In this episode, Rick Hughes passionately discusses the transformation that occurs when believers acknowledge their role as grace transmitters. With an emphasis on practical approaches and spiritual wisdom, listeners are encouraged to understand and apply the principles of grace, which although foundational, continue to challenge and enrich our journey. Whether you’re exploring God’s plan for your life or wanting to ensure you’re on the right path, Rick provides the clarity and motivation needed to deepen your faith and influence within your community.
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 am your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next 30 minutes, stick around. It’ll be just a few minutes of motivation, a lot of inspiration, some education, and no, I repeat, no manipulation, no appeals for money, not asking you to join up, fess it up, give it up, nothing like that. We’re only asking you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life, and if I can do that, then you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s always up to you. The Flatline plays in 110 different cities this morning across the United States of America and out of this country as well in the Philippines. So thank you for listening. I hope you’ll learn something today. And let me remind you of this before I get too far into the subject. We have a lot of material. It’s all free, no charge for any of it. So if you’re the first-time listener, I invite you to go to our website, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. There you will find a list of all the radio shows which can be played from our website, or you’ll find a list of all the books that we publish that are free. All you have to do is request it, and we’ll send it to you. as well as a lot of different bookmarks that we publish, and these are good to stick in your Bible, and they have a lot of different scriptural principles on them. One of them we just did is why God doesn’t always answer your prayers. The reasons why your prayers are not always answered, so you might want to get a hold of that. But you can come to our website and see all that information and hear past radio shows. And we do podcast all shows on Spotify, Apple iPod, as well as the transcriptions that go with it. So it’s all available for you. And we thank God has given us this wonderful opportunity to do this. It’s a step of faith on our part to broadcast on 110 radio stations across this country because it’s not free, I promise you. So if the Lord’s in it, he’ll pay for it. He always has. So all of these radio stations that we broadcast on this morning are aired by use of what’s called transmitters. Got to have a transmitter or you can’t transmit the radio waves. And what’s a transmitter? Well, it’s some sort of equipment they use to generate and transmit electromagnetic waves carrying messages or signals, especially those with radio or television. But it also can be a person or a thing that transmits something. And if you’ll let me use this analogy today of transmission, I want to show you something. I’d like to show you how God will use you to transmit his word to other people, how God will use you to communicate his plan and his purpose for each individual. So I guess the bottom line of what I’m trying to tell you is this. The bottom line of the Christian life is this, that our spiritual lives are about conductivity, not activity. Conductivity. It’s through this conductivity that God’s grace flows, which is then converted into productivity. Let me say it again. It’s through conductivity that God’s grace flows, which is then converted into productivity. And you and I, we are the transmitters of God’s grace provisions through Jesus Christ our Lord. So that’s our job, to be spiritual influencers in the devil’s world. The job of the mature believer, hopefully you are, is to communicate and motivate to those in your sphere of influence, your family, your friends, and your associates. You know, my job is to locate positive volition, to find those of you that might be hungry and want to learn truth. They want to get this down and get it to where you can apply it into your life. So many people that I meet go to church and they know God, but they don’t understand the God they know. That’s really a tragic thing because God said, I’m looking for people in Jeremiah that know me and understand me. And the objective of my radio shows is to locate those of you who want to understand the God you know. Those of you that may be hungry, those of you that may have an intense hunger for knowledge, That knowledge, when you gain it, is called wisdom. Biblical wisdom is phenomenal because it gives you insight and discernment that other people don’t have. It’s like having what I call spiritual x-ray vision. So we’re playing this radio show in your city, wherever it may be, from Detroit to California, hoping to find positive volition, hoping to find those of you that are hungry to learn the Word of God. hopefully from a well-qualified pastor, because that’s the way the program set it up in the Bible. That’s the way God set it up, that he gave men who had the gift of communication, pastor-teachers. Their job is to communicate the Word of God on a consistent basis to their flock, to their congregation. I am not a pastor-teacher. I’m an evangelist, and my job is to communicate the gospel and basic information to you. And if you’d like to know where there is a well-qualified pastor in your area, then get a hold of me through our website. We’ll try to link you up. So here, now let’s move on. Here is God’s thinking clearly written about you being transmitters of God’s grace. 2 Peter 3, 9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish. but that all should come to repentance. So we know right away that God doesn’t desire for anyone to perish and go to the lake of fire. If you’re listening today and you’ve never made a decision to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and the finished work that he did on the cross for you, his death, his burial, and his resurrection, then maybe you don’t have eternal life. It’s a fair question for me to ask you. If you died today, do you think you’d go to heaven? That’s a fair question. Come on, answer the question. If you died today, do you think you’d go to heaven? And you may say, well, can anybody really know it for sure? And the answer is yes. The Bible says these things are written that you might know that you have eternal life in 1 John 5. He that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God hath not life. Those are the words that were recorded by John mentioning what the Lord Jesus Christ said when he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. There’s no way you can ever have a relationship with God unless you go through Christ Jesus. And he said, this is the will of the one that sent me that you believe in me whom he has sent. So the grace of God is very long-suffering, very patient, very slow to anger. Our Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross, paid for the sins of the world on that Roman cross, the cross that was meant to humiliate him, meant to kill him. It didn’t. And everyone who’s ever lived has had the opportunity to have redemption from the penalty of sin. Now, when I say the cross didn’t kill him, the Bible says he willingly gave up his spirit. I mean, he could have called 10,000 angels. to destroy the world and set him free. Is there not a song like that? He could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free, but he died alone for you and me. They didn’t kill him. He gave up his spirit. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, he said. And so our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross physically, yes, but not by the hands of the Romans, by his own will that he gave it up. And spiritual death was his association with our sins when he cried out, Eli, Eli, lema sabachani, which was, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When God the Father poured out all the sins of the world, my sin, your sin, on him, it was agonizing. And the Father turned away in three hours of darkness, and on that cross, the Lord Jesus Christ paid for our sin. Put him in a grave, they said it’s over. Everybody go home, that’s the end of that. And it wasn’t the end of it. It was just the beginning because three days later he walked out alive, alive. And here’s the most wonderful thing of all. He will come and live in you. Christ in you is the hope of glory, Paul said. Jesus Christ will live in you. Whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. When I did that, it was the most significant decision I could ever make at the age of 22 when I prayed and I asked God to save me. And I told God that I was believing in Jesus Christ. A grace transmitter told me about the grace of God. A grace transmitter gave me the message of salvation, and I responded to it. So everyone who’s ever lived, you and I, we have the opportunity to have redemption from the penalty of our sins. Listen to Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God and all are justified freely by his grace. There’s the grace I’m talking about. Justified freely by his grace. through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus as God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith, Romans 3, 23 through 24. The grace of God demonstrated is Christ on that cross. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. That love is grace. Now, if you’re going to be a grace transmitter, you’re going to have to communicate this information to all in your periphery. Proverbs 1130 says, he who wins souls is wise. Your job is to be a grace transmitter, to replicate the message, to put it out there. But to transmit grace requires some grace provisions. You can’t do it without the grace provisions. And the first one, The first wonderful provision is the filling of the Holy Spirit. We get this by rebound, problem-solving device number one on the flat line of your soul. When you sin, you have to be cleansed from your sin. And the Bible says, if we will confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That’s 1 John 1.9. When you rebound, you are filled with the Holy Spirit. When you sin, you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit. So when you rebound, you reinstate the Holy Spirit in the control of your life. And this is a wonderful, wonderful provision that God gave. John 14, 26, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I’ve said to you. This is what the Lord Jesus told the disciples after the Last Supper. The Holy Spirit is going to come and he will teach you and remind you of everything that I said to you. That was from John 13 to John 15, 11, where he said, these things I told you. So the filling of the Holy Spirit is a grace provision for you. And then God provided you with a Bible, a wonderful Bible. I bet you have more than one. Hebrews 4.12, for the word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even to the dividing of soul and spirit and joints and marrows, and is a critic of thoughts and intents of the heart. So we have a Bible, a canon of scripture, the written word of God lasts and endures forever, and that thing will be in heaven with us, I assure you. And then we have grace protection. First of all, all the information we need is in the Bible. And we are told to study to show ourself approved unto God. Workmen, it needeth not to be ashamed, but rightly dividing the word of truth. The Bible is the word of truth. We’re told to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So growing in grace means we grow in what’s in the Bible. We understand divine viewpoint as opposed to the evil of human viewpoint. And there’s a lot of evil in the world today, human viewpoint thinking. And you may know it as socialism, progressive ideology, communism, but that’s not what the Word of God teaches. The Word of God teaches faith alone in Christ alone, and the Christian life is so much greater than all these other human ideas to equality. The grace protection that God gives you is available to you as you transmit his word. You’re told in Ephesians 6, 11, put on the full armor of God so you can take a stand against the devil’s schemes. He has a strategy for you to defeat you, get you discouraged, put you on the sidelines. And the Bible goes on to say in Ephesians 6, 12, because we don’t struggle against flesh and blood. We don’t struggle against that. We struggle against rulers and against the authorities, against the powers of the dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. Because of this, verse 13, chapter six of Ephesians, put on the complete armor of God so that when the day of evil comes to you, you can keep standing your ground and after you’ve done everything, keep standing. And then the challenge, stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around your waist. Stand firm with the breastplate of righteousness in place. Stand firm with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. And in addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. There’s so many problem-solving devices in there. Faith Thrust Drill is in there. Pick up the Shield of Faith. There it is. Breastplate of Righteousness. That’s the righteousness of Christ given to you at salvation. Unbelievable. The heaven of salvation, eternal security, the sword of the spirit, the word of God. There it is for you. This is your grace protection in the devil’s world. You live in the devil’s world. You live in the middle of the angelic conflict. And if you ever intend to be a grace transmitter, let me assure you, you will wade into the conflict. aka the devil will not sit silently by and let you become a transmitter of the grace of God beginning with the information concerning Christ Jesus. There’s another provision that God made, excuse me, and that’s to have a well-qualified pastor. This changed my life. Once I found a well-qualified pastor that could teach me the Bible and not play games with me, then I began to grow. And so Ephesians 4, 11 through 17, Christ himself gave apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastor teachers to equip his people for the work of the service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith. Unity is a big word today. I see it written everywhere, unity. But the unity that we’re talking about is unity in the faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross. When we become believers in Christ, we become members of the royal family of God, and we are all equal in God’s eyes. Equal privilege, equal opportunity. You have the privilege to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you have the opportunity to become a winner believer in time. and you have the opportunity to become a loser in time by not learning the Word of God, not paying attention to your spiritual life. Winding up in heaven, yes, with eternal life, yes, but not hearing any well done, my good and faithful servant. So we are to reach unity in the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, mature believers, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, Ephesians 4.14 says, no longer tossed around by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching that comes up, by cunning and craftiness of men who are deceitful in their schemes. Instead, speaking the truth in love, Paul said we grow to become in every aspect the mature body of Christ Jesus, who’s the head. That’s Christ. And from him, the whole body is then joined together and held together by every supporting ligament. And it grows and builds itself up in love as each part of it does its work. That’s a metaphor for the human body and comparing it to the family of God in Christ Jesus. There’s two critical thought processes we have to learn. Without learning these things, we can never be grace transmitters. You and I must orient our lives to divine viewpoint, which is called doctrinal orientation. That’s problem solving device one, two, three, four, five. And we must learn to operate under the concept of grace orientation, which is problem solving device number four. So we have rebound, number one, filling of the Holy Spirit, number two, the faith rest drill, number three, grace orientation, number four, doctrinal orientation, number five, a personal sense of destiny, number six, Personal love for God, number seven. Impersonal love for all mankind, number eight. Sharing the happiness of God, number nine. Occupation with Christ, number 10. Now, if you’d like to have a book on these, I’ve got a free book you can get. It’s called Christian Problem Solving, and we can list all of these for you because each one of these, if I took time to teach them, which I’ve done over this radio show over the past 15 years, if I took time to teach them, it could take several weeks to go through each of these. But I’m going to focus right now on grace orientation, problem-solving device number four. Grace orientation. Our Lord’s disciples had to learn that their future ministries would be funded by grace. And here’s a principle I want you to always remember. This will help you. This will save you some money here. Grace ministries don’t make an issue out of money. Grace ministries do not make an issue out of money. If someone’s in a ministry and they’re trying to sell you something, look out. Because if God’s in it, God will pay for it, and they don’t have to raise money. 2 Corinthians 2, 17, listen to what Paul said. We are not as so many who peddle the word of God. But as of sincerity, as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ Jesus. Peddling the Word of God. The biggest selling book in the world is the Bible. People peddle it. You got the Hunter’s Bible, the Lover’s Bible, the Father’s Bible, the Mother’s Bible, the Student Bible, the… I mean, come on. And every guy in the ministry writes a book and gets a contract with some publisher to publish his books, make a lot of money, and there’s a lot of famous preachers that publish a lot of books. Stay away from people that sell the Word of God because God’s plan is based on God’s policy, and that’s always grace. Grace, free, free, it’s free. Grace is God’s system of administration for the body of Christ. And grace is the means of conveying the power of God into the life of the ordinary believer like you and I. That’s why 1 Peter 5 says, clothe yourself with humility toward one another because God makes war against arrogant but gives grace to the humble believer. So humble yourself unto the mighty hand of God that he may promote you at the proper time. God gives grace to the humble believer. The arrogant believer is self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, eventually self-destruction. And if you get into that concept, if you’re in the ministry and you justify why it’s okay to sell your articles or sell your books you wrote, you say, well, we just want to get a little money to help pay for it. Forget it. If God’s in it, don’t sell it. Give it free. You got it free, you give it free. So grace is all that God is free to do for mankind like you and I without compromising any of his divine essence. By the way, do you know the essence of God? Do you know his sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, eternal life, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, and veracity? That’s 10 things I just quoted. Do you know any of those? You should. A well-qualified pastor would sure be teaching them to you. This is what God’s like. When God said he wants you to know him and understand him, he wants you to understand his essence. And God cannot compromise his righteousness. It’s impossible for him to do. That’s why the Bible says he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God by means of him. That’s why the Bible says there are none that are righteous, not even one. All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. So there’s no way that you can satisfy the justice of God by your own righteous deeds. That’s why it says, for by grace we’re saved through faith and not of works. So if God accepted your works, he’d have to compromise his righteousness. He will not compromise his righteousness. So here’s a principle you should remember. The justice of God. is the guardian of the righteousness of God. And what the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God will judge every time. So grace is everything God’s free to do for all of us without compromising his essence. There’s pre-salvation grace. What a wonderful thing. That’s the work of Christ on the cross, being judged for our sins as a substitute. That happened before you ever accepted him. That’s pre-salvation grace. That’s laying the groundwork for your salvation. And then there’s saving grace, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, as I’ve quoted already, not of works. And then there’s post-salvation grace. 1 Peter 5, 12, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it. Listen again, grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s post-salvation grace. The grace lifestyle is unbelievable. The grace lifestyle is the most attractive thing the unbeliever can see. When he sees somebody that’s grace-oriented, it knocks his socks off. He’s blown away with this sort of person who’s grace-oriented. And if it’s you, you can be the grace transmitter that transmits the wonderful word of God to him. But you’ve got to live by grace. You’ve got to understand the grace assets that you have and the grace provisions that you have. There’s nothing more fun for me than to grace somebody out. to pay for something they didn’t earn, to give them something they don’t deserve, to grace someone out just like God graced me out. God graced you out. We didn’t deserve to go to heaven. We don’t deserve to have eternal life, but he graced us out. And then there’s pre-salvation grace, saving grace, post-salvation grace, and dying grace. Dying grace is the death of the material believer who’s a winner and a hero for God. It’s the divine vehicle for the transferring of that invisible hero from earth to heaven. And dying grace is the mature believer passing over the high golden bridge from earth to heaven, traveling from grace to grace to grace. I bet you’ve known somebody like that in your own family. As a grace transmitter, God has entrusted you with all of these divine truths, all of these things for you to understand. They are not for you to hide. They are for you to proclaim. That’s your mission. That’s why Jesus said you’re the salt of the earth. You’re saved, S. You’re anointed, A. You’re a learner, L. And you’re trusted, T. You’re salt, saved, anointed, learner, trusted. And that’s what God wants from you. He wants you to be the salt of the earth that acts as a preservative. If there’s ever any nation that needed salting today, it’s us, America, USA. Client nation, USA, 2021. Mother’s Day, as you listen to this message, you need to be the salt of the earth. You need to be the preservative that holds this nation together. The extraordinary woman of Proverbs 31, the virtuous woman with courage and character and a communicator of the grace of God. That’s what we’re looking for. And so here we are. Jesus said, you’re salt. He also said right after that, that you’re the light of the world. Don’t put your light under some sort of bucket and hide it. Let it shine. Let your light shine so that others can see Christ in you. You are the light of this world. And that light will take away the blackness of sin. So if you will stay filled with the Holy Spirit, if you will learn and apply God’s Word into your life, if you will reflect the thinking of Jesus Christ, if you will glorify God to the maximum, you will be indeed a grace transmitter. But that won’t happen with a one-shot decision. That won’t happen with you going to some camp or you going to some retreat and promising God you’re going to live for Jesus the rest of your life. That doesn’t work that way. This is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment recognition of your need to stay filled with the Holy Spirit, take in the Word of God, grow in grace, and replicate the life of Christ. That’s what you’re here for. So I hope you’re learning that and I hope you’re listening and I hope this is clicking with you. And I hope if you like our radio show, you will write to me and let me know. Just let me know you’re listening. We’re about to come up with some contract renewals soon. I’d like to know who’s out there and who’s not. So please drop us a note if you are listening so we’ll know. There is someone in that city that’s paying attention. 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.
