SPEAKER 02 : 0:08

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 01 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to The Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, I’d like to give you a cordial invitation to stick around, listen up to the things that we have to say. I want to remind you that God has given you two ends today. One of those ends you sit with and one of those ends you’re thinking with. And your success and your life depends on which one of them you use. You know, like heads you win, tails you lose. I don’t know how your life goes, but if you find yourself committing the same mistakes over and over and over again, you get frustrated with yourself because you want to change, but you can’t change. You can’t do what you want to do. You do what you don’t want to do. That sounds like the Apostle Paul. Romans 7, he talks about it. He said, I don’t understand myself at all because I want to do what’s right and I keep doing what’s wrong. And then he said, it’s evident that it’s sin in me that causes this. When we talk about soul renovation and actions renovating, we have to understand if we’re going to change the way we do things, we must change the way we think. That’s why God gave you a brain. God gave you a thought so you can think in terms of rational reasoning in your life. And the Bible does tell us in 2 Peter 3, 18, we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s in your brain. You’re supposed to come to understand, to know, to comprehend, to realize, conceptualize exactly what God’s plan is for your life. But nobody ever grew by singing some song, that’s for sure. It comes by only one way, 2 Timothy 2.15. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, but rightly dividing the word of truth. So if you ever want to grow, if you ever want to have any hope of changing the destructive patterns in your life and the failures that you frustrate yourself with, then it only comes through spiritual growth in your life. And that’s what the Flatline is about, growing spiritually. On the Flatline, we teach 10 unique problem-solving devices called the 10 Problem-Solving Devices. The Flatline of your soul are these invisible assets that help you stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. Two of the most important doctrines you could ever learn or even understand in those 10 problem-solving devices are doctrinal orientation and grace orientation. You must learn to orient your life to what the Word of God says, divine viewpoint thinking, that’s doctrinal orientation. And you must learn to operate under the concept of grace, that’s grace orientation. Our Lord’s disciples had to learn that their future ministries would be funded by grace. And he had a wonderful way of teaching them. Remember, there were several of them were commercial anglers. And they depended on their catch to make a living. That’s how they made money to feed their families. They got paid for catching fish. and selling them, but they did not get paid for being fishers of men. They didn’t get a paycheck for that. So they had to learn to depend on God’s grace provisions. And this is exactly the same concept for you and I. We must learn to depend on God’s grace provision. Listen to Luke 9, 1 through 5. And he, that’s Jesus, called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons to heal diseases. This was sort of like a credit card representing who they were and who they were identified with. And he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing, again, identification. And he said to them, here it is, take nothing for your journey, neither a staff, nor a bag, nor bread, nor money. and do not even have two tunics apiece. So whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city. And for those who do not receive you as you go out from that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. Now, they were to preach the kingdom of God. They were to heal the sick as a sign of their authority from Jesus. The healings that they demonstrated, that they did, demonstrated the power in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, thus showing that he was indeed the real true Messiah and could bring in the kingdom of God. So they were forced to depend on the goodwill offerings of those who responded to their message, the message about Jesus of Nazareth being the true Messiah. I mentioned in last week’s message on giving that there’s no place for manipulation or finances in the ministry. A couple of weeks ago, I think I talked about giving gimmicks or grace. So there’s no place for manipulating people about money. Gimmicks that produce income are a disgrace to God’s grace provisions. Sometimes I’ll hear people say, for a gift of such and such, I’ll be glad to send you absolutely free. I’m not like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I remember going to listen to a revival one time, and the preacher was selling his sermons online. in the foyer and the music leader was selling his songs in the foyer. And I’m thinking, what in the world are we doing here? If we’re in the ministry, we don’t take offerings. We don’t solicit funds. We let the Lord handle that detail. And so whenever you have to use a gimmick, sell a t-shirt, sell a music video, sell a sermon, You’re not depending on grace. You’re trying to raise money to finance your ministry. And people justify this saying, well, you know, it’s okay to do. And I say, no, never mention money, never raise money, never solicit money. Don’t do that if you’re in the ministry. Grace orientation starts with salvation by grace. That’s where it starts. We are saved by grace. Listen to Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9. For by grace you’ve been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It’s the gift of God, and not as a result of your works, so that no one can brag about it. No one can boast. So none of us can approbate God into giving us eternal life. None of us can say, well, you know, God, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t chew, I don’t run around with those that do, so I deserve to come to heaven. It’s God’s logistical grace. He gives us grace, grace in salvation. Grace is a free undeserved gift. That’s why the Bible says, he who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God through him. That’s the good news. Jesus Christ, the anointed son of God redeemed me out of the slave market of sin. He paid my debt to God, and now I’m free from the penalty of death, and I’m free from the power of sin. When I accepted Christ as my Savior, I accepted the offering he made on my behalf, free, a gift from God, compliments of God. Titus 3, 5 through 7, not by works of righteousness which we’ve done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. So now I’m a Christian. Now I’m in God’s royal family. Now I’m depending on God to supply my needs, and it’s called logistical grace. Logistics, what I need to get by every day. Logistical grace provisions for God’s children is guaranteed as long as we’re in the devil’s world. He promises that. And he promises that for you and for me as well. Logistical grace is defined as divine planning, divine support, divine provision, divine blessing for the execution of the protocol plan of God. by the royal family so we can fulfill god’s will god’s purpose and god’s plan for our life so he will give you what you need to fulfill that plan your objective is to grow daily redeem the time the bible says you only have so many days you can’t afford to waste them And if you’re going to glorify God to the maximum, you must redeem the time by studying to show yourself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. It would be pitiful to show up in heaven and have the Father say, you blew every opportunity you had to glorify me because you were so self-centered. that you were so busy you wouldn’t take time to learn the plan. God’s plan is called protocol. The plan demands that a right thing be done in a right way. That’s why you’ve heard me say before, you can do a right thing in a wrong way and it does not glorify God at all. Right thing must be done in a right way. And I’ve always said by example, it’s never wrong to pray. But there is a right way to pray and a wrong way to pray, and therefore the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. There’s a right way to go to church and a wrong way to go to church. The wrong way is to go to church with unconfessed sin in your life, having quenched the Holy Spirit, thus grieving the Holy Spirit, and he’s not able to do his job. He’s not able to take the information the pastor gives you and help you to process that information. So it is the support God gives you, logistical grace. It’s defined as, I’m gonna say it one more time, divine planning, divine support, divine provision, divine blessing, so you can execute the protocol plan of God in your life. God’s will, God’s purpose, and God’s plan for your life. You know, logistics is a military term and refers to a science in the military, a science of supply, provision, and planning when you have troop movement. It’s the provision and the movement and the maintenance of all resources, all services necessary to sustain military forces while they’re in the field. They’ve got to have logistics. It’s not just soldiers going over there to fight or Whatever, it’s logistics back home. It’s people making sure the soldiers are fed. It’s people making sure the equipment works. It’s people making sure the bullets are there. It’s people making sure the fuel is there. Logistics making sure the food is there. That’s all logistics. So life support is provided for you and me, for every one of us believers in this church age. This explains to me, and hopefully to you, how and why we are alive every moment. The only reason that you and I are still alive is because of God’s logistical grace. We don’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, and there’s nothing we can work for to do it and keep ourselves alive. It’s all grace. And all of this logistical grace support, where does it come from? It comes from the justice of God. And what’s it going to? Well, God sends that support to his righteousness in us. The perfect righteousness of God in you. Listen again now. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we may be made the righteousness of God by means of him. When God sends that logistical grace blessing, he’s sending it to his righteousness in you through Christ, which means you can’t bargain with God to get it. You can’t bargain with God for anything. God blesses his absolute righteousness standards in your life that were imputed to you through Jesus Christ. Just like God is absolutely righteous and perfect in righteousness, in standing you have absolute righteousness too. Not in your experience because you still have a sin nature. But that’s God’s logistical grace support coming to the perfect righteousness of God in you. All those grace provisions come from God’s integrity. And it’s even for Christians who fail to execute the Christian life. You know, Christians who wind up backslidden and in reversionism. God still keeps them alive. God still provides for them. Grace, that’s a wonderful policy. It’s for the execution of the Christian life in this church age. You know, even in the Old Testament, logistical grace functioned. God provided. David gave a testimony of old age to logistical grace. This is what he said about God’s logistics in Psalm 37, 25. I was young, but now I’m old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken. That means logistical grace given to the imputed righteousness. He said, I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken, nor have I seen his seed begging for bread. What does that mean? It means that logistical grace blessing to you can extend even to your family, to your grandchildren, to your children, even to the third generation, I think the Bible teaches. So God’s logistics to you can be a blessing by association. My cup overfloweth, David said. Truly, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. The testimony of the shepherd is found in Psalm 23, one through six, or Psalm 23rd Psalm. You know it already. The Lord is the one who shepherds me. That’s logistical grace. Therefore, I cannot lack for anything. He supplies every need I have. He causes me to lie down in green pastures of choice food. That’s life support. He leads me to waters of refreshment. Again, life support. He restores my soul. That’s when I rebound and confess my sin. He guides me in paths of righteousness. In other words, he gives me those problem-solving devices because of his reputation. Also, when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that’s dying grace, which we will all come to, I will fear no evil because you’re with me. Your rod, that’s the divine discipline of God, and your staff, that’s the divine deliverance of God, they comfort me. You have prepared before me a table in the presence of my enemies. That’s God’s logistical grace. You’ve anointed my head with oil, that’s promotion from God. My cup, that’s the escrow blessings that God gives him, is overflowing. Only the good, that’s the prosperity of escrow blessings, and the grace, that’s logistical grace, will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Now, I gave you a lot there. I know you didn’t get it all. Let us go through it one more time. The Lord is the one who shepherds me. Therefore, I cannot lack for anything. He gives me all of my logistical grace needs. He gives me my food. He gives me my water. He protects me in living. He protects me in dying. His rod is over me. He promotes me. And as a mature believer, my cup overflows to those in my periphery. Testimony of Paul in logistical grace is found here in Philippians 4.19. Here it is. My God shall supply all of your needs. That’s logistical grace support. According to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Here’s the principle. God will never run out of riches to support you. Riches, in that passage, refers to God’s virtuous actions towards you. My God shall supply all of your needs according to his riches, his virtue in Christ Jesus. That’s where it comes from. Well, if you’re not in Christ Jesus, good luck. You’re the disadvantaged one. I mean, you don’t have God providing for you. You’re trying to provide for yourself and you will beat your brains out in the devil’s world as he laughs at you as you truck on down the my way highway. The testimony from our Lord is addressed to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, when Paul was frustrated over some suffering that he was going through. He had a thorn in the flesh, and he kept praying for God to remove it. By the way, that thorn in the flesh was people testing, people testing. And so here’s the answer from God once he prayed for that to be removed. God said, and quoting now, 2 Corinthians 12, 9, then he assured me, that’s God speaking to Paul, my grace, that’s logistical grace provision, has been and still is sufficient for you. For the power is achieved with weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that the power of Christ may reside on me. So the weaker I am, the more power grace gives me. And that’s what Paul is saying. I’ll boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest on me. No believer, not me, not you, not anyone, no pastor can live on this earth apart from having logistical grace support. It’s so important grace orientation is a problem-solving device. Listen to logistical grace here. Hebrews 2.14, that through death he might render powerless the one who has power of death, that’s the devil, and might deliver those who through the fear of death were subject to slavery all of their lives. One of the greatest enslavements in this world is the fear of death. Logistical grace delivers us from that. We have logistical grace support and it renders powerless the threats of Satan. In Psalm 68, 19 through 20, blessed be the God who daily bears our burdens for us. That’s logistical grace support. The God who’s our deliverance. The God who is to us a God of deliverance. And to God belongs the escape from death. that’s logistical grace support and time and then we come to the point when we will check out of here it’s going to happen sooner or later hopefully later but you’re going to have to check out you’re going to have to transfer into the face-to-face realm with your father so Dying grace is another phrase of grace orientation. Dying grace. We have an eschatology that looks forward to dying and death because we know that God has provided dying grace For those who go through that door, the door of hope, I call it, confident expectation, you and I must have a personal sense of destiny about the future. And we’ve learned that God decides the time, the manner, and the place of our death. We have nothing to say about it. Unless we, of course, do something stupid like walk out in front of a train, well then, obviously, you took your own life. So at the moment of our death, We will remain in a place of no more sorrow, no more tears, no more pain, and you will stay in the presence of God forever. That’s dying grace. In your thinking, you go forward to that fantastic future, if you think about it right now. the future you will have, and you bring it back into time, and it gives you strength and power to overcome your present problems. See, that’s the mechanic of confidence or hope as a problem-solving device. So you know where you’re headed. You know what’s waiting on you. You can see it. That’s what faith does. Faith gives you the ability to see the unseen. You can see it, and you know what’s coming. So you have confident expectation. Dying grace, wonderful grace asset. It’s the death of a mature believer. It’s experienced at physical death. It’s some sort of special provision of grace where the believer involved experiences both blessing and happiness while he dies. It’s not fun to watch an unbeliever die because they’re frightened, they’re fearful, they have no hope. And it’s not fun to watch a backslidden, reversionistic believer die. I’ve watched people die and it’s not fun. They’re frightened, they’re afraid. And in the case of a mature believer, totally opposite, totally confident, totally looking forward to expectation. You know, dying grace is really the extension of living grace, and that’s how we glorify God. If we glorify God when we live, and then we can glorify God when we die. It’s through the function of the spiritual life that we glorify God in living. And if you can do that, it’s inevitable you will glorify God when you die. dying grace can occur regardless of the amount of pain or suffering. I don’t care if it’s cancer. I don’t care what it is. If you are a believer, a mature believer, dying grace can occur regardless of the amount of pain. It could be a maximum amount of pain or a minimum amount of pain, but in either case, you will have maximum soul stimulation and happiness because of the confidence you have in God’s word and God’s promise to you. And dying grace is for the mature believer only, only. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who are occupied with him, on those who have confidence in his grace to deliver their souls from death and to keep them alive in depression. Psalm 33, 18. So, if you are a mature believer, if you have grown in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as I implore you to do every week, to get with the program, to grow up spiritually, to learn God’s word and live by God’s word, then you can experience dying grace which will remove any fear of death because according to Psalm 23, 4, 1 Corinthians 15, 55, dying grace takes the sting out of death. It’s a great blessing, and it comes at the termination of our life. I mean, it’s still a part of living, but physical death plus the word of God in our soul equals the greatest blessing in this life. So when a mature believer comes to that time, It’s a part of God’s blessing paragraph to him. It’s the link between temporal time and eternal time. It’s the bridge that takes you over from time to eternity. And that’s a bridge you got to walk over by yourself. So you can walk over frightened and afraid, or you can walk over confident with expectation. And you can hear your Lord say, well done, my good and my faithful servant. Well, if God provides the greatest for us in time, and he does, then he cannot withhold anything less in eternity. I mean, it’s easier for God to produce blessing in time than to produce temporal blessings in eternity. He does it. He gives it to us. It’s there. It’s all there for you. And without blessing in time, we can have no blessing in eternity. God knows that. He provides that. And so the relationship of blessing in time with blessing in eternity is found in dying grace because dying grace, dying grace brings all eternal rewards into a clear focus. Job teaches that in Job 5.19. The mature believer, hopefully you, will have nothing to fear at the point of death. No fear of death. No fear of anything dangerous. No believer will die until the Lord says it’s time to come home. And once God calls a believer home, nothing can keep him here. The living must go on living and the dying must go on dying. But a person in dying grace never would hinder another from continuing their living. That’s why we say God is the expert. He decides when it’s the perfect time for each of us to depart from this earth. It’s his best time. And the disciples had to learn this. They had to understand it because they were all persecuted and they all died martyrs with the exception of John who died alone on the Isle of Patmos. They had to learn, depend on God’s grace provisions to supply their logistics and to supply their future, just as you must learn and I must learn what grace is all about. Next week, we’ll try to go into doctrinal orientation and emphasize the importance of that in our life. I sure hope you’re enjoying it. I hope you’re listening and learning. That’s my prayer. That’s why we’re here. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 02 : 28:09

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.