Join Rick Hughes in an intriguing discussion about how believers can effectively manage life’s challenges through understanding God’s unconditional love, practicing impersonal love towards others, and maintaining a humble disposition. Through insightful scripture references and practical advice, Rich Hughes emphasizes the significance of these virtues, encouraging believers to explore and deepen their faith by living in alignment with the divine principles outlined in the Bible.
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.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline Radio Show. F-L-O-T, FLOTLINE, stands for the Forward Line of Troops. It’s a military analogy to building a mainline of resistance in your soul so that you can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. That’s why my pastor used to always say adversity is inevitable, but stress is optional. Because adversity is what circumstances do to you, and stress, well, that’s what you do to yourself. So as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you don’t have to have stress. And that’s what this show is about, helping you to identify the plan of God for your life so you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. We’ve been on the air now for well over 20 years, producing the Flatline Radio Show. I’d like to thank you for letting me come into your home, into your automobile, wherever you may be, and thank God for his faithfulness in financing our efforts and what we do. He’s always faithful. He’s never let us down. He always supplies every need that we have. You know, we don’t charge you anything. We don’t ask you for anything. We just trust God to provide. What a great thrill it is to live like that, to live free from having to hustle up finances. God’s so wonderful to take care of us. We give him all the credit and all the glory. I want to talk to you this week about the Believer’s Code of Conduct. The Believer’s Code of Conduct. That’s about you and me and how we’re supposed to live our lives. Our code of conduct is essentially our mission statement in life. I don’t know if you ever thought about this, but if I were to ask you to sit down and write your mission statement for your life, a document said this is my mission statement, what would you say? You might even say what in the world is a mission statement? Well, it’s the summary of your aims and your values that determine your course of action. So your code of conduct is formulated by the core values in your spiritual life. Core values, C-O-R-E, your core values. Those core values are the summary of what you think. And those are the things that motivate you to be faithful and obedient to God’s plan for your life. Now, your core values must be enforced, first of all. Undoubtedly, number one core value in your life must be your personal love for God. Your personal love for God. That’s recognized in the problem-solving devices of the flat line of your soul as problem-solving device number seven. And by the way, if you don’t understand those 10 problem-solving devices, we have a book free of charge called Christian Problem Solving. If you’ll write to me from our website or call us at 800-831-0718, we’ll send you that book free of charge. But personal love for God is problem-solving device number seven in the flight line of your soul’s mentality. Listen to what John wrote in 1 John 4 20. If someone says I love God, is that you? Have you said that? I love God. And you hate your brother. The person that says I love God and hates his brother is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? There’s a tremendous inconsistency there. So there’s one thing we must understand in regards to loving God, is that there can be no prejudice in our life. Here’s a question for you. Do you claim that you love God but you hate certain races or certain individuals because of their political beliefs? We must remember the song that we sang when children, you remember this song? Red or yellow, black or white, they’re all precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. The dilemma we face is since we are not God and we’re not, then how are we supposed to love like God loves? That’s why you must understand problem-solid advice number eight, which is impersonal love for mankind. Those two loves, personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind, that’s a virtue package. One of them is motivational virtue, you do the right thing because you love God, and the other is functional virtue, that’s impersonal love for all mankind. So you have to learn those two things and what they mean in your life. Again, see the book on Christian Problem Solving. I will tell you this, God loves me and you in spite of our condition. in spite of what we look like. Maybe you can remember back when you first got saved. I can. I was 22 years old when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I had not been a very good boy. In Romans 3.10, the Bible says, there are none righteous, no, not one. On the contrary, you and I know that God is perfectly righteous. In Psalm 145 verse 17, the Lord is righteous in all of his ways, gracious in all of his works. So we’re not righteous and he is righteous. Righteousness is part of his character, part of his integrity. So how is it even possible that a holy, righteous God could love a jerk like me, an unholy, unrighteous individual? And you know, to our amazement, that’s exactly what happened. According to John 3.16, in case you forgot that verse, you shouldn’t have. God so loved, there it is, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him, there’s the word believe, we talked about that last week, whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life, everlasting life. This love that God has for all mankind is based on his righteousness, not ours. There’s nothing in us that merits the love of God. He loves us because of who he is, not because of who we are. Now once we become members of the royal family of God, it’s a different story. Once we believe in Christ, receive him as our savior, then we’re his children. But this is before you get saved, how can God love you? It’s impersonal love, and it’s based on his character, not ours, since there’s nothing we could ever do to earn any of the love of God. Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, you and I have that same ability to love, just like God did. If you’re a Christian, it tells us in the Bible that the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace, et cetera, but love. We have the same love available to us that God loved us with. And what is that? It’s based on our righteousness, not the unrighteousness of another individual or the righteousness of another individual. I mean, that person may be totally obnoxious to us. I mean, because after all, weren’t you and I, weren’t we obnoxious to God before the righteousness of Christ was imputed to us? In 2 Corinthians 5.21, listen, listen to the word righteousness. In 2 Corinthians 5.21, for he made him, that’s Christ, who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we may become the righteousness of God in him. See, on the cross, you’ve heard me say it before, it was a trade-out. He took my sin, your sin, and he gave me and you his righteousness so that now we can have fellowship with God because we have the same righteousness that God has. It’s not based on what we did or didn’t do. It’s based on what Christ did for us. So it’s evident, the number one core value of the Christian is to love God and to love as God loves. That must be your number one core value in your life. Your number one code of conduct is to love others as God would. Listen to this verse, Mark 12, 30 and 31. Jesus said, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first mandate. And the second, like it, is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. For there is personal love for God and impersonal love for your neighbor, even if he’s obnoxious. Even if he or she is someone you can’t stand, you’re supposed to love them. Based on what they are? No. Based on who you are. Based on your character, not theirs. I’ve had a few neighbors that it’s hard to love, I promise you. but they work at it mighty hard to make you not love them. But as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have the love of God available to us through the filling of the Holy Spirit, which means we can forgive them. We don’t hold a grudge against them. We don’t get our hackles up every time we see them. We’re totally relaxed around them, and we can pray for them and help them if we need to. So that’s what the verse says. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. So that’s the number one core value. If you had to write it down, this is your core value number one. Okay? Your mission statement, to love God and love my neighbor as I love myself. Number two, the second core value in your life must be obedience. Obedience. It means you have to obey God. Paul gave his charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6, 13 through 14. He said these words, I charge you before God, the one who gives life to all things in Christ Jesus, the one who testified before Pontius Pilate the good confession. And here’s what he charged him to do. Listen carefully. I charge you to keep the mandates without spot. and being irreproachable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the obedience that God is looking for you. He wants you to be obedient, to keep the mandates without spot. being irreproachable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t want you going on trial for doing something wrong. We don’t want God having to discipline you and put you under the divine punishment. Remember, warning discipline, intense discipline, even dying discipline. So we want you to have a wonderful, great, happy life by obeying God. Obedience is the key. Now, why would you obey God? Well, because you love him. The Bible says in 1 John 5, 3, this is the love of God, that we obey his mandates and they are not hard and they’re not burdensome, they’re not heavy. Why do you obey what the Bible says? Because you love God. You don’t want to disappoint God. You want God to see that you love him and you honor him by being obedient. Jesus said it in John 14, 23. Jesus answered and said to them, if anyone loves me, he’ll keep my word. Are you trustworthy? Are you faithful? Do you love him that much that he can trust you to obey him? One key thing for us to remember is the right thing must be done in a right way. Because it’s very easy for organized religion to mislead individuals by teaching half-truths. Only half of it. There’s a good example. Pray without ceasing, the Bible says, found in 1 Thessalonians 5, 16. As a member of God’s royal family, you must remember that effective prayer requires a filling of the Holy Spirit. Now let’s make an analogy. I’ve used this before. I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous, but I want to use it. So the pastor calls on Deacon A to get up and have a great prayer. he gets up in the pulpit, you know, before the offertory or before the special music and he offers this great prayer. It sounds so wonderful. Maybe he even read it, printed it out and read it. Oh God, we thank thee, oh Lord, for the way you love us and the way you provide for us and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He goes on sounding very theological. But at the same time, there’s Deacon B on the back row that he cannot stand. He hates this individual because of some business deal that went south and maybe he got shafted in the business deal. And so he has this hatred in his heart. You know, the Bible is very clear about this. That prayer is not gonna be answered, not even gonna be heard. Why? Because if you try to pray and you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, it’s not going anywhere. Romans 8, 26. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now he who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Praying to God is a right thing to do. But praying to God if you have unconfessed sin in your life is a wrong thing to do. A right thing in a wrong way is wrong. In Psalm 66 verse 18, the Bible says clearly, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So you have to remember that. If you pray and you have unconfessed sin in your life, the Holy Spirit is quenched and grieved and he can’t intercede for you. So before you begin any prayer, ask God to show you if there’s any sin in your life. Ask him to reveal it to you so you can name it and confess it. And that’s why rebound works. It says in Problem Solving Device number one, rebound technique, If we confess our sin, 1 John 1, 9, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And I know you say, I can’t remember every sin I did. No one can. But he said he would cleanse you from all unrighteousness, even the ones you don’t remember. So there you have it. It’s easy to be misled. It’s easy for the local church to tell you, you got to pray, brother, pray, brother, pray, brother, pray for this, pray for that. And people send out prayer requests. That prayer’s not going any higher than the ceiling if you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit. There’s another core value. We got obedience, we got love of God. How about this one? Trust. learning to live by trust, then that’s a key obedient in your life. That’s a key core value you must have. In Proverbs chapter three, verse five, trust in the Lord with all of your heart and don’t lean to your own understanding. And in all of your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your path. Trust in the Lord. The word trust is your word for faith and action. How can you trust God if you don’t have faith? That’s what faith is. Faith is you trusting God. As a believer, we honor our Lord Jesus Christ by trusting him. I trust that when he said I would never perish, that he would give me eternal life, he meant it. I trust him that he said if I’d confess my sin, he’d cleanse me, he meant it. God’s not a liar. We know that from 1 John chapter five. He’s not a liar. So what God said, you can book it. You can believe it. You can trust him. He’s never gonna let you down. That’s your faith in action. Do you feel completely confident and safe in God’s plan for your life? If you do, then you’ll express your confidence to God by using the faith rest drill, standing on the promises of God. That’s a core value for you. Trust. How do you use a faith rest drill? What are the mechanics of the faith rest drill? Again, if you don’t understand that, then you need our book on Christian problem solving. We’ll go through it. But it starts with you believing that when God makes a promise to you, he doesn’t back away from it. You have to believe God’s promises. Claiming promises is how we stabilize our emotions under adversity. Claiming promises is how we don’t let our emotions get in control and cause us to freak out. Listen to Psalm four, verse eight. This is David claiming a promise of God. I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for you, Lord, only make me dwell in safety. Do you have problems sleeping at night? Do you have fear, panic, ploy get into your life? Can you not relax, trust God? Do you not realize God is watching you, watching over you, that he’s assigned ministering angels to take care of you? So yes, Psalm 48 says you can relax. You can shut your eyes, you can lay down in peace and sleep, for the Lord only makes me dwell in safety. What a wonderful thing to believe that. That’s how the faith restaurant works. Listen, trust in the Lord with all of your heart, Proverbs 3, 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. That verse is so critical. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not to your own understanding. Now if you try to figure it out on your own, you’re going to be in trouble. You know, again, I talked last week about Moses and the Red Sea. When Moses came to the Red Sea, if he tried to figure out, now how am I going to build boats and get across that Red Sea? That was his understanding. But he had to trust in the Lord that God wouldn’t abandon him. God didn’t desert him. God said, go this way. They went that way, and there it is. If God sent me this way, God must be making a way to go through that thing. And he did. He parted the waters and they went through and came out safe on the other side. Not so for the Pharaoh and his army. That was the end of them. So trust in the Lord with all your heart. What a wonderful core value in your life. What a wonderful way to live, to live obedient and to be trusting because you love God. That’s fantastic. The battle for your thoughts is always part of the attack we face from the forces of evil in our life. And so we’re told to let this mind be in us that’s also in Christ Jesus, Philippians 2.5. Once we stabilize our emotions, Once we get into the faith function where we mix the promises of God with our faith, means we believe and trust God, then we can finally execute the plan of God since we’ve claimed and believed his word. But an arrogant individual, they will never be satisfied with the outcome since they believe they got a better plan. Reminds me of the joke about the guy that saw the fire coming out of the engine on the airplane wing and he got panicked and he got started praying. He said, Lord, if you just get me down on the ground, I’ll give you half of everything I own. And the plane leveled out and landed. Some preacher heard him. He came up and said, I heard what you said, brother. You said you could give God half everything you own if he got you down safe. You want to start now? And he said, no, I made a better deal. He said, you made a better deal? I said, sure did. I told him you can have it all if you ever got on another one. Well, that’s the wrong way to think. I’m sorry for the corny joke, but that’s the way people think. You can’t think like that. Once we stabilize our emotions, we have to move into the faith function where we mix the promises of God with our faith, believing God, trusting God, executing the plan of God. But the arrogant individual will never be satisfied with the outcome. James 1, 2, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that, knowing what? That the testing of your faith produces patience. Oh, what a great virtue. What a great core value for your life, patience. It’s something God wants you to have. You cannot afford to get ahead of God by being impetuous, and you cannot afford to fall behind God by being lazy. Some individuals have a problem with waiting on God. They want the answers now. They want the answers immediately. They want to call to pray. Tell me what to do. Learning God’s will and plan for your life requires patience. My pastor used to tell me years ago, just shut up and listen. You’ll learn it. You don’t have to know the answer right now. Be relaxed. Take it easy. Be patient. People won’t answer. I guess we fall into the fast food mentality in our spiritual life, so we want God to answer right now. Learning God’s willing plan for your life requires you to be patient, but that fast food mentality is bad for us. God will eventually show you what he wants you to do. But if you get impetuous and run ahead of God, you’re gonna waste time and waste years and you’re gonna do something stupid and dumb and wish you’d never done it. How do I know that? Because I’ve done that. I’ve been down that road. It doesn’t work. It’s wonderful to wait on God, to be patient, till he opens the doors and he shows you what he wants you to do. So patience is a core value. Ephesians 4.2, be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, there it is. Be patient, bearing one another in love. Once again, we find that this core value of patience is manifested by the filling of the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5.22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, patience, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness. That’s part of the filling of the Holy Spirit, patience. And this leads us to another core value which you must have in your life called humility. This simply is a mindset to orientation to authority. National humility is seen in 2 Chronicles 7.14. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin and heal their land. Humility, if my people that are called by thy name will humble themselves. Humility, it’s not you being humiliated. That’s not what we’re talking about. It’s submission to our Heavenly Father’s plan for your life. It’s the height of arrogance when you think you’ve got a better plan than God. When an individual rejects the mandates of scripture and justifies personal sin, and then the arrogance factor becomes self-deception leading to self-destruction. Proverbs 16, 18, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall, that’s arrogance. Arrogance will destroy you. Self-justification, self-deception, self-destruction. Many individuals who are listening today understand what I’m saying. Maybe you tried to find happiness in the details of life or followed the lust of the flesh only to discover it was all an illusion. The world can never give you what you’re seeking, which is fulfillment and purpose, but that’s available in God’s plan. In Proverbs 19, 21, many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. And it all starts when you humbly come before the Lord Jesus Christ and seek his forgiveness. In John 6, 37, all the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. So why don’t you make that decision today? Why don’t you make that eternal decision today that you’re going to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to receive him as your Savior? I promise you God is waiting to hear those words. Father, I believe Christ died for me. I’m willing to trust his work on the cross and receive him as my savior. Because you know what happens when you do that? There’s a new life designated just for you. In 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if any man’s in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away and all things become new. And that’s available for you. That’s your new life in Christ Jesus. So now, what are your core values? Patience, I hope so. Humility, I hope so. Trust, I hope so. Obedience, I hope so. Personal love for God, yes. Impersonal love for your neighbor, I hope so. That’s your code of conduct and essentially your mission statement in your life. I hope you’ve been listening today. I hope you’re learning. I hope this has challenged you. I’d love to hear from you if you’d like to. Get in touch with us through our website, rickhughesministries.org or call at 800-831-0718. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you so very much for listening to The Flatline.
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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.
