This episode dives into the concept of the faith-rest drill—a spiritual technique to handle adversity without capitulating to stress. Rick Hughes highlights the significance of establishing a steadfast soul through divine promises that ensure peace and security. Listen and learn how love, reverence, and a focus on the divine viewpoint can convert trials into strength and adversity into opportunities for demonstrating unwavering faith.
Welcome to The Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flotline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, a cordial invitation to stay tuned, stick it out with me, just a few minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, all done without any type of manipulation. We say that every single show on purpose because we’re not here on purpose because we’re not here trying to solicit money. We’re not here trying to solicit membership. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not asking you to join anything. We’re just asking you to listen. Listen to me as I teach you what I know to be truth about the Word of God. and how you can establish a flat line in your soul, a main line of resistance in your soul, a forward line of troops is the term, F-L-O-T. If you take God’s Word and learn it and use it, it will protect your soul. It will stop the outside sources of adversity from becoming the inside sources of stress. That’s why we always say adversity is inevitable, stress is optional. I want to dedicate my show today to some friends in Redding, California. We’ve had a radio show in Redding, California for several months now, maybe over a year. And they are experiencing a horrific tragedy right now with a fire that started in the Carr, C-A-R-R, forest area, has spread through Shasta and gone into Redding and destroyed over 1,000 homes in that area. Many people, six that I know of, maybe up to eight now, have lost their lives. Thousands and thousands of acres of land have been destroyed, and I don’t know if the fire is under control yet or not. But as I looked at the pictures on the internet, my heart was moved as I saw neighborhoods where 8, 10, 9 homes were completely destroyed, and yet there would be one home standing in the middle that wasn’t even touched. It was amazing to see that. Amazing to see the devastation, amazing to see the loss, and to feel empathy for my friends in the Redding, California area. I want to share some words with you this morning, and hopefully these words will encourage you. And here’s where we’ll start, in Isaiah 41, verse 10. Fear thou not, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am thy God, and I will strengthen thee, I will help thee, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. If you can understand that verse, this is called faith rest. The faith rest drill is problem solving device number three in the flat line of any believer’s soul. learning how to stand on the promises of God. This is a promise that you can claim as a believer in Jesus Christ if you’re in this devastated area in Shasta County there in Redding, California. Fear is the Hebrew word yad-rah or yad-ray, And it means do not be afraid. It has a negative with it, fear thou not. Don’t be afraid. You may have lost everything you had. You may have lost your home. You may have lost your earthly possessions. In some cases, family members have been lost. Don’t be afraid, because God said, I am with thee. This is a wonderful promise. You are never alone. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, you are never alone. The Lord Jesus Christ told the disciples in John chapter 16 that they were going to be scattered, and he said, I’m going to be alone, but the Father will be with me. Just as God the Father was with Jesus Christ in those final hours before he went to the cross and was crucified, and died for the sin of the world. He’s with you and with me where I’m sitting today and with you wherever you may be on this Sunday morning in Shasta County. Don’t be dismayed, the verse says. Fear thou not, I am with thee. Do not be dismayed, which means distressed. Don’t have stress in your life. There’s no reason to have stress in your life. Stress in your life is indicated by worry, Stress in your life is indicated by fear, two things, and mental attitude sins. You can’t afford to let mental attitude sins control your thinking because if you do, then you’ll get under emotional revolt of the soul. If your emotions are controlling you, you are not thinking. You have to disassociate from emotions, and as the Bible said, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. You have to learn to think divine viewpoint, and this is how you do it, focusing on the fact that God is with you. Do not be stressed out. Do not be distressed out. And why not? Because he said, I am your God. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, there’s nothing that ever happens in your life that God is not aware of. If your father allowed this to happen in your life, it was for a reason. And I promise you, you will be better as a result of it. Not worse off, better off. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, do you remember the book of Job where Job lost everything he had and he just wanted to die? He even got boils and sickness and his wife told him, why don’t you just curse God and die? In the end, God restored him twofold, gave him much more than he ever had. As a believer in Jesus Christ, if you can use a faithless drill, if you can stand on a promise like this in a tough time like you’re facing, you will be blessed. God will give it all back. He’ll put you back on your feet. He’ll supply your needs. How do I know that? Listen to what the verse said. I will strengthen thee. Yes, I will help thee. I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. There’s three promises for you. He will give you strength to endure what you’re having to face. He will help you as you try to rebuild or claim your insurance or do whatever you need to do. And he will uphold you. He will control you. He will keep you from being devastated with the right hand of my righteousness. In Hebrews 11.6, the Bible says this, without faith, it’s impossible to please God because he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. The only way that you’re going to find the faith to do this is to understand that love is the greatest motivation. Your father loved you in eternity past because the Bible says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. There was a loss that the father had, the loss of the son who went to the cross, paid for our sins, and that was love. And if you understand that from receiving Christ as your Savior and develop reciprocal love for the father, then you know he loves you and he is not going to throw you under the bus. He will provide for you. He will be there for you. He will answer your questions about why these sort of things happen for you. But you must believe. You must demonstrate faith. And faith is not an easy thing to demonstrate. when Moses was fleeing the Egyptians coming to the Red Sea and the Pharaoh’s army was behind him and the Red Sea was in front of him and maybe a million Jews worried about they were about to die, Moses’ words were famous where he said, stand still and watch the deliverance of the Lord. Stand still and watch the deliverance of the Lord. if you will stay out of panic palace, if you will keep your emotions under control, and you will go to your Father and trust Him, He will strengthen you. But that is the demonstration of your faith, and that’s how you please God. You demonstrate your faith to Him By one simple word, you’re trusting him through this situation. Here’s some principles to understand. Under no circumstances are we ever to be frightened by the adversary, which is a.k.a. the devil. Never. And two, in every believer, you, me, and any other person anywhere under the listening to this radio show, every believer has a divine promise of security and peace and in the middle of frightening circumstances. Love demonstrates this. This is interesting. Love demonstrate must be reciprocated. And so when you demonstrate your love to God the Father by trusting Him, He reciprocates that for you. Every believer, every believer, has a divine promise of security and peace in the middle of frightening situations. Peace means you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to crawl up and panic palace and scream. You just have to trust the Lord. He will not abandon you. Three, these promises must be learned if you intend to access them. And there are like 7,000 promises in the Bible that for the believer in Jesus Christ. We even have a book called Promises and Principles in the Word of God. And it’s free, it looks like a telephone book. We’ll be glad to send it to you, but it’s just a way that you can look up these promises and claim them in your prayers. That’s how you use promises. You take those promises to the Father in prayer, and you say, Father, you said this, I believe this, and I’m waiting on you. And that’s demonstrating faith. And you can order that book just by contacting us through our website, rickhughesministries.org. Here’s another principle. The promises learned and deployed on the flight line of your soul are called the faith rest drill. Faith rest drill. They don’t do you any good if you don’t deploy them. They don’t do you any good if they’re in the Bible and you don’t know them. You have to learn them and use them. Here’s another principle. Short-time trusters never enjoy the benefit of security or the benefit of happiness in this devil’s world. Short-time trusters. You can’t afford to be a short-time truster because short-time trusters always live with dread on the horizon. They never have a relaxed mental attitude, and they never have the happiness of Jesus Christ. By the way, the Bible says, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, the joy that was set before him. You think you can find joy in what you’ve experienced in Redding and Shasta County? The answer is yes. There’s a reason. God always has a plan. Nothing happens by accident. And if we will trust the Lord, if we put our faith in him, if we stand firm on the promises, he will reveal it and he will bless you. In Matthew 8, 25, his disciples came to him, woke him up on board a ship, and they were about to drown. They thought, they figured the Lord took them out in the middle of the Galilean Sea to drown them. And they said to him, wake us up, wake up, wake up, wake up, we’re dying. And he said unto them, why are you afraid? Oh, you of little faith. Then he arose and he rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. Faith was deflected by adversity. Why are you afraid? You don’t have to be afraid. Adversity is inevitable. Stress is optional. Sooner or later, the principle says that there will be a storm hits your life. Maybe you don’t live in Redding. Maybe you don’t live in Shasta County. Maybe you’re in Oago, New York. Maybe you’re in Jackson, Mississippi. Maybe you’re in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Maybe you’re in somewhere in Houston, Texas or Waco, Texas or any of the other places our radio show plays. Sooner or later, a storm will hit your life, just like it’s hitting the lives of these people in Reading. The question is, what you do in those circumstances will reflect the confidence you have in your soul. What you do in those circumstances will reflect the confidence you have in your soul. If you have no love for the Father, then you will have no security from the Word of God that you’ve learned and deployed in your soul because the only reason you would learn it and deploy it is you love the Father. This is what 1 John 5 says, if you love me, obey me. My mandates are not hard. Do you love him? Remember the Bible says if we say we love God and hate our brother, we’re liars and the truth is not in us. loving him is the greatest virtue we could ever have because it motivates us to obey him. And if we love him, it will reflect in our confidence and the peace that we have in our soul in spite of the storm that we’re in. Proverbs 1.7 says, The respect of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Knowledge has to start somewhere, and it starts with respecting God. It starts with trusting God, believing God. The Hebrew word here in this passage, the fear of the Lord, is the verb yirah, the verb yirah. And it simply means two mental attitudes, reverence and respect. Fear of God is to reverence God and respect God. And you must understand that. If you love Him, you will reverence Him and respect Him. In Psalm 211, serve the Lord with fear, that’s reverence and respect, and rejoice with trembling. In other words, let joy abide in your soul, which means you have confidence in your Father’s provision. When you have reverence for God and respect for God, it will manufacture joy or happiness in your life. I’ll read the verse again. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Rejoicing comes from the reverence and the respect that you have for God the Father. In Psalm 86, all nations whom you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and they shall glorify your name, for you are great and you do wonderful deeds. You alone are God. Teach me your ways, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. That’s universal reverence by the believers across the world anywhere to respect God and reverence God. In 1 Kings 4.32, and he spoke 3,000 proverbs and his songs were 1,005. This is the majority of the proverbs written by Solomon. And he wrote many other proverbs, not just the ones included in the scriptures, but according to 1 Kings 4.32, he wrote over 3,000 proverbs and over 1,005 songs. And God blessed him with great wisdom, great supernatural insight. He was able to see things that other people didn’t see. And this was because God gave him great wisdom, great discernment. And Solomon recognized that the beginning of wisdom centered in the reverence and respect for the Lord. And he wrote in his Proverbs with the intent of giving a course of instruction and wisdom, which is the advantage that life has for you. It’s preparation for life, instruction for living life in the devil’s world. Here’s a principle. Without preparation, there’s no execution. without preparation. There’s no execution. That’s the principle you need to remember. So Solomon did not write every proverb. There were a few written by some other people that are in the book of Proverbs. But you have to remember this. By understanding the process of gaining wisdom, which is called divine viewpoint, Then we understand the foolishness of human viewpoint, human viewpoint that saturates the whole universe, the cosmic system, socially, politically, all kind of stuff, humanism, socialism, communism, progressivism. They’re all designed to reconstruct politics and change the way you think. And you should remember this, that Satan is in a war for your thoughts, even right now. As you face what appears to be an uphill battle, as you face your biggest fear, loss of everything you’ve ever owned, it’s all gone, burned up in the fire. Satan is in a war for your thoughts. Please read the book of Job. Go back and read through it. Ponder over what happened to Job and look what God did for him. You see, Satan will use empty words to try to deceive you. Ephesians 5, 6, let nobody deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, God’s wrath on the sons of disobedience will come. Empty words. And some people, you know, they give you empty words. They say, it’ll be okay. Don’t you worry. It happened to my grandmother. I mean, those are nice, thoughtful, kind things to say. But in times like this, you need doctrine. You need the Word of God. You need the promises of God that you can stand on. You need the gold that’s found in the treasure of the Word of God that you can cash in. It’s the only way you can maintain stability in your soul. It’s the only way you can keep a relaxed mental attitude in your soul. But Satan is not gonna give you that. He’s giving you empty words and persuasive words Paul said in Colossians 2.4, don’t let anyone deceive you with his persuasive, reasonable-sounding arguments because they’re false. 2 Peter 2.3, they’re lies. And in their greed and in their lust for power, they will exploit you with deceptive words, lies. And by giving you information like I’m telling you today, what I want to do and trying to do is to equip you with a bank of values. And it’s just something called wisdom, the greatest thing in the world, wisdom. It’s the gold of the Word of God. It gives you great treasure to have wisdom and to have discretion to make good decisions based on divine viewpoint. And anyone that lost everything they did in these fires around Shasta County is going to have to have wisdom and discretion in what they do in the future. And the only way that comes is from the Word of God, the humility to receive instruction. Nothing’s going to change. There will be no contentment in life if you can’t take instruction since there’s no consistency in learning. So you have to learn the word of God to know where you stand, what God expects out of you, what you can expect out of God. And it’s very important to attain wisdom, spiritual ammunition, to have knowledge, divine knowledge, divine viewpoint, understanding, discipline, prudence, all these things are yours and they’re all available to you from the Word of God. So, successful living requires accurate instruction. Without instruction, then our children, for example, I have four, our children are just wandering around in the devil’s world unprepared if they don’t have some instruction. I mean, they can be recruited by Satan’s lies, people waiting to deceive them with empty words, promising words that don’t mean anything. The wisdom that we’re talking about comes from instruction of the Word of God. And when you know the Word of God and you allow the Holy Spirit to control your life, then you can override the emotional fear, panic, ploy in your soul. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to be in a panic situation. As a Christian, this is a wonderful time. for you to evangelize your neighbor. It’s a wonderful time for you to come beside them and demonstrate to them your relaxed mental attitude, to demonstrate to them how you trust the Lord even in this disaster. 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, “‘Nothing’s overtaken you that’s not common to the world.'” There’ve been fires before, many fires before. And it says God will always provide a way out, 1 Corinthians 10, 13. The way out is simply the word trust. To trust your Father gives you a relaxed mental attitude. To have a divine viewpoint in the middle of this will give you great joy. Remember the verse, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. If God allowed this to happen in your life, there’s a reason. And that reason is so that you can demonstrate the stability of living in Jesus Christ. Disruptive crises can often cause an emotional override in your life. And when that happens, we kind of abandon the plan of God. You can’t afford to do that right now. In the game of life, you’re only gonna get one shot, that’s all, and you need all the information you can get. So with God’s grace provisions and your positive volition, nothing can distract you from trusting him, standing on his promises, having a relaxed mental attitude and letting the joy of Jesus Christ reside in your soul. You know what happens when you do that? Here it is, listen carefully, John 14, 27. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give it unto you, but it’s a different sort of peace, not the peace the world offers. The peace the world offers is the money in the bank, the security that you have. You know, well, okay, I lost it all. I got enough money to rebuild. Well, it may be true, but that’s not the peace we’re talking about here. Here we’re talking about the peace I give unto you, not like the world gives. Let not your hearts be troubled. Don’t be afraid. When you have the faith rest drill, when you operate under divine viewpoint, when you have the happiness of Jesus Christ in your life, then you have this peace, and you’re not afraid. This peace is what the Lord Jesus Christ offers, and it’s internal, it’s not external, it’s not something that people will see, but it’s internal. And it doesn’t infer that there’ll never be any turmoil or any conflict. It’s an internal mental attitude that leaves you free of worry, free of bitterness, free of anxiety, or any other mental attitude of sins. Remember that. The first thing required of the disciples was they had to have faith. They had to trust in what he was telling them. And the Holy Spirit would instill the confidence by comforting them in the Lord’s absence when he left directing them in their ministry that was to come but he told them that he was going to go away in john 14 15 but i want to send someone to be with you it’s called the holy spirit the advocate and this is with you also you have an advocate you have a defender you have a coach he’s the holy spirit he lives in you he will strengthen you he will sustain you He will give you insight if you allow him. But if you worry, if you get bitter, if you get angry, if you get mad, those are all mental attitude sins that will quench the Holy Spirit and grieve the Holy Spirit. So you can’t afford to do that. In Luke 24, 30 says, And they spoke with him. Jesus stood in the middle of them and said to them, Peace, calm down. Peace, calm down. They were terrified. They were frightened. And they thought they had seen a ghost. This is the resurrected Jesus Christ. And he showed them his hands and he showed them his feet and said, It’s me, boys. Calm down. Don’t be freaking out. That’s the thing you cannot afford to do because faith will obliterate any fear in your life and faith will replace it with peace and joy. Isn’t that amazing? The life of the mature believer is the greatest life the world offers since it’s founded on faith, grounded by a relaxed mental attitude and producing peace in a world of uncertainty, in a world of conflict, and in a world of crisis. You can have peace. John 14, verse 1, let not your hearts be troubled. If you believe in God… Believe also in me. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. If you have trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, he lives in you. He knows what you’re going through, and he will provide for you. I will not leave you comfortless, he said. I will come to you, and peace I will leave with you. Let not your hearts be troubled. Don’t be afraid. You know, basically, fear is you assuming a responsibility that’s not yours. Trust the Lord. Wait on Him. Focus on Him. And He will provide your needs. Thank you for listening. My prayer is with you. Until next time, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thanks for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
