Discover the profound impact of understanding God’s love and the divine resources available to each of us. Rick discusses the biblical perspective on salvation and eternal life, exploring the significance of righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. With practical advice on how to live a spirit-filled life, this episode encourages listeners to make wise decisions and embrace the transformative power of divine wisdom in daily living.
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 Rick Hughes, your host, and thanking you for tuning in again once more today. Remember, we simply have 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and we do that without any manipulation because we don’t try to con people. We’re not soliciting money from you. We’re not asking you to join anything. We simply have some information. Information that may help you verify as well as identify God’s plan for your life. And if you’re willing to act on that information, if you can orient and adjust, then you’ll be a lot better off for it, I promise you. Remember, God gave us two ends, one to sit with and one to think with, and success in life depends on which one you use. Heads, you’ll win. Tails, you’ll lose. So let’s keep that in mind as we dive into what we want to cover today. Simply put, we want to talk about the divine advantages that we have available to us, the divine advantages. that we have available to us. I just got back from a Texas Wounded Warrior Foundation meeting in New Brunswick, Texas last week, and this is the same material that I presented to those wounded warriors that attended that event. It’s an event we do twice a year for this particular group, and it’s a great opportunity to talk to the men and women who serve in our country. So, you know, America has had an all-volunteer army, military, for a while now. We’re not doing the draft anymore. And men and women such as those that I met freely chose to serve their country. And non-serving Americans may not even notice or care about their sacrifice or what they’re doing until they need them. But the bottom line is that without a strong military, we could not survive as a free nation. those men and women that i spoke to made a choice and the benefits and rewards of their choice could be great and the cost and the sacrifice could be even greater as it was in some cases but in the end they can say with pride i did my duty to the best of my ability well like them there are many choices in life that we have to make And God equips each one of us with a brain and the ability to choose. We have volition. The free will he gave us, volition. He did not make us into little bitty automatons that run around doing his bidding. He gave us free will. And we have choices to make, and we use logic sometimes. Sometimes we use reason. Sometimes we use faith and make those choices. But in the end, every one of us, myself included, we are responsible for our decisions that we make. And three things you need to remember about those decisions. One, bad decisions limit all future options. And two, stupid decisions get people hurt. And then three, trusting your instinct or your impulse in a major decision is a sure way for you to mess up. Again, God gave you two ends, one to sit with, one to think with, and you must learn to use the head part. Heads you win, tails you lose. So on this radio show, I might ask you to make another choice today, not one that would require you to join up, fess up, give up, but one that might require you to act on faith and consider the opportunity and the consequences. You see, not all Americans are willing to serve their country in military service, and not all humans are willing to serve their gods. Each one of us must make a personal choice. And that’s where our volition comes into play. You know, you and I have met people born with a silver spoon in their mouth. It gives them an advantage and a social standing. And having an advantage in life is one way unqualified people get ahead. Yes, they do. But I can tell you on this show how to have a divine advantage. A divine advantage in life that will give you discernment and understanding in all of your endeavors. Because that’s what life requires. It requires wisdom. And wisdom is none other than discernment and insight. And if we don’t have discernment, if we don’t have insight, we get taken advantage of by forces greater than our own capabilities to discern. So wisdom is a critical component in your life if you’re going to take advantage of the divine advantage God gives you. But here is the catcher. Wisdom is not inherited from your parents. It must be acquired in your own soul. And it can be divine wisdom, which comes from the word of God. It could be relative wisdom, which comes from what some joker thinks should be or should not be the truth. But without some type of resource, none of us would even make it through the week, much less through life. And this is where God offers us his divine resources. He offers his divine resources to each one of us. And if you want to know why his motivation to do this is pretty simple, he loves you. Maybe you’ve never heard anybody say that to you, but God loves you. I know I’ve been a jerk and someone said God loved me. It was shocking. I mean, how could God love me? I’m an idiot. Look at the stupid things I’ve done. But he loves you. I promise you. As the Bible says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That’s love personified. When he sent his son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to pay the ultimate penalty for our sin so we wouldn’t have to pay it. That’s true love. What greater love does a man have than this, that he lay down his life for his friends, the Bible says, and the Lord Jesus Christ loves you. That’s why he went to the cross, to pay for your sin. What a wonderful divine advantage that we have there. He loves us. You know, the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 10.2, a wise man’s heart directs him to the right, but the foolish man’s heart directs him to the left. Now, this is not a political statement, as you know about lefters and writers and all that sort of stuff, but This is talking about your choice. Sometimes you go to the left and sometimes you go to the right. And to the left would be the my way highway, the relative wisdom way, not using God’s divine wisdom and going thy way highway. So you can make some pretty dumb decisions like I’ve done in your life. You can’t afford to do that. You only got a little bit of time. You can’t buy more time. And you don’t want to come to the end of your life and look back like a vapor trail across the sky, seeing it disappear from history. Because I can assure you, nobody’s going to stand around and worry about where you went when the Lord brings you home. But you don’t want to go home with regret, and you don’t want to go home ashamed. You want to go home having done a good job. Your choice. It’s up to you. so these divine resources that i’m speaking of to you they start with first of all the free gift of salvation and that’s a win-win situation it doesn’t cost you anything but it does require you wanting to know the truth you want to know his love and his forgiveness and it requires that you have the faith to trust him If you want to take advantage of the divine resource of forgiveness of sin, you must have a desire to know his love and forgiveness and the faith to trust him, as I said. He offered this forgiveness freely since we are his creation. And there are no strings attached because the Bible clearly says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. It’s a legitimate question to be saved from what? I mean, sure. Ecclesiastes 1.4 said, a generation goes and a generation comes. But the earth remains forever. When I’m saying that you’re gonna pass away someday, I’m gonna pass away someday. But the earth will continue until God says that’s it. So we all have our niche, our time in history. And saved from what? What are we saved from if we said we’re gonna believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved? We are saved from the lake of fire. Hebrews 9, 27, and it is appointed unto men once to die, but after that death, the judgment. The judgment is described in Revelation 20, verse 11 through 15, and this is not an illusion. This is literal. Where John wrote, then I saw a great white throne and him that sat upon it from whose presence earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small standing before the throne of God and the books were opened. And then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds. The sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. And they were judged, every one of them, according to their deeds. And then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death. the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Now listen carefully as I explain this to you. When you’re born, your name is put in the Lamb’s book of life. If you die without accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior, your name is blotted out and you have died the first death. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you’re never said to be dead. You’re asleep in Christ. So you have to be born twice or you’re gonna die twice. This is the way it goes. This is the way God made it. So here we have people that did not believe in Jesus Christ. They’re unbelievers. And so since their name is not in the book of life, they’re going to be given an opportunity by the justice of God to present their case of why they should be allowed to come into heaven because of their deeds, their good deeds. They were good. But remember the Bible says there are none that are good, no, not even one. All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag before God. Remember that. So here they are standing up and saying, well, what about this? And what about that? Look what I did. I gave to the church and I tithed and I sang in the choir. I helped little old ladies across the street. I bought Girl Scout cookies. Didn’t work. That’s not salvation. For by grace are you saved through faith. And that not of yourselves is the gift of God. He that believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, John says. And so when their name is not in the book of life, then the various books of their good deeds are opened and they are judged from that and they are found lacking. They cannot equal the righteousness of God. The only way you can have eternity with God is to be equally righteous. Now listen to what the Bible says. He who knew no sin was made sin for us, so we may be made the righteousness of God through him. Through Christ and receiving him as our savior, his righteousness is imputed to us and we have equal righteousness with God because we are in Christ Jesus. He took our sin and gave us his righteousness. Thus, God can bless you and welcome you into the royal family by faith. And so, if their name was not found written in the Lamb’s book of life, they are thrown into the lake of fire. Again, verse 15, Revelation 20. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, that’s the ones who rejected Christ, they’re thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death. I don’t know if you got this, but those in Hades were brought out of Hades and judged. Those in hell were brought out of hell and judged and then thrown into the lake of fire. Think about that. You die apart from Jesus Christ. You go to hell and you await this final judgment. And then you’re brought up before the great white throne and your name’s not in the Lamb’s book of life. and your production doesn’t equal God’s righteousness, so then you’re thrown into the lake of fire where Satan and the fallen angels will already be. It doesn’t sound very inviting, does it? So when I say saved from what, you’re saved from this. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved or delivered from this judgment. You won’t be there. And that’s a marvelous thing. That’s a divine advantage. This judgment is not because anyone was bad or anybody misbehaved, because what it’s about is they were born with Adam’s original sin imputed to them. Romans 5.12 just says, Through one man sin entered into the world, and then death by sin. And now death spreads to all because all have sinned. And so the first divine advantage is to have our sins forgiven. Romans 5, 8, but God demonstrated his love towards us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Problem is solved. A free gift from God. In Luke 18, verses 9 through 14, we find in the temple a Pharisee praying, and he’s not really praying. He’s braying, B-R-A-Y, like a jackass would bray. He’s patting himself on the back and telling God what a great guy he is. how he fasts and how he does this and how he does that and hoping that he’s impressing God with all of his good deeds. And then it talks about the publican who came in and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And Jesus said, that’s the man that went to heaven right there, the one who asked for forgiveness. Problem solved, a free gift from God. How do I know it’s a free gift? Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. What a divine advantage that is. Divine advantage number one, salvation. I am delivered from my sin and the penalty of my sin. I am set free from the slave market of sin. I’m no longer under control of my sin nature. Now, God the Holy Spirit lives in me and I can make a choice. I can choose to live in fellowship with God, or I can choose to let my sin nature dominate me and control me, and even as a Christian, live in sin. That won’t get you very far because the Bible says in Hebrews 12, 6, that God chastens those that he loves and judges and disciplines those that he loves. So when you or I, when we get into sin, we don’t use problem-solving device number one, the rebound technique. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us, purify us from all of our wrongdoing. If we don’t do that, then we set ourself up for divine discipline because God loves us. Why does he discipline you? He doesn’t want you to self-destruct. You have the ability to destroy your life with an acquired flaw. You can acquire flaws that’ll destroy you and you will make constantly bad decisions until eventually you box yourself in and you get frustrated and you deliberately choose to maybe end it all because you have no hope and no life. God doesn’t want that for you. God wants you to have a wonderful, profitable, wonderful life in Christ. And the divine advantage of knowing Jesus Christ as Savior is wonderful. But there’s a second advantage too. You see, the Bible says anyone who receives Christ as Savior, they soon learn, like I learned, that that we still possess the ability to sin. We still fail from time to time, sometimes too much. And we have to learn this. The Bible says God recognizes this and makes a provision for our failure. Now, let’s answer this question. What exactly is sin? Well, it comes in three ways that I’m aware of. Something you think. You can commit a sin in your brain. You can sin seated in the pulpit at church or seated in the pew at church. If you have mental attitude sin of anger and bitterness, resentfulness, implacability, hostility, that’s a sin. It’s a mental attitude sin. Lust is a mental attitude sin. Jealousy, hatred is a mental attitude sin. Well, there are also sins of the tongue. Gossip and slander, maligning, criticizing, backbiting. These are sins of the tongue. And then there are the overt sins like drunkenness and fornicating and stealing and murder. These are sins as well. Can a Christian commit murder? You better believe he can. Look at David in 2 Samuel 16. He had Uriah the Hittite murdered. And he committed adultery with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. Sure, Christians can do some pretty goofy, stupid things when we get out of fellowship with God. If we’re sinning, if we’re committing personal sin, we are breaking fellowship with God, we are quenching the Holy Spirit, we are grieving the Holy Spirit, and we set ourself up for divine discipline. But if we will recognize the sin, and rebound the sin, then we can be restored to fellowship, put back in fellowship. First John 1.9 says, if we confess our sin, then he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is the secret to the Christian life, and nobody ever told me that. Here I was, a new Christian, a year and a half into my Christian life, not knowing what to do, reading the Bible, going to different Bible studies, going to different churches, going around in a circle. I had the gospel right. I understood what it meant to be saved. But I did not understand the mechanics to the Christian life. You must come to realize there are mechanics. And by that, I mean a right thing has to be done in a right way, or it is wrong. A right thing done in the wrong way, wrong. A wrong thing done in the wrong way, wrong. A right thing done in the right way, well, that’s right. There are mechanics, and if you intend to serve God, you must do it through the filling of the Holy Spirit. That’s why Ephesians 5.18 gives you the mandate, be filled with the Spirit. You cannot be Spirit-filled with sin in your life. Sin quenches the Holy Spirit. Sin grieves the Holy Spirit, and you must admit the sin. confess the sin, and then God the Father is faithful and just to forgive you. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to stay filled with the Spirit 24 hours a day because you may sin at 8 o’clock, you may confess that sin at 8.05, and you may sin again at 9 o’clock. You’ll have to confess the sin again. On a particularly bad day, you may have to confess your sin eight or 10 or 12 times. But whatever you do, don’t wait until you go to bed at night to do it. Don’t look back during the day and say, oh Lord, this morning I sinned at 8.02 and now it’s 10 p.m. at night. Listen, if you sin at 8.02 a.m. in the morning, you quenched the Holy Spirit at 8.02 a.m. in the morning. And thus, you’re going to go through your life all day long without the filling of the Holy Spirit, without the power of God in your life. And then you’re going to go to bed at night and ask him to cleanse you and fill you so you can sleep good. You need to keep up with your sin. When you’re aware of it, name it immediately. Immediately. And then he’s faithful and he’s just to forgive us. You know, some people think that when they sin, God will disown them. And that’s not true. the bible is very clear in luke 15 about the prodigal son and how the prodigal son wandered away from home wasted his money on riotous living and got under divine discipline and finally came to his senses and went home and confessed his sin to his father and his father took him back freely the father loved him and killed the fatted calf and put a ring on his finger he was still his son still his son The father didn’t go chase him down because the father knew he’s going to have to learn it the hard way. And that’s the way some people are. I’m probably that way. And you can learn the easy way or you can learn the hard way. Are you one of those people that has to learn the hard way? Even though you know you shouldn’t do something, you’re going to do it anyhow just to see if you can get away with it. You’re not going to get away with it, I promise you. so the divine advantage of the filling of the holy spirit guarantees you the power of god in your life it guarantees you the rewards of god in eternity it guarantees you the ability to replicate the life of christ it guarantees you complete happiness in time and in eternity but only through the filling of the holy spirit What does the Holy Spirit use? He uses Bible doctrine. He uses the Word of God. So as you learn the Word of God in your local church under your pastor, and you apply to your life the principles and the precepts that he teaches and you learn, then you begin to replicate the life of Christ. And this brings God much glory. That’s the objective of the Christian life. So, the divine advantage of number three. Number one, salvation. Number two, the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now, number three, the secret to keep from becoming a battlefield casualty in the spiritual life is to refit when you fail and rearm when you need it. And that’s the local church where you study and grow under a real qualified pastor. People ask me, they write to me and say, do you know if there’s a local church in my area? And a lot of times I may know or I may not know, but I know where you can get information. I know where you can get DVDs and MP3s and study just like I do every morning. You can sit down with a Bible and a notebook and a cup of coffee and away you go. Turn it on and study, take notes, learn, apply into your life. That’s the way I’ve kept up with my pastor for years since I don’t live in the same town. But I get the information and I study it and I write it down and I review it and I apply it into my life. I refit every morning, rearm my life every morning. And that’s the job of the pastor, to rearm you for your daily battles in life And he does that by teaching you God’s amazing problem-solving devices. What that does is change the way you think. The Bible says you have to change the way you think. Romans 12, three, stop thinking of self in terms of arrogance beyond what you should, but think in terms of sanity as God has assigned to every one of us a different way of thinking from his word. That’s an attitude adjustment. An attitude adjustment is renovating my thinking, are simply learning to think like Christ thought. Philippians 2.5 says it. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. And the key to understanding that is that the Lord Jesus Christ acted from the motivation of humility. He humbled himself, made himself of no reputation, the Bible says. He never reacted to bitterness. He never reacted to unfair circumstances. Our Lord Jesus Christ never lost his temper, never did anything foolish. And you can live the same way if you will renovate your thinking by learning the word of God, learning divine viewpoint. beginning to operate on divine viewpoint will give you the resiliency in your life with this new mindset to keep pressing on, to keep using the divine advantage of wisdom, insight, discernment, and knowledge from the Word of God. Because the Bible clearly says in Luke 11, 27, and 28, happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s voice and who keep it. Our God is looking for a few good men and women. The question is, will you be one of them? Will you take these divine advantages, salvation, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and the ability to renovate your thinking and think in a new way? Will you take advantage of this? And will you glorify Jesus Christ to the maximum in your life in a daily basis? That’s my prayer. I hope you’ll continue listening, and I hope you’ll come back next week. Same time, same place. Until then, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for being with us today.
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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.
