Join Rick Hughes on The Flatline as he unearths the critical role of wisdom in the life of a believer. Drawing from biblical examples and personal insights, Rick emphasizes the importance of nurturing spiritual acumen from a young age. This episode offers parents guidance on instilling divine standards in their children’s lives and highlights the peril of human viewpoint. With every turn in its conversation, the episode highlights prayer’s vital role in spiritual growth and the eternal implications of embracing true biblical 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, I always do this. I’m extending to you a cordial invitation. Stick around. Listen a little bit. This show is simply about 28 minutes, and it’s designed for some inspiration, motivation, education, all about the plan of God for your life. That’s my job. And if I can do a good job, maybe you will orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. But God did give you two ends, one that you sit with and one that you think with, and success in your life will depend on which one you use. So I always say heads you’ll win and tails you’ll lose. Heads means you put something in your brain, put something up there to think with because that’s where you actually live your spiritual life if in fact you are a Christian. You live your spiritual life in your soul, in the mentality of your soul. You have an invisible soul, you have an invisible spirit and these are the two things that go to heaven and get the new body, the new resurrection body. but your soul has a consciousness and that consciousness has norms and standards. Things that you live by, things that you learned as a child, you learn certain norms like brush your teeth, make up your bed, comb your hair, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And you learn standards if you were taken to church and you learn God’s standards and God’s maybe the 10 commandments or you learn different parables from the Bible, you learn standards to live by. These are called wisdom in the Bible. It’s God’s way of giving you wisdom by learning his word so that it can enable you to have a wonderful, fantastic, fulfilled life. Solomon, the king of Israel, wrote about some of this wisdom in his Proverbs under the inspiration of God, and we started talking about this last week. I’d like to wrap it up today if I can, but we approach the subject of being spiritually brain dead, spiritually brain dead. And that’s people that have no wisdom, no wisdom from the word of God inside the mentality of their soul and the standards of their soul. And, uh, Solomon’s objective, I remind you, I want to review some stuff here with you. First of all, I said his objective was to stress the importance of the wisdom of God, which he made available for you and me through his written words. And I read to you Proverbs 1, 1 through 7. I will reread it. It said the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, for gaining wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for receiving instruction and prudent behavior, doing what is right and just and fair, for giving prudence to those who are simple. That’s the spiritually brain dead. Knowledge and discretion to the young. That’s young people. And then it goes in verse 5, says, let the wise listen and add to their learning. Let the discerning get their guidance for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and the riddles of the wise. And then it goes on to say, the fear of the Lord is where the beginning of knowledge starts. But fools despise wisdom and instruction. So this proverb, verse four, Proverbs 4, 1-4 says, for giving prudence to those who are simple. Simple, and that was the word prudence was the word ormah, the Hebrew word ormah, which meant discretion or wisdom or subtlety, which was the state of having some mental acumen, the state of being shrewd. And that’s why Solomon wrote these things. And we talked about what it means to be a subtle believer, not being bold or brash or obnoxious. And we showed you how an overbearing person is always an obnoxious person. And when you speak, you must have clear thinking and accurate content if you’re going to communicate the plan of God. And I challenged you to think about why the Bible keeps repeating the need for the believer to have discernment. Why does it keep repeating the need for us to have understanding derived from the wisdom in our soul? And I told you the answer was simple. It’s the spiritual life is lived in the soul, and it’s expressed in your body. Thus, your soul has mentality, your soul has volition, and Satan will use every advantage he can in this world to distort the way you think, distorting your thinking into what’s called human viewpoint, not divine viewpoint. Human viewpoint is the exact opposite of divine viewpoint. We’ll talk more about that later. But one of the ways that he distorts these things is through his own ministers and pulpits who preach human viewpoint, 2 Corinthians 11, 13 through 15. Therefore, it is not surprising that if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their own deeds. I told you, according to John 8, 44, he’s the greatest deceiver in all of history. The Lord Jesus Christ called him the father of all lies, the greatest liar ever in the history of the world. And I told you that those servants who he uses will teach false information. In 2 Timothy 4.1, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and from the doctrines of demons. People that abandon the word of God and go for the false, go for the lie. So hopefully I wanted you to see that the enemy can control what you think. If he can do that, if he can control what you think, if he can control what you believe, then he can control what you do. And how we were exhorted over and over again throughout the New Testament to learn God’s plan so we could execute it, so we could fulfill God’s desires for us that we might glorify him and have a full, wonderful, meaningful life. Ephesians 3.20 says all glory belongs to God whose power is at work in us for this very reason. Thus the demand that we become spiritually mature and accrue wisdom in our soul so we can fulfill the plan of God. The importance of learning the wisdom of God is educating the simple or the spiritually brain-dead individual. And in Proverbs chapter 1, they are called the youth who need knowledge and need discretion. And I told you the principle was this, destroy the thinking of the youth and you can destroy the client nation. And I showed you where Satan’s attack on client nation USA is to capture the thoughts of and the imagination of the young people who are ultimately the future decision makers in this country. He does this through the abundance of social media, which is an appeal to the emotions. It’s not a challenge to the intellect. And the whole concept of humanism, human viewpoint, humanism, is rampant on social media. So the emotions are wonderful. I have great emotions. I sometimes cry at movies. I get excited when I catch a great big giant bass. I go and yell and stomp my feet and say, that a boy, big boy, you caught him, you know. If my football team wins, I get excited. But emotions are not an initiator. They’re not designed to dictate policy. They’re just an appreciator, not an initiator. They give us the ability to appreciate, but not to discern. If you’re going to discern right and wrong, if you’re going to discern what your life must be about, it’s not about emotionalism. It’s about thinking, thinking, thinking. And this is where the devil is really good in humanism promoting all sorts of emotionalism in the life of so many young people today. Just the thought that so many young people are committing suicide tells you they’re living by their emotions. So accurate thought requires accurate information at the beginning, at the beginning of youth, at the beginning of a young age. And the first thing you have to learn is children obey your parents, honor your father and your mother. That’s authority, orientation, and respect for your parents. And then in Proverbs 3, David wrote to Solomon, My son, do not forget my teaching, lest your heart fail. failed to obey my instructions. And so failing to teach authority orientation in the home resulted in a sound out of soul, out of control and making decisions that’s detrimental to self. So I looked at the word simple, the Hebrew word pathay. And that means those who had no divine standards, the youth who are the simple, the simple ones, uh, And they relied on their emotion, not content, when they make a decision. Simple means naive or silly or seductible or easily persuaded and enticed. And here’s the principle. We’ll try to dig in with this and hopefully move on from this. With no divine operating standards, an individual is easily persuaded to step into sin. He’s a credulous person, which means he’s ready to believe a lie. And the simple-minded person, the one Proverbs talks about in Revelation, chapter 1 verse 3 the simple-minded person is the person who has no biblical frame of reference if he has no biblical frame of reference then he must operate on artificial intelligence and as a friend of mine who’s a pastor once said artificial intelligence is made up of arrogance and ignorance AI arrogance and ignorance put these two together and you have artificial intelligence Arrogance always starts with self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, and eventually self-destruction. And ignorance is just simply thinking human viewpoint and disregarding any divine viewpoint. Where do you get the word divine viewpoint? The Bible says let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. The Bible says stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should. but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. So there is the concept of learning God’s word, living God’s word, learning the mind of Christ, and guess what the mind of Christ is? First Corinthians says it’s the Bible. The New Testament is the mind of Christ. The writers of the New Testament wrote what he thought, what he did, how he lived his life, and it’s an encouragement to us as well. So if someone doesn’t have a basis to determine what’s right and what’s wrong, then they’ll be easily persuaded to step into an arena that they should not enter. James 1.14 says, Every man is tempted when he’s drawn away by his own lusts. and entice, that’s the temptation, then when the lust is conceived, that’s the sin, it brings forth sin, and sin when it’s finished brings forth death, temporal death. So being tempted is not a sin, that’s the temptation. But when you let the temptation come to fruition and conception, then it becomes a sin. And the sin, if you’re a Christian, brings forth death, temporal death, spiritual death for temporary out of fellowship, the filling of the Holy Spirit, quenched and grieved. And it could even be eventually the sin unto death, but it’s not spiritual death. you were made spiritually alive in christ jesus and god doesn’t make you spiritually dead when you sin that’s not the way it goes when christ who knew no sin was made sin for us we were made the righteousness of god through by means of him and so if i sin i get out of fellowship with god and i’m in a state of temporal spiritual death but I’m not spiritually dead to where I’m not gonna be saved. So if you take young people and give them early exposure to sinful, flawed behavior, what it does is scars up their soul, scars up their heart. And Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 4, 18, where he said, being darkened in their understanding, They get excluded from the life of God because of their ignorance and because of the hardness of their heart. They become callous and allow themselves to be betrayed to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greed. This is what happens when there is no soul rapport with God, when a person is spiritually impure. brain dead he’s darkened in his understanding and he has nothing to do with the plan of god because of ignorance he doesn’t know anything he hasn’t been taught anything he doesn’t see the difference and his heart gets hard and becomes callous and he betrays his own soul so proverbs 1 4 if we go back to that it says to the youth give knowledge and discretion Youth is a young person, a damsel or a boy, usually under the age of 20, doesn’t make any difference, but they need knowledge, da’ath, the Hebrew word, da’ath, D-A-A-T-H. It means a perceptive skill, which is built on wisdom and understanding. Proverbs 2.19 says this about knowledge. When wisdom enters your heart and knowledge becomes pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you and understanding will keep you. We call that the Fantastic Four. Wisdom in your heart. Knowledge is pleasant to your soul. That means you like it. It tastes good. You want more of it. So when you get knowledge, you gain wisdom. And through wisdom, you get discretion and understanding. And it protects you from self-destruction. protects you from arrogantly destroying your own life by bad decisions. So Psalm 119 verse 9, how can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to your word, the psalmist wrote. in proverbs 23 19 listen my son and be wise and direct your heart in the way in proverbs 22 6 a word to parents train up a child in the way he should go and when he’s old he will not depart from it that’s not a promise that he will eventually come back to fellowship with god But it is a promise that he will never forget what you put in his soul by information you taught him and by the illustrations that you presented to him as he watched you live your life. He may never come back. He may walk away from the plan of God. He may never come back. But he will always have that in his soul, what you fed him, what he saw, what he heard. But through his own volition, he rejected it. And that happens every day. so here’s some principles without perception skills no young person can tell when they’re being manipulated without perception skills no young person can tell when they’re being manipulated in Genesis 3 1 now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he the serpent said in the woman yeah God said you should not eat of the tree of the garden He manipulated Satan. Satan manipulated Eve. He manipulated her arrogance. He fed her arrogance. And she sinned, took a bite of the fruit, and eventually gave it to Adam. So we know he’s a master manipulator. And the Bible says in 1 Peter 5, 8, be alert, have a sober mind, because your enemy, the devil, is prowling around like a lion looking for someone to devour. And if he can identify you as a person who’s not prepared, if he can identify a simple-minded youth, then he can destroy him with social media, humanism, progressivism, and destroy any chance he ever has of living a normal life. So point two, the tragedy of many of America’s youth is that they have no ability to recognize the lie of socialism or or the lie of humanism, since social media starts dominating the thinking of so many of them at a very young age. And the problem is this, you cannot tell what’s fake and what’s true by looking at your cell phone. That’s the problem. So where do you get your truth from? Oh, I get it from the cell phone. That’s where I get my truth from. Well, how about trying to get it from the Bible? I would say that’s much more dependable than the cell phone. Three, one of the reasons for this flaw in the mind of a young person who’s spiritually brain dead is the parent did not teach him nor demonstrate the wisdom of God to him at an early age. Had that been done, then the innocent person would have an opportunity to spot the lie of Satan and recognize when they’re being manipulated. Thus Proverbs 3.1, David’s words to Solomon, “‘My son, forget not my laws, “‘but let your heart keep my commandments.'” point four if you do not capture the thoughts of a young person in other words if you don’t establish a beachhead of divine viewpoint in their thinking at an early age then eventually the enemy will seduce them lure them take them into human viewpoint into humanism at a later time by appealing to their emotions. How does he do that? Through sex, through movies, through social media. The cosmic system is always recruiting the thinking of your children and your grandchildren. And the only thing you have to go against it is the word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. Piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow is a critic of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Put the word of God in the soul of your children and the soul of your grandchildren, and they have a chance. They still have to make their own decisions, but they have a chance because the cosmic system is not going to quit recruiting them Now, our most effective weapon, point five, our most effective weapon against the lure of the cosmic system is prayer. If our children have bought into the devil’s lie, at least we can cover them with prayer. Cover them with prayer. Ephesians 6.18 Pray in the Spirit in every situation. Use every kind of prayer and request there is. For the same reason, be alert and use every kind of effort and make every kind of request for all of God’s people. Praying for your children is a magnificent opportunity. Praying for your grandchildren, magnificent opportunity. You can approach the throne room of God through the name of Jesus Christ and the filling of the Holy Spirit and have an effective prayer life for your family and your children and grandchildren. But if you’re out of fellowship with unconfessed sin in your life, remember the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So if we have sin in our life, there will be no answer to the prayer. Remember that. So if you’re going to have an effective prayer life, you must be able to pray under the filling of the Holy Spirit. But it’s a flaw for the parents not to teach, not to demonstrate God’s Word. So using prayer is a wonderful way to protect your children. Now, guilt in a parent is not good. Your job, my job, is to expose our children to God’s plan and encourage them to follow it beginning with believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. A broken heart in a parent is not guilt. A lot of parents are broken hearted, but that doesn’t mean they’re guilty. It means their children have used their own negative volition to go against what their parents taught them. It happens every day. Your parents teach you divine viewpoint. Your parents teach you the love and the kindness and the generosity of God, and you reject it, and it breaks your parents’ heart. But that’s not guilt. Guilt in a parent is a parent who didn’t teach divine operating assets or who didn’t help his simple-minded child understand the delusion and the deception of the devil. And then he watches his child self-destruct because he didn’t teach it to him. You know, Adam and Eve had a son named Cain and he murdered his own brother Abel. I don’t know how the mom and dad handled that. Do you? The Bible doesn’t really talk about what Adam and Eve thought about one son killing another son. I would not say that that’s a successful upbringing, but both sons had the same information. Both sons had the same parents, but they had different volitions. One adhered to the plan of God. had enough humility to obey the plan of God and the other one did not. So that could happen in your children too. You can have three great children and one lousy child, you know, two great children and two lousy kids, same parent, same information. but it’s up to their volition. Children have their own volition, point seven. And we cannot coerce them, nor can we manipulate them into responding to God’s invitation. If you read the prodigal son illustration in Luke 15, you’ll remember this, how he approached his father and he wanted his share of the inheritance now, and the dad didn’t try to talk him out of it. He didn’t try to convince him not to go. He knew it was a waste of time. The kid was so stupid. He had to learn the hard way. And here is a maxim or an aphorism you might should remember. Stupid decisions get people hurt. Bad decisions limit future options is one way of thinking about it. The other way is stupid decisions get people hurt. And it was a stupid decision of this younger son to take his share of the inheritance and blow it all and almost wind up dead until he came home and saw the error of his ways and confessed his sin to his father. This is the believer out of fellowship going down the my way highway and almost dying the son unto death until you rebound and reboot your life and get back in fellowship with God. So children have their own volition. You can’t coerce them, you can’t manipulate them. You just have to give them the facts. If knowledge is pleasant to their soul, then the individual will enjoy the taste of feeding on the word of God. It’s that simple. In Matthew 5, 6, happiness belongs to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. This is a person who has knowledge being pleasant to the soul. He hungers and thirsts for knowledge. Righteousness is knowledge there. So what you think is the secret to what you live. If you’re going to avoid being spiritually brain dead, then you have to have some information upstairs. Let the mind of Christ be in you. Learn the word of God. Proverbs 23, 7, as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. and that you are the sum total of your thoughts, not your emotions, your thoughts. If God wants to check you out, he’s going to look at what you’re thinking, what’s your motivations, what’s your intentions, what’s your desires. He’s not looking at your image and your style. He’s looking at your mind, what you’re thinking. So if knowledge is pleasant to your soul, this means you enjoy the taste of feeding on God’s word. What do you think is the secret to your life? Do you know? What do you think is the secret to what you live in your life? Well, the Bible clearly states, as you think in your heart, so you are. And the secret is what you’re thinking. You can think in terms of arrogance, or you can think in terms of humility. And I quoted the verse in Romans 12, three, stop thinking in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each of us a standard of thinking from his word. the concept of humanism is arrogance god does not want you to be trapped in arrogant humanism it’s important you understand that because arrogance uses human viewpoint and academic theory as criteria for life rather than the word of god see the human viewpoint completely disregards god’s plan and god’s mandates that are found in the scripture Thus, someone trapped in human viewpoint is living a direct opposite of what the Bible says is divine viewpoint. Human good is simply the devil’s lie by distortion of the laws of establishment. For example, the whole idea of the government trying to abolish sickness, mental illness, economic problems, frustrations, human problems by some sort of legislation, some sort of human solution. It’s evil. The world’s problems can never be solved apart from the word of God and the laws of divine establishment. So the greatest distortion of all for anyone is the organized religion where human good is touted over faith alone in Christ alone. Thus, the free gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to have eternal security and to enjoy living the plan of God in time. And that’s not what humanism tells you. Be good. Live a nice life. Be nice to people. And God will cut you a slack deal when you get to heaven. That’s not the case. Not the case. Well, I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re learning. I hope you’re learning. And please come back and be with me next week. Until then, I’m 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.
