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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 Good morning and welcome to the flatline I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few minutes as always stick around for 30 minutes of motivation some inspiration some education and

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but always with no manipulation because we don’t try to con anyone. We’re not going to ask you to buy something. We’re not going to ask you for money. You’re not going to be asked to join up, fess up, give up, nothing like that. We’re just going to ask you to listen up. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life, and if I can do that, then as we always say, you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. I want to remind you that our new book entitled These Things is now available. It deals with the last Bible class our Lord Jesus Christ taught the disciples before he was arrested. He said, these things I have taught you so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full. And the question that came up is what does these things refer to? It’s all in the book These Things, free from rickhughesministries.org. We’re working on our next book called God’s Grace in Aging. I’m really excited about that. Many of you that listen are over 50, so if you want to get that book, it’ll be available within the next month or so. You can drop us a note, and we’ll put you on the list to mail it as soon as it’s available. It’s called God’s Grace in Aging. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your support. It’s the grace of God that keeps us going on these radio stations, 115 stations every Sunday morning, and only the Lord can handle that. It’s way beyond our control, but he does it, and we’re here, and if you’re listening to us today today, That’s because he supplied our needs, maybe through you. Now, what we’re going to talk about today is something that’s very dear and near to me. I think it needs to be said. I don’t particularly want to say it, but I think it has to be said. These are times that people get very angry. We’re going through some strange times in the United States and in the world, and people are very angry about a lot of different things. I’ve even had people call me up and cuss me out on the phone because they I said something they didn’t like and they got very angry about it. Well, anger is out of control today and there are two systems of control in the life of any believer. So let’s talk about that for a minute. There are two systems of control in the life of any believer. One is thought, what you think, and one is emotion, what you feel. So with that in mind, emotions always react to circumstances with no thought. But thought always responds to circumstances with no emotional distraction. So you can either get emotional or you can either respond or react, one of the two. React with emotions or respond by thinking. And thinking in terms of humility is what the Bible tells us to do. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. So the Bible tells us to think like our Lord Jesus Christ thought in Philippians 2.5, not for us to get emotional. That’s not how the Christian life functions. There are emotions, but that’s not what dictates policy in the Christian life. So remember this. The Lord Jesus Christ, as far as I can tell, never lost his temper. He never yelled at the disciples. He never threatened Jewish religious leaders who plotted to kill him. The reason is that emotional anger is a terrible sin that lashes out at individuals and only with one purpose, one reason, to harm or maybe to extract some sort of revenge. Some believers have never learned how to control that emotional rage that comes out in conflicting circumstances. If that’s you, and I’m talking to you, that’s right, if that’s you and you let your temper get out of control, then you have a very serious problem. Do you get enraged and trafficked? Do you get angry at politicians that you don’t like? Do you yell and get angry with your spouse? All of these are indications that your sin nature can control you simply because you cannot control your very own emotions. So if you don’t mind, let’s notice a few principles about emotions and mental attitude. One, as a mental attitude sin, anger expresses antagonism, hatred, exasperation, resentment, and irrationality. And I said it’s a mental attitude sin. Yes, if you get angry, you are sinning. The Greek word orgei refers to mental anger, and the Greek word thumos refers to emotional anger. Thumos is much like a thunderstorm, emotional anger. So in Ephesians 4.31, we have these words mentioned, both words. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God of whom you are sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, all clamor, and all evil speaking be put away from you along with all malice. Orgay, mental attitude sin. Wrath and anger, the two words we’re talking about here. And they are both a sin, according to the Apostle Paul, and you’re mandated, quit doing it. Quit letting your emotions take control. Two, anger motivates jealousy and cruelty in your life. The Bible says in Proverbs 27, four, wrath is cruel and anger a torment. or excuse me, a torrent, T-O-R-R-E-N-T. So a person like you or me, we can’t be angry without being cruel and unfair to the individual that we’re angry at. Number three, the Bible clearly says that anger is related to stupidity. In Ecclesiastes 7-9, don’t be hasty to be angry in your mind for anger resides in the bosom of a fool. So if you find yourself losing your temper, if you find yourself letting your emotions take over and yelling or screaming at traffic, at a politician, or at your spouse, you are being foolish and acting like a fool. Why? Number four, because a person is never smart when he’s angry, which is why many stupid and many embarrassing things are said in anger. I mean, if you have to deal with some problem and must have a serious temper, Sense is about you, don’t you? You can’t lose your temper if you got a problem. You got to think your way through it. You got to deal with it, not just get angry and yell and stomp your feet. Five, anger is a sin from the old sin nature. Anger is a sin from the old sin nature. Galatians 5, 19 through 22, now the works of the flesh, here’s the sin nature, are evident. They are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions and dissensions and heresies. I don’t know if you heard them, but listen, here we go again. Hatred, contention, outbursts of wrath. These are all signs that you’ve let your sin nature take over. So whenever you are angry, whenever you lose your temper, You are out of control and the sin nature has captured your emotions and now you’re gonna make a lot of stupid decisions which you wish you never had done. Six, anger is never an isolated sin. Never an isolated sin. Proverbs 29, 22, an angry person stirs up strife and a hot-tempered person abounds in transgression. So when you get angry, it’s not just about you, it’s gonna affect other people also as well. Seven, anger is a violation of the royal family honor code. In Colossians 3, verse 8, and I haven’t taught you much about the royal family honor code. I need to do that. But in Colossians 3, 8, but now you also put them all aside, put them away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Now let’s stop right here. This week, have you been angry? This week, have you said something mean, harsh, with malice or slander? Have you been abusive towards your politicians, towards your friends, towards your spouse, towards anybody? The honor code said put it away. There’s a better way to live. That’s what’s so unique about the Christian life. You can live without being angry because the word of God gives you a different way to live. It’s called the mind of Christ. It’s divine viewpoint. You can have a relaxed mental attitude and use impersonal love and love anybody. You can love any jerk. I always call them WOJs, weird, obnoxious jerks. And they may be Christians, and you may have to spend the rest of eternity with them in heaven. But you might not want them to crowd you too much right now. But you don’t get angry. You don’t lose your temper. You love them as the Bible tells you to love them. with impersonal love, not personal love. You don’t love them based on who they are, based on who you are. This is part of the problem-solving devices, problem-solving device number eight, impersonal love for all mankind. So the angry individual, you, me, is trying to build our happiness or their happiness on someone else’s unhappiness. So if you get angry at someone and put them down, you’re trying to make them unhappy and you get making yourself happy, aren’t you? What does the Bible say about that? Ephesians 4, 30 and 31. What is that passage about? Here it is. Listen carefully. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. And then we go back to a passage I read to you earlier. This is what grieves the Holy Spirit of God, this personal sin in your life. Let all bitterness, personal sin. Let all wrath, personal sin. Let all anger, clamor, evil speaking be put away from you along with all malice. I’ve spoken in a lot of high schools and taught this verse to a lot of students. Bitterness is the word picaria, and it’s a seething bitterness inside your soul, the Greek word picaria. And wrath, anger, orge, thumos, two words. One’s the middle attitude, anger. The other’s an emotional outburst. And then clamor. What is clamor? Clamor is what’s called in the English an onomatopoeia, an onomatopoeia. I know it’s a weird thing, but it’s a word that sounds like what it means. Have you ever heard a crow early in the morning barking out, crawling, crawling, crawling? They call it crawl, C-R-A-W-L. You’ve heard a crow sit in a tree and bark out early in the morning. Well, that’s what clamor is. That’s you running your mouth and barking out stuff about another individual. And it leads to evil speaking, slander, maligning, gossip, criticizing, judging. And you are mandated here, put this away from you along with all malice. Malice is the desire to hurt some person. So this is a direct mandate from God through the apostle Paul. Put away your anger. Put away your evil speaking. Put away your wrath. Do not let it take control of your sin nature. I know you do. I know you have a problem with it. You do too. Have you gone to God and confessed your sin? Have you gone to God and asked him to give you the power to overcome your temper? Because you can. The Holy Spirit can give you the ability to overcome your temper, but you’ve got to first admit you got it. You’ve got to first admit that you’re letting your temper take control through your emotions and that you’re getting angry when you know you should know better than that. What does it mean, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God? What does that mean? Well, it means this. Grieve is the Greek word lupeo. And the active voice of Lupeo means do not. It’s a command. Do not indicates that it causes sorrow when you break fellowship with God. Do not grieve. Grieve means that the Holy Spirit is sorrowful. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by committing sins such as anger and bitterness and et cetera. Yeah, it’s a silly illustration, but You are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and you have a sin nature, and there’s a war going on inside of you right now. It’s always been that way until you get out of this body and get your resurrection body. And you have to decide who’s going to control your life. And when you let your temper take over, when you get mad and angry and start yelling and saying abusive things, then you can just see the Holy Spirit going, oh, no, here he goes again. Here she goes again. How many times have I had to tell them, don’t do that? You are a victim of your own decisions. You know that? You’re going to ruin things. You’re going to destroy things. You’re going to hurt people you shouldn’t hurt because you can’t control your anger. You may consider yourself a good Christian, but I assure you that your temper will get you under divine discipline and your temper will eventually drive off the people that love you the most. So what about explosive anger in marriage? What about that? That’s interesting. Maybe we need to talk about that for a minute. In 1 Peter 3, 7, listen to this. Husbands, likewise, dwell with your wives with understanding and giving honor to her as to the weaker vessel and being heirs together with the grace of life so that your prayers be not hindered. Understanding your wife. Honoring your wife is what this passage says. If you get angry with your spouse, your wife, and you can say it for the husbands as well, if you get angry at your husband, you are grieving the Holy Spirit and your prayer will not be answered until you confess the sin, you rebound. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing. But if you go to God and try to pray for and you’ve been angry and yelling at your spouse, that prayer is not going any higher than the ceiling. You may think you’re being a good Christian because you put some money in the offering plater. You may think you’re being a good Christian because you went to church, or you may think you’re being a good Christian because you did something like that. But until you rebound and confess the sin, you have just quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit, and you’re manufacturing nothing but good works. One of the most disturbing and deflating things that can happen to any female. Listen carefully. One of the most disturbing and deflating things that can happen to any female is for her husband to get angry or yell at her or torment her. And if you are a believer and you have this problem, stop it now before things get worse. All because you got a little short temper. Your wife is not a slave. She’s not your property. She is God’s child. Now, women, listen to this, Ephesians 5, 22 through 29. Wives, submit. Submit is a military term. It means to obey orders. Submit to your own husband. Now, I know you’re saying, my husband’s a jerk. I don’t have to obey him. Listen, if you married a jerk, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for that. And you’re correct. You don’t have to obey him if he tells you to do something that violates the royal family honor code. So let’s say you need some beer. And he said, I want you to go down there and steal some beer from the 7-Eleven. Don’t do it. That’s a sin. If your husband tries to tell you to break the law or do something that’s a sin, you don’t have to do it. But when this verse says, what? Submit to your husbands, what does that mean? It means that ultimately God’s gonna hold the man responsible if the marriage fails. God’s gonna hold the man responsible because he is the head of the wife, the Bible says. Ephesians 5, 22. Wives, submit to your husband as to the Lord, as to the Lord, just like you would the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, and also Christ is head of the church. for he’s the savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, also let the wives be subject to their own husbands in everything. And then verse 25, Ephesians 5, husbands, love your wives. That’s personal and impersonal love. Both of them are problem-solving devices. Love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, and that he might present her to himself as glorious. Now, any husband that loves his wife would willingly die for her, would willingly give his life for her, would not yell or abuse her. So what did this verse say? Love your wives just as Christ loved the church, gave himself for the church, that he might sanctify and cleanse the church with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having a spot or a wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. Listen to verse 28 now, Ephesians 5. So husbands ought to love their own wives just like they love their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves also himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. So husbands, that verse is for you. Husbands, love your wives as you love your own body. You would not deliberately take a weapon and cut your arm off. You wouldn’t do that deliberately. You wouldn’t deliberately stab yourself in the throat. And yet some husbands deliberately, intentionally harm their wives by being rude, yelling, screaming, getting angry with them and saying things they shouldn’t say. What’s the problem? It’s an authority issue. There is authority structure in marriage, okay? We know that from 1 Corinthians 11, 3. But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. Do you hear it? I want you to know the head of every man is Christ, the head of every woman is a man, and the head of Christ is God. Now, some people don’t like that, but that’s the way the Lord set it up. And the man is ultimately responsible in marriage for whether that thing works or doesn’t work. And you have to make a decision. It doesn’t mean the man bullies himself around. Surely he talks to his wife, considers what we want to do together, but ultimately he has to make a final decision, what’s right or wrong. And he may make a decision the wife doesn’t agree with eventually. And she can do one of two things. She can get emotional and mad and pout and shout and get mad about it. Or she can turn it over to the Lord and walk away and let the Lord handle the details. But remember those marriage vows said this, for better or for worse. For better or for worse. But they do not demand, the marriage vows do not demand, and I’ve done a lot of weddings, it does not demand that a woman submit to verbal or physical abuse. You hear that? No woman has to submit to verbal or physical abuse. An angry, abusive individual is full of arrogant subjectivity. So think about this. You cannot build your happiness on the unhappiness of someone else. And that’s exactly what retaliation tries to do. You will never become happy by trying to get revenge. But what about the bitterness in the angry individual’s soul? What about that? Well, the bitter soul is contagious and often will pollute other people. I remember fishing one time in a river and I was catching fish. I went up this little creek and flipped a jig over by a log and bam, caught a nice bass and I smelled something, you know, and I flipped a jig by another log and bam, caught another nice bass and went around the corner and uh-oh, there was a sign that said raw sewage being discharged into this creek. I had to get out of there quickly and wash my rods and reels and wash everything about it. The bitter soul is contagious and pollutes other people. Hebrews 12, 15, see to it that no one comes short of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness springing up may cause trouble. Because of this, many are defiled. The word, you ready? This is going to grab you a little bit. See to it no one comes short of the grace of God and the root of bitterness springs up. The word defiled, many are defiled. That word is the Greek word pronounced mi-i-no, M-I-A-N-O. Now here’s the kicker. A bitter soul is a troubled soul and a troubled maker. And the word mi-i-no means what? It means what’s in the sewage. It means excrement or diarrhea. And what happens when you get bitter and barf it out on everyone else, you cover us with your excrement and the others around us. That’s what this verse is saying. That’s God’s way, God’s sense of humor. You got it? You are polluting other people when you get bitter and spout off and say things you shouldn’t say because you let your emotions take over. All bitter people destroy the environment in which they live because they react to everything in life. Bitterness or any other sin that’s ever caused by, you know, is sometimes caused by genetic weakness. But that’s not the case. Bitterness is caused by personal decisions. Bitter believers destroy their marriages and they destroy their relationships. Bitterness is a fantastic source of sinning. It always ends in a terrible system of evil. I want to make a note about bitterness here. It’s a number one system of self-deception. It results from reacting to people, reacting to situations, reacting to circumstances. It’s a sign of you having your eyes on people rather than on the Lord. If you are bitter, it’s a reactionary sin. And it’s you failing to take responsibility for your own decisions in life. That’s called self-deception because a bitter person always lies to himself. He never tells himself the truth. He doesn’t tell the truth to others that are willing to listen. So what he does is he contaminates other people around him with his bitterness spewing out me I know. When bitter people react, they have a bitter reaction and they justify it. They justify it. They say, well, I’m right and they’re wrong. And for that reason, bitterness is very contagious because it always involves someone else. It always involves maligning someone else from a standpoint of I’m right and they’re wrong. So anger, wrath, quarreling, slander are all part of bitterness. And that word anger, thumos, I told you the thunders, anger, boil over with anger. That’s an overt, emotional, irrational rage that comes out of you. You do not get angry unless you have bitterness in your soul, because in anger you react to someone that you should love. But bitterness is both anger and irrational anger, and it’s the lust to hurt someone else. Bitterness can destroy any personal relationship, especially a marriage. Husbands, Colossians 3.19, love your wives and stop being bitter against them. Bitterness can destroy a marriage faster than anything except sex outside of marriage. No man has a right to be bitter against his wife no matter what she does because he’s the ruler of the wife and the leader of the household. He’s responsible for the household. And he made the decision to marry her to start with. So no husband can love his wife and be bitter against her at the same time. If there’s bitterness, there’s no love because where true love exists, there is no bitterness. Here’s the closing principle. If you are bitter and you don’t rebound, then you’re going to become implacable. And if you continue with implacability and don’t rebound, you will be filled with personal vindictiveness because bitterness is arrogant, animosity, hatred, anger, cruelty, and harshness. It’s a monstrous combination of arrogance and emotional sinning. And bitterness produces a hardness or a harshness that’s totally incompatible with God’s grace and contrary to the protocol plan of God. You cannot be grace-oriented when you’re bitter, when you’re hateful, when you’re angry or cruel towards someone else. Ephesians 4.32, and wrapping this up, but become gracious towards one another, compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as God also by means of Christ has forgiven you. Aren’t you glad God doesn’t get bitter with you An angry, bitter person is always self-absorbed and does not see himself as he actually is. He sees himself as what he thinks he is. Now if I’ve been talking about you, learn this lesson. Put it to use in your life. And stop being angry, stop being bitter, stop being emotional. Learn to live as the Lord Jesus Christ told you to live. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Then you can have the joy and the happiness that God designed for you to have. If these things be in you, I want my joy to be in you and your joy to be full, the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 15, 11. So think about that. Come back next week, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you so much for listening to The Flatline.

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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.