The Mirror of a Man, Part 3

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to this program of the R. G. Hardy Ministries. I'm Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I'll be bringing you today's message entitled "The Mirror of a Man." This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart because God's word tells us to guard our hearts with all diligence because out of it comes the issues of life. And the only true mirror that we can look into and know the truth of who we are is the perfect mirror of scripture. It reads our hearts without distortion, and our hearts reflect the mirror of the man.
R. G. Hardy: The soul is bossy, and he knows how to manipulate and how to get his way. We can see it in a child. We see a child when he's learned how to manipulate his parents because he knows all he's got to do is get that cry in that certain decibel. And when he gets up there, okay, he's going to get what he wants. How many seen him either fall out on the floor or kick up and go kick the wall a little bit until the parent says, "Wait a minute. You're not getting by with that behavior anymore. This isn't a genuine need. This is just nothing but a little bratty spat. And we're not going to have this. You can kick all you want. I'll put you in your room and lock the door and you can kick until you get tired and fall asleep." And then finally, after a while, he gets the message: "Well, you're not going to get everything this way. This isn't how it really works." But you're not going to get away with that with God. He will let you get by with it when you're one and two and three, but not when you've been saved for a long time. He's not going to let you get away with that behavior. And if you insist on acting like that, he'll just let you act like that, and you're going to look like a fool in front of everybody and you're not going to have the blessings and the anointing upon your life. And that's what it's all about, right? Amen? We want to be blessed indeed. So the problem is so many people have been living out of their soul for so long that they have calibrated everything by the experiences that they've had. Now, I know some of you have had bad experiences and you can't help the way you were raised. You can't help the things that happened to you. You can't help it if you were abused and misused and you were hurt and wounded and you had a lot of stuff that happened to you. That's your life, and it hurts. And some of you might have even, when you grew up as an adult, you might have married somebody and you might have went through some more bad stuff. So you've had a lot of wounds and a lot of hurts. And I understand all that. But you cannot let that continue to determine the way that you're going to be, that you're going to continually live your life out of your soul and those emotions because you'll never grow spiritually. Things will never get better. Amen? So we've got to find out that we can't go by what our culture has told us because the world out there today, everything is about me. "I did it my way." I heard somebody on a Christian program not too long ago, and they were talking about something, I can't even remember what they were talking about. But I went, "Huh?" They were saying, "And you know that song? It was like that song 'I did it my way.'" Only they weren't talking about the way they used to be in the world before. They were talking about the way they were now. And I thought to myself, "You got the wrong song. You need to give that back to Frank Sinatra. He did it his way and you see where it got him. How many say amen?" They tell you if it feels good, do it. "Just do it." How many heard that before? And now, "You deserve it. You deserve it. You owe it to yourself." And so so many people, they don't even bother to seek the Lord. They go through life making very major decisions without seeking God. They get a feeling, they get an emotional high, they get a temporary euphoria, and they go for it. And they say, "The Lord showed me. The Lord moved." That was not the Lord. It was their emotions. Everything that's emotional is not God. I know we're Pentecostal. I know we jump, shout, run, scream, and holler. And that's wonderful. But not everything that's emotional is God. There are a lot of emotional things that's nothing but your soul and your emotions that you have never brought under the word of God. And you let your spirit, even though you're born again, you're not feeding your spirit on the word of God, so your spirit is the weaker of the two. Your soul is louder. He shouts the loudest, he's got the biggest voice, and so that's the one you follow. But when you start getting in God's word every day and you stay in the word of God continually, then when you hear that—you still hear your soul, he'll still say those same things. He'll still shout the same stuff. But all of a sudden it sounds different to you now. Because now your spirit man is saying, "Wait a minute. That's not of God. That's the flesh. That's the carnal mind. That sounds like that junk they say on television. That sounds like that stuff the world's putting out. That's not what God's word says." And all of a sudden the spirit of God will begin to bring scripture to you. And those scriptures will begin to make you look in the mirror and say, "Wait a minute. That is not the leading of God. That's not the Holy Ghost. I know that's not the Holy Ghost." Because now you're feeding your spirit, and instead of living out of your emotions and your soul all the time, you're living out of your spirit. Does it mean you're never going to get angry again? Of course not. I didn't say you're to become a zombie. Because the Bible says, "Be angry and sin not." But when you're angry and you just haul off and let somebody—tell them what you think or tell them what you want to do or get in arguments, get in debates, shouting matches, fights. Then you're not being led of the spirit because the spirit would handle that situation differently. How many say amen? So we have people now that are making all kinds of decisions. I mean monumental decisions out of their emotions. How many people have gotten married because they were in love with love? They were in love with the idea of the bridal gown and the flowers and the reception. Because let me tell you, weddings have come to the place if you really have an all-out wedding, it just consumes your life for several months, maybe six months up to a year. Your whole mind, your brain gets in the track. You've got so many details, so much stuff to take care of. And you can get caught up in all the wedding, and you're feeling all excited about all that, and you're mistaking that euphoria for the love of that person, and that's not it. People make all kinds of decisions because they are used to living out of their soul. When you live out of your soul, you will make impulsive decisions, you will make impetuous decisions, you will make quick decisions, you will make hasty decisions. And the Bible says a hasty spirit is not of God. That right there lets me know when somebody wants to do something hastily right off the bat, I know there's a check. There's a red flag. A hasty spirit is not of God. And when it's of God, and if he is going to move swiftly, I know the scripture says, "I'll work a new work, I'll do it in a short work." But that's talking about God's kingdom. People take scriptures where God's talking about his kingdom and they bring it down and they try to make a reason why they should hurry up and do something. But when you begin to get in God's word, he'll bring the words to you to lead you. Now, I know I'm almost out of time. I'm not going to get to half of what I have down here, but that's all right. But I do want to get to this one thing. I had already started this message, already had my notes together when I got this in the mail from—I'm on David Wilkerson's mailing list. I don't know, some of you might be on his mailing list too. David Wilkerson is the one who started Teen Challenge and he pastors a church in Times Square, New York. Anyway, this came this week and I want to read this to you. I'm talking about how people out of their soul make a lot of rash decisions. And I thought this was very interesting. His message is called "Giving God Full Control," but this is the part I want to talk to you about. Because I had never heard this before. He says we are now living in a time referred to as the blink generation. Has anyone ever heard that expression before? The blink generation? You have? Okay. He says we're now living in a time referred to as the blink generation. I don't mean bling. I know what bling means. This is bling. Not bling, blink. Blink your eye. Okay, that's what it is. B-L-I-N-K, blink. Okay? All of a sudden I realized you might be thinking I meant bling. No, blink as in blink your eye. We are now living in a time referred to as the blink generation. People are making major decisions in the blink of an eye. A best-selling book has been written on this concept. The title of the book? *Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking*. The theory is: trust your instincts. Blink of the eye decisions prove to be the best. Think about all the hurried up language you hear. We hear every day, "This is the offer of the century. You can make a bundle overnight, but you have to act right now. You only have a small short window of opportunity. Get on the bandwagon right now. Come on, move now." And he says the problem is such thinking has begun to infect the church, affecting the decisions made by blink Christians and even by blink ministers. Just a few years ago, the watchword among Christians was: "Did you pray about this matter? Have you sought the Lord concerning it? Are your brothers and sisters surrounding you in prayer? Have you received godly counsel?" But in the past year, how many important decisions have you made where you have honestly taken the time and the matter to God and prayed sincerely? Or how many of those decisions did you make in the blink of an eye? The reason God wants full control of our decision making is to save us from disasters, which is exactly where most of our blink decisions end up. And that is exactly what the word of God is trying to tell us. If we will look into the word of God—you say, "Well, this is a lot of information I'm trying to process here and now I feel overwhelmed and I don't know what to do about it." It's not hard. It's where we started. Start looking in the word of God and continue therein. Read books like James. Read books like Proverbs. You want to know how to conduct your life? If you're young and you're on the threshold of your life and you've got many options and you could go many different ways, do you want to know how to make the wisest, best choices? Saturate yourself with the Proverbs. If you want to know how to make good business deals, if you want to know how to look for a job or get a promotion on the job that you are in or start any endeavor, buy a house, because houses aren't cheap today. You make a mistake buying a house and you could really pay for it. Buying cars, so many things. If you get in the word of God and begin to read God's word and continue therein, you will begin to see that the Lord will begin to show you where you're weak and where you're strong. He's not only going to show you the bad stuff, but he's going to show you where you're strong. And that's good because when you know that you're strong in an area, you know that God can use you in that area. You can have boldness and faith and confidence in that area. But if you know that you're weak in some area, don't just ignore it and hope it'll go away. It's not going to go away. It's only going to get worse. But if you go to the Lord, he will begin to teach you and lead you and guide you. You can talk to God and say, "God, I'm troubled about this. I don't know what to do." But what people do today is they just start out on a venture instead of seeking God and getting as I just read what David Wilkerson said, surrounded by prayer and letting God confirm his word. People say, "I'm going to start out and do this, and if it's not God's will, then he can stop me." There's nothing in scripture to validate that. I don't know where you got that, what message you got that from, but there's nothing in scripture to back up that kind of behavior. But that's what people do today. And they act like it's great faith. "I got great faith. I'm going to go out there, I'm going to go start this church, I'm going to go start this business, I'm going to go do this, I'm going to go do that, and if it's not God, he can stop me." Well, God, number one, is not obligated to stop you because he didn't tell you to start it in the first place. And he just might let you go so you learn a lesson, so hopefully you won't do it the next time. Amen? That is not how it works. That is not faith, that's presumption. And when you presume something and you turn out to be wrong, then you're going to have to pay for it. But when you get down and seek God—and that's why husbands and wives need to be in agreement. I mean, hopefully no Christian married couple would make some huge decision that they weren't in agreement about. Hopefully one wouldn't just say, "This is the way it is and I'm going to do it, like it or lump it." Hopefully that would never be the case because all that's going to do is cause your marriage to suffer. If you come into agreement, and that's enough to keep you in prayer, that's enough to keep your nose in the Bible, that you come into agreement and begin to seek God and say, "Wait a minute, let's get the mind of the Lord on this thing." And husband say, "I'm going to go and I'm going to pray my way and you go and pray your way." And be sincere about this because if you're going to get down and just say a bunch of stuff but you've already made up in your mind what you're going to do, that's just a waste of time. But if you say, "We're going to seek the Lord and we're going to see what God tells us," you will find out that when you come together, it'll usually work out that you both on the same page. You both got the same idea. You both got the same witness, or you both got the same misgivings. You both got that same uneasy little feeling down here. And when that lets you know that the spirit of God is leading you and directing you. Something's wrong when one person is real gung-ho and the other person is like, "No way." They can't both be right. So we got to find out which one is right. Amen? So we've got to find out because otherwise you're going to make decisions with this so-called blink of the eye and you're going to suffer for it. God wants us to walk in the fruit of the spirit. And it's easy to look in our lives. It's only nine things we have to check it out. Look and see, "Do I see those things being produced in my life?" If they're not, if you're weak in some area, that's where the Holy Ghost needs to work on you. And the only way he's going to work on you is through the word. He might do it through the pulpit, through preaching, teaching, but you've still got to do your own Bible reading. I'm sorry, you cannot let somebody else read the Bible for you. You cannot depend on what you hear on here Wednesday night, Friday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night. That's not good enough. You've got to read the Bible for yourself. You've got to read the Bible. You say, "Well, I don't like to read." Well, is that your spirit talking? Is that the spirit talking? No, it's not. The spirit man loves, loves! He says, "In thy word I meditate day and night and night and day." So all those things, when you just listen to what you're saying, "I don't like to read, I don't get much out of reading, I'm not a reader." That's the flesh, that's the soul. You've got to tap into the spirit. Now not everybody's going to be a voracious reader, like me, I just read, read, read. I'm not telling you to be like me. I'm not asking you to be like me or be like anybody else. But I'm telling you you've got to get in the word of God. And if you'll start easy, if you're one of those people that's not big on reading, start easy. Open up the Book of Proverbs. There's 31 Proverbs. You can read one a day for a whole month. I guarantee you by the end of that month, you will be a changed person. You will be changed. You will find yourself going back with a red pencil and you'll begin to say, "I like that one. I got to remember that one." You'll find out sometimes you want to remember so you can tell somebody else, "Next time they say that to me, I'm going to tell them this Proverb!" So you can sound real wise and spiritual because you're telling them the word of God. But that's all right because the Holy Ghost will get a few in on you too. And after a while he'll be saying, "This one's not for her, this one's for you." Amen? But God's word is good! I'm not done but I'm finished. Amen? But I just want to encourage you to get in the word of God because I want to hear reports that people are walking in the fruit of the spirit and walking in the spirit. And when we walk in the spirit, God's going to work everything out. There's no situation that you're in that's so hopeless. I don't care if you're ready—you say, "Well, we're ready for divorce court." No, you're not. God hates divorce. Don't even put that word in your vocabulary. Get in God's word, get subject to the spirit of God, start silencing the emotions. Get away with God, get quiet before God, get in the word, silence your emotions. That's why the Bible says, "Be swift to hear and slow to speak, slow to wrath. The wrath of man never works the righteousness of God." Amen. Silence those emotions. "He that handles a matter before he hears it, to him it is a folly and a shame." Amen. "But he that handles matters wisely, to him it shall be good." "Debate thy cause with thy neighbor himself, discover not thy secret to another." So when you begin—and these are all Proverbs. And there's tons of them that will lead you and guide you and tell you how to behave and how to act so that you can begin to be happy with your own behavior. And then you begin to see the fruit of the spirit, and you won't hear those awful things come out of your mouth and say, "My God, did I say that? Did I act that way? Did I react like that?" Yes. Because you were acting out of that soul that you have not brought under the spirit man. The Bible says, there's a scripture in Job the 32nd chapter, I didn't get to it tonight, but in the 32nd chapter, the Bible says that God, the Almighty, reveals things, he reveals understanding to the spirit of a man. Not to your soul, to your spirit. But you've got to be spiritual minded. It's not automatic. You've got to get in the word of God. But when you do, I tell you the rewards are well, well, well worth the sacrifice. I promise you that. I can guarantee you that. The rewards are well worth the sacrifice. Let's everyone stand tonight and thank the Lord for his word. Hallelujah! Thank you for your word tonight, Lord. You said, Lord, that your word is like water, water that cleanses us. Your word will wash us. You said sanctify us by thy word, oh Lord, for thy word is truth. Lord, your word will wash us. And then when it's washed us, your word will adorn us. It will beautify us with your salvation. It will beautify us with the wisdom of God. And Father, I pray tonight that you'll just impart a hunger in every soul, in every heart, in every spirit man for a desire for the things of God and the word of God. Lord, I pray that we will begin to get away with you more, get up those extra five or 10 minutes in the morning to read that chapter in Proverbs, to read wherever you lead us, oh God, to make that sacrifice. So that the very first thing that we put into our spirit before we go out the door is something from the word of God. That when we have that we're already prepared ourselves. That when the enemy comes and attacks us, something that would make us get angry or provoke us, that we wouldn't get provoked because we've already put that word of God in our heart. And the Holy Ghost can bring it to our remembrance. And I pray, Lord, give your people a hunger and a desire for God's word. And if there are those who have struggled in the past, then I pray Lord tonight you give them a breakthrough. I pray tonight you give them an anointing. Lord, I ask you to take some of the anointing off of me that I love to read your word and put it on them, Father God. That anointing that makes them want to get in your word! Because your word is going to mold them and make them the person you want them to be. And Lord, we all want to be like you. And as we continue to look into the word of God, we're told in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that as we continue to look into the looking glass of your word, that we behold that we're being changed, we're being transformed. We can't stay the same. We're going to be radically changed into the very same image of the Lord Jesus Christ from glory to glory to glory to glory. That is our desire, Lord God, that we can bring glory and honor to your name. Never to be a reproach, but always to bring glory to you. I pray Lord tonight that you'll do this for your people. I believe that they want it. I can see it, Lord. You can see it in their hearts, God. I see their faces, but you see their spirit. And you see their heart, Lord. And I pray Lord just impart to them. And when they read the word of God, let an anointing come upon them. Let their spiritual eyes be enlightened. Let their spiritual mind be enlightened. Let the word of God become alive to them. And Father, I pray that they'll just be delighted, they'll get lost in your word and it will change them. And Father, I pray for everyone that's facing a big decision, everyone that's got a trouble, a problem that they're facing they don't know what to do. I pray Lord God that you will give them wisdom because you said if we would ask for wisdom it would be given freely. Father, I pray Lord God they won't make the wrong decision. But by the Holy Spirit, lead your children. You said they that are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. They are the mature ones, the grown up ones. And Lord, we want to be led by the spirit and not by the carnal mind. I pray all these things in Jesus' name. In Jesus' name. We seal it in Jesus' name. And we believe it's done in Jesus' name. Hallelujah! Amen, I believe the Lord will do it for you. He said preach the word and he'll confirm it. So you know what to do. You don't have to get up and go to work tomorrow, most of you. So you know what you can do. You can start tomorrow off. You don't have to worry about jumping out of bed and going to work. Start tomorrow off in the word of God and see if God doesn't put a new anointing on you. He'll do it.
Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. I hope you're being spiritually enlightened by our message "The Mirror of a Man." Proverbs 27:19 says that just as a mirror reflects a person's face, a person's heart reflects who he really is. And the Book of James is the New Testament equivalent to the Book of Proverbs and carries this metaphor over, stating that God's word is the perfect law of liberty and, like a mirror, it reveals the hidden man of our hearts. The problem is, James said, we're prone to get up and go our way and forget what the word has revealed. It is only when we continue to look into the mirror of scripture and act on it that we are justified and blessed in all our deeds. But most people, including many Christians, play the blame game. "It's not my fault." And they conveniently suppress any pangs of conviction. For believers, this is very serious because the Holy Spirit convicts us not to condemn us, but to bring us to contrition and confession and conversion. Fallacious reasoning, arguing beside the point, open the door to self-deception and presumption. And many Christians are not able to differentiate between their soul and their spirit, which can lead to natural carnal remedies that will only ultimately fail when it is the spirit that is under attack and in turmoil. When people live out of their souls instead of their spirits, they learn to calibrate everything on an emotional experience level. As believers, we must make conscious discipline not to let our souls be the boss. And as born-again spirit-led Christians, we can. If you are a believer dealing with emotional, mental, and/or spiritual issues, or if you know someone who is, you need this message in its entirety. "The Mirror of a Man" is available on one CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request offer SK134. That's S as in Sharon, K as in Knotts, 1-3-4. Mail to R. G. Hardy, PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Or go online at rghardy.org. That's R-G-H-A-R-D-Y dot O-R-G. Again, our mailing address is PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying, Maranatha.