In this enlightening episode of The Flatline, Rick Hughes discusses what it truly means to be part of the pivot—an essential core group within the client nation that upholds spiritual and national integrity. Emphasizing the need for perseverance, precise knowledge, and disciplined faith, Hughes offers insights into developing a mature spiritual life that honors God’s plan and strengthens personal and national blessings. Tune in for an inspiring exploration of personal growth, faith practices, and the pitfalls of relying on others for spiritual achievements.
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 01 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It’ll be a short time of motivation, inspiration, education, and absolutely no manipulation, no requesting money, no trying to sell you anything, not trying to get you to join anything. We just would like for you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify God’s wonderful plan for your life, and if I can do that, then you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. But God gave you two ends. One of those ends you’re seated on right now probably and the other end you think with. And success in your life is going to depend on your thoughts, what you think, not how you sit. Heads you win, tails you lose. So this shows about changing the way you think, learning to think in terms of divine viewpoint, not human viewpoint. The world is full of human viewpoint. You see it in the paper every day. Dear Abby, dear this, dear that. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? All human viewpoint. The question is, what does the Bible say? If you listen to the news these days, it can be downright depressing. Murder in major cities across America. Pandemic deaths skyrocket. They’re just unbelievable. Cost of goods, fuel, groceries, all spiraling higher and higher. Are we on some sort of collision course with disaster? Because it certainly appears that way. Many folks think government is a solution. Do you? Do you think government can solve the problems? Many people think government is a solution to this dilemma. But some people, unfortunately, think there is no problem. Nothing wrong. I mean, a lot of young people that I talk to, not even aware that there’s a problem. They’re only concerned about who they’re going to date this weekend, who they’re going to take to the prom, who’s going to win the football game. They’re not thinking about terms of government and freedom in this country and what’s coming down the pipeline. Much like the frog in the pot of boiling water that is going to sit there until they get boiled and cooked. But there is a problem. And those that don’t think of the problem, especially the socialists who sees government as the great deliverer, the one that could take care of everybody, make sure everybody gets their share of the pie, regardless of their work ethics. And we talked to you about that last week, how God gave you a garden in your soul and expected you to take care of it. So for a few moments, I’d like to talk to you using Christian socialism as a metaphor for the believer who wants other believers to invoke God’s blessing for them. In other words, they’re not bad people. They’re just lazy, distracted Christians who want God to make all their problems go away so they can go about their lives without any sort of difficulty. You know, they want all the blessings, but they don’t want to pay the price. It’s kind of like God’s a genie in the sky and magic eight ball, rub the eight ball. God makes all my problems go away. Then I go back to living my life. That’s not the way God works, I promise you. I assure you that. We’re going to show you today why a Christian socialist is going down the wrong road. Christian socialist, what is that? What kind of person am I talking about? Well, it’s a person who hasn’t grown to spiritual maturity. I mean, we want the spiritually mature believers to pray for us. You know, like, hey, brother, would you pray for me? I got a problem. I got to get on this airplane. Would you pray for me? Or my husband and my wife is sick. My children are sick. Pray for me. When we go through the hour of testing. These Christian socialists want prayers and they want God to work for them and they want God to deliver them. And they want to enjoy the tremendous temporal blessings that God gives, but they don’t have the discipline to invoke those blessings themselves. Much like the socialists in the world today who depend on other people to provide a living for him, these Christian socialists are depending on mature believers to provide God’s blessing for them. So if you take our current state of national affairs, the United States here in America, we’re a client nation to God. And in this century and in the last, we’ve been a client nation. And as such, we have a responsibility to carry the gospel to unbelievers across the world, as well as provide a haven for the Jew and to provide accurate Bible teaching for our own citizens. If, and I say if, conditional, if we fulfill these responsibilities, then God will keep his protective care over us and bless our nation. But if we abandon those responsibilities, then you can say we’re going to go down the tubes. What do I mean by that? If we fail to carry the gospel across the world, if we fail to provide a haven for the Jew, if we fail to protect our own citizen, we’re in trouble. So this client nation in the United States of America, God’s nation to this world, this is his client nation using to reach out to the world. We need a core group of mature believers, an intensely core group that can hold this nation together. And that core is called the pivot, and that’s what I want you to be a member of. I want you to be a member of the pivot because it’s their testimony and their faithfulness that God will funnel blessings toward. What is a pivot member? Well, I’m going to tell you that right now. My pastor taught me that years and years ago when he was still alive and still in his pulpit for 53 years. He taught that the pivot is defined as the accumulation of mature believers living in the client nation or under civil government in a specific geographical location. So if we’re talking about you living in the U.S. of A., and we have 300, roughly 300 million people, how many does it take to make up the pivot? Does it take 50 million, 100 million, or 10 million, or 3 million? What does it take? I don’t know the answer to that. But I know when Gideon went to fight the Midianites, God said, you have too many, and he whittled it down to 300. I don’t know what God needs, but I know that he will use the pivot to deliver this nation in times of adversity. So my pastor taught me the pivot is composed primarily of mature believers, grown believers, believers that are not babies. So technically, this pivot may include all believers, but the ones that have fulfilled the principle of virtue first as their first priority in the plan of God. What do I mean by virtue first? Here’s what I mean. The greatest virtue you have is personal love for God. If you love me, you will obey me, John 5, 3 says, and Jesus repeats that many times and told John that many times in John 15 and 16. If you love me, you’ll keep my mandates. Virtue first is you being in love with God, having personal love for God. And I talk to people all the time. I say, do you love God? Oh, yes, I love God, they say. But they don’t live like it. They don’t obey God. Most of the time, they don’t know what God wants out of them. So they think that if they just go to church and put in some little money in the offering plate and sing a few do-lord songs, that that makes God happy. That’s not what we’re talking about. These believers in the pivot stand out. in contrast to believers living in the cosmic system. The cosmic system is the devil’s world. You know, you live in the devil’s world. You don’t belong here. You’re a sojourner. You’re passing through. Your home is in Ouranos, the Bible says. Ouranos is the Greek word for heaven. And so the devil’s world is here. And he has a satanic way of thinking. We have divine viewpoint. He has human viewpoint. And in the client nation, you cannot afford to think in terms of human viewpoint. Can’t do that. So you have to learn to think in terms of divine viewpoint. This is the type of believers that bring about our freedom. This is the type of believer that brings prosperity into the client nation, the pivot believer, the mature believer, the one who has the mind of Christ. Other immature believers enjoy these benefits that the mature believers provide. What they’re essentially doing is they’re living off the good life of those who merit God’s blessing or God’s favor. I’m not talking about the military purchasing freedom for all members of the client nation, but rather a lazy Christian. who’s piggybacking off the life of the mature believer expecting to receive all the blessings that God gives the nation. It’s just like the socialist who won’t work, the socialist who takes income from the government to sustain his lifestyle, but he won’t work at a job. He thinks the government owes him something. Just like the media dominates the thinking of many youth and lures them away from responsible living, Here’s the real problem. Here’s the real enemy, organized religion. Organized religion lures believers away from true spiritual growth through the use of programs and crusader arrogance and suckering people into thinking that they’re really doing something for God. Here’s what Hebrews 5, 11 through 16 said about this. The writer of Hebrews said on this topic, we have much to say and it’s difficult to explain since you become sluggish, sluggish in your hearing. That means you’re not very interested. People that are sluggish, you can go to a church and if you teach the Bible, people will go to sleep on you. But if you sing and clap and happy, happy, happy, they’re all into that. But getting up there and teaching the Bible for an hour, you’d have a hard time getting them to stay awake without entertaining them. They’re sluggish. And so the writer goes on to say, though some of you should in fact be teachers by this time, you now need someone to come back and teach you the beginning elements of the God’s utterance of the Christian life. You’ve gone back to needing milk like a baby on a bottle. not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced in the message of righteousness because he is a baby. But solid food is for the mature, those whose perceptions are trained by precise, by practice, excuse me, to discern both good and evil. So let me run through that again for you. Catch this, that there’s a difference between a baby believer and a mature believer. When you accept Christ, you start out as a breathos, a baby, baby on the breast. And then you move to be a technon, which is a student, a student under discipline. And then you move to be a weos, which is an adult son. God can honor you. He can use you. You move to be a mature believer. Here’s a question I have to ask you. What stage are you in? Are you a mature believer? You are? Well, I’m glad to hear that. Can you tell me the 10 problem-solving devices? Do you know what they are? Because that’s the protocol plan of God. Do you know how to rebound? Do you know how to stay filled with the Spirit? Do you know how to use a faith-rest drill? Are you familiar with grace orientation and biblical orientation? Do you have a personal sense of destiny? Do you have virtue love for God and impersonal love for others? And are you sharing the happiness of God? And are you occupied with Christ? Those are those 10 problem-solving devices that identify you as a mature believer. Until you learn that and live that way, you’re never gonna be a mature believer just because you’ve joined some church and got baptized and put some money in the offering plate and sing a few songs. It’s a lot, lot, lot more. Let me go on to show you. Here’s the mandate to do your job spiritually. In my show last week, I told you how God gave Adam a job in the garden. I explained you got a job. Well, here’s how you do your job. Hebrews 11, six, without faith, it’s impossible to please God. The first thing you have to understand if you’re going to be a mature believer, You must learn how to use the faith rest drill or how to stand on God’s promises in time of extreme adversity. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be living in panic palace, worried, upset, fearful, mad, bitter all the time. If you don’t learn the faith rest drill, remember God was in business before you got here and God will be in business when you’re gone. So don’t worry about it. He’s completely aware of what you’re going through. The Supreme court of heaven is open 24 hours a day. So if you have a problem and something you don’t like, you’ve been treated unfairly, take it to the Lord, put it at his feet, and go away. You can’t change it. Only he can do that. So when the Bible says without faith it’s impossible to please God, what does that mean? It means you have to learn the faithless drill. Learn, learn. That acquires knowledge. You have to acquire some knowledge. Listen to God’s judgment on the northern kingdom of Israel. and their failure to follow his plan in regards to the word knowledge, the word people don’t want to hear. Hosea 4.6, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, lack of knowledge. That doesn’t mean they weren’t saved. It means they did not understand God’s plan. He goes on to say, since you’ve rejected knowledge too much, you don’t want to study, you don’t want to grow, you don’t want to spend time studying, you just refuse. rather have a little sweet little Christian life about an hour a week in church, and that’s all you need. Knowledge gives you insight and discernment and understanding. This is what Hosea said, there’s no knowledge in the land. And God said, because of this, I will reject you from being my priest, my client nation. Since you’ve forgotten or ignored the laws of your God, I will ignore or forget your children. when they cry out for help under the fifth cycle of discipline. So this is not just about you, it’s about your children and your grandchildren. If you are not interested in learning and applying and living in God’s protocol plan, you’re guaranteeing the fact that your children and your grandchildren will have a miserable life. because you’re gonna pull away the blessing of God on this nation, since you should be a member of the pivot. You should be a mature believer. You should be tending to your job, which is to make sure your soul is growing and replicating the life of Christ. But when you refuse to take time for God’s counsel through his word, and when you ignore his requirements, you are a failure, a spiritual failure. Listen to Romans 15, four through six. For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction. So that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures, two important things, stick with it and learn God’s word. Stick with it and learn God’s word. Perseverance and encouragement of the scriptures. We might have confidence or hope Now may the God who gives this perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind, not divided mind, not fighting one another, but be of the same mind, one with another, according to Christ Jesus. Romans 15, 6, so that with one purpose and one voice you may be able to glorify God the Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, that means you can represent Christ. So are you willing to take the time to learn the protocol plan of God? Well, what are you talking about take the time, Rick? I’m talking about daily. Am I talking about reading your Bible every day? No, I’m not talking about that. I run into people that do that. I read the Bible through three or four times, and they think that’s some kind of great accomplishment. I’m talking about are you willing to find a qualified pastor, sit down under that pastor, and study God’s word on a daily basis. It’s possible. I know you can’t go to church every day. Most pastors don’t even teach every day, but… There are men across this country who have significant ministries that teach the Word of God, and you can access those ministries within the confines of your own home. And you can take a Bible and a notebook and sit down right there at your coffee table and take notes and learn and grow on a daily basis in the days that you’re not in your local church. It’s possible you can do that. So you have to learn to do that. You can’t reject knowledge because this is the greatest thing in the world, one of the four things that you need, wisdom, knowledge, insight, and discernment, the fantastic four. And this is the insight God gives you to understand when the devil is up to something. If you don’t recognize the difference between good and evil, as Heru said, you’re not a very mature believer. What is evil? It’s taking God’s plan and twisting it. It sounds good, smells good, looks good, but it’s evil. What does God’s plan say in regards to being saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That’s what it is. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should brag about it. What does evil do? Evil comes along and puts a half a twist on it. Evil will sound good, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and give up partying. and give up smoking, and give up drinking, and quit cussing. That’s not getting saved. That’s you trying to impress God with your self-righteous lifestyle. Salvation is a free gift from God. You don’t earn it, you don’t deserve it. He gives it to you freely. That’s why the Bible is clear about that. The gift of God, grace, it’s a provision for you. And if you don’t learn and understand that, then you’re going to wind up teaching your children something that’s not true and not correct. Satan’s very good at clouding the water, muddying the water, so that people don’t really see the truth. And organized religion does this all the time. So when you refuse to take time for God’s counsel through his word, if you ignore his requirements, you are going to be a spiritual failure. Listen to Romans 15, verse four and six again. Whatever was written in earlier times were written for our instruction. That’s so you can get knowledge. So that through the perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures, there it is again, then you can be the man or the woman God intends for you to be. so here’s the solution god provided you with an owner’s manual you got one it’s called the bible read it and apply it into your life in second timothy 2 15 the bible gives you instructions how to do this be diligent diligent that means consistent to present yourself approved to god as a workman workman i told you you have a job to do you have to tend to your soul as a workman who does not need to be ashamed accurately handling the word of truth. You have a job to do, and that is to develop your soul into a representing of Jesus Christ. You have a job to do to glorify God. That’s why he left you here after you got saved. He could have taken you to heaven immediately, but he did not. Just as he gave Adam a job in the garden to tend to the garden and name the animals, he gave you a job in your soul. Replicate the life of Christ. Take the word of God, learn it and apply it and live it in your life. You’ve got that job to do and it’s to reach spiritual maturity and accurately represent Christ to your friends, to your neighbors, to your world. But you cannot be an approved workman by doing a sorry job. So if your spiritual life is, okay, I’ll go to church on Sunday and maybe Sunday night and almost maybe Wednesday, and the rest of the time I’ll get a little scripture like a daily devotion and read that, and that’s how I’m growing. You’re not ever going to grow to spiritual maturity reading a daily devotion every day. God gave men the gift of pastor-teacher, the Greek word . Their job is to study and teach you the Bible. Unfortunately, a lot of pastors don’t do that. Unfortunately, they get into social ministry. They get into shepherding their flock and holding their hands and praying with the old people and making sure that people have places to go and socially things to do and creating a little Christian community. God doesn’t need a Christian community. God needs Bible teachers. You can handle your own problem if you learn God’s word and if they will study and teach it. So God has a precisely correct procedure, and you better learn it or you will never glorify God to the max in your life. I’m going to say it again. God has precisely correct procedure, and you better learn it or you will never glorify God in your life. Without precisely correct procedure, you will be lacking at the judgment seat of Christ in 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 16. I would hate to see that. You show up and you think you’ve done a lot of great things for God. You tithed, you got a button for Midnight Missing Sunday School for 10 years, and it turns into wood, hay, and stubble because you did all the right things in the wrong way. You remember I’ve taught you about this. Right thing in the wrong way is still wrong. Is it wrong to go to church? No. Is it wrong to pray? No. Is there a right way to go to church and a right way to pray? Yes. What does the Bible say? If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So if you’re praying to God with unconfessed sin in your life, that prayer’s not gonna go any higher than the ceiling. So the pastor may call on some deacon to get up there and pray on Sunday morning, And maybe last night he sinned big time, whatever he might have done. Or maybe throughout the week he’s been cheating people in his business. Or maybe he’s been lying to his spouse or who knows what. And he never confessed his sin. He never admitted to God his sin. But he got up in the pulpit on Sunday morning. because the pastor asked him to pray, and he prayed a great prayer. Oh, God, we thank thee, God. That was a waste of time. It went no higher than the ceiling, because he was out of fellowship, quenching the Holy Spirit, and he did it in the energy of the flesh, and that’s wood, hay, and stubble at the judgment seat of Christ. Think about all the times you have done something for God, supposedly. Is it going to be gold, silver, and precious stones, or will it be wood, hay, and stubble? because you’re going to give an account about how you squandered your opportunities and squandered your assets that God provided you. So listen, the Christian socialist wants all the blessings provided by God without the effort required by God. The Christian socialist is no different from the political socialist. They both want somebody else to provide their needs without working for them. In 2 Thessalonians 3.10, when we were with you, we commanded you that if any would not work, neither should he eat. That’s a biblical principle, and it’s true spiritually as well as physically. So don’t depend on others to provide spiritual blessings for you and yours, but rather learn and apply the Word of God and be a part of that pivot that we’re talking about, and you can provide not only blessings for your own personal life, but national blessing and historical blessing as well. But the Christian socialist, he’s content to remain an immature believer thus depending on the mature believers to provide God’s blessing for his own personal use. Do you hear that? If you’re a Christian socialist, you’re content not to study, not to grow, not to acquire knowledge, but to let somebody else do it for you so that if God blesses the nation, it comes through them, not you. You just want to enjoy all the gifts, but you don’t want to get to know the giver, right? If you want to do something to change the course of history in this country that we seem to be following right now, you need to take responsibility for your spiritual life and get under a well-qualified pastor and do your job and show up and learn all that he offers. And again, I’m not talking about you reading the Bible on your own. I’m talking about being taught the Bible on a daily basis. Why? 2 Corinthians 2.11, so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not to be ignorant of his schemes. You’re in a war. You’re in an angelic conflict. If you don’t understand Satan and you understand you don’t have some discernment and insight and some knowledge, you’ll be lured in and suckered into it just like everybody else. In Galatians 6, 3, for if anyone thinks he’s something when he’s nothing, he deceives himself. But each one must examine his own work, his own production. That’s what you have to examine your own life. Look at yourself. Are you a Christian socialist or are you a mature believer on the way to being a mature believer? Each one must examine his own work and then he will have reason to boast. but only to himself alone and not to another person. For each one will bear his own load. You’re not designed to live off the blessing of other people. You’re designed to live off the blessing of your own spiritual life as God gives it to you. And remember when David said, my cup overflows, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. If you’re a mature believer, the blessings of God overflow into your life to those around you. If you’re not a mature believer, I’d suggest you find one and hang out close to him so you get some blessings from him. In Galatians 6.3, if anyone thinks he’s something when he’s nothing, he deceives himself. Again, examine your own work. Look at your own life. You must take responsibility. The one who is taught the word is to share all the good things with the one who teaches him, the Bible says. Galatians 6 6 don’t be deceived God is not going to be mocked whatever man sows he’s also going to reap for the one who sows to the flesh will reap destruction from the flesh But the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let’s not become discouraged in doing good things, for in due time we will reap, verse 9, if we do not become weary. It’s a challenge to live the Christian life. It’s a fight every day. The flesh wars against the Spirit, the Spirit wars against the flesh, and they’re contrary one to the other. I know that. You know that. There are days you feel like a nut and some days you don’t. But unless you can be consistent in the intake of the Word of God, consistent in the filling of the Holy Spirit, learning and acquiring knowledge, you’re never going to be anything but a Christian socialist living off the maturity of someone else. Think about this. I mean, there’s a lot more to say. I don’t have time to say it all here now, but let me encourage you on our podcast. If it’s Apple Podcast or if it’s Spotify or Anchor, one of these podcast venues, If you go there and just type in The Flotline, you will find us, The Flotline. And you can listen anytime, anywhere, any day. We also have available the 2020 transcripts of all of our radio shows produced in 2020. If you’ll contact us, we’ll get those to you as well. It’s been an honor to talk to you this morning. I hope I haven’t offended you too much. I hope it’s been a challenge. And I pray that you will lift me up in prayer and ask God to bless us and bring us back next week. Same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
