Navigating life’s complexities can often seem daunting, but Rick Hughes provides remarkable insight into how biblical principles can serve as a guiding light. This episode unpacks the concept of personal and impersonal love as powerful tools for personal growth and spiritual fortitude. Through discussions about the unconditional love of God and the implications of suffering, Rick invites listeners to embrace these truths and apply them with faith and understanding. With this compelling study, find inspiration and motivation to align more closely with divine wisdom.
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. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stay with me. It won’t be long, only about 30 minutes. Motivation, inspiration, education… And we always do it without any type of manipulation because we’re not trying to con you. We’re not trying to solicit money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re just trying to give you some accurate information. Hopefully information that will help you verify as well as identify God’s unique plan for your life. If we can do that, then you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. It’s your life. You have to make your decisions. You’re only going to get one shot at it. And remember, bad decisions limit future options. The worst decision you could ever make in your entire life is to reject Christ as your personal Savior. Because you don’t leave God any alternative if you do that, you’d be forcing him to condemn you to the lake of fire. And that’s not what God intended. He didn’t intend you to go to the lake of fire. He sent his only beloved son to take your place on the cross and die for your sins and pay the penalty for your sins and for my sins. And so you have to make a decision. And that decision is, is Christ who he says he is? That’s the single greatest decision you could ever make, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So don’t ever forget that. This show will talk about a lot of information from the Bible, but primarily we want you to come to know Christ as your Savior and have a confidence that you have eternal life. So if you ever have a question about that, you can always go to our website, rickhughesministries.org. That’s rickhughesministries.org. Contact us through the website. We’ll be glad to send you some information, free books that we’ve written. That will clear these things up and help you to understand it in the most personal way that we can do. Okay? Well, thank you for listening. Thank you for giving me a few moments of your time. Today, if you are a first-time listener, please be aware of something. What I’m trying to do with a few shows recently is explain how we came up with the name FLOTLINE. F-L-O-T, FLOTLINE. It’s not FLIGHTLINE like an airplane, and it’s not FLATLINE like in the hospital with no heartbeat. FLOTLINE. And this name is actually a military term for what we call the forward line of troops, F-L-O-T. Now that flat line refers to ten fundamental biblical doctrines which are called problem-solving devices. And if you learn these ten problem-solving devices and use them, then you will find that adversity and circumstances don’t have to be controlling your thinking or your life. In the past few shows, I think we’ve done three so far, we’ve dealt with the first five problem-solving devices. We’ve dealt with the word rebound, which is the word for covering your sins, confessing your sins. Then when we all sin, we have a sin nature, we’re going to sin. If a man says he has no sin, he’s a liar, and the truth is not in him, the Bible says. And when we sin, we fail, we break fellowship with God. And the term that my pastor came up with years ago was rebound as a way to recover, like to bounce back. You recover from sin by confessing your sin to God. Therefore, 1 John 1, 9 tells us how to do that, confess our sin to God. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing. Anytime you sin, personal sins include mental attitude sins, sins of the tongue, even overt sins, you must rebound or else you’re going to let your sin nature control your life and you’re going to quench and grieve the Holy Spirit. So we covered rebound, we’ve covered the filling of the Holy Spirit and how that helps you overcome the energy of the flesh because you have a war going on inside of you. The Bible says the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit wars against the flesh. These are contrary one to the other, so there is a battle. And so the filling of the Holy Spirit helps you win that battle. Then we talked about the faith rest drill, how to stand on the promises of God, how to have a relaxed mental attitude, how to take it easy under those circumstances. Then we talked about grace orientation, and that’s orienting your life to God’s grace, but primarily his saving grace and then his living grace, even dying grace. and surpassing grace. And we talked about doctrinal orientation as a problem-solving device, or orienting your life to the Scriptures, the importance of the Word of God. So the scriptures tell us that our number one priority obviously is for us to love God. That’s always our number one priority, to love God. Deuteronomy chapter six verse five in the Old Testament says this, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. That’s a challenge for you as well as it was for them. Moses went on to tell us these words in Deuteronomy seven verse nine. Therefore know that the Lord your God, he is God. He is the faithful God who keeps the covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his mandates. That’s what the Bible says. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, Deuteronomy 6, 5, with all your soul. with all your strength, and if you love God, he will keep his word. If you keep his commandments, he’ll bless you for generations and generations. That’s the conditional. That verse guarantees us that God is faithful. Listen again. He is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his mandate. So we got two types of love. He loves you and he wants you to love him. But he also wants you to obey him, keep his mandates. And that verse guarantees you that God is faithful. He will do what he promises to do. But it does include the challenge for you to be faithful as well, to keep his mandates. So our love for God must be reciprocal. That means it goes both ways. 1 John 4, 19 says, we love him, that’s God, because he, that’s God, first loved us. So his love was demonstrated by sending his anointed son, our own Lord Jesus Christ, to pay for the sins of mankind. You know the verse as well as I do, John 3, 16. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. There is a demonstration of God’s love. God so loved the world. And of course, our job is to reciprocate that love, 1 John 4, 19. We love him because he first loved us. So God loves us and his only begotten son to pay for our sin. Now the question is, do you love God? I know you say you do, but we’re going to talk about that this morning. Do you love God? Personal love for God is a tremendous problem-solving device. This statement was made by Jesus. I’m about to read it to you. But the statement that I just read in John 3.16 was made by Jesus when he was speaking to Nicodemus, the Pharisee who approached him under the cover of darkness for fear of people finding out he was talking to Jesus. And he was trying to understand exactly who he was. John wrote these words. Listen to 1 John 4, 9, and 10. By this, the love of God, there it is, was manifested. In our case, that’s for you and me, because God has sent his unique son into the world in order that, or for the purpose that, through him we might live. By this, divine love exists, not because we have loved God, but because he loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. So the love started with God loving you, and it responds with you loving him. So here’s what’s amazing. Prior to you accepting Christ as your savior, God’s love for you was based on his total character, not yours. His character, not yours. You know as well as I know, and me included, we were jerks. We were just pitiful. And God loved us in spite of who we were, and he didn’t love us based on who we were. He loved us based on who he was. that’s impersonal it’s not it’s not our love it was his love this divine love that god had for us was impersonal it wasn’t based on who i was and what i was doing it was based on who he is and what he was doing so once you’ve made the decision to receive christ and hope you’ll do that then his love for you becomes personal because the righteousness of Christ is credited to your account. Listen to 2 Corinthians 5.21. For he made him who knew no sin, that’s Christ, to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. That’s the only way we can have any fellowship with God. We must have equal righteousness, and we’ll call that plus R. God has plus R. We have minus R. The Bible says there are none that are righteous, no, not one. So how could we ever have a relationship with God if he’s plus R and we’re minus R? Well, it’s through the Lord Jesus Christ. On the cross, he took our sins and when you come to the cross, he gives you his righteousness. So once you make the decision to believe in Christ and receive Christ as your savior, then you become family. And so listen to 1 John 3, 1. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God. That’s my question for you today. Are you a child of God? Have you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and received him as your Savior? It’s not going forward in the church. It’s not going backwards in the church. It’s not going up in the church, going down in the church. It’s faith alone in Christ alone. Listen to the Bible again. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should brag about it. The Lord Jesus Christ never gave a come forward invitation. The Lord Jesus Christ never asked anybody to jump through any hoops. He just said, believe in me. I’m the one that God sent. Do you believe that? And they did. The disciples believed it and followed him. So that’s the wonderful thing about it. You and I, when we accept Christ as our Savior, we become the children of God. Now it’s a different love. Now it’s not an impersonal love. It’s not God loving me based on the basis of who he is. Now he’s loving me based on the basis of who I am because I’m a member of the royal family of God. Now love is virtue-driven. So how can you love and trust somebody that you don’t even understand? That’s a good question. If you say you love God, do you understand God? Let me give you a few principles my pastor taught me years ago. God is limitless. He’s infinite, limitless. He’s eternal and he’s invisible. You probably know those things. You and I are finite and we’re temporal and we are visible. We’re not invisible, we’re visible. So the question is, how can our finite minds come to know the infinities of the eternal God who created us? How can we do that? And secondly, We claim to love God, but God is beyond comprehension in the function of our limited mentality. What do you think about God? What do you know about God? We as humans lack the cognitive ability to see and to talk with God face to face. We can’t do that. We can observe what he created, but we cannot see him. And in Romans 1.20, the Bible says, for since the creation of the world… His invisible attributes are clearly being seen. So I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to look around and say that something created this stuff, and that something is God the Father himself. So in Romans 1.20 again, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly being seen. and understood, seen and understood by the things that are made, that’s you and I, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that we, they, that would be you and I, are without excuse. Nobody ever has an excuse to say I didn’t have a chance to know God. Every human being on this planet has an opportunity to know God if he wants to. And if he wants to know God and wants to have a personal relationship with God, God will send a missionary or someone with the word to give him the gospel so that he can be invited into the family of God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive him as a savior. So there’s no excuses for anyone to say, well, I never had an opportunity to know God. Yes, you did. The invisible things of the creation of this world make it possible for you. So point three, God is infinite. God is eternal life. So God is unending and unchanging. His life is unending. and he never changes. And a significant part of God’s life is God’s love. And this love is part of the essence of being God. In Psalm 136, verse 26, give thanks to the God of heaven for his loyal love endures forever. I added that word forever. His loyal love endures. So God is not going to abandon you. God’s not going to forsake you. He loved you before you came to Christ and he will love you after you get in Christ. He loves you. There’s no doubt about that. He loved you and he made provision for you and he will provide for you, point four, because God’s love is perfect and absolute righteousness and integrity. So this means that his divine love can never be prejudice, his divine love can never be unfair, or in any way discriminatory at all. God loves all equally, every person equally. Every person on this planet, he loves them equally. Now point five, personal love for God the Father is the first adult problem-solving device. And it’s necessary to have this problem-solving device deployed on the flat line of your soul in order to pass providential preventative suffering. What is that? You remember Paul’s thorn in the flesh when he asked God to take it away and God said, no, I’m not gonna do it? Paul prayed three times for God to take it away and God said, my grace is sufficient. you are going to experience suffering in your life. You have to go through providential preventative suffering in order to grow, to break your arrogance, to get you to depend on the Lord. And so this is what’s important for you. Personal love for God the Father, it must be understood, and you must have it. And you must never turn on God because something bad happened in your life, and you thank God through you under the bus. God has never thrown you under the bus. He never would do that. You may walk away from him. He will not walk away from you. In 1 Peter 5, 10, the Bible says, but may the God of all grace, who called us to his eternal glory through Jesus Christ, After you have suffered for a while, perfect, establish, and strengthen, and settle you. After you’ve suffered for a while. That’s providential preventative suffering. We go through that. That’s what all Christians have to go through that to learn how to depend on the Lord. I mean, we live in the devil’s world. We’re going to go through suffering, which is a good thing. Not suffering for discipline. That’s a bad thing. But suffering for blessing. So point seven. Capacity for loving God the Father does not come from emotional streaks of gratitude. You know, it’s not you getting on a mountaintop and seeing the sun peak up over the valleys and saying, oh, I love God, look at this. This personal love for God comes from the mechanics of the spiritual life. It’s your capacity to love God based on your knowledge of God through the word rather than based on your emotions. Now you may get emotional about it, and that’s okay, but that’s not the strength of your love. The strength of your love comes from the word when you understand him. Because I’m telling you, you cannot love somebody you don’t understand. It’s impossible to do. So personal love for God is what motivates obedience and trust. So once you know and understand him, then you will trust him and you will appreciate him. In 1 John 5, 3, for this is the love of God that we keep his mandates, and his mandates are not a burden. Many individuals claim they love God, but they don’t understand God, nor do they obey God. Listen to Jeremiah 9, 24. Let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord exercising loving kindness and judgment and righteousness in the earth. These are the things I delight in, says the Lord. If you want a glory in something, he wants you to understand and know me. I’m telling you it’s possible for you not to understand the God you claim you know. That’s where you have to learn the scriptures. You have to learn the words. You have to understand who and what God is and who and what God does. So personal love for God is demonstrated by you then having another problem-solving device called impersonal love for other people. Because if you claim that you love God, but you hate some other people, you’re kidding yourself. That’s not true. Because the Bible says in 1 John 4 20, if someone says I love God, but he hates his brother, he’s a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? All the hatred in people’s hearts. Hatred because of their political leaning or hatred because of their family members or hatred whatever reason. You say you love God and you hate some race of individuals, you’re lying. God doesn’t hate anybody. And if you’re going to understand that, if you’re going to understand how God’s love works, you have to understand you’re not going to be hating anybody either. Christ died for everybody, including you and me, and we were jerks just like the rest of the world. So, personal love for God must be demonstrated by you and I having impersonal love for people that we normally might want to hate. This impersonal love is a problem-solving device. We call it problem-solving device number eight. Problem-solving device number seven was your personal love for God. So problem-solving device number eight is impersonal love for others. This particular problem-solving device gives you the ability to love even the weird, obnoxious jerk who’s your neighbor. Maybe he has some sort of OPD. You don’t know what an OPD is. It’s called an obnoxious personality disorder. And maybe you got a neighbor like that. And maybe there’s someone you work with like that. When you have personal love for God, you will have impersonal love for others. So how do you love a weird, obnoxious jerk? Well, you use the filling of the Holy Spirit. Problem-solving device number two. The Bible tells you the fruit of the Spirit is love. There it is right there, Galatians 5.22. And you will understand that Christ died for everyone that you and I despise. then we might be able to relax and not react every time that individual comes around. You have to understand that we can’t live like that. So listen to John 13, 34. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, uh-oh, just as I loved you, uh-oh, that you also love one another, And this is how people will know you’re my disciples, if you have love for one for another. So these are the words of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I loved you with impersonal love. He loved you before you loved him. That was his impersonal love for you. And then once you got saved, he loved you as a member of the royal family. So keep that in mind. You have personal love for God the Father. You must have that. And then you have impersonal love for other members of the planet Earth, people that you might not want to like. And this impersonal love that I’m talking of, listen to this, a new commandment, John 13, 34, a new mandate. This is not a request, it is an order. The moment that you react with anger, the moment you react with disgust towards anybody, you are sinning. And do not forget what a jerk you were before God saved you. So this impersonal love that we’re talking about is a love that’s based on your essence, on your character, on your fidelity, not theirs. You are loving them the same way that God loved you. He loved you based on his character, not yours. It’s not impossible to do. It’s very possible to do by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit. and by means of doctrinal orientation. So if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, you can exercise impersonal love towards even the most obnoxious person you know. That means you don’t get your hackles all up when they come around, you don’t start to vibrate when you see them. I mean, there are people that just may set you off if you look at them. If they do, you haven’t conquered this yet. You’ve got to understand this is an individual that Christ died for and you don’t have any excuse or any reason to hate him or to be disgusted every time you see him because your love must be based on your character, not their character. It’s a tremendous importance in the Bible placed on impersonal love throughout the whole scriptures. Listen to this, Ephesians 4.32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God and Christ forgave you. That’s impersonal love. Sometimes the toughest person to love may be your spouse. Maybe as a husband you get angry at your wife. Impersonal love gives you the ability to forgive others than lashing out in bitterness. You can forgive or you can get mad. One key thing about impersonal love is that you never have to fall into the bitterness trap. When a family member disappoints you, you just turn on impersonal love and you’ll be able to respond with forgiveness rather than to react with bitterness. So you’re gonna have to learn how to do that. That’s what mature Christian life does. So contentment and tranquility are the byproducts of this impersonal love. But remember this, in order for impersonal love to work, you must be filled with the Holy Spirit, problem-solving device number two, or else your frustrations will quickly return after you cool off. Does that help you understand how this works now? Personal love for God is your motivational virtue, and impersonal love is your functional virtue. These are two of the tremendous problem-solving devices found in the Scripture. I hope you’re understanding that, and I hope you’ll learn that, and I hope you’ll apply that into your life. Now these are seven and eight in the problem-solving devices, We still have to review the next two, which is sharing the happiness of God and occupation with Christ. And then we’ll have a complete understanding of why we call our show The Flat Line. If you’d like to have more information on this, please let me know. We’ve got a book available free of charge called Christian Problem Solving that explains all this in detail. I thank you for listening this morning. Thank you for dropping by to pay attention. And I hope you will apply this information into your life. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you 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.
