The Real You
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 639 aired on December 1, 2017
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes, would you please stay with me? Just a few minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a
lot of education, and always with no manipulation, no con games, no hidden agendas here. We
are not trying to sell you anything. We are not trying to hustle any money. We’re just trying to
give you some accurate Biblical truths and introduce you to a way of in-depth studying, in-depth
thinking, learning God’s Word all without any type of solicitation. Just 30 minutes of the Word of
God and me trying to verify and identify God’s plan for your life and hopefully, if I can do this,
then you will orient and adjust to the plan. Thank you for listening to The FLOT Line, 12 years
we have been broadcasting across the United States. What an honor, what a privilege it is to be
able to do this and to see the grace of God handle all the circumstances that we face on a daily
basis. I love hearing from you listeners that are learning the Word of God, that are growing in
grace, that have been challenged by what you’ve heard. Thank you so very much for staying in
touch. Right now we’re broadcasting in 25 stations across America, the latest being Spokane,
Washington which started last Sunday. Hopefully we’ll have a long, wonderful relationship with
the folks in Spokane. What I want to talk to you about today is, who are you really? The real you,
remember that TV show, will the real so-and-so please stand up?
Proverbs 23:7 says,
“As a man
thinketh in his heart, so he is.”
The answer to the question, who are you or who is the real you
is found in this verse. You are the sum total of your thoughts.
You are what you think.
Your
image and your style are not the real you.
The real you is the thoughts, the intentions of your
heart.
That’s what exposes the real you. Sometimes people try to cover this up with a style or an
image or dressing. You can take a preacher and put him in a white neck shirt, a white turtleneck
shirt like a priest, or you can put him in a coat and tie, or you can put him in a pair of blue jeans
and a cowboy shirt. Preachers wear all sorts of stuff nowadays in pulpits but that’s not them.
What’s them is inside their hearts, inside their minds. As they really think, that’s the real true
them. God tells us in His Word that He has the ability to look not only into the pastor’s heart, but
into your heart, to be able to discern your very motives concerning any action that you may take.
Remember, God gave you volition as part of your soul and volition means you have the ability to
choose. God did not make you an automaton robot, you have a choice. As you make decisions,
God can discern the intentions or the motives of why you made these decisions. In 2 Chronicles
16:9, part of this verse says,
“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth
to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect towards Him.”
Yes, God has His
eye on you. This is an anthropomorphism, God doesn’t have an eye and He doesn’t have a hand.
He’s immanent and transcendent. But that’s a way that we can understand God. We can
understand that the omniscience of God always knows what we’re thinking. The omniscience of
God always knows what our intentions are, what our motives are, and why we do certain things.
When the Bible refers to your heart, just what exactly is it referring to? Is it your ticker? I mean
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the part of you that the doctor says, “Oh-oh, the plumbing’s clogged up,” or “Oh-oh, the
electrical system is not working right.” When the Bible talks about the heart, it’s talking about the
invisible, immortal part of you in your soul. See, your soul possesses mentality and that’s part of
the format of your soul, the ability to think, the ability to logic, the ability to reason. In the soul
resides the mind and the heart. One in the Greek New Testament is the
nous,
the mind, and the
other is the
kardia
or the heart. Most of time when
the Bible talks about the heart, it’s not
referring to the organ, it is talking about the mind.
The mind has two lobes, your right lobe
and the left lobe. In one lobe, the mind, is where you receive the information and the other part
of the mind is where you apply the information. Your thinking skills should include things that
help you in life, like you should be able to comprehend certain things, comprehension skills. You
should have memory retention and be able to recall. You should have problem-solving
capabilities. We have problem-solving capabilities, decision-making abilities. God gave you the
ability to be creative, some of you more than others, and He gave you awareness. These are
thinking skills. If you combine these thinking skills with the spiritual skills that we talk about on
the FLOT line of your soul, then you have the ability for divine good production. What short-
circuits all of this is arrogance.
Arrogance can short-circuit your awareness skills of who you
really are, give you a false image of yourself.
That’s the dangerous thing about Satan, he is
arrogant. He was arrogant in heaven in eternity past and assumed that he could rule like God
ruled and he is still arrogant today, The arrogant viewpoint that many people have of themselves
is an unrealistic self-image. If you have this unrealistic self-image, you are going to have
unrealistic expectations. You need to understand, if you have an unrealistic self-image about
God, if you think God is going to let you into heaven because you’re a good person, because you
have been nice, because you have been moral, then you don’t really understand God. You have
this unrealistic self-image of yourself and you have unrealistic expectations of God. Jesus Christ
our Lord said this in John 14:6,
“I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life and no man can come
to the Father but through Me.”
You can’t look at yourself and say, “Well, basically I’m a good
person. Therefore God is going to like me and let me come into heaven.” The gift of eternal life
is based on the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross. He was our substitute. He paid the
penalty for our sin, “
He that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we can be made the
righteousness of God by means of Him”
(2 Corinthians 5:21). It’s through Christ Jesus that we
have redemption, don’t ever forget this. It is not through yourself because arrogance will tell you
that you are a good person. Arrogance will tell you that God likes you and arrogance will tell you
that you’re better than other people. That’s not necessarily true.
Very few people ever pull out of
arrogance. The only way to do it is to let the Word of God shed light on the real you.
That’s
one reason people don’t want to hear the Word of God taught. They don’t like it because it
condemns them for being phony, two-faced, arrogant individuals who live only for themselves
and not caring who they step on, anyone who gets in their way. Proverbs 24:1-4 warns us about
these people. Here’s what it says,
“Don’t be envious of evil men and do not desire to be with
them, for their minds devise violence and their lips talk of trouble. By wisdom a house is built
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and by understanding it is established, and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all the
precious and pleasant riches.”
Three things here: wisdom, understanding and knowledge,
these are some phenomenal gifts to you from God the Holy Spirit as you take God’s Word
and learn it and apply it into your life
. You get the wisdom of God’s Word that builds a house
of understanding in your soul. That’s knowledge, that’s understanding what God’s plan is,
understanding who you are, understanding what God expects out of you, and understanding what
you can expect out of God. Understanding uses faith to comprehend issues, faith to apply
decision-making abilities. For example in John 14:1-6, we have the illustration of those
wonderful disciples not really using faith to understand what our Lord was telling them. He
comforted His disciples in John 14:1 and He told them that He was going away. He had been
telling them He was going to go to Jerusalem and would be killed. He said,
“Don’t let your
hearts be troubled. Believe in God and believe also in Me.”
This is how He comforts them. He
said,
“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places and if it were not so, I would have told
you, for I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I’ll come back
again and receive you to Myself so that where I am, you may be also. And you know the way
where I’m going.”
Here comes Thomas, you know, the doubter.
“Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we
do not know where You’re going, how could we know the way?’ And Jesus replied, ‘I am the way,
the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.’”
This is the only way to God
the Father. You don’t come to God the Father through your works. You don’t come to God the
Father through any religion.
You only come to God through Jesus Christ.
To start with, these
disciples didn’t actually comprehend that He was going to Jerusalem to die. They were a little
freaked out about this sort of stuff. They were confused about, first of all, where He was going
when He said,
“I’m going to prepare a place for you.”
They had no idea, not a clue that they
were going to become wanted criminals and that their leader Himself would be put to death by
the Romans, although He told them on several different occasions. Listen to Matthew 16:21,
“From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer
many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on
the third day.”
Then Matthew 20:17-19,
“Now as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, He took the
twelve disciples aside and He said to them, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man
will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the Law. They will condemn Him to death
and turn Him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and on the third day
He will be raised to life.’”
How much more plain could this have been and yet it just went right
over their heads, they didn’t have a clue. You know, in your own life it’s easy to sit in church and
never really hear what your pastor tells you. It’s easy for you to daydream. It’s easy for you to be
distracted when you’re sitting in church. It’s easy for you to be deceived and discouraged. How
many times do you even take notes? How many times if you go to church do you even write
down something the pastor says so that you can go back and read it later and apply it to your
life? The Bible uses a word we call wisdom. Wisdom is the Word of God or what I call
“doctrine,” God’s Word that has been learned and been applied. In other words, the doctrine that
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has gone through your
nous,
through your mind. You heard it, you understood it, and you cycled
it by faith. You believed it and you applied it into your life. Now it’s in your heart and this is
where it’s called wisdom. Doctrine on the launching pad of your soul is called wisdom. When
you need this doctrine, when you need to get this information, when you need to recall, you go
into your heart and you pull up this information. That’s where it’s stored. It’s stored in the
memory center of your soul, in your frame of reference of your soul. You’ve got to understand,
doctrine has to be learned and applied or there can be no growth. You’re replacing human
viewpoint, the thinking of the world, the arrogance of the world, with divine viewpoint, which is
the mind of Christ and you’re told in Philippians 2:5,
“Let this mind be in you that was also in
Christ Jesus.”
If you’re going to replace your human viewpoint thinking which will tell you that
happiness is involved in people, happiness is involved in the details of life, happiness is involved
in circumstances then you want to remember what Jesus said.
“Happiness belongs to those
people who hear My Father’s Word and keep it”
(Luke 11:28). There is no happiness without
application and there is no learning without listening.
Replacing human viewpoint with divine
viewpoint is a life-long task. It doesn’t happen overnight. It includes replacing arrogance
with humility.
This is why 2 Timothy 2:15 says,
“Study to show thyself approved unto God a
workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.”
Rightly dividing,
orthotomeo
is the Greek word. We get a word orthodontist from this, to straighten out your teeth.
We’re suppose to be able to straighten out the Word of God, rightly divide the Word of God. If
we’re suppose to rightly divide it, is it possible we can wrongly divide it? The answer is
absolutely yes. Yes, you can misapply the Word of God. You can take it out of context. You can
claim that it’s not really literal, that it’s just figurative. That’s not true. The Word of God is literal,
it’s not figurative. It is true and you can’t take it out of context. You have to know the context of
what the Lord was saying or what the writer was saying. Proverbs 27:19,
“As water reflects a
face, so a person’s heart reflects the person.”
Again, if God wants to check you out, He’s not
going to look at your hairline. He’s not going to look at your style of clothes that you’re wearing.
He’s not going to look at anything except your heart, He’s going to look right into your heart and
He’s going to see what you’re thinking. He’s going to see your motives. He’s going to see your
intentions. He’s going to see your desires. He’s going to be able to read your thoughts as the
omniscience of God can do. He can tell what you’re really like. What you really are is not what
you appear to be on the surface. What you really are is what’s in your heart, what’s in your right
lobe.
“As water reflects the face, so a person’s heart reflects the person”
(Proverbs 27:19). So
the Bible is like a mirror. When you look into the Word of God, you will see what you really
are. It will show you your flaws and your failures.
In Psalm 26:1-2 the writer wrote,
“Judge
me Oh Lord, for I have walked in my integrity because I have trusted in the Lord and I do not
slide into sin. Examine me Oh Lord and test my emotions and my heart.”
Have you ever asked
God to do this?
Have you ever asked God to give you a personal examination?
That’s a prayer
you might want to consider. “Heavenly Father, test my thoughts. Test my emotions. Test my
desires. Test my intentions. Let me know if I’m out of line. Let me know if I’m thinking wrong.”
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You have to understand the Word of God is there to show you where you’re right and
where you’re wrong.
If you don’t learn it, how can you understand it? If you don’t have wisdom,
you have no understanding. Wisdom, understanding, and learning are critical in the believer’s
life.
“We must grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
(2
Peter 3:18). Without spiritual growth you’re never going to understand God’s plan. Look, you
have a physical life. You know God gave you a physical life. You’re born, you’re short, tall, fat,
skinny, whatever you are, that’s your physical life. You have a spiritual life too, that’s a different
life. It’s not a biological life, it’s a soul life, it’s the spiritual life. It’s where God the Holy Spirit
comes to live inside of you, and in this spiritual life, that’s where the content of the heart is
important because it’s what’s in the heart that guides and controls the spiritual life. We know that
you have a sin nature in your physical life and we know that he doesn’t want your spiritual life to
assume control of your body. The sin nature is going to tempt you, trick you, try you, test you,
anything it can do to take control. It doesn’t want to surrender control but you are told,
“Walk in
the Spirit and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh”
(Galatians 5:16). You are told,
“The flesh
wars against the Spirit and the Spirit wars against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the
other so that you cannot do the things that you would”
(Galatians 5:17). You are told in
Ephesians 5:18,
“Be filled with the Spirit.”
So the secret to the Christian life is really simple.
It’s to stay filled with the Holy Spirit by means of the rebound technique and learn God’s
Word
. Rebound is confessing any sin that may be in your life, admitting it to God, not hiding it,
to rebound when you sin and recover your spiritual momentum, and to get yourself under the
ministry of a well-qualified pastor who can teach you God’s Word consistently on a daily basis.
Not once a week, not twice a week, every day. You say, “It’s not possible.” Yes it is. It’s possible
every day for you to sit down with your Bible, with a notebook, with a cup of coffee or a glass of
water or whatever, and take notes as you listen to a man teach you the Bible. There are a lot of
great pastors that I know of, a lot of them study and teach and study and teach and their messages
are available free of charge. There’s enough for you to learn from my own pastor whose teaching
the life of Christ. I just studied lesson 1,092 this morning, at 5am. That’s right, 1,092 hours on
the life of Christ. Now, if you want to listen to this, I’ll tell you how to do it. Get in touch with
me. But you have to be consistent. You have to sit down on a daily basis and take in God’s Word.
I mean don’t you sit down every day and eat? Don’t you sit down every day and have a meal?
You could not survive without doing this in your physical life and your spiritual life will be
malnourished if you don’t sit down daily and take in God’s Word. That’s where the arrogance
comes in and tells you, “You don’t need to.” It distracts you, a decoy, you get delayed, and the
next thing you know you’ve gone two days, three days, and you haven’t studied at all. You
haven’t sat down and listened to the Word of God being taught to you. If you don’t do this, you
don’t grow. You just keep going backwards. You’re losing ground and you’ve been losing ground
a long time. That’s why I’m giving you this message, because God’s looked into your heart. God
can see what you’re thinking and it’s a lot of games. You’re playing games at church. You’re
playing something that you’re not and you know it. You’re not what they think you are, are you?
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Listen to what
The Man in the Glass
says, a poem. I don’t know who wrote it, but I want you to
listen to these words very carefully. It’s called,
The Man in the Glass.
“When you get what you
want in your struggle for self and the world makes you the king for a day, go to the mirror and
look at yourself and see what that man has to say. For it isn’t your father or your mother or your
wife whose judgment upon you must pass, the fellow whose verdict counts the most in your life
is the one who stares back from the glass. Some people might call you a straight shooting chum
and call you a wonderful guy, but that man in the glass says you’re only a bum if you cannot look
him straight in the eye. He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest, for he’s with you clear
to the end. And you have passed your most dangerous test if the guy in the glass is your friend.
You might fool the whole world down the pathway of years, and even get pats on the back as you
pass, but your final reward will be heartaches and tears if you cheat the man in the glass.” That’s
you, no one can answer but you. Who is the real you? Your conscience will convict you today of
sin, of wrongdoing in your life. That’s what it’s there for. The ministry of the Holy Spirit uses
your conscience to reveal your flaws and your failures and your volition makes a decision to do
something about it. You must act on your volition. You must act on what you know and what you
hear. You can’t hide from it, you can’t act like everything’s okay. You must go to the Father and
admit your sin, “He will be faithful and just to forgive you” (1 John 1:9). I’m not saying that
there is this horrible sin in your life. What I’m saying is there is the sin of neglect.
Putting God
second place is a sin. Failing to advance spiritually in the plan of God, being caught in the
world’s distractions, is a sin.
We use this as an excuse all the time, “There’s just not enough
time in the day. I’ve got so much to do.” I understand, but Matthew 6:33 says,
“Seek ye first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things will be added to you.”
It’s
talking about priorities.
Unless you make your spiritual life your priority, your physical life
will end in failure I promise you.
I hope you’re listening. I hope you will consider these things,
and I hope you’ll come back next week. Until then, this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank
you for listening to The FLOT Line