Rick also sheds light on distinguishing between human good and divine good, emphasizing how even well-intentioned acts can fall short if not aligned with spiritual truth. Through passionate storytelling and Scriptural analysis, this episode offers a comprehensive guide on recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls of human-centric worship. Rick shares insights on how to worship effectively, the importance of spirit-filled living, and God’s expectations for executing His plan. Tune in for an enlightening exploration of spiritual diligence, encouraging listeners to build a solid, rewardable foundation in their faith journey.
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, please stick around. It’ll just be a short time of motivation, some inspiration, some education. All of it will be done without any type of manipulation because we don’t con people. We’re not seeking to raise money. We’re not trying to sell memberships. We’re not trying to hustle a book. We just want to give you some information, information that will help you verify as well as identify the plan of God for your life. And if you can do that, then you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. It’s your life. You’re responsible for your decisions. And I remind you that bad decisions limit future options. So the FLOT line, F-L-O-T, stands for the Forward Line of Troops. What we’re trying to do on this show is introduce a new way of thinking. It’s called the mind of Christ. In Philippians 2.5, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. This new way of thinking is also seen in Romans 12, 3, where the Bible says, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us our standard of thinking from his word. If we learn how to think, it’s called divine viewpoint. If we don’t learn how to think, we live by the system called human viewpoint. That’s the cosmic system. That’s what the world has to offer, and that’s one of the problems in America today. Divine viewpoint is being shut down in the public agenda. If you want to talk about God or the Lord Jesus Christ, you just hear crickets in the public agenda. So here we are talking about it on a private radio show, the divine viewpoint of understanding the FLOT line, F-L-O-T. You say, what is that? It’s a forward line of troops we’re going to build in your soul, invisible forward line of troops built on 10 unique problem-solving devices, 10 things the Word of God teaches. Nothing new that I discovered. No, I did not. This has been around as long as the Word of God’s been in print. If you learn these and use them, you will be able to stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. So that’s why we always say adversity is inevitable and stress is optional. And I repeat this nearly every radio show, hopefully to get your attention, hopefully to let you know there’s something here you need to listen to. Building a flat line in your soul is the most important thing you could ever do if you are a Christian. If you’ve made a decision to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have to understand the process God sets up for us. It’s a process called study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. The process also says grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So study and grow are both mandates. We’re mandated as Christians to study God’s word, and that results in growth. That growth produces what the Bible calls wisdom, wisdom in our soul. The Greek word for wisdom is Sophia. When we have wisdom in our soul, we have insight and discernment and great understanding. This is something that the world does not have. The world cannot offer you that wisdom because it comes from the Word of God. And we started a show last week called Worship. how most people don’t understand the true meaning of worship and what worship really is all about. I’d like to follow up with that today, talking about human good that comes from the wrong type of worship as opposed to divine good, which comes from the correct type of worship, because God expects you to do the right thing in the right way. That’s called protocol. A right thing must be done in a right way, especially when dealing with God. don’t believe that read the old testament and you’ll see how right thing had to be done in a right way so we’re going to talk about that a little follow-up on worship and maybe praise there’s two different words there praise and praise in the hebrew means to make a loud noise to shout sing forth And there’s nothing wrong with praising God. But that does not require much concentration. It’s just more or less an appreciation for what he’s done. But worship is a different animal. Worship requires concentration. And that means you must have reverence and respect for God, giving him great honor. It’s impossible to worship God in the flesh. If you worship God, you must worship him in the spirit. Those who wish to do so must do so in the Spirit. Now, you don’t have to be in a local assembly to worship. That’s something I want you to make clear so you’ll understand that. I encourage you to find a local church. I encourage you to find a well-qualified pastor that can teach you the Bible, but if there’s not one in your area, then you certainly can worship in a different way. I know hundreds of people that worship sitting at home with a Bible and with a notebook and with a tape recorder or an MP3 player or a DVD or a computer, watching a local pastor in a local church teach the Word of God. They might not be there, they may be distantly hundreds of miles away, but every time the church assembles, they’re assembling. Every time the pastor teaches, they’re watching and they’re learning and they’re listening, so they’re non-face-to-face. But they are assembling with the rest of the people in the congregation, they’re just not there physically because they don’t live there. That’s possible for you to do that. You can worship any place, any time, by staying filled with the Holy Spirit, and by taking in the Word of God on a consistent basis. And prayer, obedience, motivated by personal love for God is the key to this. If you’re going to worship effectively, there must be obedience to the Word of God, and that obedience It’s called virtue love, and it comes from personal love for God. Listen again, 1 John 5, 3. If you love me, you will obey me, and my mandates are not hard. Well, the Bible tells us don’t forsake the assembling ourselves together, to get together, to study, to learn, to grow, to apply in our lives. However, I want to read a passage to you. coming out of Revelation chapter 2, verses 1 through 4, written to the pastor of the church of Ephesus. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ wrote and required to be written here in this passage. And it’s about people who like to worship and praise God, but are not doing it in the right way. To the angel of the church of Ephesus write these things, says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. That’s the Lord Jesus Christ. I know your works. Now, when we talk about works, it can be human good and it can be divine good. It’s very critical that you get the right one, human good or divine good. I know your works, I know your labor, I know your patience, and that you cannot stand those that are evil. And you have tested those that say they are apostles and are not, and you found them that they’re liars. And you have also persevered and have patience and have labored for my namesake. and have not become weary. Nevertheless, verse four, Revelation chapter two, we have a problem, he said. I have this against you. You have left your first love. You have left your first love. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen and repent or change your mind and do the first works or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent or change your mind. But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also despise. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the ones who overcome, I will give to them to eat from the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. So a strong warning, and the warning is about this, the wrong motivation. Our motivation to worship and to serve is our personal love for God. It’s not to correct someone. It’s not to find out who’s right and who’s wrong. However, you must do that sometimes. And these people had a lot of production. They had a lot of labor. They had a lot of patience. They didn’t like the ones that proclaimed themselves to be teachers of the word but were teaching false doctrine called evil. So they tested the apostles, the ones that claimed to be apostles and found them to be liars. However, however, the right thing done in a wrong way is still wrong. Now let’s go to your life and in your local assembly, your church on Sunday morning. If you’re in the right place doing the right thing, you can be praising and worshiping God. But if you’re in the right place doing the wrong thing, the wrong way, then you’re not going to be accomplishing anything but human good. So let’s back up. The first thing is critical for you to understand. Those that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth. You cannot worship God if you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit. You cannot worship God in the energy of the flesh. That’s not divine good production. So there has to be, at any point in time in your life, 24-7 rebound, problem-solving device number one. When you know you’ve sinned, you must confess that sin immediately because the reason is because of this. When you sin, you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit. and you’re out of fellowship with God. Now, it’s possible for you to be out of fellowship with God with unconfessed sin in your life and still go to church, even put money in the offering plate, even sing in the choir, even go to Sunday school. And it’s all nothing but human good because you did a right thing, but you did it in the wrong way. You did it in the energy of the flesh. Unbelievers can give money to churches. Unbelievers can go to churches, but that’s not worshiping God and that’s not producing divine good. True worship produces divine good. and you are rewarded for that true worship in your life. So let’s back up and get it one more time. What is sin? It can be what you think, what you say, what you do. Why is it on Sunday morning there’s a war in your house getting ready for church? The children are perpetually late. The wife can’t get ready on time. The husband has got something going on and doesn’t want to leave on time. It’s always a battle to get to church on time and to be there together. “‘Sunday morning is like that.’ So if you’ve been yelling at one another, maybe mom yelled at the daughter, let’s go, let’s go. I told you to be ready 10 minutes ago. You’re going to make us late. Let’s go. Dad’s yelling at mom, come on, honey, we got to go. And they all lose their temper and get mad and get frustrated and they get in the car and they don’t even speak to each other on the way to church. Does that sound like you? That you are out of fellowship. You have sinned. You’ve committed sin, anger, frustration, bitterness, implacability. And until you confess the sin, you are out of fellowship and in the energy of the flesh. And yes, you went to church. Yes, you put your money in the offering plate. Yes, you sang the songs, but you did it in the energy of the flesh, and that is not true worship. That’s human good, and that is not rewardable. If you want to see where this all comes to fruition, you have to go into 1 Corinthians 3, because the objective of true worship is to glorify God and produce divine good. Divine good you can be rewarded for. In 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 16, the Bible says, For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, this is a builder’s metaphor, so imagine that. a building, a house with a concrete foundation on it. And then the framers come in and start putting up the framing of the woodwork, the walls, the roof, and all of that stuff, the trusses and all of everything. So here it is, no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. That’s our foundation. Now if anyone builds on the foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, that’s divine good production under the filling of the Holy Spirit. That’s you going to church under the filling of the Holy Spirit. That’s you tithing under the filling of the Holy Spirit if that’s what you believe in. That you, whatever you’re praying under the filling of the Holy Spirit, that you’re singing in the choir under the filling of the Holy Spirit, if you do these things under the filling of the Holy Spirit, that’s divine good production. And you can be rewarded for that. It’s called gold, silver, and precious stones. But if you’re saying the exact same things, And yet you had unconfessed sin in your life. You came into church this morning, and you had known bitterness and resentfulness in your heart for your wife or your children. You were frustrated, angry, and mad. Or maybe on the way down there, someone on the interstate cut you off. flipped you a bird and now you’re mad wanting to run them down and bop them in the head or something. You’re out of fellowship. You’re sinning. And that sin has to be repented or admitted or confessed or rebounded. Did you rebound before you walked in church? Did your pastor even tell you this? Did your pastor say before we began our worship service, we need to make sure that we’re all in fellowship with God? Did he give you time to have a personal examination? Did he say, take a few moments, look inside your own soul, see if there’s any sin there, and if there is, confess it right now privately to God so you could be filled with the Holy Spirit? And I’ll bet you the answer is 99.9% no, they don’t do it. They just assume that everybody’s in fellowship and everybody is not in fellowship. You might have got out of fellowship Monday the week before over some business deal and never confessed that sin yet. And you’ve been operating in the energy of the flesh all week long. That’s why your prayers are not being answered and that’s why you try to read your Bible and you can’t. You quench the Holy Spirit. You grieve the Holy Spirit, and you’re only producing human good, and it is not rewardable. It is not gold, silver, and precious stones. So the writer, Apostle Paul, said we can only lay one foundation, which is Jesus Christ, but we can build on it gold, silver, precious stones, or we can build wood, hay, and straw or stubble. That’s all the right things done in the wrong way. I would hate for all the money you’ve contributed, all the times you’ve sang in the choir, all the trips you’ve made to church, all the good deeds you’ve done for your community to be burned up at the judgment seat of Christ as human good. But if you did it in the energy of the flesh with unconfessed sin in your life as human good, wood, hay, and stubble. This goes on to say each man’s work, production, is a human good or divine good. Each man’s work will become clear for that day will declare it and it will be revealed by fire. and the fire will evaluate every man’s production of what sort it was. Was it produced in the energy of the flesh, or was it produced under the filling of the Holy Spirit? If it’s produced under the energy of the filling of the Holy Spirit, it says this in verse 14, chapter 3, 1 Corinthians. If any man’s work which he has built upon endures, he will receive a reward. But if anyone’s work is burned up, that’s human good, he will suffer loss, but but that’s a big conjunction of contrast but he himself will be saved yet so as through fire you’re not going to lose your salvation jesus christ said i won’t ever leave you i will never forsake you i give an eternal life and they will never perish but you may lose an opportunity to have any rewards that you could lay at your savior’s feet Any opportunity to give recognition to him for the way he sustained you during your time on earth and your appreciation for his love for you. Because everything you did was in the energy of the flesh. No one ever told you this. No one ever told you you must be filled with the Holy Spirit when you go to church. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour sort of deal. This is in Ephesians 5.18, be filled with the Spirit. That’s a mandate. In Galatians 5.16, the flesh wars against the Spirit, the Spirit wars against the flesh, and they’re contrary one to the other. so that you cannot do the things you want to do. You have that battle going on daily inside of you. As a matter of fact, you have three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. Why would the devil even mess with you? Why would the devil even worry about tempting you if you can’t get past the lure of the flesh? If you can’t overcome the calling of the world, why would Satan try to in any way affect what you’re doing? He’s not omnipresent. He can’t be in America and Russia at the same time. He can only be in one place at one time because he’s a created being, a fallen angel. Chances are you will never have an encounter with Satan. You may have encounter with fallen angels called demons. And they may throw something at you called doctrine of demons or lies that are not true, but it’s called evil. It’s when you take the word of God and put a half twist on it where the Bible says, for example, for by grace are you saved through faith as a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should brag about it. The doctrine of demons would say, for by grace are you saved through faith and by giving up bubble gum. That’s right, give up bubble gum and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you’ll be saved. That’s ridiculous. That would cancel out grace because you would add to the grace. It’s only faith alone in Christ alone that anyone gets saved. So remember that. Now the question is, looking back over your life and the production of your life, how much wood, hay, and stubble have you manufactured? How big a bonfire is this going to be for you? Are we going to have a movie screen up there and everybody’s going to be watching all of your human good be roasted? No, no one’s going to be watching this. This is all a very private evaluation, but you will be evaluated. And if it’s not human good, the worship was no good. The praise was no good because you did it all in the energy of the flesh, manufacturing from your area of strength and your sin nature. Your sin nature can be moral. Your sin nature can be strong. But only what’s done under the filling of the Holy Spirit glorifies God to the max. And that’s why this verse is here. What about it? Are you producing wood, hay, and stubble? Or are you manufacturing gold, silver, and precious stones? Because everything you do for God will be evaluated at this judgment seat of Christ. There are three types of good mentioned in history. Human good, the first one, and that’s the production of what we call evil. That’s Satan’s plan. Human good is evil. The first human good ever done on this planet was Adam putting on a fig leaf trying to cover up his genitals. He tried to cover up for his mistake. God clothed him with the skin of a lamb which was sacrificed on his behalf. So human good is you trying to appease the justice of God and it won’t work. Human good is the production of evil. Human good and salvation can be faith plus works. Human good in the Christian life is faith plus morality or spirituality plus morality. You know, I’m a good Christian because I don’t drink. I’m a good Christian because I don’t smoke. I’m a good Christian because I don’t say dirty words. That is not why you’re a good Christian. Those may be things that good Christians do, but that’s not what makes you a good Christian. A good Christian is a person who’s filled with the Holy Spirit and who’s growing in the grace and the knowledge of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So human good is not going to cut it with God. It began in the garden right after the fall with Operation Fig Leaf, and evil is the thinking of Satan, while human good is the application of that thinking. It’s production of the unbeliever, and even those that are out of fellowship, we call them reversionists or backsliders. So human good doesn’t cut it for God. It’s not rewardable. It’s wood, hay, and stubble. And then there’s certainly moral good. That’s the unbeliever that observes the laws of divine establishment. He believes in freedom and family and marriage and nationalism. And that’s moral good. He gets married. He treats his wife fair and right, teaches children fair and right. He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t steal. He’s morally a wonderful person. But that’s not divine good. That’s human good. Moral good. Moral good is what I’m saying. And then there’s divine good. And that’s a production… that the mature believer can manufacture from his frame of reference if he’s filled with the Holy Spirit. So that’s the question. If you worship God, are you manufacturing human good or are you manufacturing divine good? There’s a few keys to the production of divine good. First of all, we say status quo. This means that being in the directive will of God, which is tantamount to the filling of the Holy Spirit. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit to manufacture divine good. Whatever counts for God in your life or my life must be related to the filling of the Holy Spirit or it is not right. It’s a right thing done in a wrong way. You know, if you take that a football analogy, here’s a big, strong guy. We got football season coming up. He’s handsome. He’s fast. He’s strong. He’s playing in the line. He’s playing tackle. And he’s supposed to block number 22 on the defensive side, but instead he blocks number 45. He did the right thing. He blocked the opposing player, but he did it in the wrong way. He blocked the wrong person. He didn’t know the plays. And this is what Satan specializes in, getting you to ignore the plays, getting you to live by your emotion. You must think, think, think, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. You must learn, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. And the Lord Jesus Christ was clear about this. Take, come unto me, all you that labor and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn of me. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. Christian life must be executed, and to execute it, you must learn it. So there’s a status quo of production of divine good and momentum. This means that the word of God is the most important thing in your life. When you have that kind of momentum, and you’re applying the Word of God in your life, then you can produce divine good. And then the attainment, and this is when you advance to spiritual maturity through the execution of God’s plan. This is when the Word of God is the most important thing in your life. It has to be learned. The Word of God has to be learned. You have to learn how to execute the Christian life before you can produce divine good. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t do it. And then finally, the impact. This is the function that you will have as a mature believer. You will be an invisible hero during the church age. It is possible for any of us to get sucked into a system that appears to be good. I mean, we think we’re doing something for God when in reality we’re just fighting against God’s plan. And this is really true of what we call Christian activism. Because good is not always good. You’re not called to clean up the devil’s world. You’re called to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ. So the wrong motivation parlays good into evil. Good may be dead works for the function of good deeds. Good may be Christian service, which is divine good or dead works. Everything depends on the relationship of that good to those first three keys I told you, status quo, momentum, and attainment. That was the problem in Ephesus. There must be spiritual growth before there can be production of divine good. All production of divine good must come from within the boundaries of of the word of God. If it’s not, then it will not be rewardable. It will be thrown out as wood, hay, and stubble. So you have a choice listening to me today. I hope you’ve understood this. You can manufacture human good. That’s from the energy of the flesh, the good things you do, but it is not rewardable. It’s called wood, hay, and stubble. Or you can manufacture divine good, which is done under the filling of the Holy Spirit. based on the momentum you have in the word of God when you understand God’s plan for your life. God is glorified through divine good. You will be rewarded for the divine good that you produce. But even if you have no divine good, your foundation will still be there. You’ll still be going to heaven. You’re just going to be minus any rewards. I hope you’re listening. I hope it’s making sense. I’m trying my very best to make it as simple as I can. Some people appreciate it. I hope you do too. And next week, we’ll be more than happy to come back and give you some more information at the same time, on the same channel, same day. So until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes. Thank you so very much for listening to The Floodline.
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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.
