Join host Rick Hughes in this insightful episode of The Flatline, where we discuss the spiritual tests that life often presents us with. This week, Rick dives into the challenges that teachers and believers alike face when enduring ‘people testing’ and ‘system testing.’ Through his experiences and scriptural lessons, discover how to navigate life’s trials with wisdom and grace, without letting frustration and bitterness take root.
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, stick around. It’ll just be a short time, maybe about 30 minutes, but a lot of inspiration, some motivation, some education, and no manipulation. That’s right, we don’t con people. We’re not soliciting money. We’re not trying to sell you something, not a t-shirt, not a membership. We’re trying to give you something, give you accurate information that’ll help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life if you are, in fact, interested. And if you are, then you can orient and adjust to the plan. But I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to be with you today. This is show 930 today. That’s 930 Sundays that we’ve been presenting to Flatline across America, compliments of the grace of God. People ask me sometimes, how do you pay for it? We trust the Lord to pay for it. We depend on unsolicited contributions. We don’t solicit money. We don’t ask for money. But we know if God’s in it, he’ll pay for it. And he always has without failure yet. So thank you, Father, for your wonderful provisions of grace and the way that you provide it through your people. And I want to remind you that we have done a significant revision of our book, Christian Problem Solving. It was a bigger book, but we’ve broken it down to a smaller book. And it’ll be out off the press very soon. And if you want to get your copy, just contact us at rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. or call 800-831-0718, 800-831-0718, and you can order your copy of the Christian Problem Solving book free of charge. We also have redone our book on divine pardon that we use for the incarcerated individuals. If you’d like a copy of that, let us know as well. These will both be coming out along with another book we’re working on called Understanding Your Soul. And we do these books because we know the printed word lasts forever. Books seem to have legs. They get up and walk around and move around. If you’re not listening to the radio when this show goes off, then you don’t hear it. But if you get a book, then you can read something. So that’s why we publish and print books, and a lot of our cost involves cost of publishing books, distributing books, mailing books out, et cetera. So we appreciate your prayers in that regards, okay? You ready to get started today? I think what we’re going to study would be very, very interesting. I think it may involve you. I’ve traveled for many, many years, and right now I’m approaching 78 years old, coming up pretty soon. And I’ve traveled for many years, speaking to hundreds of schools and thousands of students. Actually, from 1970 until 2022, I’ve traveled and spoken in schools all across the Southeast. During that time, I would often speak at special functions like general assemblies. We would do what we call our spiritual emphasis week. That was five assemblies, five days, an hour each day with a student body seven through 12. But we would also speak at some graduations, speak at sports team functions and banquets, and speak at individual classrooms, as well as something called in-service training for teachers. And this is where I had a lot of fun, talking to teachers. and dealing with tests that teachers often fail. Not tests that students fail, but tests that teachers fail. And I’ll tell you more about that here in a minute. I also sponsored a prayer breakfast at the annual Mid-South Association of Independent School Administrators Conference. This function that I provided was free of charge and we did it for over 30 years and we were the largest attended independent function there. It happened as I was visiting one year speaking there and I noticed that the cap and gown people had a cocktail hour and the ring people had a cocktail hour and the yearbook people had a cocktail hour and I thought, why don’t we have a prayer breakfast? So at 7 a.m. on the first day of the conference, I would always go in and host a prayer breakfast for those that wanted to attend, and it was very well attended. And that’s the way I would get in school sometimes. But during these times, I met many faculty members, many administrators that faced testing on a daily basis, every day, dealing with students, dealing with parents. And seeing these individuals endure these unjust and sometimes unfair trials motivated me to develop a series called Tests That Teachers Often Fail. And in that series, I dealt with system testing, working for a system that’s not always fair. You know, sometimes you have to be at the ball games when you don’t want to be there. You have to do certain things you don’t want to do if you’re a teacher. You have to teach certain classes you don’t want to teach when you’d like to take a break, maybe you gotta have a study hall, but always working under authority, always working in a system that wasn’t always fair sometimes. So I developed how you handle system testing. And I also developed something else called people testing. So we dealt with system testing and people testing when we talked to teachers. Both of these sort of tests are passed or failed if you’re a believer based on what you think. The residence of the word of God in your soul is what you think. And so people testing is very often the hardest test in life to pass. I can agree with that. People testing is the hardest test in life to pass without becoming bitter or not getting full of self-pity. If you’ve ever been lied about, if you’ve ever been dumped on, If you’ve ever been misled, if you’ve ever been stolen from, cheated upon, you know what I’m talking about, people testing. And if you have friends turn on you, if you have friends accuse you, maybe even steal from you or desert you in time of need, that’s a very hard thing for the believer to process, but you can process it with the Word of God. Often the people that test you are the ones that are not known to you sometimes. I mean, you can encounter them in a local grocery store. You may encounter them on the highway. Social media, YouTube often puts up videos of people out of control, hollering at people, screaming at people in parking lots. One of my favorites I like to watch is what’s called the Karens. The Karens, and that’s women that come out of their house screaming and hollering at fishermen that are fishing too close to their pier and threatening to have them arrested if they don’t get away from their dock. Of course, it’s public waters and they don’t own the water and a tournament fisherman can fish wherever he wants to fish. But tournament anglers often encounter Karen when they fish too close to their dock and she comes out screaming and shouting for them to go away. The internet is full of videos showing these irate individuals who threaten to do nasty things if you don’t leave immediately. I’m telling you these things so I can demonstrate how the spiritual life is a system of thinking under the direction and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Your spiritual life is lived in your soul and in the mentality of your soul. Your soul is going to live forever. You don’t have a human spirit unless you’re born again, then you get a human spirit, and it’s your soul and your spirit that live forever. And in your soul, you have mentality, you have volition, you have conscience, and you have self-consciousness. These are all part of your soul. And in the mentality of your soul, where your thoughts are, this is where you live your spiritual life. So remember that. I want you to remember that and don’t forget that. So I wanted to show you that it’s inevitable in life you’re going to encounter unreasonable unprofessional people who will try to bully you with intimidation in order for you to pass this type of thought testing because that’s what it is it’s trying to get you to quit thinking and get emotional in order to pass this sort of thought test you must learn to think beyond the limits of your body and not fall into emotional retaliation where you get mad and get frustrated and get blow steam off out of your ears and holler back at them and it goes back and forth. But if you can’t solve these sorts of tests, listen carefully, if you can’t handle the people testing in your life, if you can’t handle the system testing in your life, that could be social security, it could be your taxes, it could be political situations, if you can’t handle that, then you will never ever advance spiritually. they’ll always get you off track. You’ll always get emotional, you’ll always get mad, you’ll always get angry, and you’ll always sideline your spiritual life. That’s why God allows these sort of things into your life. You ever thought about that? That’s why God allows pressure situations. So you will grow and become spiritually strong and not depending on what people think and not depending on what people say about you. But arrogance is strange. You’ve heard me talk about arrogance before. Arrogant people have unrealistic self-image and unrealistic expectations. And arrogance always reacts to pressure, always reacts to unfair situations. And what does it react with? Bitterness, frustration, anger, volatility. While humility, just the opposite, always responds with forgiveness. which is the power of impersonal love as a problem-solving device, and we talk about that in the 10 problem-solving devices. Problem-solving device number eight is impersonal love, and hopefully you know what that is by now. If not, you need to get this book called Christian Problem Solving and look at it. So that’s why God allows these things, so you can grow and become spiritually strong, not letting your happiness depend on what other people think or what other people say. But arrogance cannot handle pressure, cannot handle unfair situations, and always gets angry. But humility always forgives. And what did our Lord say about those that mocked him? Remember that? The ones that crucified him. There’s a song that says, he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free, but he died alone for you and me. What did he say to those who mocked him and crucified him? He said, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do. So he didn’t take it personal. He knew what was going on. He understood Satan’s objective was to stop his work on the cross and to stop his provision that he would make for God. So remember this. Temptation for us to sin is inevitable. It’s inevitable. Mental attitude sins is inevitable. There’s also other sins like sins of the tongue that go along with that and even overt sins. I mean, you get mad at somebody, then you slander and malign somebody, then you want to attack them and hit them. So that’s mental attitude sins, sins of the tongue, and even overt sins. So passing the temptation test that we face with people is certainly possible if you will indeed use God’s problem-solving devices. Why do I know that? How do I know that for sure? Let’s take your life for example. You may have something going on right now. You’re having a test with a family member, a test with a boss, a test with a spouse, a test at school, a test at work. How do you handle it? What do you do about that? How do you keep from getting mad and getting resentful? Listen to 1 Corinthians 10, 13. No temptation has overtaken you except such as common demand. Common demand. You’re not the first one to go through it. But God, who is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape so that you may be able to bear it. There’s a promise. God’s not going to put you in over your head. He will let these things come into your life to give you spiritual strength so you can grow and learn. In the case of people testing, you need to understand a couple of simple facts. First of all, it’s always a test to challenge your thoughts. Because if you get angry at people, if you get bitter at people, if you get frustrated with people, then you are obviously failing the test. The question is, will you allow someone else to control your thoughts? Will you allow someone else to pull you into some sort of emotional reaction? And secondly, will you use impersonal love to overcome the frustration and forgive the people that you are having a problem with since you’re commanded to love even the worst jerks on the block? Did you know that? The Bible says you have to love even the worst jerks on the block. I call them W-O-Js, weird, obnoxious jerks. The Bible says in Mark 12, 30 and 31, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and this is the first commandment. And then Mark 12, 31. And the second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There’s no other commandment greater than these. What if you got a weirdo for a neighbor? What if you got a neighbor that has an OPD? OPD, what is that? Obnoxious Personality Disorder. and you gotta love that person, does that mean you gotta go over there and put your arms around their neck and say, oh brother, I love you? No, that’s not what it’s telling you. What it’s telling you is if you will use the filling of the Holy Spirit, if you will use the resident doctrine in your soul, you can have a relaxed mental attitude and not vibrate every time you see that person, not get bent out of shape regardless of what they do. So here in this particular passage, we have the mandate in Mark 12, 30, 31 to have personal love for God as well as impersonal love for others. That’s problem solving device number seven and problem solving device number eight. Listen again. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. That’s personal love for God. With all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. And then secondly, impersonal love. Now listen, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There they both are right there. These are the mandates to use personal love for God and personal love for others. That’s virtue love the believer has to be able to have and execute if he’s going to successfully live the Christian life. In Paul’s last letter before his execution by Nero, he mentioned individuals that brought tests to him as well. And Paul had his fair share of them. In 2 Timothy 4, 10 through 16, he talks about Demas, D-E-M-A-S. He said, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and departed for Thessalonica. Crescents went to Galatia. Titus went to Dalmatia. Only Dr. Luke is here with me. And this is when Paul was going through his trial. So he said, get Mark and bring him with you. He’s useful for me. Antiochus, I’ve sent to Ephesus. Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and when you come, and the books, especially the parchments. And then he goes into one of his big people tests that he had. He said, Alexander the coppersmith did much harm to me. May the Lord repay him. That means he didn’t try to get even with Alexander. He just turned him over to the Lord. May the Lord repay him according to his works. You also must beware of him, for he has greatly resisted our words. At my first defense, no one stood with me. That’s when he was on trial the first time, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them. So he had his fair share of people testing. Demas was a trusted companion in the ministry, according to Colossians 4.14, and he deserted Paul and stayed back in the safety of Thessalonica. Of all of Paul’s close associates, only Luke was with him at this time. Alexander the metal worker had done a great deal of harm to Paul’s ministry by opposing his messages of grace, and Paul warned his young student Timothy to watch out for him. But he turned revenge over to the Lord because Paul was not in the I’ll get even with him ministry. And you are not either. I have a friend of mine who’s getting on up there nowadays. He used to keep a little black book in his pocket. And if you did him wrong, he put your name in the book. And that was when he was going to get even with you sooner or later. So he had put your name in the book. That’s not allowed in the Christian life. We don’t put people’s names in the book. We forgive them and we move on. So Moses also, before I tell you about Moses, Paul said, they all forsook me at my first trial. What is that? Paul’s praying for God not to hold it against them. Apparently nobody came to support him. And why was that? Because it was very dangerous to be a Christian in Rome since Nero accused the Christians of starting the fire that burned down half of Rome. So it wasn’t exactly the safest place in the world for the Christians to be, and that’s why a lot of them wouldn’t come to support Paul. Moses had a tremendous test when the children of Israel turned on him after he was the one that God used to bring him out of Egyptian captivity and on their journey to the promised land. The first complaint he had to deal with came just two months and 15 days after he left Egypt. And it was directed toward Moses, the very man that delivered him through the Red Sea. They forgot about that. In Exodus 16, two through three, then the whole congregation of the children of Israel And what happened? The whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses. They were gritching, gritching, combination of two words. They complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the children of Israel said to them, that’s to Aaron and Moses, we wish we had died by the hands of the Lord in the land of Egypt. when we sat by pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full, but you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. You talk about self-centered, no appreciation whiners and complainers. This is a maximum people test. The very people that Moses led out of slavery, the very people that he delivered through the Red Sea, the very people that he accomplished their freedom were now turning on him and said, you’re trying to kill us. You designed to kill us. This is crazy. But this was a test to see if they would believe God could provide their needs. So listen to what God said to Moses in Exodus 16, verse four. Then the Lord said to Moses, behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you, that’s called manna, and the people shall go out and gather it carefully, quota every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my laws or not. So the Lord was putting them through a test. They failed the test. It took 40 years for the complainers to die off, but then the next generation had their own set of tests. In Exodus 16, 35, and the children of Israel ate manna for 40 years until they came to an inhabited land, and they ate manna until they came to the borders of the land of Canaan. And then the second generation, these are about 40 years old now, their parents had died off. And now they’re accusing Moses of the same thing, people testing again. You’re trying to kill us in Exodus 17.3. The people thirsted there for water. This time it was no water. Last time it was no food. And they complained against Moses. And they said, why is it you brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? This is something that you need to get used to. What about the children? Oh, the poor children. This is an excuse that whiners and complainers use all the time. And here it is, you’re gonna kill our children. This is one of the reasons they wouldn’t go in the promised land to start with. There were giants in the land and they’ll kill our children. I could tell you a lot of what the Bible says about our children if we don’t get with it spiritually. But I’m gonna tell you right now, you need to listen carefully. If you don’t get with it spiritually, if you keep neglecting the word of God as a believer, if you keep going down the my way highway, you can grant that you’re going to bring out chaos in the lives of your grandchildren and your children because the Lord’s hand of discipline is fairly on this nation right now. And you are the only one that can stop it because as goes your spiritual life, so goes the history of America. So think about your children and your grandchildren and think about it in relationship to your spiritual life and what God expects out of you. So, what did Moses do? We saw Moses go to the Lord and ask what he should do about this problem of no water. In Exodus 17, four, Moses cried out to the Lord saying, what shall I do with these people? They’re ready to stone me. We’re not talking about narcotics either, we’re talking about rocks. They’re ready to stone me, they’re ready to kill me. What am I gonna do with these people, Moses said. Now remember, Moses was a man who fled Egypt after murdering an Egyptian. The Egyptian was abusing the children of God, and Moses killed him and covered him up and hid it. And he committed murder. And he had to flee Egypt, and he fled and went to the backside of the Midian Desert, stayed there 40 years, married a Midianite priest’s daughter. And when he was 80 years old, God appeared to him in a burning bush and said, it’s time to go back, Moses. When he was 80, he returned, and his humility is noted in the scriptures. The Bible talks about how humble Moses was. In Numbers 12, three, now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth. That’s an attitude you have to have. You have to have that sort of humility. Not humiliating, but humility to where you respect the authority of the word of God. Humility means you respect and obey authority. No matter your age or your position in life, there’s always going to be those that are jealous of you. There are always going to be those willing to turn on you. There are always going to be those that will seek to destroy you and your credibility by a campaign of lies and slander. And Moses had to learn. And it was through situations like this that Moses developed faith and trust in the Lord’s provisions. Now, what about you? If you are depending on people to make you happy, or if you think no one will ever doubt you, think again. Some of the greatest men of God I’ve ever met in my life have all faced slander and They’ve all faced lies. They’ve all faced rebellion against their leadership. Great men of God. Satan’s very good at turning people against people. So our strength in times like that does not depend on what people think. It depends on what God says. So our strength in times of people testing is always going to be in the word of God. Listen carefully as I read a couple of passages. 1 Peter 1, six through seven. In this you greatly rejoice. In what? In this testing you’re going through. In this you greatly rejoice. People testing, system testing. Though for a little while, if need be, you’ve been grieved by various trials. That means you’ve been made sad, you’ve gone through trials, it’s been hard on you. But listen to what verse seven says. So that the genuineness of your faith Being much more precious than gold, it will perish, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Do you know that some of the greatest glory you can give God is how you handle unfair testing? Our Lord Jesus Christ went through the greatest unfair test of all. Several trials that were not fair before he was crucified and even the judge said he’s innocent, I find no fault with him. How do you handle that? The greatest blessing that you can give God, the greatest glory you can give God is when you handle the unfair test, and you handled it in the right way without getting bitter, without getting even, without getting revenge-minded, not retaliating. I know some of you have been through some horrible tests where you made sacrifices for years doing things that you thought glorified God, and I’m sure they did. And then your own friends turned on you. Your own friends changed and began to say things about you. How did you handle it? Did you get mad? Did you get bitter? Did you weep? Did you get frustrated? Did you get angry? Or did you greatly rejoice? Did you hear it again? 1 Peter 1, 6 through 7. In this you should greatly rejoice, though for a little while you’ve been grieved. The greatest glory you can bring God through that testing is your attitude where you turn it over to the Lord. You maintain a relaxed mental attitude and you forgive those that have turned on you. In James 1, 2 through 4, the Bible says, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, and let patience have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. People testing is not about the obnoxious people you encounter, but rather about how you handle the conflict. Can you maintain a relaxed mental attitude through the attack? Can you use impersonal love and forgive your attacker? Never, ever try to vindicate yourself. That’s a waste of time. Just put the matter in the Lord’s hand. Use a faithless drill and forgive those who accuse or abuse you. And I’m not talking about physical abuse. That’s a different story completely. So did you learn something? Are you listening? Can you make this application into your life? I sure hope so because the glory of God depends on you fulfilling the objectives that he has for you. Please pay attention. Please learn it. Please apply it into your life. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
