In this episode, Rick Hughes introduces listeners to essential problem-solving devices from the Bible that help Christians navigate through life’s adversities. From understanding the significance of spiritual concentration to forming a deeper connection with God through the Holy Spirit, uncover practical advice that equips you to respond to life’s trials effectively. Embark on this spiritual journey today to build your spiritual IQ and experience a life of grace and purpose as intended by 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.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you, Jack, and good morning to you. Welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, specifically about 30 minutes, we’ll be giving you some information based on the Bible, the Word of God, not human speculation, but biblical information that’ll help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life, if indeed you’re even interested in that. If you’re interested and if you listen to what I’m teaching you, you can orient and adjust to the plan. It’s up to you. You have your own volition. You are a product of your volition. You make decisions every day, and those bad decisions can limit future options. So the FLOT line is designed to give you a life of wonderful choices so that you know what your options are. FLOT is F-L-O-T, and we’re coming out with a brand new book called Christian Problem Solving. I want to tell you about that book right now. It’s free to start with. There’ll be no charge for it, and you can order it soon, next week or two. But this book is designed to go over those 10 unique problem-solving devices that we teach here on the FLOT line. You know, the FLOT stands for the Forward Line of Troops. And we use that military term to describe how you can build in your soul an invisible barrier, an invisible barrier called a main line of resistance. And that invisible barrier is built around 10 unique problem-solving devices taught in the Bible. And if you learn them and use them, then it’s possible you can stop the outside sources of adversity before they overrun the content of your mentality and your soul and create stress. You don’t have to have stress. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to live in fear. You don’t have to live in bitterness and antagonism. There’s a better way to live. Actually, it’s called the Christian life. What a wonderful way to live. And it’s a life of joy and a life of peace and happiness and it’s unbelievable. And this is what we’re offering you if you will learn God’s word, God’s problem-solving devices. But you can’t understand the word of God unless you can concentrate. Concentration is important. Any child with attention deficit disorder has a hard time concentrating, you know that, on a single subject. But I find that many Christians have the same inability to focus, the same inability to concentrate for long periods of time. It’s one of the reasons we just run about 27, 28-minute shows here. So you got to be able to listen to what we’re saying and pay attention for about 28 minutes. If you can do that, then you can learn God’s Word. I’m not your pastor, but I’m here to instruct you and give you some information that leads you to a great pastor a well-qualified pastor that can shepherd your soul but our minds prefer to be entertained and thus movies and electronic games where one doesn’t have to think very much or uh you know the actors of the images do all the thinking for us so You got to think now and you got to learn because God’s given you an IQ. That IQ is important. And God, because you can develop a spiritual IQ, not a human IQ, a spiritual IQ. I can tell you about that because when I became a Christian, I wasn’t the smartest cookie in the jar. Still am not, but I developed spiritual IQ from listening to my pastor teach God’s word to me. and therefore I developed an inventory of biblical frame of reference. This is what we want you to do. Learn those 10 problem-solving devices. They are as follows. Rebound, problem-solving device number one. The filling of the Holy Spirit, problem-solving device number two. The faith rest drill, problem solving device, number three. Grace orientation, number four. Doctrinal orientation, number five. Personal sense of destiny, number six. Personal love for God, number seven. Impersonal love for all of mankind, number eight. sharing the happiness of god number nine and occupation with christ number ten i could literally teach a couple of weeks on each of those subjects i’m not going to do that today i just want to highlight them i don’t want to remind you of these subjects because this is why we do the show we want you to build this flatline because every problem in life has a solution and it’s stated in the Word of God. So these studies, they’re designed to help you understand what your options are when you encounter problems and to encourage you to grow spiritually every day by learning those 10 problem-solving devices provided in the Word of God. Because problems can come in several areas. They may not be limited to just the bad things that happen to you either. One of the biggest problems is our own sinful nature. Adversity, prosperity, death all create problems. We have problems in our life every day. So there’s a way to handle those problems. There’s a way not to freak out. There’s a way not to get angry. There’s a way not to get full of stress. But one of the first problems that we have is our own salvation. You can’t come to God unless you come through Jesus Christ. And I see people talk about this all the time. I’m praying to God, praying for God to help me. Our prayers are going up for you. Christ said, no one can come to the Father but by means of me. So this most significant question I can ask you is this. Have you a personal relationship with the God of this universe through his son, Jesus Christ? Have you indeed accepted him as your savior? It’s a decision that every man, child, woman, every one of us, we must make this decision. I made it when I was 22. I never paid much attention to God growing up, going through school, playing football and chasing girls and doing everything that I did. But at the age of 22, I came face to face and made a decision to accept Christ as my Savior. I never knew what would happen as a result of that. I had no idea of the plan that God had for me, but I knew I wanted to go to heaven, and I knew that this gentleman that led me to Christ said I could know I was going to heaven. He showed me in the Bible. These things are written so that you might know that you have eternal life. And ever since that day that I dropped on a knee and prayed and asked God to save me, I have known for sure I’m going to heaven, not because I’m a good kid, not because I don’t do stupid things, but because I have faith in Christ. Faith alone in Christ alone is the signature salvation that every one of us need. So when you make that decision to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is the single most significant decision that you could ever make in your entire life. Now, once you accept Christ, you’re not perfect. That’s what I found out immediately. I accepted Christ as my savior and wound up going back to school, going into a Bible college and found out I wasn’t perfect. I still had my temper. Still could go off at the flash of a bang, boom, get mad, lose my temper. And I thought, well, if I’m a Christian, why do I do that? I could still lust after girls. And even in Bible college, if I’m a Christian, why would I do that? And I found out that I still had a sin nature. Even though I was a Christian, even though I had accepted Christ as my Savior, It did not mean that from now on out, I would never have any other temptations or never commit another sin. That’s not what the Bible says. Paul put it plainly. He said, I don’t understand myself at all because I want to do what’s right, but it’s inevitable that I do what’s wrong. And if I do what’s wrong, it’s plain that it’s sin in me. He wrote that the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit wars against the flesh and they’re contrary one to the other so that we don’t do the things we want to do. You, like me, have a sin nature. And you, like me, inherited that sin nature from your father. I don’t really know who my father was, but I know what his sin nature was, I got it. And it’s in me, and I had to learn how to control it or else it was gonna control me. So that’s where the first problem-solving device comes in. How do I control my sin nature? And it’s called rebound. Rebound is problem-solving device number one. It’s a term that describes a confession of any known sin. Simply put, when we bounce out of fellowship with God by committing personal sin, we rebound or we bounce back in by confessing our sin. And it’s taught in the Bible in many passages. For example, 1 John 1 says, if we confess our sin, if is a third-class condition. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Maybe you don’t even know what sin is. But if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Do you even know what sins are? Mental attitude sins like worry. Did anybody ever tell you worry is a sin? Fear is a sin. Anger is a sin. Jealousy is a sin. Or it could be a sin of the tongue like gossip, slander, maligning, criticizing, lying. Or it could be an overt sin like stealing, murder, fornication, adultery. When we sin, if we are Christians, we break fellowship with God because we quench the Holy Spirit. We grieve the Holy Spirit, and our fellowship with God is broken. So we have to reestablish fellowship, and the only way to do that is to rebound. It’s a pretty basic concept. Most people understand they should ask God to forgive them for their sins, but it doesn’t mean you have to beg God to forgive you for your sin and promise you’ll never do it again, because more than likely, you probably will do it again. The Bible says that when you sin, you grieve and you quench the Holy Spirit, and sin quenches the power to help you execute the protocol plan of God. Sin grieves the Holy Spirit or makes him sorrowful that you sin. So by rebounding, you can recover from your sin and get back into fellowship with God. by letting the Holy Spirit once again take control of your life. So at any moment in time, right now as I’m talking to you, you are either controlled by the Holy Spirit or you are controlled by your flesh, your sinful nature. You are indwelled with the Holy Spirit at salvation, you’re sealed with the Holy Spirit at salvation, you’re given spiritual gifts at salvation, and you’re filled with the Holy Spirit at salvation. But when you sin, you don’t lose your salvation. You simply quench and grieve the spirit and you quit operating in the spiritual life. Now, let’s put it together. First, you must accept Christ as your Savior and get saved. Secondly, God the Holy Spirit indwells you to help you follow God’s plan. And third, you are prone to sin and thus you could quench the Holy Spirit when you do that. And fourth, God knew this was gonna happen, so he made a provision for you and for your sin by providing a rebound. Fifth, when you do sin, if you will confess that sin and rebound it, then you will be back in fellowship with God and free to follow his plan. I can hear you right now say, how many times will God forgive me for the same sin? As many times as you do it, I promise you. As many times as you do it. No one’s perfect. No one goes through the day not ever sinning. There are some days if you drive in cities like Atlanta or Houston or Dallas, you may sin a lot on the interstate traffic. You may sin a lot at work with mental attitude sins and frustration and anger. But as many times as you sin, when you go to God and say, Father, I just messed up. I just did something I shouldn’t have done. I just lied. I just lusted. I just got full of vindictive bitterness and hatred. Then he forgives you. That’s his plan for your life. And the whole process may have to be repeated a lot of times every day, but you must continue to rebound. if you have any chance of executing the Christian life because you can’t do it on your own. You cannot use your own energy and your own flesh to execute the spiritual life. So failure to rebound results in several things. If you don’t rebound, if you don’t confess your sin to God, you’re gonna get under the law of divine punitive action, which means that in Hebrews 12, five, God said, those that I love, I discipline and I chasten with a whip. And so God can discipline you for not rebounding. And the second law to consider is in Colossians 3.25, it’s called the law of volitional responsibility. This is where you must take responsibility for every decision you make, good, bad, or ugly. So simply put, God holds all of us responsible for our decisions. And when we sin, we must take responsibility for that sin. And sometimes that even includes accepting the discipline that goes with it. But if you fail to rebound, if you fail to confess the sin, if you try to hide it from God or act like you didn’t do it and you continue your sinning and you’re letting your sinful nature control you and you’re going to be in a lot of trouble with God, if you’re a Christian, you’re going to get disciplined. Now the second problem-solving device. Again, the new book will explain all of this to you and you can have it in your hands and you can read it and study it and open your Bible and look at it. So order the book if you want it. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the second problem-solving device. This term often causes a lot of confusion in the Christian world. I mean, a whole denomination has been built on using this phrase as a major emphasis. And I’m not here to unravel all the confusion that surrounds that. But my emphasis is to show you what I believe the Bible teaches concerning the filling of the Holy Spirit. With this hope that you will seek to allow God’s Holy Spirit to control your life each and every moment of every day. When our Lord Jesus Christ left the earth, he told the disciples he was going to send them a tutor or a mentor, and the Holy Spirit would be with them and help them to remember everything that he taught them. That’s the Holy Spirit that’s come to live in you, and he lives inside of you. If you are a believer, the Holy Spirit indwells you. And you are mandated in the Bible to be filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5.18. It’s not a request, it’s a requirement. God said you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. So at any time in a 24-hour day, You are either controlled by the Holy Spirit or you are controlled by the energy of the flesh. The flesh, flesh, flesh. The carnal man, the sinful nature. So which one’s controlling you right now? Can you know that? Yes. How do you have unconfessed sin in your life? Are you lying to God? Are you hiding something from your wife, from your husband, from your church? What are you hiding? That’s sin. And if you don’t confess the sin, you can get ready to accept the discipline that comes with it because God will give you an attitude adjustment. He will break your anger and your arrogance and bring you down to nothing as his child. So you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Then rebound when you sin. Rebound when you sin because the filling of the Holy Spirit solves the problem of the genetically formed sin nature. You have one, I have one, and the Holy Spirit takes care of that problem. So how do we handle sin? We rebound. How do we handle the genetically formed sin nature? We stay filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s our first power option in the Christian life. If we choose to be filled with the Holy Spirit, then we can choose to learn God’s plan and learn it and apply it into our life. It’s important for you. It’s the foundation. No man can build on this foundation. And that’s your faith alone in Christ alone. And then you build on it. The gold, silver, and precious stones, these are things that you do in production from the filling of the Holy Spirit that glorifies God forever. So here’s a question I’m going to ask you again. Are you saved? Have you accepted Christ as your Savior? Yes, you have? Great. Secondly, at this moment, are you in fellowship or are you out of fellowship? Answer that question. How do you know? Is there unconfessed sin in your life? That’s the answer. Third problem-solving device, faith rest drill. In order for the faith rest drill to be effective, you must be in fellowship with God through the filling of the Holy Spirit. If there is any unconfessed sin in your life, you cannot use this tremendous problem-solving device. So let’s start with that word faith. It’s a noun, sometimes used as a verb, believe, or faith or believe, same word. The original Greek manuscripts in the New Testament call it pistis or pistouo, faith, faith. We must have faith to be saved by faith alone in Christ alone, for by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works, that someone could brag about it. The Bible tells you that faith in Romans 10, 17 comes by hearing, and that hearing, the Word of God. So as you hear the Word of God under the filling of the Holy Spirit, as you build a biblical inventory of ideas and scriptures in your soul, your faith grows. That’s what’s important. In Ephesians 6, 16, we’re told to pick up the shield of faith. And this is a weapon that we have or a protective barrier that we have that protects us from the strategy of Satan. Every Roman soldier had a shield that he carried in the combat and protected him from the enemy’s arrows and from spears. And Paul told us we have a shield like that. He used a military metaphor and it is faith. It’s the word of God. If we learn the Word of God, stand behind the Word of God in faith, then we are lifting our shields to protect ourselves from the attacks of Satan. You can read it for yourself in Philippians 4.19. Do you believe the promise? Are you willing to trust God? Or do you think you’ve got a better plan for your life? Those three problem-solving devices I’ve given you right there are critical for you, critical for you to grow in grace, critical for you to understand what God’s plan is about. So are you willing to trust him? Do you know God has a plan for your life? Excuse me, he does. And the faith thrust drill requires three steps. Let me take a drink of water. All right. The first one is this. You have to claim a promise. This is how the faith rest drill works. Claim a promise. Now, how many do you know? How many biblical promises do you know? Because there are over 7,000 of them in the Bible. And these are yours. It’s like a check. You can write it and cash it. These promises can stabilize you from fear and panicking. And you have to understand these promises. You have to know where they are. And then, once you claim a promise, then you can use the faith rest drill by concentrating on God’s essence. He’s sovereign, he’s just, he’s righteousness, he’s immutability, he’s veracity, he’s omnipotent, omnipresent. If you think about these things, and I just said a lot, I know I said a lot. Relax, I know I said a lot. That’s the essence of God. Excuse me. If you think about these things, you will see how God was in business before you got here. Nothing catches God by surprise. And he’s well aware of what you’re going through. He hasn’t thrown you under the bus. He hasn’t walked away. I mean, you could have walked away from God, but he never walked away from you. He just loved you from behind. But if you fail to use your shield of faith, then you will fall victim to your sin nature, and you will begin to sin by worrying and being afraid. And all of us are tempted to do that. I’m talking about a lifestyle of fear and worry. I mean, look at what’s going on in America today. A lot of people worry about that, especially and worry about it politically. God never tells you you’re going to have a perfect life. As a matter of fact, cosmic chaos is where you get to be tested, and that’s how you grow, going through chaos and testing. So God always gives you privacy, privacy to fail or privacy to pass on your own. But everything you need has been provided by God. He saved you. He gave you eternal life. He gave you his Holy Spirit. He gave you his word. Now it’s up to you to learn it and apply it into your life. That’s the challenge. So those first three problem-solving devices prepare you for what’s ahead. And then we come to grace orientation. Excuse me. I got a bug in my throat or something here. Let me take another drink of water. Grace orientation. Another problem solving device that we have to learn is called grace orientation. Now, how did we get saved? By grace. How do we live? By grace. As a matter of fact, 2 Peter 3.18 tells us, grow in grace. This simply means we stay filled with the Holy Spirit and we learn God’s word on a daily basis. These two things in your life are how the secret to growing in grace, beginning to understand how God treats us and what motivates us to treat others the same way, grace orientation. Because the enemy of grace is one little word called legalism. Legalism is the enemy of grace. God gives you a grace lifestyle. The religious crowd will give you a legalistic chain to wear around your neck and say, oh, brother, you’re not going to be a very good Christian if you smoke, brother. Oh, brother, you’re not going to be a very good Christian if you go down there and shop at that place, oh, brother. And they will try to legalize you and browbeat you into doing what they think is the right thing to do. So the Bible doesn’t say don’t smoke, it says don’t harm your body, okay? Let’s just get that straight. So God is impressed with your good deeds, but not legalism. Legalism often becomes very self-righteous as a result of legalistic lifestyle. And in Luke 18, nine through 14, you can read about the legalists who thought he was impressing God because he fasted and gave a tithe. But that’s not the case. We live by grace, we’re saved by grace, we die by grace, we have future grace in heaven. Grace orientation is a wonderful way to live. To grace people out, not to seek revenge, not to get even. Did God grace you out? Yes. Did you deserve or earn salvation? No. And I know you’re not God, I know that, but can you not grace other people out when they disappoint you? You’re not required to hold a grudge. You’re not required to judge them. I mean, Matthew 7 talks about that. Don’t judge people. Grace them out. The enemy of grace, again, is legalism, and that’s the enemy that Jesus had during his time on earth. The Pharisees hated him. They were eventually responsible for his crucifixion, John 11, 47 through 51, because legalism is the enemy of grace. and you cannot afford to get trapped in that type of lifestyle because that legalist likes to judge other people and criticize their actions and control other people by demanding they follow a set of tradition and rules. They don’t mind their own business. They want to take care of everybody else’s business. The grace lifestyle minds your own business. The grace-oriented person does not stick his nose in other people’s business. And the grace-oriented minister, pastor, does not make an issue of money. He doesn’t ask people for money because he knows that God has promised to supply all his needs if he’ll just teach his word. So why ask man for something that God already promised to give you? That’s crazy. Grace orientation simply means you begin to live and experience God’s grace every day. You don’t worry about your needs. You don’t judge other people. You treat people in grace and live by grace. But don’t expect the same thing in return. Many people will not understand this attitude. They’ve never come to understand grace, saving grace. But here’s a wonderful one, dying grace. It’s promised in the Bible in John 5. 19 through 27. Simply put, God will protect you from death and you will be brought to full age before you transfer to heaven. If you will learn these truths and live by grace and understand the grace operating procedures of the Christian life, like rebound, that’s a grace operating procedure, then you can have this phenomenal lifestyle I’m talking about. It’s all in our book, Christian Problem Solving. It’s a summary of lessons that I’ve taught and we want to give it to you free. All you have to do is order it from rickhughesministries.org. We just printed up several thousand of them for you. And if you’d like to get it, let me know. We’re going to continue this next week. We’ve only been through rebound, the filling of the Holy Spirit, the faith rest drill, grace orientation. Now we got to get into doctrinal orientation, personal sense of destiny, personal love for God and personal love for others, sharing the happiness of God and occupation with Christ. A lot still to go, huh? A lot still to see. These are those 10 unique problem-solving devices that make up the flatline in your soul. Learn them and use them, and you will stop the outside source of adversity from becoming the inside source of stress. I hope I’m making it plain and clear for you. If not, contact me and let me know. And so until next week, we’ll be back, same time, same place, same channel. Thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
