In this riveting episode of the Flotline, Rick Hughes delves into the heart of what it means to mature spiritually. Through deep exploration of Hebrews and the New Testament, he highlights the roles that spiritual teachers play in guiding believers toward understanding and living out their faith. Are you ready to transform into the person God designed you to be? This conversation provides the roadmap to spiritual maturity.
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, you have a cordial invitation to hang around, stick with me, 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and no, no, no manipulation. That’s right, no con games, no hustling for money, not asking you to join up, fess up, give it up. We’re just asking you to listen up. Listen as I try to explain how the Word of God works for you so I can verify and identify the plan of God for you. And if I can do that, then you can orient and adjust to the plan yourself. It’s up to you. In the end, you’re responsible for your life, your decisions. Every decision you make, you must take responsibility for it. And I tell you, you have to understand what’s out there and how we’re supposed to live and how we’re supposed to do this thing called human living. So I want to go to a passage today in the book of Hebrews from the New Testament that and I’d like to share something with you that I think is pretty interesting. When I’m traveling around the country, I meet a lot of people. I just returned from a trip to Michigan. I’ve been to Kansas City this year. I’ve been to St. Louis. I’ve been to Tallahassee. I’ve been to Albany, Georgia. all of these cities in the last two months, and I meet a lot of people. And the people that I meet, some are hungry, some are not. I met a man in my office yesterday who had learned about the show called The Flatline, and he was listening to everyone he could get his hands on. He had a rapid hunger for growth. He wanted to grow rapidly. He wanted to grow quick. He was a 70-year-old man, and he said, you know, I’ve wasted so many years not really growing, not really understanding what God’s plan for my life is. And this is what I run into. A lot of people in a lot of churches that I might speak in have no real hunger. They’re just not hungry to learn God’s Word. I’m not able to spark an interest, even though I may say something they’ve never heard before or put it in a way they’ve never heard it put before. They just don’t respond. They just don’t have an interest in growing and learning the Word of God. One of the reasons that I do this radio show is to look for those of you that have an interest, those of you that are hungry for truth. The Bible says when knowledge becomes pleasant to your soul and wisdom enters your heart, then you have discernment and you have insight. If knowledge is pleasant, that means you enjoy learning. You enjoy growing spiritually. And what I’m looking for are people that want to grow spiritually, people that identify with what I’m saying, people that say, for example, this is neat. I’ve never heard it put that way before. How can I learn more? How can I get more information? How can I apply it into my life? So many of you have done that over the 14 years we’ve been on the radio, and there are others. that are listening to me right now that don’t know how to do it or don’t know how to say it. You can always write to us, just simply rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. And you’ll find our website there and you can communicate through the website or you can simply email me to rick at rickhughesministries.org, rick at rickhughesministries.org. The passage I want to share with you today comes from Hebrews and whoever wrote it, whether it was Apollos or whether it was Paul, we don’t really know. The writer doesn’t identify himself, but he talks about slow learners, slow learners of the Scripture. Here’s what he said. He’s writing, and he says, Of whom we have many things to say, and they’re hard to be uttered, since you are dull of hearing. Verse 12, Hebrews chapter 5. For when for the time you ought to be teachers… You have need that someone teach you again what is the first principles of the oracles of God. And you have become such as one who needs milk and not strong meat. For everyone that drinks the milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness. He’s still a baby. But strong meat belongs to them that are of full age, even to those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. And this is something that you might get tricked up on. What’s the difference between good and evil? That’s a great biblical question. So the writer is writing to people that have been saved for a while, people that should be able to teach basics to other people, people that should be able to explain different biblical doctrines or different biblical rationales, and they don’t know how. even though they may have been saved a long, long time because the writer said you ought to be a teacher. Now you’ve got to need someone has to come back and teach you again the very first basics, the basics of the oracles of God. And then he goes on to describe them as milk drinkers, and they couldn’t have a steak. They have to have some milk, and he would like to feed them a steak. Getting a stake is that wonderful way of studying the Word of God in depth. You know, when I go to a Bible class and I listen, my pastor usually teaches for an hour solid without quitting. If it’s a conference, it’s an hour and a half without stopping. And if I’m speaking, usually I’ll speak for an hour without stopping. Most people are not used to that kind of length-long sermons. And we’re not ranting and raving and yelling and screaming, we’re just teaching the Word of God. Most people tune out after about 10 or 15 minutes, especially on Sunday morning. In my day-to-day experience, I meet many believers who are not really hungry. They’re not hungry to grow spiritually. Knowledge is not pleasant to their soul. They don’t yearn for knowledge. As a matter of fact, they don’t even sense the meaning of growing spiritually. That term is alien to them. What exactly does that mean, grow up spiritually? And so they’re faithful people. Yes, they are. There’s no doubt they are believers in Jesus Christ. They attend church and they even give of their tithes. But as far as understanding the spiritual life, And the demands the spiritual life puts on us, they know very little. That’s exactly the problem of the writer here in Hebrew says, you don’t know anything. You ought to be teaching other people, but you don’t know it. So I have to give you the milk, he says. I mean, come on, they know not to sin. People know not to sin. I’m speaking of people in churches today now. They know the biggies, you know, don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t smoke, don’t chew gum, don’t walk with wild women and stuff like that. But they don’t really understand how the mechanics work in the Christian life. They know if they sin, they should ask for forgiveness. Yes, they know that. But they don’t really understand what that does or what the spiritual life as a whole, how it operates. And in some instances, what’s sorry or pitiful is the rate of forgetting has exceeded the rate of learning. So they forgot more than they’ve learned. And when we, I mean, this is important. When you are born physically, you have to grow. I have a grandson and Watching him grow up is really fun. Watching him grow. He starts off eating milk and then solid foods. And we’ve got to have food for energy, food for growth. And without food for energy, the newborn person would be malnourished and eventually die. Thus, I mean, we have to ask ourselves this question. Am I growing energy? spiritually, not physically. I know we’re all growing physically as we get older, the belt gets a little tighter and tighter. But are we growing spiritually? The question is, do you know more today about your new life in Christ than you did last year? Because you are commanded to grow spiritually. In 2 Peter 3.18, the Bible lays it out plain. It says, grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And grow is a mandated verb. It’s not a request. It’s an imperative mood verb by the Apostle Peter to grow spiritually, grow in the grace, in the charis, C-H-A-R-I-S, and in the knowledge, the epinosis of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So connection to the Lord is the key to growth. That’s what you have to understand. Connection to the Lord is the key to growth. And in 2 Peter 3.18, it’s really a key. And it simply means this. You have to understand who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what the Lord Jesus Christ has done and what the Lord Jesus Christ continues to do for you on a daily basis. And the only way you can ever do that, this requires a Bible and a teacher Since all that he’s done and all he continues to do is written for our advantage in the scripture, in the Bible. So why a teacher? Why do we need a teacher? Why did I say that this requires a Bible and a teacher? Well, because the spiritual gift of pastor teacher, that’s what the Holy Spirit uses to enlighten you. Eventually, all of us have to get under a well-qualified pastor because if we don’t, You’re not going to figure this thing out on your own. And if you don’t get under a well-qualified pastor, you’re probably not looking for one to start with. You have no knowledge. It’s not pleasant to your soul. It’s an interruption to your routine. You don’t have time to pursue it, right? So listen to Ephesians 4.11. And he gave some apostles and some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. Pastor and teacher is one word. Poimen kai didaskalos. That’s one word. And why did he give these gifts? For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith. So what is it for the perfecting of the saints? That’s for you and I, for us to be perfect, to be like Christ, for us to assimilate his thinking, his lifestyle, for the work of the ministry so we can replicate what the Lord Jesus Christ did and we can represent his ministry and his life to others. for the edifying of the body of Christ so that we can all be built up together to become mature believers together until, verse 13, Ephesians 4, till we all come in the unity of the faith. We all get on the same page by the same pastor who’s got us squared away, understanding what? unity of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That’s the objective of the pastor. The pastor is to teach God’s Word to perfect the saints, to follow the work of the ministry so that the body of Christ can be edified and Come to the unity of the faith in the knowledge of the Son of God unto mature men, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we be henceforth no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men, cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, we may grow up into him. That’s the Lord Jesus Christ. in whom all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the body is joined together, compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, making increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. That’s a lot of scripture I just read. I’m sitting here reading this and I’m thinking, I probably just lost you right there. Let me back up. This is why we have pastor teachers. God gave men who have the gift. Some men have the gift of evangelism. That’s my gift. Some men have the gift of pastor and teacher. The gift of apostle no longer operates today. The gift of prophet no longer operates today. Apostles were those who had to have seen the Lord Jesus Christ, and prophets are a different gift. We have the canon of Scripture today, the completed Bible. We don’t need a prophet. It’s all right there. But we do need evangelists and pastor teachers so the saints can grow up, so the ministry can continue, so the body of Christ can be edified. This is directly related to you. You have to understand this. Until you get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, you’re never really going to grow up. You will learn some things. You’ll pick up some stuff on your own. You can read through the Bible. As a guy told me the other day, he said, I’ve read through the Bible twice in my lifetime, but I never knew what I was reading or even understood it. And yet, when he got under a well-qualified pastor, it became alive to him. All of a sudden, the dots started being connected. Reading the Bible alone by yourself is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces are missing. But until you get that man that can teach you what God’s Word says, you’re never going to be able to put the puzzle together. Once you find that pastor, once you get under that man who has that ability to delineate the word of God to you, then your spiritual life will take off like a rocket ship, I promise you. So the objective of spiritual growth, what is the objective? It’s for you to become more and more like Jesus Christ. See, when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, God the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us and live in us and begins the process of making us more like him, conforming us to his image. That’s why we have problem-solving device number one is rebound. If you quench the Holy Spirit by sin and grieve the Holy Spirit by not rebounding your sin, then obviously you can’t grow. You can’t grow spiritually because if you’re going to grow, it takes three things. It takes the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It takes the living Word of God. And it takes a well-qualified pastor that can teach it to you. The Bible is a textbook. It’s not a novel. It’s a textbook. And when it says study to show thyself approved unto God, that means study the text. What do you do when you take tests in school? You have to take a test on what you learn. And 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, don’t be surprised if you’re tested. Everybody gets tested. And you have to pass those tests. You have to grow to be spiritually mature and pass the test that God puts you under to see if you learned how to apply that doctrine to your life. So the whole objective of you growing spiritually is you becoming more like Jesus Christ. I’m not acting holy and spiritual and walking around going, oh brother, oh sister, praise the Lord this, praise the Lord that. No, it’s thinking like Christ. It’s assimilating the divine viewpoint. It all starts with a transformation on the inside. as Romans 12, one through three says, and it talks about renovating your thinking. It says, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. But think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. And so the Christian life is lived in your mind. It’s lived where you think. Your soul has mentality. Your mentality, your soul has volition. What you think and what you do has tremendous impact on your life. If you don’t think right, you can’t do right. And so Satan is in the deceiving business. He loves to deceive you and to get you to believe a lie, to get you to think off course, off track, or not think at all. That’s even better. Just operate on your emotions and go through life not really thinking. Just say, well, you know, my emotions help me. I figure it out. I have an intuition. That’s not learning the Word of God. Learning the word of God starts inside transformation. And Philippians 2.5 says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. It means you must learn to think like he thought. Or you have to learn to think divine viewpoint. Thinking divine viewpoint is the key because the cosmic system has a way of thinking we know of called evil. Evil is the genius of Satan, and it is the mainstay of the cosmic system. Evil takes grace and distorts it just a little bit, just a little bit. You won’t even be able to tell it’s evil. You know, it may sound good, look good, smell good, but it’s evil. Something like this in regards to salvation. The Bible says, For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should brag about it. But evil says this. Here comes Satan along and says, no, it goes like this. For by grace are you saved through faith and give up drinking Coca-Colas. And then you can be saved. No, no, it’s not giving up anything. You see, the neat thing about what our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did on that cross is he paid for all of our sins. The Bible says, he that knew no sin was made sin for us. He paid for them. He was judged in our place. We cannot approvate God by quitting sinning. Our sin were paid for. And what turns God on is when you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible is clear about that. He that believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. And he that believeth not, the wrath of God abides on him already. You want to please God? Jesus said, this is the will of the one that sent me that you believe in me whom he has sent. Until you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed son of God, the Messiah, you’re not saved. And it is faith alone in Christ alone. It’s not I believe it and I quit drinking. I believe it and I started going to church. I believe it and, you know, and then if you fall off the wagon, then I’m not saved anymore. I went back to drinking or I quit going to church. So now I’m not saved anymore. It doesn’t work like that. Once you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, you’re born spiritually, spiritually reborn. If any man’s in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things become new, a spiritual birth. And when you have a spiritual birth, you’re not going to have a spiritual unbirth. a spiritual dying and then have to be born again two or three times in your lifetime. No. One time is enough. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, Paul told the Roman jailer. And then once you get saved, what’s next? Changing the way you think. Learning divine viewpoint. Staying out of the cosmic system. Not buying into the lies of evil, which is the genius of Satan. Why do you think our Lord appointed those disciples as apostles, those fishermen as apostles, those people that tax collector as an apostle? Why? Well, they were to record his actions and his thoughts as well as record what happened for our edification. so we can learn how we can handle situations the same way. So the Holy Spirit took these men and took the information they learned from the Lord Jesus Christ and helped them to put it in print. And that Word of God in print is called the mind of Christ. And 1 Corinthians 2.13 tells us we have the mind of Christ. It is the New Testament. It’s the Bible. There it is for you. So that’s what they did. They never thought they would be writing scripture. And in a million years, they couldn’t have thought of we’re writing a Bible. They didn’t think like that. They wrote letters to churches. They wrote letters to other believers. And that became scripture. And in those letters, they reproduced the thinking of Christ. They told people what Christ did, how he did it, how he handled situations. as a reference to you so you know how to do the same thing but distractions are a are a weapon of the enemy i promise you aka the devil he uses our distractions and he can encourage your defeat what i mean by that it means you never reach spiritual maturity you never bring maximum glorification to god because why you’re just too busy to pay attention Too busy doing stuff and your spiritual growth never took place. If you’ve been a Christian 15, 20, 30 years, I mean, I could ask you just a few questions. How well do you know them? Could you tell me the essence of God? Could you explain dispensations to me? Do you know what it means to be a spiritually mature believer? Do you know the difference between spirituality and maturity? Do you know that? I mean, I could go on and on and on with questions. Yet you go to church, you assemble yourself, you listen, you go home, you feel good about yourself because you went to church today and you paid tribute to God. I mean, that’s when church becomes a ritual and not a reality because you’re too busy doing other things. Defeat means you never reach spiritual maturity. You never bring maximum glorification to God. You’re just too busy to pay attention. So you’re a little bit of church, just your little bit that made you feel good about yourself. And it became ritual without reality. Just an exercise in going to a Christian community. And you might call it worshiping, but it’s not even close to true worship, I promise you. I mean, yep, you honored God by going and attending on Sunday and going to Sunday school. But what did you learn in regards to advancing in your spiritual life? God is looking for a few well-qualified believers, men and women that can stand in the gap, men and women that can represent him accurately. So this stuff about playing church doesn’t cut it with the Lord. When we teach the plan of God on the flat line, when we lay out those 10 problem-solving devices, these are exactly the same steps our Lord used when he walked on this earth, except he never had to confess his sins as we do, and he never had to be occupied with Christ as we do, but Problem solving device number one and problem solving device number 10, he didn’t do. But he did two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight, and nine. Yes, he did. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. He did operate under the faithless drill. He did use grace orientation. He did use biblical orientation. He did have a personal sense of destiny. He did have personal love for his father. He did have impersonal love for all mankind. That’s why he went to the cross. And he did share in the happiness of God, yes. And he told you how to share in the happiness of God as well. He said, happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s word and keep it. So learning these 10 problem-solving devices and using them in your life, long process, is what will shape you into thinking divine viewpoint and give you the maximum glorification of God in your life so that when you get before God in heaven, And it’s going to happen someday, whether you like it or not. It’s going to happen. And you want to hear, well done, my good and my faithful servant. You don’t want to pat on the back and say, attaboy, glad you made it. Have a seat. We’ll see you in a few thousand years. Sure, you’ll be in heaven. but there’s no reward, there’s no rejoicing. You’re there, you got eternal life, but you showed up late for the game. You didn’t do your job. That’s the bottom line. Now, this cannot be done apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit, and it cannot be done apart from the consistent intake of the Word of God metabolized into spiritual momentum in your life. You can never grow spiritually without that. So the eventual outcome is, is your happiness is guaranteed by our Lord, and it’s reflected in the way you think as well as the way you represent your lifestyle to those around you. Or you can continue to play church, play Christian, continue to be a caricature of Christ. You’re saved? Yep. Serving? Nope. You don’t even recognize what your spiritual gift is or how to use it yet. How could you be satisfied with that? I was on the internet the other day at a place called gotquestions.org and saw this. I thought it was a good statement, so I’m going to read it to you. When the transformation of salvation takes place, spiritual growth begins. The Holy Spirit indwells us, John 14, 16 through 17. We are new creatures in Christ, 2 Corinthians 5, 17. The old sinful nature begins to give way to the new Christ-like nature, Romans 6 and 7. And spiritual growth begins. is a lifelong process that depends on our study and application of God’s Word, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. and our walk in the Spirit, Galatians 5.16. As we seek to spiritually grow, we should pray to God and ask for wisdom concerning the areas that he desires us to grow in. We can ask God to increase our faith and our knowledge of him because God desires for us to grow spiritually, and he’s given us all we need to experience that. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we can overcome our sin and steadily become more like our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I didn’t say that. They said that. But that’s the exact same thing I’m telling you. Are you ready to start growing spiritually? Are you ready to be the man or the woman that God designed you to be? Then let’s do it together. Let’s get with the program. Let’s become that person. Stay filled with the Spirit. Get under a well-qualified pastor. Take in God’s Word every day and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.
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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.
