This episode of The Flotline explores the critical protocols of prayer and the potential pitfalls that can arise from misunderstanding these spiritual processes. Rick Hughes emphasizes the necessity of knowledge, humility, and grace in developing a robust spiritual life. Learn how to navigate spiritual drift by securing yourself with sound doctrine and fundamental biblical principles, unveiling the true essence of living a successful spiritual life centered in the Word of God.
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 Frontline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, I’d like to invite you to stick around. It’s about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education. And as you know, we don’t use any type of manipulation. We’re talking about soul renovation. That’s the whole reason for this show. Soul renovation, not financial manipulation or anything like that. The purpose of this show is for you to build a flatline, give you information so you will understand what a flatline is. It’s a forward line of troops, F-L-O-T. That’s a military metaphor for a main line of resistance in your soul, inside of you, because of the way you think, because you’ve changed your thinking. You began to think in a different way. As the Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. As the Bible says in Romans 12, 3, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility as God has assigned each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. Therefore, if you look in the mirror, God gave you two ends, one end you sit with and one end you’re going to think with. And success in life is always dependent on which one of those ends you use. Heads, you’ll win. Tails, well, you’re probably going to lose. So the Bible is clear about growing the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and that spiritual growth, spiritual growth. And the only way you can do that is to accumulate some knowledge of God and establish in your soul a main line of resistance, a flat line. You know, today we want to talk about what a friend of mine brought up to me. I thought it was an interesting term. It’s called a spiritual tumbleweed. You know, those things that blow across the desert, tumbleweeds. I often hear repeated phrases that don’t make much sense to me, and I bet you’ve heard them too. I bet you’ve heard somebody say, I prayed about that. You did. Oh, I prayed about it. And they will tell you that. But a lot of times people don’t understand the mechanics of prayer. They don’t understand that if you have sin in your life, God’s not going to answer the prayer because the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. They don’t understand that when they pray, they’re supposed to go to the Lord Jesus Christ using his name to pray in his name to the Father in the power. of the Holy Spirit. Prayer has a protocol. We pray in the name of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, pray to the Father. We don’t pray to Jesus. Somebody’s out there praying to Jesus, not going to get answered. Has to go to the Father. That’s the way it works. That’s why the Bible is very specific about following the protocol plan of God. Another term that I hear often repeated is our thoughts and prayers go with you. That’s like sending flowers to somebody. It doesn’t make any sense. Our thoughts and prayers go with you. What does that mean? Well, we’re praying for you. Well, let’s go back to the same concept. You’re praying for me. What are you praying? Are you praying what is God’s will? Are you praying for God to take it away? Are you praying for God to help me go through it? How are you praying? What are you praying about? It’s critical if you understand the ministry of prayer that you understand how prayer works and what we are supposed to do in prayer. We can intercede in prayer. We can give the prayer of adoration, the prayer of intercession, other prayer of supplication. You can pray for your own needs, you can pray for my needs, and you can give praise to God the Father in your prayer. So, you know, smart people often do dumb things like that, not really knowing exactly what they’re doing, but trying to sound rather sensitive and spiritual and sound like maybe that they have something spiritual in mind when they say it. They convince themselves that they are in the will of God by saying these things, and this comes from some sort of misguided judgment. in their mind or human viewpoint thinking over divine viewpoint thinking when they don’t have any biblical rationale to make decisions. This is true especially of the parable that our Lord Jesus Christ gave about the Pharisee praying and the Pharisee saying, I thank God I’m not like this sinner over here. I do this and I do that. And Jesus said, nope, nope, nope. This sinner’s going to heaven because he asked for forgiveness. And this guy over here on the other side, this Pharisee, was touting about how self-righteous he was. So that’s a misguided human viewpoint, thinking that you’re in right relationship with God when you’re not, because there’s no biblical rationale to make that kind of decision. So here’s a principle, here’s an aphorism I want you to remember, a maxim for you. Misguided judgment results in wrong conclusions. Misguided judgment results in wrong conclusions. Say it one more time. Misguided judgments, especially in regards to yourself, result in wrong conclusions. And wrong conclusions equal you wasting time and coming up with self-condemnation eventually from your own guilt. So let’s make it personal. Just exactly how many times have you flown the coop thinking you’re making the right decision based on some sort of misguided judgment when you didn’t have accurate biblical rationale to make your decision on? For example, have you ever convinced yourself that you’re in God’s directive will for your life? Have you ever done that? You said, oh, I prayed about it, and I know this must be what God wants me to do. Oh, really? Well, what was it that convinced you that you were actually doing the will of God to start with? I hear you. I prayed about it, and then you convinced yourself of some false conclusion. I was recently speaking to a high school and listening to a board member tell me how the principal of the school decided it was now God’s will for him to move on to another job. My question is, how could he know God’s will if he didn’t understand the spiritual life to start with? On what rationale did he make his decision? And I want to ask you the same thing. What are your rationales for making your decisions? Here we have the end of an NCAA football season and coaches moving, this coach going there, this coach going there. And usually it’s about a bigger opportunity and more money. But that’s not what the Christian life is about. How do you know what God wants you to do? How do you live your life without wasting time and going down dead ends because you rationally convinced yourself you were doing the right thing? If someone tells you they think this is God’s plan for your life, then you need to stop and consider how that person came to that conclusion because you God doesn’t authorize counselors, you know. I mean, I hope you’re not going to some counselor and paying money to get this guy to tell you what the Bible says when you should be under a well-qualified pastor that can teach you what the Bible says, and then you can actually counsel yourself. Sure, there are people that need medical help and medical doctors and psychiatrists. I’m not saying that. But if you’re having problems in your life, spiritually or mentally, you need the Word of God. That’s what it is. The Word of God can clear your thinking up. It can give you absolute direction in your life so that you know what it is God wants you to do. So that you don’t have to rationalize decisions based on seeking some sort of happiness. through people or circumstances, and that’s usually what it boils down to. I prayed about it, and this seems like where I’m going to be the most happy over here, are these people are going to be the ones that I feel the most comfortable around. Circumstances, did you, let me ask you a question, think about this, did you fall for the decoy of Satan that eventually led you into being out of fellowship with God, some sort of Temporal spiritual death for the while until you rebound. Problem solving device number one until you rebound and get back in fellowship where you belong. It’s a shame, but this happens every day. This show is hopefully to encourage you not to let that happen, to encourage you to learn what the flat line is and build a main light of resistance in your soul so that you’re not given in to the decoys, so that you’re not deceived, so that you’re not discouraged by failure in your life. you can’t rationalize decisions on wrong thinking anytime there’s some sort of push for you to make a decision very quickly well you can probably bet god’s not in it more than likely unless it’s a decision to save your life and go quick you know i’m not saying that but if someone’s pushing you to make a decision take your time you know car dealers do it more than anybody else you walk on the lot you take a look around And they got a piece of paper saying sign here before you even decide whether or not you’re ready to do that. That’s an emotional decision based on some sort of persuasion from the sales personnel. There’s no push to make any decision in your life spiritually. So let’s think about this. what decision are you facing right now and how quickly must you make it? Is it a decision about who to marry? Is it a decision about where to go to school? Is it a decision about what job to take in the future? What decision are you facing? Take your time. Take your time and let the Word of God counsel you. You don’t have to be in a hurry. If you do not stop and determine God’s directive will for your life, then undoubtedly you’re probably going to step out of his plan. You know, Satan is certainly a master at using a decoy. Think about this. I’ve used this illustration before. Think about it. Think about the poor, dumb duck. He doesn’t know that he’s falling for a decoy. Those guys down there hiding in that boat with all that stuff over the top of them, got those ducks out there in the water, and they’re playing that music and making that quack, quack sound. And the poor duck flies over and looks down and says, well, it looks real. It sounds real. It must be some ducks. So let’s go down and join the party. And boom, he gets blasted out of the sky and winds up on the dinner table. Except people tell me it’s hard to make duck taste good. So you go from being a beautiful, fast-flying duck to being somebody’s dinner. That is not my idea of success. 2 Corinthians 2.11, lest Satan should take advantage of us, we should not be ignorant of his devices. And that’s exactly what Satan will do with you. The Bible clearly says he goes around like a roaring lion seeking who he can devour. So with misguided judgment and a wrong decision, you can wind up being a dinner table for Satan as well. So any decision that you make, apart from what the directive will of God for your life is, could lead you to a convoluted and confused life. And I’m not talking about a week. I’m not talking about a couple of days. I’m talking about a confused, convoluted life. where you’re thinking to yourself, how did I get into this situation? How did I let this happen to me? And the worst thing is you don’t know how to get out of it. Discovering God’s will is not necessarily an easy thing to do. I understand. It’s related to knowing the scriptures. Listen very carefully as I read 2 Timothy 3.18, what the Apostle Paul wrote. He said, all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training. In righteousness, teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training. In righteousness, that’s God’s plan for your life, so that the man or the woman, I’ll add that, so that the person of God, may be thoroughly equipped for every good decision, every good work. That’s what the Word of God is there for. It is there to be your guide. It is there to be your director. This is God’s way of speaking to you. If you think you’re going to go out into the middle of the swamp at midnight, and sit under an oak tree and breathe in the fog of the air and listen for God to speak to you, it’s not going to happen. He speaks to you through his word. And more than likely, he’s going to speak to you through the communication of a man that has the gift of pastor, teacher, communicating God’s word to you. If you listen, sure, you can read your Bible, and sure, God can speak to you that way. I’m not saying that. But technically, to understand the mechanics of the Christian life, this is not a novel. The Bible is not a novel. It’s a textbook. That’s why it says, study to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed. If I gave you an algebra book and said, here you go, kids, study. Well, you’re not going to pass algebra because somebody’s got to explain it to you. It’s the same thing in the Bible. That’s why God gave people the gift of pastor teacher, so they can explain it to you, so that you can understand what it is that God is trying to teach you, why he’s rebuking you, why he’s correcting you, and why he’s training you in the plan that he wants you to live. You know, the bottom line is God operates under protocol. We understand that. You know, look at it this way. If the president of the United States walked into your periphery, you wouldn’t go up and say, call him by his first name. Hey, Donald, how you doing, Donald? Good to see you, Donald. You’d say, Mr. President. You might not even like him, but at least you understand protocol, Mr. President. And that’s the way God is. God, there’s protocol. I hope you don’t think when you get to heaven that you’re gonna run up to the throne of God and slap him on the back and say, hey, God, it’s me, Herbie, and I made it. There’s protocol in heaven also. God is a God of protocol. And thus he’s provided these procedures and these principles from the Bible so we can live his life. But they’ve got to be learned. They’ve got to be learned. I mean, here’s a fair question to ask you. Do you have a hunger for knowledge? Is knowledge pleasant to your soul? Are you willing to commit to studying the Bible more than five minutes a day? I see people on Instagram and Facebook who are committed to working out. And they go to the CrossFit gym and they work out every day for an hour every day to make sure that their body is in peak condition and hopefully they’re going to live a long time and feel great. Well, do you work out for God every day? You see, I’ve been telling you this for a long time. The ideal workout is for you to open your Bible and you to sit down and listen to a qualified pastor teach you God’s Word every day. You say, well, my church doesn’t meet every day. I understand that. Most churches meet about 30 minutes on Sunday morning, about 30 minutes on Sunday night, and about 30 minutes on Wednesday night. And that adds up to an hour and a half a week of biblical instruction. You cannot grow up on an hour and a half a week. Fortunately, there are places you can get more information. And I have told numerous people over this radio show who contact me where they can get it free, how you can get DVDs and MP3s from well-qualified pastors everywhere. that will teach you God’s Word. And you can sit down in your home, at your desk, at your table, with a cup of coffee or a glass of tea, get out your Bible, get out your notebook, and take notes and learn it and apply it and glorify God in your life. It’s available, but you don’t have the time. That’s what I run into. They don’t have the time. Even those that I know closely don’t have the time to study. I’m raising children. I have a busy day. I just don’t have the time. I guess I could get up an hour early in the morning, but I’d be so sleepy by then. You will find the time when you’re ready, I promise you. If you want it, you’ll find the time. But knowledge right now is not pleasant to your soul. You’re not willing to grow spiritually. You’re not willing to do that. You’re not willing to put in the time to study God’s Word, are you? You’re not willing to learn these procedures and these principles for living the Christian life. You don’t have that hunger for knowledge. Many believers like this are what I call tumbleweed believers. What’s a tumbleweed believer? He’s blown all around by every strange doctrine that comes up. Blown around, Paul wrote about it in his letter to the Ephesians. that the gift of pastor-teacher was given for a reason so that believers would not be blown all around. Ephesians 4.14, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine. That’s the tumbleweed believer. That comes from the slight of man and coming craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive you. Oh, there’s some really religious characters out there that would love to deceive you. They’d love to get you to part with your money. They would love to get you to part with your time and dedicate it to them. They have a lot of plans and a lot of programs, but none of them are designed to help you grow spiritually. You can’t afford to be a tumbleweed believer. Paul wrote to Timothy, you need to hold fast to that form of sound doctrine which you’ve learned from me. Hold on to it. Don’t be distracted. You see, the deceiver Satan is a mighty convincer, and without solid, sound Bible teaching, you you you that are listening to me right now you may find yourself involved in some weird stuff in the name of religion are you one of these spiritual drifters who moves from one church to another and you never really get what it’s all about since you live off your emotions i don’t mean to make you mad but is that happening whatever service makes you feel good get you closer to god I’ve heard this before. It’s so good. God was here tonight. We felt him. Listen, when you leave the building, God is still there because he’s eminent and transcendent. God is eminent and transcendent. He’s omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. So you’re not going to summons up more of God by singing praise and worship songs over and over again until you lose your breath. You want to get to know God? Get into the Word. That’s why Jesus Christ said the Holy Spirit will come and tutor you and mentor you, and that’s why God gave you the spiritual gift of pastor-teacher to direct you to the Scriptures. The spiritual drifter is a pastor-shopper, one man who’s like a tumbleweed drifting from one pastor to another pastor, and he’s usually confused, usually misdirected, never really living the spiritual life, instead going for spiritual emotional highs, lack of knowledge, no associated wisdom from understanding. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who’s a pastor and one of his best friends in life, a guy that actually led him to the Lord Jesus Christ, now considers himself to be something radically different than he was back 20 years ago. I’ve known pastors who changed their mind, who were going down one way and made an abrupt turn and all of a sudden don’t believe in this anymore. Now they believe in that. They change their doctrine. They change their view. And they convince people to stick with me. You know I love you. You know I wouldn’t mislead you. I know this is not what we learned together 20 years ago, but I found something new. So let’s go down this road for a while. That is a pastor that’s a drifter, and that’s bad. If you’re under one of those drifting pastors, that’s a tough thing. So I’m encouraging you, get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor and grow spiritually. A lot of people write to me and say, where can I find one in my town? I mean, I get letters all the time from people like you. Where is there a church in my town? I don’t know. I don’t live there. But if there’s not one locally, I can tell you where to get it. I can tell you how to get it freely so that you can grow until God shows you where you belong. So the Flatline, this radio show, is about you understanding these things. It’s about you understanding how God’s plan works in your life. That’s what it’s about. It’s about how the plan works in your life. Here’s a question for you. What is a spiritual life? What is that? When you talk about a spiritual life, what exactly is that? And where do you live the spiritual life? Look, if I was in your presence right now, I’d be looking at you. I’d be looking at your image and your style. I’m sitting in a recording studio and you would be looking at me sitting here with a headset on and a pair of slacks and a loose fitting shirt talking on the microphone. But that’s not the real me. That’s what you would see. The real me is what you can’t see. It’s what I’m thinking inside my head. That’s why the Bible says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. So guess where the spiritual life is lived? The spiritual life is lived in your thoughts, in your thoughts. That’s why it says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. You have to renovate your thinking. That’s why I told you this show is about soul renovation, not manipulation. getting you to renovate the way you think so that you can be a well-qualified believer yourself and you can have a significant impact in the devil’s world. God is looking for good men like you, good women like you, people like you who are hungry for truth and who want to learn it, who are willing to take whatever time it means necessary. That’s what God’s looking for. So that’s what the Flatline is about, to keep you away from emotional highs, not to get you to something, go down some emotional road. Sometimes people ask me, do I live near an airport? The answer is no. I live near a big highway, and I hear these rumblings going by, which are big trucks going by. It sounds like a jet flying over, so please don’t be distracted if you heard that. So the Flatline is about understanding how God’s plan works, how the spiritual life works, how you recover from failure, how you fulfill the plan of God for your life. That’s what this show is about. So without developing this ever-increasing inventory of biblical knowledge, then no one can understand or advance spiritually. And I said ever-increasing inventory of biblical knowledge. It’s true in my life. Every day I study. Every day I learn. Every day I see things I didn’t know before. It’s amazing how Scripture is layered, and you can peel away the top layer, and there’s another layer underneath it. And you’re like, I didn’t see that. Wow. Peel that layer away, and there’s another layer. It’s layered. It’s a great treasure, the treasure of the Word of God. It’s called in the Greek New Testament the thesaurus, a word treasure. As you learn the Word of God, it enriches your soul. It renovates the way you think. It gives you the ability to have a relaxed mental attitude. It gives you the ability to understand God and know what his plan is. understanding how to use grace orientation and biblical orientation in your life. Two wonderful problem-solving devices. And where do I get that from? When the Bible says, grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There’s two devices. Grow in the grace, that’s grace orientation, and in the knowledge, that’s doctrinal orientation, of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s just two of the 10 problem-solving devices. Rebound being number one, the filling of the Holy Spirit being number two, the faith rest drill being number three, grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, personal sense of destiny, personal love for God and personal love for all, sharing the happiness of God and occupation with Christ. It’s all there, all for you. I hope you’ll take advantage of it. Stay in touch. Write if you want to get that book, Christian Problem Solving. It’ll list them all out for you as well as a bookmark that lists them all. And let me remind you that we have now moved our show to podcasting. So you can go to Apple iPod or Spotify, the app that is available for podcasting, or any of the other podcasting apps and type in The Flot Line, F-L-O-T, and then up will come. There you can listen to Flatline shows 24-7 anywhere in the world because we’re podcasting these radio shows. And we are also making available transcriptions of the radio show. So if you’d like to have a transcript, let us know. We can email it to you or we can send you a printed transcript of the show. We’ll be putting those into a book form shortly. and I hope you’ll enjoy that as well. I guess I better sign off. It’s getting to be the end of my time. So until next week, same time, same place, I hope you will come back and join me again. This is Rick Hughes, host of The Flotline, thanking you for being here 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.
