In a world rife with distractions, Rick Hughes encourages listeners to delve deeper into the biblical blueprint for a godly life. He emphasizes the need to adopt the mind of Christ and engage in the faith rest mechanics that Jesus himself utilized. With wisdom and clarity, Rick illustrates the importance of living self-controlled and uprightly, devoid of worldly enticements. Listen in as Rick discusses the characteristics of a godly person, examines the spiritual battle against the cosmic system, and provides timeless wisdom on the power of invisible impact through devout faith and conviction.
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 Flotline. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few minutes you have an invitation to join in. Stick around. Listen to me. 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education and we’ll do this without any type of manipulation. We’re not trying to con you into doing anything. We’re not asking you to join up, fess it up, give it up. Nothing like that. We don’t need your money. Well I don’t mean that. I mean we’re not hustling money is what I’m trying to say. We’re not trying to get anybody to contribute. We’re just trying to teach the Word of God accurately, hopefully so you can identify and verify God’s plan and then orient and adjust to the plan. If it’s the first time you’ve ever heard the FLOT line, FLOT stands for Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T, and that’s a military acronym which means that inside the Christian’s life, he can develop a main line of resistance, a main line of resistance that will stop the outside sources of adversity before they become the inside sources of stress. That’s why we always say adversity is inevitable and stress is optional. If you learn the protocol plan of God, you can have the most amazing life, a life full of pleasure and happiness as the Lord Jesus Christ promised it, I give you my joy, he told the disciples. He said happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s word and keep it, and that’s a promise. And you can avoid worry and guilt and fear and anger and bitterness. You don’t have to live that way. Those are all indicative of emotional sins in the believer’s life. And so there’s a new way to live. And that’s the living the protocol plan of God, understanding the problem-solving devices, the ten unique problem-solving devices of the flotline that make up the forward line of troops in your soul. If you’ve never gotten hold of the book on that, we have a book called Christian Problem Solving that is free, no charge ever. Just contact us, and we’ll ship you one right out immediately. You can go to our website, rickhughesministries.org, and you can get the book from there if you’d like to have it. This is about the fifth show in the series on practical principles for people with principle, principled people, people that live by principles in their life. And last week we began to talk about pivot membership. Pivot, that’s the core group of believers that God uses to sustain a nation, just much like in Gideon’s day when God used 300 people. well-qualified soldiers to sustain the Jewish nation. God’s always looking for those well-qualified people. And pivot membership, we use the verse from Titus 2, 11 through 13 that says, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people. And then it goes on to say, as Paul wrote it, it trains us to reject godless ways, to reject worldly desires, and and to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age as we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we begin to break this down. If you would like to be one of those people, that God can count on. I’m going to use the term godly person. I don’t know if you consider yourself godly. We’re going to study it here in a minute. But that’s what our Father is looking for, godly people, people who in this nation can sustain the pivot. And that doesn’t mean that you… are good with a firearm, that means that you are good with the Word of God, that you are the invisible pivot having a historical impact on the nation. That’s what you’re supposed to do. And as goes your spiritual life, so goes the history of this nation. And so in this passage, Paul says we must reject godless ways. Reject godless ways. The Greek word, I’ll go into the Greek on these so you can see it, is the Greek word asabaya. Asabaya. And it means ways that have no respect for the laws of God. You must reject that. The laws of God are clear. Romans 13, 1 tells you about that. And that’s a very interesting passage because it says there is no leader that’s there that God hasn’t allowed to be there. So if you are mad at the president, last president or this president, you have to be mad with God because God put him there. Romans 13, 1, 2, 3 will tell you that. They didn’t put their themselves there, and God could at any time take them out. He allowed them to be there for a reason. And so godless ways are people that don’t respect God’s laws, like Romans 1, the last few verses of Romans 1 about God. People that don’t respect God’s laws and establishment concepts of the way life carries on through marriage. And so you have to be aware of that. It’s the same word used in Romans 118. It’s the passage we’re well aware of. It says, those who hold the truth of God in unrighteousness. And then remember, remember what the Bible says, God will not be mocked. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans in the USA today mocking God, trying to attribute things to God that he doesn’t approve of, that he doesn’t agree with. Some of the most absurd, insane things you could ever believe. And yet you read the news, you see the same things I do. Godless ways, reject them, stay away from them. And then worldly desires is the next passage. We are to reject godless ways and worldly desires. Cosmikos, the desires of the cosmikos, the cosmic system of Satan. We live in the devil’s world. It’s the cosmic system. And the desires, epithumia, the Greek word epithumia, so we have cosmikos, epithumia. The desires are the craving or the uncontrollable lust of the sin nature. The result of lust in the sin nature, if you don’t control it, is it builds up scar tissue and your conscience begins to be seared with a hot iron or you’re branded in your conscience, 1 Timothy 4.2. And katoriazo is the Greek word to be seared, much like it means to cauterize or to put a brand on a cow, for example. Bar T.J. And so you hold the little cow down and you press the hot brand in iron. He carries that brand all his life. Sin will brand you. Godless ways will brand you. And it will cause you to carry this scar all your life. You must avoid the worldly desires. And, you know, there are three enemies we have, the world, the flesh, and the devil. And here we’re talking about the desires of the world, what the world throws at you. You know, the cosmic system tells you if you want to be happy, win the lottery. Well, that’s a joke. I mean, everybody wants to have money, sure, but Winning the lottery won’t make you happy. There’s too many cases of people that won the lottery that are not happy. And, you know, happiness is not related to people or circumstances. That’s not where happiness is found. But that’s not what the world tells you. What the world will show you is a mirage, like in the desert. You’ll see it. It looks like it’s a beautiful, nice, wonderful place, and you’ll get there, and you’ll be an Operation Boomerang. You’ll go, oh, no, this is not what I expected. And so Solomon talks a lot about that. He said, I tried everything under the world, and it brought me no happiness. And then Paul went on to say, on the contrary, we are to live how? Self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age. We are to live self-controlled, sophronos is the Greek word, self-controlled, sophronos. That sophronos word means we must learn how to restrain our passions and our desires. Thus we acquire the mind of Christ or we think like he thought. Philippians 2.5, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. That means that we are to be free of intoxicants that rob us of clear thinking. We are not to allow our emotions to overrule us. Emotions are intoxicating and intoxicating. eliminating clear thinking in your life. So we are to stay away from emotional decisions. We are to restrain from letting the sin nature control our life. And this starts with just training your children when they’re young at home and teaching them respect for authorities where it starts. Keeping watch over our lives and not sleeping while we’re on duty. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5, 6, let us not sleep as others sleep, but watch and be sober. So if we’re going to live self-controlled, we must keep control over our life. We can’t allow our lives to be sucked into the cosmic system looking for happiness and the details of life. This is you assigning responsibility. You have to take the responsibility yourself. And one of the most damaging thing is to assign responsibility to immature individuals who have no self-control. Those sort of people are dangerous people since they can be enticed to disregard the protocol plan of God and endanger all people that are associated with them. For example, a few traits of no self-control. A few traits of no self-control is 1. A self-centered individual.
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A nosy individual.
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A messy individual.
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An impatient individual. and five, an explosive individual. So Titus 2.12 said we are to have self-control, live uprightly, and have godly lives. Uprightly is the word dikaios, dikaios. And it means we’re to live equitably in a fair and impartial manner, never taking sides, not judging, not predetermining guilt on your part. And I think I went over a lot of this with you last week. I know it’s review, but let’s move on. Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 2.10, this is what Paul talks about, living equitably and fair and impartial manner. He said in 1 Thessalonians 2.12, You are witnesses in God also how devoutly, justly, and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you. I told you I would look up those words, and I did. Devoutly, hosios. It’s a descriptive adverb of Paul’s lifestyle of holiness. He was not addicted to sin nature control, and his life was devoted to his mission without any distractions. His life was a picture of fidelity and spiritual commitment, and he was not self-righteous. He was set aside by God for a certain job. So you are my witnesses how I lived, Paul said, when we’re talking about this concept in Titus 2.12 of being upright, being fair and impartial. Paul said, you’re my witnesses of how devoutly I live my life, how justly and blamelessly. Justly as to chaos, I was living up to God’s standards. I didn’t judge people. The Bible tells us not to do that, not to judge others lest we be judged. And how blamelessly, amentos, how I live my life with no cause for censure is the Greek word. There’s no skeletons in Paul’s closet. He stood up to the critics of scrutiny in his life. So 2.12 goes on to say that we are to live godly lives. We are to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives, with interjecting what Paul said about himself there I just gave you. Godly lives. You save us. You save us. What does it mean, godly lives? In Psalm 116, verse 15, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of godly ones. So we get into what we want to cover today. What is a godly person? And do you consider yourself to be a godly person? In 2 Corinthians 7.10, the Bible says, for godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation. I need to take exception with that. Godly sorrow. There’s really no such thing as godly sorrow. There is sorrow, the word lupe, or grief or feeling of remorse or guilt or sin. But godly sorrow, using the word God to deal with this, is saying that you must feel sorry for your sins in order to be saved. And that’s a question you have to answer. Because your personal sins are not what condemns you to the lake of fire to start with. It wasn’t your personal sins. It wasn’t that you fornicated. It wasn’t that you stole something. It wasn’t that you lied. Your personal sins are not what condemn you. It’s your position in Adam that condemns you. As the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15, 22, as in Adam, all die, but in Christ, all are made alive. So God’s solution does not require sorrow, godly sorrow. There are two Greek words for feeling sorry or repenting. It’s metamelomai or metanoia, or the verb metanoeo. So we have metamelomai, metanoia, metanoeo, all translated in the Bible, repent. Metamelemi is an emotional sorrow. And this is exactly what Judas did when he went out and hung himself. He was sorry that he betrayed the Lord. But he didn’t change his mind. He just had emotional sorrow. Peter, on the other hand, who denied the Lord, confessed his sin, rebounded, problem-solving device number one, metanoia is the word, and he got back in fellowship. So a person who is godly is not a person who doesn’t commit sins. We all sin because we have a sin nature. You’ve got one and I’ve got one. But a godly person is a reproduction of Christ Jesus. He’s acquiring the mind of Christ and representing Jesus Christ to all that he walks with, talks with, and spends time with. He reproduces Christ. They see Christ in him. This says the disciples saw the Father and the Son. We see the Son in us. So this is all based on the filling of the Holy Spirit and the motivation of virtue love or personal love for God. If you love me, you will obey me, the Bible says, and my mandates are not hard. So here we are, godly people. What is a godly person? Well, listen to 2 Timothy 1.13. Hold fast, that’s positive volition, not negative volition, positive volition. Hold fast the form of sound words or doctrines which you’ve heard from me. In faith, that’s the faithless drill, and in love, that’s virtue love, which is in Christ Jesus. So what does that mean? Hold fast the form of sound doctrinal words you’ve heard from me in faith and in love, which is in Christ Jesus. One, a godly person stands firm and does not drift away from sound doctrine. It’s very easy to do in the cosmic system. It’s very easy to be recruited away You might not even know you’re being recruited. And one of the worst ways that it takes place or happens It’s when men of God who are called by God and saved and in the ministry begin to teach something that’s not true, something that’s deviating from what they’ve learned. They learned the truth from their mentor, but they came up with a better idea. And since they have friends, friends, they lure their friends to go along with them. And their friends believe in them. Their friends trust them. Their friends don’t think they would ever lie to them, their friends have complete confidence in them, and they go with it. And they leave the doctrine they learned originally and go for a changed doctrine. They drifted away from sound doctrine, but they would say, well, no, we’ve got a better doctrine now. We don’t believe that way. We believe this way. We changed our mind. Well, that happens a lot. I’ve seen it in my lifetime happen a lot, and it’s shocking when it happens. It happens with men who have independent churches that do a lot of studying and a lot of teaching. The next thing you know they develop some new concept or some new way of thinking and off they go. So a godly person, point two, understands faith rest mechanics. This is exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ used in Matthew 4, 1 through 4. He quoted scripture when he was tempted by the devil and this is the faith rest drill. And a godly person, point three, is motivated by virtue love. And that’s personal love for God. If you love me, you will obey me and my mandates are not grievous, 1 John 5, 3. Personal love for God is the greatest motivational virtue any of us possess. And the Bible says in 1 John, we love him because he, God, first loved us. It’s called reciprocal love motivation. When we have that kind of love motivation, then we can love our neighbor as we love ourselves with impersonal love, which is another problem-solving device. So a godly person stands firm, does not drift from sound doctrine. A godly person understands the faith rest mechanics and uses them. A godly person is motivated by virtue love, personal love for God. A godly person, point four, is not a self-righteous legalist who thinks he’s impressing God with his lifestyle. Like the man in Luke 18, 9 through 14, who said, I thank you, God, I’m not like this sinner over here. And he went on to produce all of his good works to God. He said, I tithe, and I do this, and I fast, and I do that. And he thought he was earning his way to heaven. And the other one, the illustration the Lord Jesus Christ gave was he just beat on his chest and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. A godly person knows he’s a sinner. He’s not self-righteous. He’s not a legalist who thinks that he’s impressing God because he doesn’t smoke or doesn’t drink or because he tithes faithfully or because he hasn’t missed Sunday school in 23 years. I mean, I’m glad that you do all them things. all those things. But that’s not what impresses God. What impresses God is when you assume the character of Christ, when you assume the mindset of Christ, when you stay filled with the Spirit, when you operate under His Word, and when you represent Jesus Christ to your friends, family, and whatever you’re in contact with. So a godly person, point five, is not somebody who acts holy. goes around uttering spiritual phrases to everyone, God willing, God bless you, brother, God might. You hear that all the time, and you think, this must really be a godly person. Listen to how he talks. You can’t tell what a godly person is. You can look at someone, and I used to think I would run across these people from England, and they spoke like this, and they had the English accent, and I thought, man, these are godly people. They would pray to the master. And I thought, ooh, listen to how they sound. They just sound so holy. You can’t tell what a person is by the way he talks, by the way he walks. You can only tell by what he thinks. And that’s where the Bible says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. How can you tell what he thinks? As soon as he opens his mouth and begins to talk about the doctrine he believes. Does he believe in faith alone in Christ alone or does he believe in faith plus being baptized or faith plus giving up peanut butter or faith plus not driving your car on Saturday? What’s he believe? So one trait of godliness, for sure, is an impact that you have on your family, on your school, and on your nation. The invisible historical impact from you who are the spiritual quiet professional. That’s what you have to be, a spiritual quiet professional. That’s what God expects out of you. 2 Timothy 3.12, now in fact all who want to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Uh-oh. There it is. You will be persecuted for what you believe. You will be persecuted for how you live your life. You will be persecuted if you try to stick your nose in everybody else’s business and change the way they think. It’s not your job to change the way the government runs. Christians are not to get so involved in politics that they begin to condemn the unbeliever. Stay out of that. I know what the unbelievers are doing. I know which way this government is going. I know what this nation is facing. I’ve been telling you there’s a train wreck coming. I can hear the whistle blowing. I can see the progressive ideology of the Democratic Party today and what they want as compared to the conservative ideology of the Republican Party and what they’d like to see. I can see all of that. And you can too. And you can make your own mind up which way you want to go. But like Joshua said, as for me and my house, we’re going to stick with the Lord. And we’re going to be persecuted. We’re going to be slandered. We’re going to be maligned. We’re going to be called all sorts of weird names and even taken to court and sued because we don’t want to associate with some sinful trait or sinful deed. You would not believe what’s going on behind the scenes in the Christian world. The attack on ministers is unbelievable in this country and it’s only going to get worse. So what should I do about it? Well, 2 Timothy 2, 3 says, take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. What does that mean? Shut up and show up and fake it till you make it. Just don’t worry about it. The Supreme Court of Heaven is open 24 hours a day. and he is perfectly able to handle any complaints, any fair, unjust treatment that we give. Colossians is clear about this, but before we do, let me give you one final warning. The perfunctory believer… The believer who acts or his gestures are carried out with minimum effort, the perfunctory believer, he’s never going to reach godly status because he won’t put in the time. He’s not willing to study. You know, the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. He’s not willing to do that. And if he does, he thinks he’s smarter than the pastor. And then secondly, the Bible says, grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s a mandate. That’s not a request. And thirdly, the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You can’t do that if you have minimum effort, if you just put a little bit into it. If you’re perfectly content, if your Christian life is, okay, I’m happy I went to church Sunday morning and maybe even Sunday night I gave up a football game to go to church. That doesn’t make you godly. You’re probably not even close to being godly. A godly person is a person who is faithful to rebound, confess his sin. He’s faithful to stay filled with the Spirit. He’s faithful to use faithless drill. He’s faithful to grow and advance in the Word of God. If his pastor’s not teaching it, he will find somebody that’s teaching it. I know God is out there, and if you’re hungry for truth, you may be listening to me, and you’re saying, where can I get truth? Where can I get it? Just write to me. I’ll give you the name of a lot of great pastors, and you can call them. You can get their tapes, their DVDs, free of charge, no money ever asked. There are some wonderful pastors teaching the Word of God, but you can’t be less than 100% committed and expect to ever be a godly person. You’re not godly just because you don’t smoke or because you utter godly phrases. You’re godly because of what you think. As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. The real you. That’s what godliness is. And that’s what God is looking for. He is looking for those of you who are willing to make a historical, invisible impact on this nation. Ones that I call the spiritual quiet professionals. That’s what we’re looking for. And I know some of you are listening, and you are that sort of individual. You are a spiritual, quiet professional. I hope you’ll continue to grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I hope you’ll… take advantage of the material that we offer, and I hope you’ll take advantage of the contacts that we have. So on your own, if you have to, you can sit around with a cup of coffee and a Bible and a notebook and study every day, which is exactly what I do. I hope you’re listening. Hope you’re paying close attention. The history of this nation depends on your thoughts, your actions and your deeds. Whether or not we survive another 20 years is going to depend on you. As goes your spiritual life, so goes the history of this country. It’s too late. It’s about gone. You must step up. You must put on the mantle of godliness and be the man or the woman that God can count on. I hope you’re listening. Please come back next week, same time, same channel, and let me know if they don’t play the show. Let me know immediately. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flock Line.
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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.
