Ankerberg Show

Guest (Male): Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show Classics Edition. For decades, we’ve been privileged to host esteemed scholars discussing a wide range of topics from apologetics and science to biblical prophecy and beyond. Join us as we revisit these timeless conversations and make them accessible to you wherever you are.

Are you a Christian who has placed your faith in Jesus Christ but still struggle privately in your personal life with many different problems? Have you been surprised at how easy it is to still fall into sin? How does the Christian life work? Have you discovered that as a Christian, you can know in your mind what God wants you to do, but your bodily desires can still lead you to give into sin in a moment's time?

Why do Christians feel such strong temptations to sin after they have believed in Christ? Doesn't the Bible say that God will change a person who believes in Christ? When and how does God give a Christian power to live victorious over his sinful desires, habits, and circumstances?

If you have despaired of ever living a victorious Christian life, we invite you to listen to today’s program. Our series is entitled "The Fight Within and the Fight Without." God very plainly tells us in the Bible how every Christian can experience victory over the problems and sins of his or her life. He wants this for you. We invite you to stay tuned to find out how.

John Ankerberg: Welcome. We've been examining God’s solutions to the battles that Christians fight within and without: their own sinful desires and habits, and the fight without—the circumstances, other people, the world, temptations, and satanic attack. Last week, we looked at how much we’ve been conditioned and influenced in our thinking by the way our family raised us. Even as Christians, we struggle with wrong ideas about ourselves, wrong habits, and wrong patterns of living that we learned from our parents.

Today, we want to talk about God's help for believers who don't feel saved, who don't feel secure, who feel very guilty about their lives. Maybe I'm talking to you. What provision has God made to reverse such feelings and give security and peace to those who belong to him? God has a lot to say about this. Once again, I'd like to begin by taking a moment to talk about the family that you grew up in. I’m sure that you realize that every human being that’s ever been born into a family has been born with two things: a mind and emotions. I'd like you to think for a moment of how your mind does affect your emotions.

Let me try to illustrate this for you with an illustration from Bill Gillham’s excellent and hilarious book, *Lifetime Guarantee*, which I highly recommend to you. Suppose that you enter a room and you find there's a rattlesnake on the floor, coiled and ready to strike you on the leg. Your mind processes that information quickly and says, "I believe I’m in great danger." On a scale of one to ten, that’s a ten. Now, while your mind is processing these thoughts, what is happening to your emotions?

Your emotions respond to the thoughts that you have in your mind and say, "I feel terrified," and that’s a solid ten on the emotional scale of your life. But afterwards, suppose on closer examination, you discover that the snake is made out of rubber. Your mind immediately says, "There's no danger here. I’m safe," and the mind drops from ten down to level one. But what about your emotions? It interprets the thoughts of the mind and starts to calm down, but it doesn't do so right away. It takes maybe an hour or two for your emotions to get back down to the bottom level.

Bill Gillham writes in his book, "Your emotions are like a BB sinking in oil." It takes a long time for those emotions to float back to the bottom. Now, let’s say that your mind has gone down to one and your feelings are just slowly dropping as a result of seeing the rubber snake on the floor. You go into another room and you open a drawer there, and what happens? A big spider scoots up your hand and goes up the inside sleeve of your shirt. Your mind instantly reacts and goes from one back up to ten, and your emotions cover the few points back to ten in one leap.

Bill Gillham takes this illustration and applies this to the intellectual and emotional development of the mind and emotions of a young child growing up in a tension-filled home environment. He asks this question: "What if, as a child, you were reared in a home where your dad constantly yelled and struck out at you like a rattlesnake, and your mom always kept you on edge like a spider going up your arm?" Add to this an angry brother, or an aunt, an uncle, or a grandma who would keep your mind and emotions at level ten most of the time.

When they would back off for a few moments, your mind would go back down to a one and you would think, "Wow, relief at last." But your emotions would still be like the BB dropping in oil, going down slowly. Maybe your emotions, which had never gotten back to normal, would only reach a seven when all of a sudden one of the people in your family would do it to you again. Your dad would accuse you, your mother would shout at you. Wham, bang—your mind would immediately go up to ten and your emotions, which had never gotten back to normal, would once again cover the few points on your emotional scale back to ten.

By the time a five-year-old child has grown up in this kind of a home, it would have been a long time since his emotions had been below a seven. In fact, his emotions would have sort of bottomed out on seven. Seven becomes the floor or threshold below which his emotions never drop. It gets so he doesn't even know he has some points below seven. Isn't it interesting that psychologists teach us that by the time a child reaches the age of five, 85% of his personality is established and is irreversible?

Many folks think that they are condemned for the rest of their life to think and feel the way they were programmed growing up in such homes. That's what psychology seems to suggest. But God and the Bible disagree. He says this is not true. He holds out hope to every one of us and says that the emotions and thinking of children who grow up and become adults out of a tension-filled home can be reversed. 2 Corinthians 5:17 states: "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

The question is, how does it work? How will God help change your emotions and the way that you think if your parents have made you feel guilty and never approved of what you did while growing up? Let's talk about this. The first thing you must do is you must trust the Lord. In saying this, what is trust? And why does it make a difference in whom you put your faith as long as you have faith? Those are two solid questions.

Let's begin with trust. The Bible says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight." I'd like to ask you first, have you really ever trusted Jesus Christ to be your Savior from sin? Maybe the reason you don't feel saved is because you don't know what it really means to trust in Christ. Let me try an illustration of what trust means.

There's a story about an old mountaineer who was climbing high up in the Swiss Alps, and he got into a precarious position. He was about ready to fall, and he cried out to God for help. Suddenly, an angel appeared, flying in the air right next to him. The mountaineer said, "Well, thanks for hearing my prayer, but I need your help." The angel said to the mountaineer, "Do you trust me?" The mountaineer looked at the angel's strong, muscled arms and said, "Sure, I trust you." The angel looked down far below and into the ravine over which the mountaineer was hanging dangerously on the cliff, and he said, "Do you really trust me?"

At that point, the mountaineer thought for a moment. He looked down at the valley floor, maybe a half a mile below him. Then he looked over to the angel and said, "Of course I trust you." Then the angel said, "Well, if you really trust me, let go." Have you ever gotten to the place where you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ with everything? You let go. You trusted him with all of your sins of your life, your very eternal destiny. You put it into his hands. That is, you've trusted Jesus and no one else, nothing else.

God's word tells us: "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." If you’ll trust him, he’ll save you. Now, in today’s world, some people say, "Well, it doesn't really matter in whom you believe, just as long as you have faith." I want you to know that's a lie. Your faith is only as valid as the object in which it is placed. Jesus claimed that he was the only way to God. He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me." There are not a thousand ways to God; there’s only one. Christ is it.

He's the one who died on a cross for your sins. Let me see if I can illustrate this point—that the object in which you place your faith does make a difference. It's not enough just to have faith. Let’s say that you’re on top of a three-story building. The first two stories catch on fire, and you run to the roof. The firemen come and look up, and they realize that the flames will engulf you in just a short time. They form a circle, get out a big net, and when they are all holding the net, they look up to you and say, "Jump!"

You look down and say, "You've got to be kidding. Jump from up here?" They say, "Well, what choice do you have? If you don't jump and trust us to catch you with this net, you're going to perish in the flames. Don't you trust us?" You say, "Sure I trust you." They say, "Well, have faith and jump." Let’s say that you do have enough faith so that you jump off the roof. Now, if you're like most people, if you're like me, and your eyesight is not real good, it's about that time, about half a story down, that everything at the bottom starts to come into focus.

But as it does come into focus, to your horror, you realize that instead of the firemen standing around in a circle holding a net, they are just standing around in a circle holding hands and they don't have a net. You had faith and you jumped, but what good will your faith do you in that circumstance? Again, your faith is only as valid as the object in which it is placed. There had better be a real net with real firemen holding onto that net when you jump.

By the way, was it your faith that saved you in that situation? No, it was the firemen and the net that really saved you. Your faith just entrusted yourself to their safe keeping. The same is true with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not how much faith you have, and it's not your faith that is the thing that saves you; it's Jesus who saves you. He is God the Son, the only Savior who does have the power to change your life. Your faith is simply the means by which you have to entrust yourself into his safe keeping, but he does the saving.

So the first thing that needs to be done in changing your emotions and the way you think is to trust totally in the Lord. Second, we're to learn God's promises about our life. Your parents may have raised you in such a way that you learned the only way you could gain their love and acceptance was to act right, clean your room, get good grades, be home on time. You had to perform. And if you performed, then they loved you and accepted you. But if you failed, then you caught their wrath.

Or maybe you grew up in a home where mom and dad had their own problems, and they took those problems out on you. You really did nothing wrong, but when you cried or were hungry or needed comfort or care, you were an irritation to them and they took their anger out on you. No matter what you did, you were a failure. They verbally abused you, maybe they hit you. In terror, you didn't know how to act. They just made you feel guilty, unlovable, unworthy.

Now, even though there was no real reason for you to feel guilty, you came to feel that way because as a child, that was how you were treated. You were conditioned by their words and actions about you. Now, if that happened to you and you grew up feeling that way, how can God help change your emotions? Many people assume that God treats them just like their parents did. You have to gain God's approval by your performance. They think you have to live a clean life before God. You have to talk right, you have to act right, and if you don't, and if you've tried and you've failed, God's wrath comes on you.

Well, here's the good news. God already knows all about your failures, your sins, and says he loves you anyway. The gospel, which is good news, is that God sent his son Jesus to rescue you and me, for him to be our Savior. Jesus died on the cross and while he was dying, your sins and mine were picked up and they were placed on him. He paid the penalty we deserved for the sins of our life, and God accepted his sacrifice on our behalf. So all of your sins have already been punished on Jesus, and God is willing to forgive you the moment you come to him and put your trust and faith in him and Christ's work on your behalf.

That's what we call believing in Jesus Christ. We ask Christ to come into our life and to save us, to forgive us of our sins. The moment we do, God promises he accepts us on the basis of Christ and his life, not on the basis of our life, our performance. It's a gift that God gives to us. Further, God gives you another gift. He credits to you and to me, to our account, to your standing before him, the very righteous behavior of Jesus Christ.

You know that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life while he was here on earth. Well, that righteous life which Christ lived and earned was credited by God to you and to me the moment that we believed. So God has made it possible for you to stand before him in holiness and righteousness, and he treats you as if you had behaved just like Jesus Christ all of your life. That's your wonderful standing, your position, your identity that God has given to you as a free gift because you've believed in his Son, Jesus Christ. You don't have to perform to gain God's acceptance.

Now, it's tragic that many Christians who have already been declared righteous by God because they put their faith in Jesus Christ, still think they have to strive to generate a good track record of performance to get God's approval. The Bible refers to such actions as dead works. We already live under God's grace, his unmerited favor day by day. And we live by this grace not only when we came to Christ, but we live by this grace after we came into a relationship with him.

Romans 5:1-2 says: "Since we have been justified"—that’s that legal declaration that God makes about us that we're free from the penalty of our sin—"we have been justified through faith, not works, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom"—that’s Christ—"we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." Of course, you must learn that God has made these promises to you. You must read the scriptures to see for yourself what God has said.

Then, you must let the facts which your mind absorbs dictate how your emotions will react. Let me illustrate. Let’s say that one day, you think that because of certain pains in your body, that you might have cancer. Because your mind thinks this is possible, how do your emotions react? How do you feel? Well, your emotions go to a straight ten on the fear scale. Now, how can you find any kind of peace and happiness and get your emotions back to normal?

Well, you go to the doctor. He takes some scientific tests and when he comes back into the room, he has a smile on his face. The doctor tells you all of the facts. "All of the tests that we have taken prove conclusively that you do not have cancer in your body." When you hear those facts, when you believe them, what happens to your emotions? They go from fear to joy. And as a result of the facts, your emotions can slowly return to normal.

Whenever doubts or fears arise as to whether or not you have cancer, what do you do? You can now concentrate and think about the wonderful facts that you have been told which will erase your doubts. The tests show you do not have cancer. Security, peace, hope—all start with facts: the facts of God's promises. The Bible says that every person who has put his or her faith in Jesus Christ is totally accepted by God. Maybe you don't feel it, but it's a fact and it's to be believed.

And once you believe this is God's promise to you, and you realize God never lies, your emotions will go from fear to joy, from ten back to normal. When God specifically says that he sent Jesus and punished him so that all of our sins might be done away with, he means that. Colossians 2:13-14 says: "When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave you all of your sins," which means you are totally forgiven when you've placed your faith in Christ.

If you've sinned grievously after becoming a Christian, God still loves you and has already forgiven you, but you're out of fellowship with him and he wants you to come and confess your sin to him and allow him to have that intimate fellowship with you once more. 1 John 1:9 says: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and he's just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." If right now you have a guilty conscience, confess your sins to God. Be willing to turn from them and ask God to cleanse you and empower you, forgive you.

God will do a supernatural work in your life. We're not talking about you mustering the willpower to somehow blot these sins from your mind and your conscience. You can never do that. We're talking about a real work of God in your life, a supernatural work where God removes sin and guilt. If you come to him, confess that you have sinned, turn from it, God will forgive all of your sins. Jeremiah 31:33, God says: "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

And then fourth, in our struggle to rid ourselves of the wrong ideas of ourselves that we came to believe as we were growing up, to rid ourselves of feelings of inadequacy, the lack of security that all seem to be a part of our life, we must not look to ourselves, but we must depend on the Holy Spirit who lives in our life. You know, even the Apostle Paul, after he'd become a Christian, struggled with sinful desires and wrong attitudes.

In Romans 7, he said: "When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being, I delight in God's law"—only a Christian can say that. "But I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind." Notice he says there's a war going on for his mind. Where's it coming from? He says in Romans 7:14: "It is sin living in me." Our sinful nature still exists.

But even though the Apostle was a Christian and had received a new spiritual nature from God which desired to obey and love God, still his sinful nature could overpower him and tempt him to sin. He didn't have the power in his own strength. For that, God had put the Holy Spirit into his life. And Paul learned that he could conquer his sinful desires not in his own strength, but in the Holy Spirit's power. How do we know? In Ephesians 3:16, Paul says: "I pray that out of God's glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."

Remember I told you that at home I have an electric power saw and a drill? Well, these tools plug into the same power source: electricity. Electricity is their life. Without that life, without that power, my tools are nothing but big paperweights. Similarly, I can believe in Christ and have God give me a new spiritual nature that desires to love and obey him. But unless I am plugged into the power of the Holy Spirit, depending on his source of power, I will not have victory over sinful desires and habits. I will fail miserably, and so will you.

If you have failed God, ask him right now to forgive you. Then tell him that from now on, moment by moment, you're going to ask the Holy Spirit to empower you to live for him, to conquer your doubts, to have victory over your sinful habits. As you entrust yourself to the Holy Spirit's power and to his keeping, he will change you from the inside out.

Now, next week, I hope that you're going to join me as we examine how God lovingly motivates every one of us as Christians to progress from accepting our identity in Jesus Christ to living more and more like who God says we actually are. We'll talk about what is true repentance, and why is totally surrendering our lives to God the only way to really experience real life? I hope that you'll join me then.

Guest (Male): Stay tuned as we revisit these timeless discussions, and join us in celebrating the wealth of knowledge that continues to encourage and educate. To learn more, please visit JAshow.org. That’s JAshow.org. Or subscribe to us on YouTube.