teach you God’s Word. You can get DVDs and MP3s
and listen at home and learn if you want to, but most of the time the distractions are too great.
First, it was one kid, now it’s two, and now it’s three children. Now it’s a spouse that wants
attention and you say to yourself, “When am I ever going to be able to study?” Yeah, that’s the
question, when? Do you think you might have to get up a little earlier in the morning or stay up a
little later at night? Whatever it takes, it takes determination.
The immediate solution to your
sin is to rebound but the long-term solution takes determination.
“
I’m going to push the
darkness of this human thinking out of my soul and I’m going to let in the sweet light of the
truth of God’s Word.” If you have this type of determination, you will be an invisible hero
in God’s plan.
You will grow, you will glorify God, and you will become what we call a winner
believer. Even David sinned and he sinned mightily but he recovered.
You can recover from
any sin you’ve done. It’s not too late. All you have to do is go to God and admit it.
Go to God
as David did in Psalm 38:18 where he said,
“I confess my iniquity and I am hurting because my
sin is always in front of me.”
Take your Bible and read Psalm 38:1-18 and see if this sounds like
you. David’s carnality harmed his body and harmed his soul equally and he underwent discipline
from God. God’s justice dealt with him just like God’s justice will deal with you. You cannot hide
sin from God. He sees it. He knows about it and He can turn the disaster you made out of your
life into blessing if you will let Him, but you must let Him. Nobody can do it for you. You have
to make the decision. “I’m going to rebound and admit my sin to God and I am determined to
grow spiritually.” When you’re ready, you let me know. I’ll tell you how to do it, who to listen to,
how you can start growing, and become the person that you want to be, but you must make the
decision. Until next week this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The
FLOT Line.