Live Your Spiritual Life
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 1007 aired on December 8, 2024
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes. For the next 30
minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long, just a few short minutes of motivation, inspiration,
education and always without any manipulation. We’re not trying to con you. We’re not going to
ask you for anything. We just want to give you the Word of God and hopefully if you hear it, you
will be able to understand God’s plan for your life. If this happens, then you can orient and adjust
to the plan, it’s up to you. It’s been my honor to give you this radio show for 20 years. We’ll
press on as long as the Lord allows us to do so. Thank you for giving me a few moments of your
time this morning. We just finished up a series on the family. If you’ve been listening regularly,
you know the last one that I did the Y in FAMILY dealt with Your Spiritual Life. This is a subject
I just can’t let go of. I’ve got to go back to your spiritual life because there’s an urgency in my
soul’s mentality to communicate how important it is for you to understand the difference between
spirituality and spiritual maturity. They are not the same thing. They are two different things. The
word spirituality is a term used for the filling of the Holy Spirit. If we are in a state of sin, we are
performing human good if we are doing tasks like giving money to the church or singing in the
choir or helping out in the community or promoting some cause. It might even be evil. We are
not spiritual if we are carnal and not filled with the Holy Spirit. Right now, at this very moment
you are listening to me, you are either spiritual, filled with the Holy Spirit, or you are carnal,
quenching the Holy Spirit. The difference is, is there unconfessed sin in your life that you haven’t
dealt with? Remember rebound is
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive
us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”
(1 John 1:9). When you fail to rebound,
to name your sin, you remain in a state of carnality. Spirituality and carnality are mutually
exclusive. It’s like a dark room and a bright room. You are either filled with the Holy Spirit or
you’re not. The term spiritual life refers to something completely different. Your spiritual life will
not function on a substitute that some people call good works. I call it human good or evil. This
leads us to a question, think about this please. Can I be filled with the Holy Spirit, which means
there is no unconfessed sin in my life, and not function as a spiritually mature Christian? The
answer is absolutely yes. It’s found in the difference between sin and evil. Here’s what the
difference is. Sin is an act of your volition. You decide to create a sin. You make a choice. You
know it’s wrong. The Holy Spirit tells you it’s wrong. The Scripture tells you it’s wrong but you
do it anyhow. This is a sin. It’s an act of our volition. We all sin. Evil on the other hand is a
system. It is not necessarily an act, it’s a system and it can be a system of good works and good
deeds which appear to be very legitimate Christian production. But in reality, all of these good
works and the good deeds done in carnality will be burned up at the Judgment Seat of Christ,
labeled as being wood, hay and straw. I’ll read to you out of 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 where it says,
“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
[This is
a builder’s metaphor for building a home. Consider you’ve laid a concrete foundation down and
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you’re going to build on top of the foundation. The foundation is the Lord Jesus Christ.]
Now if
any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
[These are
two different categories: the gold, silver and precious stones are going to be rewardable and the
wood, hay and straw are good deeds that are not rewardable.]
each man’s work will become
evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test
the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will
receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but
[this is a conjunction of
contrast]
he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”
This is not about you losing your
salvation, it’s about you losing your rewards in time and in eternity because you failed to live
your spiritual life. It’s not necessarily that you failed to stay filled with the Holy Spirit, but you
failed to produce divine good production called gold, silver and precious stones. It’s not a sin to
feed a hungry person. It’s not a sin to promote a system that offers service to the disadvantaged,
but it definitely can be a process called evil if you substitute this for spiritual good production.
Spiritual good production only comes through the filling of the Holy Spirit and application of
God’s Word. Anything good you do when you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit is wood, hay and
straw. For example, if you go to church and you sing in the choir, you give money, you visit
others, and you have known sin in your life, you are doing a good thing but in the wrong way. It
will be burned up at the Judgment Seat of Christ because it’s evil. It’s you trying to produce your
own righteousness and it doesn’t work. Satan is the originator of all evil. Evil is the policy that he
uses as the ruler of this world. Evil is the modus operandi of Satan from the time of his fall
throughout the angelic revolution and through where he became the ruler of this world. He is the
ruler of this world, John 14:30 tells us this. We don’t belong here, we are sojourners, we are just
passing through. Philippians 3:20 says our home is in heaven. The Greek word is
ouranos
. Evil
is Satan’s policy to produce a system of good works in mankind and in society that would bring
in a pseudo-millennium. He doesn’t want to go to The Lake of Fire. If he can produce in time a
pseudo-millennium where everybody is good, everybody does good, then he can show God he’s
just as good as God is. Of course we know this is not possible because every person has a sin
nature. Again, evil is the policy that Satan produces, human good, human works, right things
done in a wrong way. All evil of Satan has two sources. It can come from sin or it can come from
erroneous thinking. This erroneous thinking is called human good and can be the motivation to
produce evil. If you add human good to the sin of self-righteousness, when they are combined
together in a nation, then you have a saturation of evil. Listen carefully again. If you have a
combination of self-righteousness plus human good, a right thing done in a wrong way, they
combine to saturate the nation in evil. Grace and the Word of God or Scripture represent the
genius of God in relation to the human race. God’s game plan is grace,
“For by grace you have
been saved through faith”
(Ephesians 2:8). Evil represents the genius of Satan in relation to the
human race. God has a plan called grace. Satan has a plan called evil. What’s the difference? Evil
is a counterfeit. In salvation, we are saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Under
the concept of evil we are saved by faith plus baptism, or plus good works, or plus giving up
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smoking, or plus doing something. What evil does is it adds a twist to grace. It adds something
onto grace and thus nullifies the grace. Keep this in mind. Evil represents the genius of Satan and
he is best at it in religion where he promotes evil so people will think they’re going to heaven.
People will think they are saved because they do some good deeds and this is evil. Recovery
from sin can be instantaneous if after you sin by a mental attitude, your tongue or something
overt, you then use the rebound technique of 1 John 1:9. However, if you get involved in evil, it
takes a long time to recover from this. The only way you’re ever going to get out of evil is by
learning God’s plan and recovering from your deception. My pastor called it “post-salvation
epistemological rehabilitation.” That’s a big word and it means learning God’s plan and
recovering from deception. The number one promoter of evil in this world is organized religion.
Spiritual maturity is your objective. This is what I want you to do, grow to be a spiritually mature
individual, not just be filled with the Holy Spirit, spirituality, but to be spiritually mature. Again,
they are two different things. Spiritual maturity is when a believer has grown to an autonomous
position of spiritual independence. This is being able to stand alone and replicate the life of
Christ by thinking divine viewpoint and functioning as a Christian warrior inside the devil’s
world. In order to lessen the impact of the Word of God, Satan has a plan. Satan doesn’t want
people to learn the Word of God because it breaks them free from evil. If he can lessen the
impact of the Word of God, he’ll do it. How does he do it? Hold your hat when I tell you this. He
does it by dumbing down believers. Satan can dumb down believers and he does this by
lessening the importance of Scripture and strengthening the appeal of emotion in worship. Never
forget what I’m about to read you and think about the difference between emotion and Scripture.
Hebrews 4:12,
“For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge
the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
This is why you hear me giving you Scripture, not nice
little illustrations. Isaiah 40:8,
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God
stands forever.”
Satan wants to dumb you down. He doesn’t want you to learn the Word of God.
He will do anything to stop you from learning the Word of God, some way to distract you, some
way to discourage you, some way to get you into some church where they don’t teach the Word
of God. Oh, they may sing songs. They may sing praise and worship and they may get all excited
but they don’t teach you the protocol plan with God. In Romans 10:17,
“So faith comes from
hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ.”
The Bible is the Word of God. Pick it up, read it and
you will hear God speaking to you. It’s the Word of God in the inventory of your stream of
consciousness that feeds your thoughts and gives you the insight needed for you to live the
Christian life and bring maximum glorification to God. If you only get taught Scripture for 30
minutes on Sunday morning, you’re never going to learn enough to sustain you in time of
frustration or failure. You’ve got to have more than this, it’s imperative. A 30 minute shot on
Sunday morning is not learning the Word of God. Extended song services, special music from
talented performers might be entertaining and enjoyable as you sit there waving your hands back
and forth but it doesn’t plant Scripture in the mentality of your soul. The sad thing is that
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Christian celebrities often travel from city to city, hosting services designed to inspire you in
your walk with Christ. The problem is they charge admission. Yes, that’s right, you’ve got to pay
to hear them speak. They sell materials at each of these events like T-shirts, hats and books.
Nobody is ever authorized to sell Scripture, regardless of their celebrity status. In 2 Corinthians
2:17 Paul wrote,
“For we are not like many, peddling the Word of God, but as from sincerity, but
as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.”
This is exactly why we don’t charge for
any of our books. We don’t charge for any of our material. You don’t sell the Word of God. Our
objective is to become spiritually mature believers, not just spirituality, not just filled with the
Holy Spirit from time to time, but spiritually mature believers that are filled with the Holy Spirit
24/7, learning Scripture 24/7 and operating under this Scripture. We do it by learning and
applying the Word of God to our inventory of ideas in our soul’s mentality. Your soul has
mentality. Your soul has volition. Your soul has a conscience. Your soul has self-consciousness.
The mentality of your soul is where you live the spiritual life. It’s what you think and this
absolutely cannot happen unless you are filled with the Holy Spirit and unless you are studying
Scripture on a daily basis. In 2 Timothy 2:15 we have the command, the mandate from the Word
of God,
“Be diligent
[study]
to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not
need to be ashamed, accurately handling the Word of truth.”
Study is an imperative mood verb.
It’s not a request, it’s a command. Show yourself approved. Can you be disapproved? Yes.
Where? At the Judgement Seat of Christ. All the good work you did, all those choir trips you
took, all the money you gave, burn up at the Judgment Seat of Christ as wood, hay and straw
because you were not filled with the Holy Spirit and you did it in your human good efforts that
turned out to be nothing but evil. We don’t need to be ashamed. What does this mean? It means
we want to hear God say, “Well done, My good and faithful servant.” To do this we must rightly
divide the Word of God. Can you wrongly divide the Word of God? Yes. This is why I implore
you to get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor who can teach you Scripture the correct
way, line upon line, word upon word, and not just give you a lot of little stories and illustrations.
I talk to people every day about this. It’s really pitiful that the believer who wants to grow
spiritually contacts me and asks, “Where can I find a well-qualified pastor? Where can I find
somebody to teach me something?” It’s pitiful that people who want to grow spiritually can’t
find a pastor that will teach them on a consistent basis and will have them purchase some
devotional book so they can get a short appetizer of spiritual insight daily. That’s right, they have
to go to the bookstore and buy somebody’s daily devotional and read it. This is not growing
spiritually, it’s an appetizer. Spiritual maturity represents the maximum spiritual growth of the
believer in time. Spiritual maturity is God’s objective for keeping you here in time after you are
saved. He could have taken you on to heaven but He left you for a reason. Spiritual maturity is
the divine objective for each one of us in time, the purpose for all commands of Scripture related
to time. It’s the only way that we will ever glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in time and it is the basis
for temporal and eternal rewards and blessings. I said a lot. I probably don’t need to say it again
but I want to, one more time. Spiritual maturity is a divine objective for the believer in time. God
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wants you to grow up to be a spiritually mature believer. It’s the purpose for all the commands of
Scripture related to time. Study, grow, learn, these are all commands. The only way you can
glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in time is to learn to operate the spiritual life and reproduce Christ
in your life. This is the basis for all blessing both in time and eternity. With all the social media
impact in today’s world, the opportunity for deception is found around every corner, I promise
you. I’m amazed at the churches that promote activities. What do they do? They want to attract
the little children. “Come for the Halloween party. Come for the Christmas party. We’ve got
dancing and balloons. We’ve got hot dogs. We’ve got popcorn. Let us entertain you.” It’s all
designed to ultimately recruit the parents. I’m all for getting mom and dad into Christ. I’m all for
teaching them the Word of God. I’m all for the kids learning to come to church, but I’m not all
for using gimmicks and games to try to recruit the children. I’m amazed at the churches that
don’t know how to address the King of kings and the Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ. I
shudder when I hear them talk about the Lord Jesus Christ as if He was their best buddy or their
best friend. I hear them talk about Jesus this and Jesus that and the Jesus way. He is the Lord
Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. When you talk about Him, address Him
properly. Listen to Philippians 2:10-11,
“So that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of
those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
[This is how powerful that name is.
He is not, “Jesus.” He is the Lord Jesus Christ.]
and that every tongue will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ became a man. He emptied
Himself of His divine operational assets. Theologians call this the hypostatic union. It is called
God and man in one body forever. He is the God-man. He is in heaven today as God and He’s in
heaven today as a man in a resurrected body. He came into this world as a human in order that
He might rescue us from sin and death. Philippians 2:7-8 tells us,
“But emptied Himself, taking
the form of a bond-servant
[
doulos
]
, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross.”
This is what He did. He emptied Himself of His divine operational assets. He
never used His deity to sustain His humanity while He was here. He lived like a man, thought
like a man, ate like a man, walked like a man and demonstrated to you that He knew that it was
possible to live like this. He followed His Father’s orders all the way to the cross. As a man the
Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated how it’s possible to live in the devil’s world and glorify God to
the maximum. He did this by living the prototype spiritual life. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior
tested and proved this spiritual life for us. We call it the prototype spiritual life because He was
the first one to live the Christian life. He lived it and demonstrated it to us. Now we offer up
spiritual sacrifices by the fulfillment of the stages of the adult spiritual life. Spiritual self-esteem,
spiritual autonomy and eventually spiritual maturity is what we do. God does not want us to offer
sacrifices. He does not want offerings. He wants us to sacrifice to Him by learning to live and
produce the spiritual life. Listen to Hosea 6:6,
“For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and
in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
This is what God wants from you. He
wants you to understand Him and know Him. Hebrews 13:15,
“Through Him then, let us
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continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His
name.”
Listen to Jeremiah 9:24,
“‘But let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and
knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth;
for I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.”
I’ve told you this before and I remind you,
there’s a difference between knowing God and understanding God, and I assure you, Satan does
not want you to understand the God you know. If you don’t understand the protocol plan of God,
you wind up doing all the right things in the wrong way, neutralized by being dumbed down by
the devil. You know all the words of the hymns and all the words to the praise and worship songs
but you don’t understand the God you claim you worship and you’re not going to take time to
correct the mistake and this is pitiful. The spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God are simply, as I’m
about to put it to you right now. Stay filled with the Holy Spirit. This is called spirituality. How
do you stay filled with the Holy Spirit? When you sin, confess the sin. Rebound, recover from
the sin, problem-solving device #1. The second spiritual sacrifice is Operation Z. What does this
mean? It means you’ve got to have a pastor and stay filled with the Holy Spirit. You’ve got to
understand what the pastor teaches you and then you have to believe it and apply it into your life.
We call it LAG, learn, apply and glorify God. These are your two power options, the filling of
the Holy Spirit and learning and applying the Word of God in your life, and glorify God to the
max. The third spiritual sacrifice are the 10 problem-solving devices we call the FLOT line of
your soul. Rebound, the filling of the Holy Spirit, the faith-rest drill, grace orientation, doctrinal
orientation, a personal sense of destiny, personal love for God, impersonal love for all, sharing
the happiness of God and lastly, occupation with the Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, as you are filled
with the Holy Spirit, sitting under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, learning and deploying
the problem-solving devices in your life, you execute to the fullest of your ability the protocol
plan of God. You go from being a spiritual infant to being a spiritually mature individual,
replicating and re-presenting the life of Jesus Christ. The question that I must ask is, where are
you in this process? Where are you today? Have you grown to become the spiritually mature
individual we’re talking about? The spiritual life is critical. If I ask you, how is your spiritual
life? What would you say? Are you growing in grace? Are you re-presenting Christ? Are you
becoming the person that I’m talking about, filled with the Holy Spirit, using operation Z,
functioning under a well-qualified pastor, learning the 10 problem-solving devices, executing the
protocol plan of God? There’s a lot I just said. I rattled them off quickly. I hope you’re listening.
If you don’t understand this, get in contact with me. We’ve got a book we’ll send you called
Christian Problem Solving
that lays it all out, free of charge. Until next week, this is your host
Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line.