In this thought-provoking episode, host Rick Hughes discusses the corrosive power of public lies and their potential to manipulate and control. Using the trials faced by Jesus Christ as a narrative backdrop, he passionately argues for the need to develop spiritual resilience. Rick highlights the significance of forgiveness and grace, urging believers to respond to adversity with love and wisdom rather than anger. Tune in for an enlightening conversation that promises to inspire and motivate while educating listeners about maintaining their integrity and peace of mind.
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 stick around. It’ll be a few minutes of motivation, inspiration, some education, But we have absolutely no manipulation because we’re not going to try to con you out of any money. We’re not going to ask you to join up, fess it up, give it up, nothing like that. We’re just going to ask you to please listen up. This radio show, The Flatline, has been on the air for 15 years now and we’re expanding rapidly across America. And one of the few radio shows where you can actually learn something. Remember, God gave you two ends, one of them you sit on and one of them you think with, and success in your life is going to depend on which one of those ends you use. Obviously, heads you win and tails you lose. Bad decisions limit future options. If you make enough bad decisions, you will have no options left, and the worst decision you could ever make, the absolute worst, number one bad decision, is to reject Jesus Christ as your Savior, because there’s no way out of the lake of fire. Once you make that decision, once you decide that you do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and you reject that, then you rejected the best good news that possibly could have ever heard. The love of God reached out to you. God so loved the world, the love of God reached out to you, provided for you an atonement for your sin, and you rejected that. Please consider that today. Please think about that today. Do not reject Christ as your Savior. I know many people sometimes claim to be atheists, but that’s no such thing as a real true atheist, because in order to be an atheist, you have to be God yourself. That’s right. You have to look in the entire universe at one time, and if he’s left out, if you leave it out and God’s there, you’re in trouble. So you have to be God yourself and say, there is no God because I’m God. I’ve looked all over the universe and there’s no God. But that’s not true. You can’t do that, can you? And so you, by faith, believe there’s no God. And it’s strange, but that’s how you become a Christian. By faith, same thing. It’s a matter of your volition. It’s a matter of your decision. It’s a matter of your choice. And so when we talk about the flat line, we’re talking about choices you make to build inside of your soul a main line of resistance, a main line of resistance called a flat line, forward line of troops. Obviously, that’s a military analogy. We’re talking about how you can build up inside of you, inside of where your brain is, is the way you think. a main line of resistance that can stop all of the adversity that you come into from becoming stress. Adversity obviously is an opportunity, and it’s an opportunity to not get full of stress. Stress will destroy you. Anger, bitterness, hatred, vindictiveness, and placability will destroy you. You can’t afford to let that happen. So if we want to make some good decisions, the first one is to trust in Jesus Christ and believe in him, receive him as your savior, because the Bible says if any man’s in Christ, he’s a new creature. Old things are passed away, all things become new. That was the greatest thing that ever happened to me at the age of 22 when I accepted Christ as my savior. I became a new person, not on the outside, I was still the same ugly guy I always was, but on the inside. born again, a child of God. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. And that’s what happened to me on that day, 17 August, way back in 1967. I trusted Christ. I was made new. I began to grow and study and learn, got into a local church where God’s word was taught. I learned it. I applied it into my life. I learned what my spiritual gift was and how my gift functioned and operated and began a ministry that’s lasted all these years. And now here we are talking to you over this radio show. What an amazing opportunity. And what’s amazing is what I want to talk to you about today, if you’re interested. I want to talk about lying, lying. I was in a school speaking one time and a young girl said, I have a problem with lying. I lie to everybody. I lie to my parents, I lie to my teachers, I lie to my friends. A lot of us live by the lie. However, there is a lie that’s very dangerous. And you’ve seen it in the political turmoil that’s going on in our country today. It’s called the public lie. The public lie. Let me give you some background on this from the Bible in Matthew 22, 15. The Pharisees, these are the men that wanted to trap Jesus Christ and try him. The Pharisees went and plotted. They attempted to discredit him. They attempted to do anything they could to make him seem as a worthless, useless scoundrel. So the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might trap him. And then, of course, try him. Trap him in what he said. And they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians saying, Teacher! We know you’re truthful. Uh-huh, yes, yeah. And teach the way of God in truth and defer to no one for you are not partial to any. Boy, you talk about a bunch of backstabbers. Here they were. The Pharisees wanting to trap him in some way, get rid of him, minimize the Lord Jesus Christ. In Luke 11, 53 and 54, when he left there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile and to question him closely on many subjects, plotting against him to minimize his impact, I’m telling you. Plotting against him to catch him in something that he might say. If they could catch him in any sort of lie or catch him in some way when he spoke when he shouldn’t speak, then they can destroy his personality and destroy the impact that he would have. This is what a public lie is. A public lie is told in order to minimize the individual, in order to minimize the impact of the individual. Listen to Mark 3.22. The scribes who came down to see him were saying, he’s possessed by Beelzebub, and he cast out demons by the ruler of demons. That’s a lie. That’s a public lie. The scribes were repeating a public lie. This is what they were saying. They were accusing the Lord Jesus Christ of being possessed by a devil. In Matthew 12, 14, but the Pharisees went out and conspired against him as to how they might destroy him. And I might add anyone who followed him. So the public lie is designed to destroy someone’s impact and minimize his impact too. Make him look like he’s strange and weird and a liar and he’s obnoxious. Many witnesses, Mark 14, 56 through 58, told lies against Jesus. There you go. And their stories did not agree. Some men stood up and told this lie against Jesus. Here’s what they said. We heard him say, I will tear down the temple. which men have made. And after three days, I will build one that is not made by men. Of course, they didn’t understand what the resurrection was. So the public lie, you tell it often enough, loud enough and long enough, people believe it. And there are people in this country that are manipulated with the public lie. The Pharisees and the scribes are an example of vituperation and vilification by creating a public lie about the only perfect person who ever remained on this earth. So since they could not discredit him, they lied about him. And here’s your principle. When evil people get power, they will say and do anything to maintain the power. They will lie and manipulate you just to maintain their power. Let me show you again another passage in John 19, 1 through 12. A little lengthy. Let me read it. This is the trial of Jesus and want you to see the public lie here. So Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and placed it on his head and put a purple cloak on him. And they repeatedly came up to him and said, Hail, King of the Jews. And pop, they’d slap him in the face again and again. And when Pilate came out and said to the Pharisees, Sadducees, religious people, look, I’m bringing him out to you so you will know I find no grounds at all for the charges in his case. Did you hear that? I find no grounds at all for the charges in his case. He didn’t buy the public lie. Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and a purple robe, and Pilate said to them, here’s your man. And then the chief priests and the officers saw him. They started shouting, crucify him, crucify him. And Pilate said, you take him and you crucify him. I find no grounds for charges in this case. And the Jews answered and said, we have a law. And by that law, he should die because he made himself out to be the son of God. When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. And he entered the praetorium again and asked Jesus, where are you from? John 19. Who are you? And Jesus gave him no answer. And Pilate said to him, are you speaking to me? Are you going to talk to me? Don’t you know I have the authority to release you? I have the authority to crucify you. And then Jesus spoke, John 19, 11. You would have no authority over me at all if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason, the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin. As a result of this, Pilate made efforts to release him. But the Jews shouted, saying, if you release this man, you are not a friend of Caesar, because anyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar. So they tried to trap Pilate into crucifying Christ and making him look like he would oppose Caesar if he didn’t do that. But what Jesus said, you would have no authority over me at all if it had not been given to you. That’s Romans 13, 1 and 2, the powers that be are ordained by God. You talk about a lie, you talk about slander, you talk about maligning, you talk about gossip, you talk about criticism, anything to get rid of who and what Christ is because he represented a threat to their power. You know, in your life, you will run into a few totally obnoxious people. We call them TOPS, T-O-P-S, totally obnoxious people who will be jealous of you, just like these men were jealous of the Lord. Or they’ll simply just dislike you. People that will say or do anything to put you down. If you have a flat line in your soul that we talk about, if you have that main line of resistance in your soul, then you will be able to respond to that and not react. Respond and not react. That’s respond with forgiveness and faith and not react with bitterness and hostility. Here’s some principles I want you to remember. Anyone can say anything about anyone else, and somebody’s going to always believe it, especially if they have mental attitude sins towards that person to start with. Like if they’re jealous or bitter about that person, sure they will believe it if they hear it. They might not even like his personality, and if they hear something they don’t like, they’re going to agree with it. Secondly, if the person who hears the lie about you believes the lie, then it’s most often because he dislikes you to begin with. And three, the originator of the public lie is usually an irrational person to begin with. What do I mean by that? I mean he has or she has an unrealistic self-image to start with, which means they think they’re smarter than you and smarter than the person that they run down and lie about. And four, volition is involved in telling a lie. In believing the lie, volition is involved. Thus, the law of volitional responsibility falls on anyone who tells it or anyone who believes it. And under this law, because of this law, we create our own misery and our own suffering. Galatians 6, 7, do not be deceived. God will not be mocked. Whatever a man sows, that he’s going to reap. So if someone tells a lie about you, they use their volition. And if the person they tell it to believes it, he’s using his volition. This means that anyone who manufactures a public lie is under liability from the Supreme Court of Heaven for lying. It also applies to those who believe the lie, since they chose to listen to it and believe it to start with. So the principle you’ve got to get here is the public lie is designed to create an environment for the control and the manipulation of other people at the expense of character assassination. The public lie is designed to create an environment for the control and the manipulation of other people at the expense of character assassination. So, in reality, if you believe the lie, you will live by the lie, and your life will become a lie. Because if you live by the lie, you will die by the lie. Again, if you believe the lie, you will live by the lie. You’ll repeat it yourself. And your life will become a lie. And if you live by that lie, you will die by the lie. That’s why having a flight line in your soul is so important, because it gives you the opportunity to respond rather than react. Respond using grace orientation and using impersonal love, two wonderful problem-solving devices, grace orientation and impersonal love. And by using impersonal love, you can then take the Scripture, the wisdom of the Bible, God’s Word, and apply it, such as Ephesians 4, 30 and 31. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, that’s because of your sin, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Don’t grieve him. Let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, all clamor, all slander be removed from you along with all of your malice. Malice is a desire to hurt someone. So the believer is told to get rid of his bitterness and his wrath and his anger and his clamor and his slander. Many of you that I’m talking to are believers. You have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, but you might have bought into a public lie. Have you repeated a lie? Have you slandered someone by repeating a lie? Did you believe the lie because you hate the individual to start with? People do that about you all the time. Proverbs 11, nine, with his mouth, the godless person will destroy his neighbor, but through knowledge, knowledge, the righteous will be rescued. What in the world does that mean? Through knowledge, the righteous will be rescued. What does that mean? Well, wisdom is the fruit of knowledge. And the righteousness is the spiritually mature believer. Hopefully that’s you. And this means you can be delivered and unaffected by the lie or the slander that’s pointed your way. If your life comes under the public lie, if someone begins to criticize, malign, slander you, gossip about you, then you can overcome that. And the key here is always forgiveness. Forgiveness of the liar or forgiveness of the person who does the slandering. Because if you maintain bitterness Then the person that did it to you, the person who wronged you, will still control you through your very own implacability. That’s right. You cannot get trapped in your own bitterness. You can’t allow that to happen. So the key is forgiveness. Forgiveness. Here’s the key. Forgiving the liar. Forgiving the slanderer. If you’re in business and you have a competing business person, they’ll lie about you. They’ll run you down. They’ll malign you. I can think about years ago my family was in the boat business and we faced a lot of that from competition from other marine dealers that would lie about our service or lie about our product or lie about our personnel in order to try to gain a sale on their behalf. This goes on every day. It goes on in your neighborhood where someone will lie about someone in your neighborhood or in the school where someone will lie about a teacher or in business opportunity where someone will lie about your business. all designed to gain an advantage over the people that don’t like you to start with and they buy into the lie so you have to learn how to forgive people because if you maintain hatred and bitterness then the person who did the original lying about you will still control you through your own implacability. So, principle. The mature believer, that’s a believer with a flat line in his soul, the mature believer can forgive the person who wronged him by using grace orientation and impersonal love. Now, when we’re talking about grace, we have saving grace, living grace, dying grace, and surpassing grace. Living grace is a wonderful thing because you can grace people out. You don’t have to retaliate when someone does something to you that you don’t like. You don’t have to bend to their level and try to get them even with them. I had a friend, used to have a friend, still have him. He used to walk around with a little book in his pocket. And if you wronged him, he’d said, your name’s going in the book and I’m gonna get you. Well, that’s no way to live. Grace orientation is now his new way of living. He can forgive people, grace them out. Why? Because God graced us out. The same thing God did for you, you can do for them. And that’s with impersonal love. did god love you with impersonal love yes he did for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son listen could god love you when you were in sin not with personal love no because there was nothing in you to love but he loved you with impersonal love in other words he loved you based on his character not your character now once you trust in christ And once the righteousness of Christ is given to you, once you’re adopted by the family of God and brought into the royal family of God, then God’s personal love is directed to you. But he loved you impersonally while you were still in sin. He loved you based on his character, not your character. And you can use impersonal love with those who hate you. The Bible has a lot to say about forgiveness, a lot. It’s a Greek word translated as forgive in the English, but in the New Testament, it’s afiemi, afiemi. And it carries a whole lot of meaning, including to forgive a debt or to… leave something or leave someone alone to send them away or even to divorce, to forgive. Ephesians 4.32 is the attribute of forgiveness. Listen carefully. Here’s the attitude. This is what it looks like when it’s working. Be kind and compassionate to one another. forgiving each other. There you go. Forgiving each other, just as Christ and God forgave you. Kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as God, for Christ’s sake, forgave you. Now, let me ask you a question. Is there a totally obnoxious person that you can’t stand? Is there a person that if they come into your arena of contention, the hair on the back of your neck goes up and and you can’t stand them? Have they done something to you or said something about you or done something that hurt you in some way? Have you forgiven that person? Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ, for God’s sake, as in Christ, God forgave you. Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t hold you accountable for your sin? Aren’t you glad that God held Christ accountable, that he judged him in your place, in my place, so that he who knew no sin became sin for us? So we have to be kind, compassionate. That’s the mandate. This is not a request. This is a commandment from God. Listen to Matthew 6, 14. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, then your heavenly Father will also forgive you. If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. If you don’t forgive people, that’s a mental attitude sin. How can God forgive you a sin when you don’t confess your sin, you don’t admit your sin? You know, if there’s two guys in a church and Bob on one side of the church and Bill on the other side of the church and they both go to the same church and they both hate each other because they got sideways in a business deal, but yet they go and they give their money and they sing in the choir and they pray out loud, but yet there’s that hatred and bitterness and where you won’t even look over at the other guy, doesn’t want to be around the other guy, and says to other people, let me tell you what that jerk did to me. This person is kidding himself. If they think they’re in fellowship with God, they’re way out of line. They’re not in fellowship with God. They’re doing the right things, going to church, praying, singing, giving. Those are all good things, but they’re doing it in the wrong way. They’re doing it in the energy of the flesh. They’re doing it in the strength of their old sin nature because they have that bitter, implacable, vindictive heart because of something that someone said about them or something someone did to them. Colossians 3.13, bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive them as God forgave you. Bear with each other, forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive them as the Lord forgave you. Principle, if somebody asks you for forgiveness and in honor you forgive them, then your integrity and your loyalty to the word of God demands that you forget what they did to you and that you never again recall it in your mind or penalize them for it. That’s a quote from R.B. Thame Jr., my pastor. If someone asks you for forgiveness and in honor you forgive them, then integrity to the word of God and loyalty to the word of God, your personal integrity and your loyalty to God’s word demands that you forget what they did to you and that you never again recall it in your mind, and you never again hold it over them and penalize them for that. Romans 12, 19, Beloved, do not take your own revenge, but defer to the wrath of God, for it stands written in Deuteronomy 32, 35, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. This means there’s no such thing as a half forgiveness. You know, it means you don’t totally forget it and move on. You hold it over their head and you never trust them again. Oh yeah, you say, I forgive you. Okay, shake hands. All right, okay, I forgive you. But you don’t and you still hold it over their head and you still have a mark against them because you think about it. It’s hard to forgive and forget, but that’s what God does. Our Lord forgave Peter when he denied him three times the night of his arrest. You can read about it in Luke 22, 54 through 62, when Peter was warned by the Lord, you’re going to deny me before the rooster crows in the morning. And of course, Peter said, I would never do that. I’m a faithful, loyal friend, follower, servant. But he did. And Luke 22, 61 says, the Lord heard him do it and looked right at him and Peter went out and wept bitterly. But the Lord forgave him because when he resurrected, he said, go find the disciples and Peter, bring him here. Peter was forgiven. Think about what you’ve done. God forgives you. But you are not God. I realize that. But you must live like you are God. You must live like you’re Christ. The Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. You have to learn to forgive like he forgave and you have to learn to live like he lived. Half forgiveness is not genuine forgiveness. That’s just half forgiveness. You must forgive as Christ forgave. That means you forget the wrong done to you and you never hold it against that person. Our Lord Jesus Christ forgave and that’s where it ended. We fail. We fail to forgive. We fail to forget. This is where manipulation by stipulation fails. You can’t stipulate forgiveness. Either you forgive them or you don’t forgive them. Forgiveness is the only real when you forget the wrong that was done to you. But here’s the problem. Arrogance has no ability to forgive. A self-righteous, arrogant person is a non-forgiving person. He’s implacable and guilty of vilification and revenge and seeking to hurt people that he won’t forgive. because he cannot use God’s problem-solving devices. You cannot replace forgiveness with anger if you’re a Christian. The function of forgiveness in your spiritual life avoids distractions like that. And there’s a warning to the spiritual life rendering forgiveness given in Ephesians 4, 30 through 32. Stop grieving the Holy Spirit by whom you’ve been sealed to the day of redemption. Forgive each other. That’s exactly what the Bible says. God blotted out our transgressions at the moment we believed in Christ. So we are to forgive and forget. It’s a spiritual principle. We are to live without reaction later on, without accompanying sins later on. Forgive them and forget it. That’s the principle. Until next week, this is 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.
