In this insightful episode, Rick Hughes discusses the different types of testing faced by believers. If you’ve ever wondered why trials come your way, this episode explains the purpose behind suffering and how it contributes to spiritual growth. Rick explores the difference between suffering for discipline and suffering for blessing, emphasizing the need for patience and contentment as key virtues woven into the fabric of our spiritual lives. As always, Rick encourages listeners to find empowerment in God’s Word, offering hope and clarity for those committed to 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. F-L-O-T, Flockline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stick with me. It’ll be a short time of motivation, a lot of inspiration, some education, and of course, no, absolutely none, not a one bit of manipulation because we’re not trying to con you. We’re not trying to hustle you. We’re not trying to get you to join up, fess it up, give it up, nothing like that. Our objective is to teach you the Word of God. And if you want to orient and adjust to God’s plan, that’s free for you. You can do that. It’s your life, your decisions to make. And I have something very critical to talk to you about this morning. I want to talk to you about the testing that we will be facing in the future in our lives. But before I do that, let me just say this, and we’ll leave it at that. If you’re wondering… about the Flatline Show. If you’re enjoying the Flatline Show, you may not know how we afford to broadcast in over 100 cities. We’re not syndicated. You don’t hear any commercials on this Flatline Radio Show. If you hear a commercial, let me know. It’s not supposed to be there. That would be the local station selling time. We don’t allow that. But we live by the verse that Paul the Apostle wrote in 2 Corinthians 2, 17. where he said, we are not like many who peddle the word of God, but as from sincerity from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God. I don’t claim to have a better understanding than many others on the airway who have Christian teaching shows, but I do proclaim liberty from selling any books or selling any messages. Excuse me. Christian marketing is atrocious and it’s sad. And I get numerous ads over social media, sometimes television, other communication mediums, all trying to sell me a book or sell me a video about God, about his word, a movie about God. This Christian marketing is wrong and totally dishonoring to God, in my opinion. Grace living frees us from human dependency. And so my staff and I, the associates that I work with, we’ve all learned that If God’s in it, God will pay for it. If he’s not, we need to do something else. So we go ahead and proclaim the gospel. We teach God’s word, and we let the Father handle our finances. He does it. He’s always done it. He always will do it as long as he’s in it. So that truth of grace sets us free from the bondage of trying to market anything. That’s why we offer all of our books, all of our transcriptions, all of our DVDs, MP3s, free. Everything is free. We don’t sell anything, so keep that in mind. Now, let’s go into what we want to talk about today. Eventually, all believers, if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, regardless of where you may be, all believers eventually undergo testing. And it can be in one or two areas, suffering we’ll call it, in one or two areas. It can be suffering for discipline, and we know what that’s about. We’ll go over a little bit of that. And it can be suffering for blessing, and maybe you don’t know what that’s about. But all believers undergo these sorts of tests if they’re ever going to advance spiritually. James writes about it in James 1, verses two through four. Listen carefully to what he says. My dear brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. That’s testing. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience have its perfect work so that you can be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So one of the reasons that God allows us to undergo these various trials and various testing is so that we can develop patience in our lives as believers. That patience is critical for us to be satisfied with what God gives us in life, to be happy. It’s critical you understand you have to have that patience in your life and not be upset, not be worrying about, not be afraid of, not being manipulated by fear. 1 Peter 4.12 says, Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trials which come to try you, as though some strange thing has happened to you. but rejoice to the extent that you are partakers of the suffering of Jesus Christ so that when his glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. So there’s the apostle James and the apostle Peter both telling you that you must endure some suffering. You will endure testing. You will go through trials. And the question is, are you suffering for blessing or is it suffering for discipline? We know the scriptures tell us that God often disciplines his children. We know that. In Hebrews chapter 12, we’ll look at that here in just a minute. Why does this happen? Why would God discipline me or you for something we’ve done? Well, it’s very simple. When we sin, whether it’s a mental attitude sin, a sin of the tongue, or an overt sin, we effectively quench the Holy Spirit. We grieve the Holy Spirit with our personal sin. So when that happens, we break fellowship with God. We’re no longer walking in the light as he is in the light. We’re no longer having fellowship one with another. And so we’ve been mandated to confess our sin to God. And that’s why 1 John 1, 9 is our rebound passage, the first problem-solving device we have on the flatline of our soul. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing. It’s critical that you remember that because that’ll keep you out of a lot of suffering. Failure to rebound, failure to admit your sin, failure to maintain the filling of the Holy Spirit brings discipline from God if you’re a believer. We also know that God uses suffering to test believers, to test our dedication, and to teach us patience. Patience and contentment are sisters. This is something so critical to understand A content believer is a happy believer. So Paul said it makes no difference what kind of circumstances I’m in, whether I have a lot or whether I have a little, I am content, I’m happy. It doesn’t make any difference because his happiness did not depend on people or circumstances or details of life. His happiness and your happiness and my happiness comes from where Jesus Christ tells us it comes from. In Luke 11, 27 and 28, happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s word and who keep it. And that’s the issue. So now, Hebrews 12, six, listen carefully. In case this is you suffering for this reason, I don’t want you to be suffering for this reason, so listen carefully. Hebrews 12, six through 10. For whom the Lord loves, he loves you. He didn’t abandon you. He’s not throwing you under the bus. He’s not mad at you. God doesn’t get emotionally mad at you. Those that God loves, he chastens. That’s a disciplines. And he scourges, now that’s some intense discipline, every son whom he receives. Every child of God undergoes discipline when they break fellowship with God and fail to rebound. Verse seven, Hebrews 12, seven. If you endure chastening discipline, God deals with you as with a son. For what son is there whom a father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you’re not really a legitimate son. Furthermore, we’ve had human fathers who corrected us and we respected them for doing that. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live? What this verse is teaching us is, number one, if you say you’re a Christian, you say you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you’re a Christian, and yet you can live in adultery, you can cheat and steal at your business, and you have no suffering, you have no discipline, you have no punishment, then what this is saying to you is maybe you’re not really a legitimate child of God, because if you were, he would discipline you. A legitimate child of God will not ever get away with unconfessed sin in his life. Now, it might not happen tomorrow, it might not happen the next day, but the justice of God is always fair and reckons justice. And so any believer, any child of God, who does not have discipline is not really a child of God. You got to, you got to have discipline if you’re a child of God. Why does he do that to us? To correct us, to make us have an attitude of gratitude, to get rid of the arrogance in our life. The self-justification that you use to say why this is okay. The self-absorption that you use, it sucks you into it and hip deep where you can’t get out of it. And then self-destruction where it leads to eventually. God disciplines you so you won’t destroy your life and others around you. And then it goes on to say, we have had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live? What does that mean? Here’s what it means. There are three stages of discipline, warning discipline, intense discipline, and dying discipline. And live is dying discipline. Proverbs 15, 10, harsh discipline is for him who forsakes the way, but he who hates the correction of God will die. What does that mean? It means when God administers divine discipline in the believer’s life and they do not respond to that discipline, they do not confess the sin, they do not move away from the sin, then they may go under the sin unto death. 1 John 5 talks about it. There is a sin unto death. And this is when you go so far down the my way highway, there’s no return. And so God just says, all right, let’s take him on home. He’s going to heaven. He’s going to have eternal life. But his time on earth is terminated prematurely. I don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want that to happen to anyone. I have seen it happen to believers that I know personally, wonderful people who were involved in sin and would not abandon the sin and eventually went out under the sin unto death. It was not a very pleasant thing. Now let’s go back to the other side of discipline, the other side of suffering, not discipline, but suffering. Not suffering for discipline, but suffering for blessing. suffering for blessing. Why would God allow us to suffer for blessing? Well, the purpose of preventative suffering in our lives is for us to learn obedience and self-discipline and enforce in genuine humility. And so just like suffering for discipline comes in three stages, so does suffering for blessing. It comes in three stages also. The first stage of suffering for blessing is from what we call providential preventative suffering. It’s taught in 2 Corinthians 12, seven and eight. This is what Paul went through and this is what Paul said. Keep in mind who this is, Paul the apostle. And lest I should be exalted above measure, 2 Corinthians 12, seven and eight, by the abundance of the revelations that have allowed me to see a thorn in my flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me lest I be exalted above measure. In other words, it was keeping him humble. Concerning this thing, I asked God three times to make it go away from me. And by the way, every time God said, no, no, no. And Paul said, because of this, since he wouldn’t take it away, I take pleasure in my infirmities and the reproaches and persecution and distress for Christ’s sake because when I’m weak, I’m actually strong. When I’m weak, I’m actually strong. Providential preventative suffering performs numerous functions in our life. The first thing it does is it insulates us against the arrogance complex in our soul. You have it and I have it. It’s part of our sin nature pattern trend. This means that if we stay in fellowship, if we grow in grace, If we don’t get out of fellowship, we can begin to eliminate jealousy and self-pity. We can begin to eliminate all the bitter, vindictive behavior that we talked about recently, the age of rage, if you heard that show. We begin to eliminate inordinate competition with other individuals and mental attitude sins. That’s what this providential preventative suffering does. When you go through something like what Paul was going through, he didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but it was given to humble him because he had allowed, God had allowed him to have a lot of insight. Let’s go back to that verse. Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations given to me, a thorn in my flesh was assigned to me. This kept him from being arrogant. All of this is important for you to understand. It’s preliminary testing. Providential preventative suffering is preliminary testing. It’s warm-up testing. And there are basically four tests that we will face before we begin to establish that momentum in our life. We have to go through this providential preventative suffering. But as you develop spiritual self-esteem, which is the next step, As you’ve developed spiritual self-esteem, you move into spiritual autonomy. Spiritual autonomy. And this is a confidence and an understanding you have in God. It’s a new spiritual status. And it will be tested by God to weed out more arrogance. Once you advance through spiritual self-esteem to become spiritually autonomous, it means you’re now independent of spiritual crutches. You hear that? You’re independent of spiritual crutches. You don’t need a counselor. You don’t need a fess-up buddy. You don’t need to run to somebody to ask them what you should do. What should I do, brother so-and-so? Your spiritual life was never designed to depend on someone else’s counseling. on advice from someone else, on any way using somebody else as a crutch, and a lot of people are not going to like that because they think you need to have a fess-up buddy. I say you do not need to confess your sin to anybody but God. Don’t go to somebody and tell them what you’ve done. That’s none of their business. They’ll spread it and tell everybody else, and that’ll be the end of that. So your spiritual life was never designed to depend on counseling, advice from anybody other than the pastor teacher who communicates the word of God to you, or any other way someone who you might use as some sort of crutch. I get a lot of mail from people, emails and written mails as well, wanting me to help them do this and help them do that. What should I do here and what should I do there? I’m not a counselor. I’m an evangelist. My job is to proclaim the good news, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to communicate basic Bible doctrine to you. But I’m not here to give you advice about what you should do about your mother-in-law, what you should do about one thing or the other, or that you need money and you need help and you want me to send you some money. It’s not going to happen. We don’t do that. So think about this. Once you get to spiritual autonomy, which is the second stage before you get to spiritual maturity, this is where the real momentum testing comes in. Will you stick with it? Will you really be serious? Are you going to face infirmities, Paul said. Yes, I face infirmities, Paul said. I gave you that verse. I’ll read it to you again. 2 Corinthians 12, 10. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in persecution, in distress for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Infirmities. The Greek word for infirmities, asthenia, means weakness or sickness of body. and Paul had much of that. He faced infirmities, he faced reproaches, hubris, the Greek word hubris, which means injuries and violence and outrage. He said, I faced persecution, diagamas, attacks on his person. And he said, I went through distresses, stenochorea, and that’s calamity, extreme affliction. He went through all of that. These are things that you will go through. You will go through infirmity. You will go through reproach. You will go through persecution. You will go through distress. Why? on behalf of Christ, Paul said. Listen to what he wrote in Philippians 1.29, for to you it has been given on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. This is how you grow. This is how you advance in the Christian life. This is how you move forward. This is how you put the old man behind you. This is how you move into a new dynamic of living called spiritual maturity. When you face these sort of tests that Paul was going through under momentum testing, you must maintain the filling of the Holy Spirit. You must continue to use a faith rest drill. If you don’t know these things, they’re part of the 10 problem-solving devices that we’d give. Problem-solving device number two, the filling of the Holy Spirit. Problem-solving device number three, the faith rest drill. If you don’t understand those and don’t use those, you will never reach spiritual maturity in your life. But if you do use them, if you do understand them, then in your spiritual autonomy, you will grow stronger and stronger and stronger and propel you into maturity, spiritual maturity. When does that happen? I don’t know. I think perhaps a lifetime. But spiritual maturity is a wonderful thing. That’s where you give maximum glorification to God. And what a wonderful thing that is for us to be able to do that. Spiritual maturity is giving maximum glorification to God. And in spiritual maturity, there’s maximum suffering. It’s called evidence testing. This is when you’ll be called to the witness stand by the devil himself. You’ll be cross-examined by Satan himself. Much like what our Lord went through in Matthew 4 when Satan cross-examined him after being in the wilderness and fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. And he combated Satan with Scripture, Scripture, Scripture. He did not use his omnipotence. He stayed in his humanity. Remember, he was a unique man, undiminished deity, true humanity, and one body forever. And as a man, he defeated Satan by quoting Scripture, Scripture, Scripture, the power of the Word of God. He went through that evidence testing. And if you’re going to grow to be a mature believer and give maximum glorification of God, get ready. There will be evidence testing on your behalf. You will be brought to the witness stand like Job. God will test you. He will allow Satan to run the gamut on you, to look at you, to put you under the microscope. Will you fail? Will you get full of self-pity? Will you cry and weep and run to somebody and say, what should I do, brother? What should I do? All these bad things are happening to me. If you don’t stay filled with the Holy Spirit, if you don’t use a faith rest drill, you will be discouraged. You will be distracted and you will be defeated and you will never bring God maximum glorification. If you want to bring God maximum glorification, get to spiritual maturity. Go through evidence testing. And let me make this clear. Prayer, can I pray for God to remove my suffering? And the answer is absolutely not. Not suffering for discipline, but suffering for blessing. Remember Paul said, I prayed three times and asked God to take it away. And every time God said, nope, nope, nope. You don’t pray for the suffering to be removed. It’s antithetical to the purpose of why God gave it to you to start with, which is a blessing. Why would you want the blessing to be taken away? And you may say, well, how could suffering be a blessing? Because God designed it that way. Paul said, when I’m weak, I’m actually my strongest because he had nothing else to depend on except the love and grace of God. What do you depend on for your happiness? What do you depend on for your stability? What do you depend on to keep your sanity? Nothing but the love and the grace of God. Prayer is antithetical to the purpose of suffering for blessings. So you got to understand this. Understand the role and the significance of spiritual self-esteem in order to appreciate Paul’s wrong application of prayer in asking God to remove the thorn in his flesh. We never pray. We never pray for the removal of the very thing that’s causing us to advance to spiritual maturity. We never pray for that. That’s the rocket fuel. That undeserved suffering is your rocket fuel, and it’s pushing you in the maximum glorification of God by means of evidence testing. So you don’t pray for the removal of the suffering for blessing. This is how the protocol plan of God is fulfilled. If God doesn’t remove the way of suffering, he intends you to bear it. So you don’t pray for the removal of the mechanics of the power by which the very spiritual life you live propels you to spiritual maturity. This is the very thing you’re supposed to go through. Here’s what people don’t understand. If you look at the 10 problem-solving devices, prayer is not a problem-solving device in your life. It’s not designed to solve problems. You can pray for others who are under suffering, and you should. You don’t judge why they’re suffering, but you do pray for those who suffer. It’s our privilege as members of the royal family of God to pray for our friends and pray for those that we know are undergoing suffering. It’s a weapon of power in the hands of believer priests like you and I. But we never pray for the removal of any suffering from ourself. All suffering is a decision from the sovereignty of God. The Christian does not pray for strength in times of suffering because strength comes from doctrine. Strength comes in other ways. Don’t say, God, give me strength to handle this. God, give me strength to handle this. Well, where do you think the strength is going to come from? It’s going to come from the faith rest drill. It’s going to come through the filling of the Holy Spirit. It’s going to come through grace orientation and biblical orientation. Pray that you learn the plot line and establish a plot line on your soul. Ignorant believers, negative believers use prayer for everything because they don’t have any doctrine. They don’t have any application of doctrine. They don’t have any spiritual growth in their life. God’s never going to put more on you than you can bear. He told you that. You can put that on your own self when you sin and don’t rebound using the law of volitional responsibility. Yeah, you may suffer more than you can bear then because you didn’t rebound. But before God gives suffering for blessing, he always provides the way and the means to handle it. So strength and suffering comes from metabolized doctrine in your soul. It comes from the stages of the spiritual life in your soul, having a flat line in your soul. That’s where it comes from. That’s how you get it. So as a believer, as you accept Christ as your savior, this happened to me, I had to come to spiritual self-esteem. I had to become aware of who I was. I had to become aware of God’s plan for me. And then as I went through providential preventative suffering in my life, it moved me into spiritual autonomy where I didn’t need a crutch. I didn’t need someone else to run to. I was able to take the word of God as my pastor taught me under the filling of the Holy Spirit and use it to sustain myself. And then as I moved into spiritual maturity, combined with evidence testing, I’m able to glorify God to the maximum in my personal life as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is your testimony as well as mine. Are you listening today? Some of you should be listening. You are undergoing suffering for blessing. You are undergoing evidence testing. You’re having an opportunity to glorify God to the maximum. Use it. Use your volition to rebound. Use your volition to stay filled with the Holy Spirit. Use your volition to use a faithless drill. And because of Christ’s sake, as Paul wrote, I have exceeding joy with this. Count it all joy, brethren, when you go through these things. The Bible told you this. Count it all joy. It’s one of the greatest things you could ever experience. Maximum glorification of God under evidence testing. Are you listening? Have you learned something? I went kind of fast. I hope you paid attention. Until next week, this is Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.
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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.
