I Am What I Think
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 547 aired on February 14, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and as always we
invite you to stay with us for the next few minutes so we can give you 30 minutes of motivation,
some inspiration, a whole lot of education, all done with no manipulation. That’s right, we don’t
try to hustle people here. Our job is to give you accurate information, not manipulate you, give
you accurate information, that our prayer is will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your
life. If you want to orient and adjust to the plan you can and if you don’t then you’re free to go on
down the My Way Highway. My job is to tell you what the Bible says. It is a show about the
Bible. It’s not a dialogue, it’s a monologue. It’s been my privilege and my honor to do this over
five years now across many radio stations from California to New York. I thank you for listening
and writing. If you can hang with me today, we want to talk to you about something that is
important in establishing the FLOT line in your soul. Remember our show is The FLOT Line and
talks about a forward line of troops in your mind, in your mentality. That’s what keeps the
outside sources of pressure from becoming inside sources of stress. The pressure is always there.
The adversity is always there. We live in the devil’s world and that’s why the Bible says, “
Man
born of woman is of few days and full of trouble”
(Job 14:1). Yes and most of the trouble is self-
induced because we are all flawed. We all have a genetically formed sin nature and we have
flaws. Nothing’s going to straighten this sin nature out. Nothing’s going to tame it, it’s there and it
will always be there until you die and you go to heaven and you get a resurrection body. There
will be no sin nature in this new body in Christ, I promise you. You have a sin nature and you
have a body and soul and spirit if you are a Christian. If you’re not a Christian, unfortunately
you’re disadvantaged because you just have a body and a soul. You’re not able to tap into the
spiritual life, the phenomenal spiritual life with incredible assets. As a matter fact the Bible lists
at least 40 things that God gives you the moment you believe in Jesus Christ. Eternal life and a
destiny with Him, well those are just a few of them. Learning this information, applying this
information into your life, this is what our Lord Jesus Christ spoke about when He told a woman
in Luke 11:28,
“Happiness belongs to those who hear His Father’s Word and keep it.”
That’s
the concept of momentum, hearing and keeping God’s Word.
For the believer in Jesus Christ,
you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior, then your spiritual IQ is far more important than your
human IQ. There are a lot of people that have high human IQ. Unfortunately I’m not one of them
and I don’t know that I want to be one of them. Some of them are unrealistic, but high human IQ
is great, wonderful, fine, but it’s nothing compared to spiritual IQ. Where exactly does spiritual
IQ come from?
Remember, God gives each one of us equal privilege and equal opportunity.
We have the privilege to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, everybody has this. God says,
“He
is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”
(2 Peter 3:9). We all
have the opportunity, in addition to this privilege, to take in God’s Word and learn it and use it.
Yes, we have two power systems in our life. We have the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ our
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Lord promised He would send to us and we have,
“The Word of God that is alive and
powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword”
(Hebrews 4:12).
These two power systems are
our phenomenal spiritual assets. The world doesn’t have this. A disadvantage person that has not
believed in Jesus Christ does not have these two things.
As go your thoughts, those things you
think about when you’re alone, so goes your spiritual life.
If you don’t believe me listen to
what God said in Revelation 2:23 as He was speaking to the church of Thyatira,
“I am He who
searches the mind and the hearts and I will give to each one of you according to your
production.”
Here’s the first thing we have to learn about God. In His omniscience, He is all-
knowing.
God knows what you’re thinking.
You can turn the lights off and get under the cover
and pull it up over your head and hope that your thoughts are not exposed to God but that’s not
possible. That’s why He is God. He’s omniscient, He’s all-knowing. He’s omnipotent, He’s all-
powerful and He is omnipresent, He’s always with us wherever we may be. Even an astronaut
that fires off on a guided missile up into space headed for the moon, God is with him. He always
is. He’s with me where I am. He’s with you this morning where you are. He says He searches our
minds and our hearts. You know there’s two different Greek words in the Bible for this. There’s
the
nous
and the
kardia.
The
nous
is the mind, this is where you comprehend information. This is
where it’s called
gnosis
or knowledge and the heart is where you apply information. We get the
English word cardia or cardiology, that’s the word heart in the Greek New Testament. Well the
heart is where you apply. The
nous
is where you hear, so you hear and then you apply. You hear
in your mind and you make the application in your heart. God knows what you’re listening to and
God knows who you are obeying. In Isaiah 26:3 there’s a wonderful promise. It says,
“He will
keep you in perfect peace, whose mind
[there it is, whose thoughts]
are stayed on Thee because
he trusts in You.”
That’s some mental dependency. When you have a life of faith, when you have
a life that depends on God, you trust in Him. This is called the faith-rest drill, problem-solving
device number three and by the way, we have a book that lists all ten problem-solving devices. If
you don’t have it, email or write us and get this book. It’s free, we’ll send it to you. Faith-rest is a
wonderful problem-solving device. It’s what Moses told the Jews when they came out of Egypt
and the Pharaoh was hot after them. Moses said,
“Stand still and watch what God is about to do”
(Exodus 14:13). It takes a lot of speed to break the sound barrier but in order to break the faith
barrier, you just have to stand still. Let God do it. There is perfect peace, total rest to the
individual whose mental dependence is on God. When I say on God, how do you depend on
God? You look into His Word. When you know God’s Word and you are able to take God’s Word
and use it in prayer and use it as faith, that’s what it’s talking about. You don’t get it by laying a
Bible next to your pillow at night and going to sleep and hoping that by osmosis it’s going to
seep over in your brain. The only way you’re going to get it is to do exactly what the Bible tells
you to do,
“Study to show thyself approved unto God”
(2 Timothy 2:15).
When the Lord Jesus
Christ said,
“Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me”
(Matthew 11:29), the only way you’re
ever going to learn God’s Word is to study. And the way to study is under the authority of a
well-qualified pastor.
That’s why God gave them to us. He equips men with a spiritual gift of
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pastor-teacher and it’s their job, their spiritual gift, to study and teach the Bible and we are to
learn and apply it into our life.
If your mind is going to be on Him, this means you need a
source of thoughts.
Listen to Lamentations 3:21-23,
“This I recall to mind,”
recall is a
source of thoughts. You are recalling something that you’ve learned.
“This I recall to mind,
therefore I have hope. It is because of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because His
compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is Thy faithfulness.”
How about that?
I
recall,
that’s my source of my thoughts.
I have hope,
that’s the word confidence. I have
confidence in God
because of His mercies,
that’s the Lord Jesus Christ.
That we are not
consumed
and
His compassions never fail us, they are new every morning.
In 2 Corinthians 11:3
we find this mandate,
“Your minds do not need to be corrupted from the simplicity that is found
in Christ Jesus.”
This is one thing that Satan wants to do with you. He wants to recapture your
thoughts. Satan can trick us through his own craftiness. Listen, if there’s one thing you have to be
careful of it’s not to think the wrong thoughts. Wrong thinking can come from a lot of places.
Remember, you have three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The devil is always
a deceiver and will teach you wrong thoughts. He does this to neutralize your spiritual life,
neutralize you, make you ineffective.
Sometimes you actually do it for him don’t you? He
doesn’t even have to worry with you because you can’t get past the world. The world is always
out there distracting you, it’s always calling you. It’s always telling you things like, “If you win
the lottery you’ll be happy.” “If you had a new this, you’d be happy.” “If you just got married,
you’d be happy.” “Look what everybody has, they’re married, they got a new car, they got a new
boat, they won the lottery. Look, how happy they are and look how miserable I am.” That’s the
world. The world is luring you. It’s like a mirage in the desert, like a thirsty man who is dying of
thirst and he sees water. He says, “Oh, there’s water,” and it’s not anything but a mirage. The
world is a liar. Happiness doesn’t depend on people or circumstances. If you’re unhappy today,
regardless of where you go or what you do, you’ll always be unhappy because unhappy people
take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. You’ll spend money you don’t have to buy
things you don’t even need to impress people that you don’t even like. Isn’t that weird?
If you
want to avoid being captured by Satan you have to look at his five objectives. What are the
five objectives of the devil, a.k.a. Lucifer, the fallen angel? The first is he wants to reclaim
your affections.
The Bible warns us in 1 John 2:15,
“Love not the world and neither the things
that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
We know
that personal love for God is indeed a problem-solving device. It is problem-solving device
number seven and it’s the motivational virtue that we need to obey God. The Bible says in 1 John
5:3,
“If you love Me, you will obey Me.”
The Bible says in 1 John 4:19,
“We love God because
He first loved us.”
We know He first loved us according to John 3:16,
“God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever would believe in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life.”
Now we’re told by John not to love the world, not to fall in love with the
world. Why, because it’s a mirage. It’s not going to give you what you think it will give you. If
you love the world, if you’re occupied with the world, you’re not going to be occupied with the
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Father. That’s the first thing. Satan will seek to reclaim your affections by showering you with
the presents of the world, the lure of the world.
Second, he will attempt to recapture your
thoughts.
He will try to reclaim your affections and recapture your thoughts. In 2 Corinthians
10:5 the Bible says,
“Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against
the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
Now listen, there’s no way around this,
you are responsible for what you think.
Whether you
believe it or not, certain things that you do have an effect on what you think.
“If there’s anything
true, if there’s anything honorable
[the Bible says]
we are to think on these things”
(Philippians
4:8). We are not to think with anger and lust and bitterness and hatred and implacability. We’re
not to get into gossip and maligning and criticizing. See, these are the wrong things to think.
Satan would love to recapture your thoughts. The first thing he’s going to do is to get you to think
in terms of arrogance because arrogant people always justify why they’re right and everyone else
is wrong. If he can get you to get into the arrogance complex then you will justify what’s wrong
and actually think it’s right. You will lie to yourself and deceive yourself and eventually destroy
yourself. Recapturing your thoughts, this is not what you need to allow to happen in your life and
so Paul warns you, cast it down.
“Cast down anything that exalts itself over the knowledge of
God”
(2 Corinthians 10:5), the full knowledge of God with the wisdom that comes from His
Word.
Satan wants to reclaim your affections, recapture your thoughts, and third, he will
try to redirect your focus.
Yes, 2 Corinthians 4:18.
“While we look not at the things which are
seen
[that’s our focus]
but we look at the things which are seen not for the things which are seen
are temporary, but the things which are seen not are eternal.”
This means you live your life in
the light of eternity, focusing on your destiny in Christ.
Don’t look at the things the world
offers, this is deception. Don’t look at the distractions that come your way. Focus on Jesus
Christ.
This is occupation with Christ, problem-solving device number nine.
Hebrews 12:2,
focus on Him, the captain of our salvation.
“Putting your eyes on Him, who for the joy that was
set before Him endured the cross.”
Satan wants to redirect your focus off of the cross, on to the
world.
Satan wants to capture your thoughts through your own arrogance, reclaim your
affections, redirect your focus and fourth, redefine your values.
What’s the most valuable
thing in your life? Listen to Matthew 6:19-20,
“Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth
where moth and rust can corrupt and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourself
treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal.”
What is the most valuable thing in your life? It’s the treasure of Bible
doctrine, the treasure of the Word of God.
This treasure is so great there’s no way that you can
even come close to valuing the treasure of truth. When you know truth, the Bible says,
“You
shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”
(John 8:32). The wonderful thing about a
pastor, if he’s a good pastor and a good student of God’s Word, he will dig into the mine of God’s
Word and make you rich. He will give you the treasure of the Word of God. If you value first and
foremost God’s Word stored in your soul, then the other things that God may give you won’t
distract you. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with having this, that, or the other. There’s nothing
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wrong with having some of your desires as long as they’re not your priority. That’s why Matthew
6 goes on to say,
“Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,”
make this your priority
and then these other things will be added to you.
We call this reordering your priorities,
Matthew 6:33,
“Seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these
things
[all the details of life]
will be added to you.”
God will take care of your logistical needs.
He’ll take care of what you need to hang in there every day in your life but you must have your
priorities right to start with. God mandates this for us in His Word and it’s critical that we
understand this. God mandates that we think in terms of, listen to this word now I’m going to
give you, divine viewpoint. Divine viewpoint is exactly the opposite of human viewpoint.
If we
have divine viewpoint we are thinking with what the Bible says is the mind of Christ. In 1
Corinthians 2:16,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord and who will instruct Him? But we
have the mind of Christ.”
The very New Testament that you hold is the mind of Christ. It is a
perspective of life based on the infallible truth of God’s Word. Ironically, God can read your
mind like an open book. I told you this when we began the show. I’ll give you another verse,
Hebrews 4:13,
“There’s not a creature hidden before Him, but all things are bare and having
been exposed to the eyes of Him whom an account is given.”
The Father knows everything you
know. The secret things you know that other people don’t know, He knows. The things that are
not so secret, He knows. He’s known everything about you from the moment you were born to
the moment you depart and you want to know something that’s amazing? He still loves you.
Satan will attempt to get you to doubt God’s love as his fifth objective.
I don’t care what
you’ve done, I don’t care who you are, God loves you and He’ll never stop loving you. That’s an
amazing thing for me because I grew up without anybody loving me. I grew up not knowing if I
was loved or not loved. I didn’t have a father. My mother farmed me out to different guardians.
I’m sure she loved me, but I don’t think I ever remember her telling me this. I mean she never
said, “I hate you,” but I never felt this kind of love. In Jesus Christ I found this love. It’s a love of
forgiveness. It’s a love that doesn’t condemn me. It’s a love that always is there for me,
understanding me. My, that’s an amazing thing. Yes, He knows everything about me and He still
loves me. Listen, if He didn’t love us, we would already be a greasy spot somewhere, would we
not? Yes. Are you alive? Well then God still has a plan for your life wherever you may be and
this plan starts with you learning His Word and replicating the life of His Son through you.
God
holds us responsible for what we think and the decisions we make so our thinking is
critically important. That’s why Proverbs 23:7 says,
“As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.”
The real you is what you’re thinking and that’s who God knows.
God knows our motives, He
knows our intentions, and He knows our desires.
Did you hear that? He knows why we did the
things that are wrong. He knows sometimes we intended to do the thing that was right but we
didn’t because we have a sin nature. He knows what we desire to be and do. Go to Him and
admit your sin. Now you don’t have to tell Him you’re sorry. The Bible says,
“If we confess our
sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us”
(1 John 1:9). All you have to do is go and name your sin
to God, cite your sin to God and He will cleanse you and fill you with the Holy Spirit. You don’t
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have to say, “I’m sorry,” every time you sin. He knows, He knows your heart’s desires. He knows
why you did what you did. The Bible always relates our thought patterns to our heart, to the
mentality inside of our soul and that’s where God’s Word must be applied to the experience in our
lives. It goes into our soul as we hear it, as we learn it and as it cycles through our life into our
memory center, into the storage compartment of our soul, and it comes out called wisdom in the
Bible.
Our approach to life, the effectiveness of our Christian spiritual life is always
dependent on one thing. It depends on what you think.
That’s you, what you think, and
there’s a connection with your physical health.
People say, “I’m worried sick.” There’s a
connection between your physical health and your thought patterns. Any mental attitude of
fear and worry and anxiety and continuous tension will eventually overflow and affect your
body.
I mean, you can worry yourself sick there’s no doubt about it. It’s common for people to
suffer from ailments like this. It’s common for people to get skin rashes and allergies and asthma
and hypertension and ulcers and other disorders just based on the pressure that they face in their
life and what they think. Sometimes when the mental attitude is stabilized through God’s Word,
then these symptoms go away. A lot of physiological problems can actually be related to what we
think in our mind.
When our hearts (minds) are right, when our thinking is right, then the
result is this peace, this relaxed mental attitude, this stability and inner happiness that He
gives us.
When we think human viewpoint, when we get involved in mental attitude sins, well
the result is always self-induced misery from arrogance and pride and jealousy and bitterness and
guilt and hatred. It’s always self-induced misery. That’s not the way God intended for you live.
There are many different attitudes that are out there but there are only two basic viewpoints in
life. Divine viewpoint is the first one. Isaiah 55:8-9,
“‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, My
ways are not your ways,’ saith the Lord. ‘As far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.’”
That’s divine
viewpoint, that’s not emotion. It’s the way God thinks in His omniscience and human viewpoint.
Oh, the bad thing, the philosophies of the cosmos diabolicus, the world, the standards of the
world, what a joke, what a waste of time. I don’t want you to live like this.
I want you to learn
God’s Word and live under the standard of divine viewpoint and have the happiness that
God intends for you. It all starts with you making the decision to grow up spiritually.
“After
salvation, what do I do?” You better grow up. You better become the person God intends for you
to be. He’s giving you equal privilege and equal opportunity. The choice is yours, just like you
chose to listen to me today. The choice is yours to advance and go forward in your Christian life.
I hope you’re listening, I hope you’re learning, and above all I hope you apply it. Until next week
this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line.