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 : 0:24

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long. Only about 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, some education, and no manipulation, meaning we don’t con people. We’re not trying to solicit money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We don’t have any political ads. We’re not up to that kind of stuff. We’re just here to teach you some information that’ll help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If you’re interested and if you can understand it, if you accept it, then you can do something with it. You can orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. But as I say, you only got one shot in your life and you better get it right because bad decisions limit future options. And the worst decision anyone could ever make in their entire history of their complete life is to reject Jesus Christ as the anointed son of God and never accept him as their savior. There’s no way out of that. You leave God no solution if you do that. So I hope that you’ll listen. I hope you’ll pay attention. I hope you’ll consider the things that we talk about today. This is Flatline Show 1070. That’s 1070 Sundays we’ve been on the air across the United States and the Philippines and Alaska and other places. And as you know, we don’t raise money. We’re not asking you for money. We always depend on the Lord to supply our needs, and He always does that. exactly what our needs are. So thanks for those of you that pray for us. Thank those of you that support us. And please stay with me today as we want to talk about understanding yourself. Last week we talked about understanding God. This week we’re going to talk about understanding yourself. What makes you do the things you do? Why are you like you are? I want to start out with a verse, but before I do, let me remind you, we’re adding new radio stations every week. Right now, we’re up to 136 stations across America, as I said, and so keep praying for those opportunities. I have a number that I’d like to hit if we can afford it, so we’ll see what the Lord does, okay? Now, Psalm 139, verse 14. Psalm 139, verse 14. I will praise you, the psalmist wrote, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and my soul knows very well. Did you notice, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. It’s true that you and I are certainly complicated machinery, aren’t we? We understand from the scriptures that we are created with a body, yep, not everybody has the same body though, and a soul, but we lack a living human spirit. So when you’re born into this world, you have a body and a soul, but you lack a living human spirit. You’re a bicotomous, not tricotomous. You have a body. Some people have big bodies. I was watching a TV show the other night, and there was some guy about seven and a half feet tall and somebody about four feet tall. God makes us that way. And a soul, and this interesting thing, we’ll talk about that here in just a minute, but we do not have a human spirit. We do not have a living human spirit. And the reason because of that is found in Romans 5, 12. The Bible says, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, thus death through sin came and death spread to all men because all have sinned. This is the very reason that Jesus said we had to be born again because we have a dead human spirit, spiritually dead. Jesus said in John 3, 3, Jesus answered and said, truly, truly, I say unto you, unless one is born again, He cannot, will not, not ever, I’m adding that for emphasis, he will never see the kingdom of God. So once we experience the new birth of salvation, we are complete body, soul, and spirit, trichotomous. All three pieces come together. That’s the way God wants you to be. He wants you to have a body, a soul, and a spirit. And as I said, all bodies are not the same. But let me give you a little insight here. At birth, all souls start out exactly the same way. Every one of us start out the same way. We don’t wind up the same way in our soul. And we’ll talk about that. So all bodies are not the same, but all souls start out exactly the same. And here it is. We have volition. mentality, conscience, and self-consciousness, and we’ll talk about that. So as you develop physically, as you grow physically, the plan of God is for you to develop and protect your soul and to grow in your soul also. So let’s examine your soul and what your soul possesses. First of all, I said your soul has volition. What does that mean? V-O-L-I-T-I-O-N, volition. It means you are free to choose for or against God. I mean, even Satan had volition to make his decision in eternity past. So thank goodness God didn’t make us into a little automaton and we’re not little robots. He gives us freedom of choice, especially in regards to his son, our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You can either have positive volition or negative volition when you hear the gospel. You can either say, yes, I believe, or you can say, no, I don’t believe. For the Christian, your volition also comes into play if you choose to obey or not obey the scriptures or the mandates of God found in the scriptures. So your volition is very critical. God gave you freedom of choice. That’s one good thing about living in America. You have freedom. You’re free to choose where you want to go to school, free to choose what kind of career you want to pursue, free to choose who you want to marry. You have freedom of choice. God does not make you a robot. But you also have in your soul, not only do you have volition, you have mentality. Mentality. I know some people are indeed smarter than others, yes. But when a surgeon gets a stopped up commode, he calls a plumber, not another surgeon. Intelligence is an amazing thing, isn’t it? So children are designed to be taught, not ignored, not abused, ever. The critical thing that children must learn early in their life is authority orientation. And the scriptures instruct us to think like Christ thought, Philippians 2.5. So we have to teach our children to think divine viewpoint. understanding what God’s viewpoint is. And so the Lord Jesus Christ was obedient to his Father’s will, just as you have to teach your children to be obedient to their parents. Listen to what he said in Luke 22, 42, where the Lord Jesus Christ said, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet… Not my will, but your will be done. And that’s submitting to the will of the Father. So you have mentality and you have volition. And we’re not all geniuses. Some of us don’t score 36 on the ACT. Some of us score 16 or 17. We’re not all smart. But a surgeon can’t stop a commode either, as I said. So if you get a stopped up commode, you call a plumber, not a surgeon. And he’s smart in his own way. So then we have the conscience, the volition, and the mentality. And now the conscience, that’s the third part of your soul. This is very critical because it’s where you store your norms and your standards. the things you believe and live by, your norms and your standards. Norms and standards are what your parents are supposed to teach you, you know, like wash your hands, brush your teeth, pick up your mess, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal. You know, children who had no norms and standards make good criminals since they can lie, cheat, or steal without guilt. But if a child is taught good norms and standards, he’ll feel guilt if he doesn’t brush his teeth, or he’ll feel guilt if he lies. So when the normal child or the young adult, when he grows up, his conscience will set off an alarm if his norms are violated. If somebody tries to get him to do something he knows he shouldn’t do, his conscience will scream, don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. And if that individual goes ahead and does it, commits the act, the sin, then guilt is sure to follow. Shame or guilt will follow. Now, it’s very possible that a believer can dull his senses of right and wrong. Did you know that? He can make his senses of right and wrong dull by dabbling in forbidden sin. And I’ll show you shortly how you black out your soul’s mentality and scar your conscience so that you feel no remorse and no guilt when you do sin. So when you violate norms and standards, direct norms and standards, and they’re there in your conscience, they’ve been put there by your parents, and you violate those norms and standards, if you keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it, you will scar up your soul’s conscience to where you can now come to where there’s no guilt and you can steal without feeling guilty, you can lie without feeling guilty. The illustration I always like to give is you wanna know if you got scar tissue in your soul, If your conscience has been dulled down a little bit, think about this. If you’re at the grocery store, you’re shopping somewhere and you give the cashier a $100 bill and you’re supposed to get change back for that $100 bill where you spent $50 so you get $50 back and accidentally they give you $200 back thinking something’s wrong. You say, wait a minute, wait a minute, you gave me too much money. But if your conscience is dull and your sinful nature is in charge, you’ll say, oh, it’s my lucky day and you put that money in your pocket and walk out. If you can steal from them like that, knowing that you’re taking something that is not yours, then you scarred up your conscience already. And an unbeliever that has no norms and no standards, a person that’s not a Christian, if they have no norms and no standards to live by, that’s a disaster waiting to happen. This is one reason why the family structure is so critical to children. And then the fourth part of our soul is our self-consciousness. So we have volition, mentality, conscience, and now self-consciousness. What is that? Well, that simply means you have the ability to pick yourself out in a group photo, don’t you? You remember your high school yearbook when you got it and you went through and looking for all the pictures of yourself and said, oh, that’s me on page 10, that’s me on page 50. And you signed your name by it probably for your friend. I don’t know what age a person has to be to be able to identify themselves in a picture or a mirror, but I do know what happens when dementia takes away self-consciousness. And both those things can occur, that’s for sure. So you can put a baby in front of a mirror and along with another baby beside him and I don’t know that he can pick himself out. But once he gets to where he can identify himself, that’s critical. Because if you don’t know that you’re lost as a person, then you can never understand you need to be saved. And now we have cases of mental illness from birth. Some people are born mentally ill, mentally retarded, not able to function like that. What about these people? They are under the grace of God from day one. They will be in heaven because they don’t make a choice. They are saved without ever having to make that decision because they’re under the grace of God. What a wonderful thing that is to know if you have a child like that. But if you don’t know your loss and you have normal mentality, and if you don’t know that you’re headed to the lake of fire, then you don’t know you need to be rescued. Self-consciousness is critical. One of the enemies we face internally is your sin nature. Sin nature. Nobody set you down and taught you how to lie. Nobody set you down and taught you how to steal or cheat. These are traits of your sin nature. And they have to be contained or you will indeed self-destruct. So our sin nature is a product of our Adamic connection. It’s from Adam that we inherited that sin nature. Romans 5.12 tells us that. Another mental trait is something I want to talk about this morning called emotions. Emotions, a system of feeling or not feeling, a system of thinking or not thinking. Those emotions can be linked to your conscience and sometimes cause you to be manipulated by guilt. That’s the emotions. Satan uses guilt complex quite often in order to bring depression or anxiety. Organized religion uses guilt all the time. They play on your emotions all the time. So you don’t have to let your emotions control your life. What’s wonderful is that you and I can have peace with God and not have turmoil in our emotions. The first place it starts is Romans 5.1. Therefore we have been justified through faith and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Peace with God. So I’d like to ask you a question. Do you have peace with God this morning? Are you at peace with God today? Are you? Or do you have conflict? Do you have guilt? Do you have shame? Have you accepted Christ as your Savior? If you haven’t, I pray you will do so. I hope you’ll bow your head and simply pray a prayer of salvation. I hope you’ll recognize what Christ did for you on the cross and paid for your sin. And you just go to the Father and do what the Bible says. Whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You can just pray a simple prayer like, Father, I believe that Christ died for me. I’m willing to accept him as my Savior this day. And it’ll happen. So your emotions are there, but you can’t let them control your life. There’s something called mental depression, and that’s a real medical disorder. And only a medical doctor can advise you about treatment for such, however, Most believers, most believers, depression or anxiety is totally self-induced since we have those 10 problem-solving devices that give us the ability to defeat issues like this, but we don’t use it. So if you’re depressed, if you’re having self-pity, if you’re going through anxiety, it’s because you’re not, and you’re Christian, you’re not using the 10 problem-solving devices. You’re not using the faith rest drill. You’re not operating on biblical norms and standards. You don’t have a relaxed mental attitude. These are things you can build in your soul from the scripture of the word of God that’s taught to you from your pastor. from the pulpit through the Bible onto the notes of your paper and store it in your soul so you remember it and use it in recall. So mental disorders, mental depression, you don’t have to have that as a Christian. And then temper tantrums. Well, that’s a sure sign we’re not controlling our emotions. Your temper gets out of control, you’re driving down the road and you have a road rage, road fit, you’re not controlling your emotions. Conflicts with people can be dissolved. If you’re having temper tantrums, you can resolve that by using impersonal love, one of the problem-solving devices. You love the person based on who you are, not based on who they are. Maybe they are terrible people. Maybe they’re weird people. That doesn’t mean you have to hate them or you have to not like them. You can love them the same way God loved you when you were totally a weirdo too. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. When God exercised his love for you in eternity past, you were not even born. But he knew what you would be and he loved you anyhow. So if he can use his love to love you, then you can use his love to love other people as well. It’s called impersonal love. Loving based on your character, not their character. And that character of yours has to be based on the word of God. Another thing that we worry about sometimes and the real us trying to understand who we are is our frustration. Frustration can be a real issue for the advancing believer. I get a lot of letters, a lot of mail, a lot of phone calls. A lot of them are people that are frustrated with certain things in their life. You might wonder why some days you do great and other times you totally mess up and you sin repeatedly. Listen to how the Apostle Paul handled this issue in Romans 7, 15. He said these words, he said, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. Verse 15, Romans 7, coming up. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, and I agree that the law is good, as it is, it’s no longer I myself that does it, but a sin living in me, sin nature. For I know that goodness self does not dwell in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do good, what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do. That’s what Paul is saying. So there’s an internal battle he’s talking about right there, just like you and I. So he says in Romans 7.20, Now if I do what I don’t want to do, it’s no longer I that does it, but it’s sin living in me that does it. Yeah, you can find yourself getting frustrated with failing. The only thing I can tell you is don’t quit. Don’t get on the sidelines and cry about it. If you sin and you told God, I’m not going to do that anymore, and you did it anyhow, don’t think he quit loving you. Don’t think he’s going to abandon you. He’s not going to throw you off the bus. Just confess the sin, 1 John 1.9. Get yourself back up, refocus, and move on down the road. And don’t let Satan discourage you or you’ll be frustrated. So it’s obvious in the passage that I just read to you in Romans 7, 15 through 20 that Paul struggled with sin just like you and I struggle with sin. Same thing. He recognized that even as a believer, he had an indwelling drive to sin on occasion. And these were things he did not want to do, but he was constantly tempted to do. And you may find yourself battling your sin nature’s lust patterns just like Paul didled his. And we know that Paul instructed us in these words in Romans 6.12. Listen carefully. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Don’t let it reign anymore. Don’t let it control you. That word do not is a present imperative verb. Imperative is a command. Present tense means continuous action. This is a divine command. It could be translated into these. Stop letting sin control you. The question is this. Are you a slave to your sin nature’s desires? If you are, then you’re not obeying Romans 6.12. Don’t let sin control you. Are you a slave to your sin nature’s desire? Are you a slave to pornography? Are you a slave to alcohol? Are you a slave to bitterness and hatred and vindictiveness? Are you a slave to some sort of power lust, approbation lust? Well, there’s cleansing in 1 John 1.9. That doesn’t give you a license to keep on doing it. 1 John 1.9 says if we confess that he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all of our wrongdoing, But you can go right back and do it again. Well, you might do that, and God will go right back and forgive you again, just like he said he would. But you’re just going to dig a deeper hole to get discipline in your life if you think you’re going to pull the wool over God’s eyes. You’re not gonna pull the will over God’s eyes. You’re not gonna play games with God. Even though you’re doing the right thing, 1 John 1, 9, confessing the sin, it doesn’t give you the license to keep doing it again and again and again. In Proverbs 24, 16, for a just man falls seven times, but he will get up again. But the wicked man shall fall into mischief. You might wonder if you can break sinful patterns and sinful habits. And the answer is yes, you can. Most certainly, but only through spiritual growth. You can break these sinful patterns and sinful habits, but only through spiritual growth. First Peter 2.2 tells you, like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it, here it comes, you may grow up in your salvation. So we start out as spiritual babies. And God wants us to grow up to be spiritually mature believers. So by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit, problem-solving device number three, and metabolized Bible doctrine in your soul, then your spiritual muscle is developed. That’s what God wants you to do. He wants you to take his word, learn it, use it, and apply it, and develop spiritual muscle. In Philippians 3.13, brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, In other words, I’m not there yet, he’s telling you, but this one thing I do, I forget about my failures. I forget about those things that are behind me. No guilt conscience here. And I reach forth unto those things that are before me. Now here comes verse 14, the powerful verse. I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. So there’s no quit in Paul, no give up in Paul, no feeling sorry for himself in Paul. He could recover from his sin the same way you and I do. And he kept marching forward so that he could glorify God to the maximum. So you can see in this passage that spiritual muscle’s gonna require some effort on your part. You will never grow spiritually until you learn to be consistent in studying God’s word, because every day is an opportunity to learn something about God’s resources and how you can use those resources to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. It’s actually very easy to become a lazy believer, and by that I mean one who knows they shouldn’t be growing spiritually, but they put other things in front of their spiritual priorities. The lazy believer often says, I don’t have time to study the Bible today. I’m too busy. Demands of my family and demands of work that take priority over my spiritual life. That’s not true. That’s what you place priority over. In Romans 8, 5, for they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after spirit mind the things of the spirit. For to be carnally minded is death. To be spiritually minded is life and peace. So you have to concentrate on what you want to do. Have you forgotten that you’re in a spiritual conflict? Have you? This is exactly why Paul told you to put on the armor of God in Ephesians 6.11. I admit it’s much easier to stay off the battlefield than engage Satan by representing Christ, representing Christ in your life. And I assure you, Satan’s perfectly happy if you’re not a threat to him, because you’ll be distracted and defeated if you’re not representing Christ, thus fulfilling God’s mission for your life. So yes, you’re saved, and yes, you’re going to heaven, but why in the world do you think God left you here after you got saved? So by staying filled with the Holy Spirit, And growing in grace and knowledge of Christ, you’re not only laying up for yourself spiritual treasures in heaven, but you’re also resisting the devil’s plan to vindicate himself with God by using you as an example. Never forget that Satan is what? Never, he’s an accuser. He accuses you. In Revelation 12, 10, I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now has come salvation and strength in the kingdom of God and the power of Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, the one that accused them before God day and night. That’s what Satan does. He goes to God and accuses you. Look at that, look at that. He thinks he’s a Christian. Well, how can he be saved? Look what he’s doing. But you have a defense attorney in heaven who’s none other than Jesus Christ himself. In Romans 8, 33 and 34, it tells us he makes intercession for us daily. It’s obvious that Christ loves you, but the question is, do you love him? That’s the question. In 1 John 5, 3, this is the love of God that we keep his mandates, and his mandates are not grievous, not hard. So stop being a lazy, distracted believer chasing the dreams that the world offers. They are an illusion. That’s why you’ll find no lasting peace in the cosmic system and what it offers. Some would say now it’s time to come forward, rededicate your life, but I say stop, don’t go for that. Just get up, stop feeling sorry for yourself, get back in the game. You don’t have to go forward and rededicate your life and promise God you’re never gonna do that again because you probably will. Just get up, confess the sins, stop feeling sorry for yourself, get back in the game. Fulfill God’s plan, grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You have a lot to learn. You have a lot to learn. And the sooner you learn it, the sooner you’ll be able to glorify God to the maximum. Well, I hope you understood that. I know I went through it kind of fast, several pages of notes here. If you didn’t understand it, it’d be on our website. You can go to rickhughesministries.org and listen to it again under the Flatline Shows website. It’ll be on a podcast or you can contact us and we’ll send you a transcript of the message. So thank you very much for being with me today. Thank you for listening today. It’s always an honor to be able to bring you these Flatline Radio broadcasts. As long as God will allow me to do it, I’ll be here for you. And I hope you’ll be here to listen to me. Okay? Good deal. We appreciate your prayers. Appreciate your encouragement. Appreciate your letters. I always love to hear from you if you’re learning something. So until next week, we’ll be back same time, same location, same channel. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you. Thank you for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:07

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.