Join Rick Hughes on this insightful episode of The Flatline as he delves into the spiritual dynamics of family and the importance of understanding God’s plan for our lives. With a focus on spiritual warfare and the satanic attacks on families, Rick shares stories from biblical times to demonstrate how these lessons are still relevant today. He introduces his latest book, ‘Family, Your Enduring Legacy,’ which explores enduring values that protect families from spiritual harm.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. Flat, F-L-O-T, Flatline Radio Show stands for Forward Line of Troops. That’s a military term and it refers to the main line of resistance in a troop of military resistance. There is a main line of resistance you can build in your soul based on the Word of God, and that’s what we teach here. No motivation, no manipulation, just teaching you the Word of God, trying to verify and identify God’s plan for your life, if I can do that. And if that’s so, then you can orient and adjust to the plan if you want to do so. But you may be a new listener. We’ve expanded our radio show to several new cities recently, and thank you. If you give us a few minutes of your time, I think you’ll find this show is very different than anything you ever heard before because… We’re not trying to con you out of anything. We just want you to listen. My team and I want to let you know that we have a new book coming out called Family, Your Enduring Legacy. We’ve written a bunch of books. You can go to my website and see them. It’s called Rick Hughes, H-U-G-H-E-S, rickhughesministries.org. If you go to rickhughesministries.org, you will find all the various books that we’ve written. One particular book called God’s Grace in Aging. You may want to order that book. They’re all free. There’s no charge for any of it. That’s the way we operate. We don’t con people out of money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re trying to give you something. So this is the newest book we’ve come up with, Family, Your Enduring Legacy, and it deals with your family. It’s about to go to press. If you want to preorder one, you can by going to the website at recuseministries.org and order it there. Send an email, simply send an email to rick at rickhughesministries.org or call us on the 800 line, 800-831-0718. If no one answers, be sure to leave a voicemail. Be sure to speak slowly and clearly so we can understand what you’re saying. But I think you will really enjoy this new book called Family, Your Enduring Legacy. Okay, no charge for anything. Okay, now the reason I wanted to write this book is because the family unit is where Satan’s made many successful victories in the angelic conflict. He attacks families. You know that. You may have a family like I do. My wife and I have four children and several grandchildren, and the attacks come every day. His first attack, satanic first attack on the human race, was aimed at the family of Adam. And you remember the story where he successfully tricked Adam’s wife, poor old Eve, into eating the result, the fruit from the forbidden tree of good and evil. And she wasn’t supposed to eat that fruit, wasn’t supposed to look at it, eat, not that, just not supposed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I’ll read it to you, Genesis 2, 15 through 17. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it. That was his job. He was a caretaker of the Garden of Eden. And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in this garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat from that, you will certainly die. Well, as we well know, God provided a helpmate for Adam, and her name was Eve. The Hebrew word is ish and ishah. And we assume Adam briefed her on their responsibilities as keeper of the garden. And we can assume as well that he warned her to stay away from that forbidden tree, not to eat the fruit from that tree. There’s a lot of fruit in here. You can oranges and apples or whatever it is in the garden. You can eat any of that, but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So in Genesis 221, this is how it happened. The Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed it up and placed it with flesh. And the Lord God made a woman from the rib he took out of the man, and he brought her to the man. And you know the history of what happened to them after Eve went ahead at the urging of Satan and ate the forbidden fruit. Spiritual death was a result of that. And as a result of that, spiritual death has now been passed on to every person in this fallen world. So you and I are born physically alive, but spiritually dead. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ said you must be born again. Nicodemus and John chapter three didn’t understand that statement. He said, it’s impossible to go back into my mother’s womb and be born again. And Jesus, of course, corrected him and said, it’s not flesh, it’s spirit. Being born again means that your dead human spirit is made alive by the dwelling of the Holy Spirit who comes to live in you because you cannot worship God unless you worship him in spirit and in truth. And if you’re dead spiritually, you can’t have a relationship with God. So you have to be born again. And how does that happen? He that believes in the Son shall not perish but have everlasting life. And he that believes not the Son of God shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him forever. So the minute you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive him as your Savior, you are born again. And don’t forget that Adam and Eve had children. They were cast out of the Garden of Eden after they got kicked out. They had children. We know the names of at least three of them, Cain, Abel, and Seth. If we study the scriptures, we can see that children can be a cursing or a blessing to their parents. Do you have children this morning? Do you? Listen to what the Bible says. Proverbs 10, 1. A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son brings grief to the mother. Proverbs 10, 1. In Proverbs 17, 25, a foolish son brings grief to his father and bitterness to the mother that bore him. So we see that a wayward child can cause great difficulty for father and mother. From these verses we see your children can be a source of happiness or a source of enduring pain. The fifth commandment given by Moses from God on the 10 commandments is found in Exodus 20 verse 12. Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land, the land the Lord your God is giving you. The secret to having a long life is not the fountain of youth. It’s the respect for the authority and the love and appreciation for your parents. So the word honor in Exodus 20, 12 is repeated in Ephesians where Paul talks about the same way. He said we’re to obey our parents and we’re to honor our parents. And the word honor is the Greek word tamao, which means to respect. Respect your father and mother so that you may live a long time in the land the Lord your God is giving you. So again, the secret to long life is parental authority and responding to it and appreciating it. Many, many letters I receive include prayer requests from parents, parents who are concerned about the behavior of their children. So what we must recognize is that your children have their own volition, their own decider maker, their own decision maker, and once they grow up and become independent, They alone will be responsible for their decision, not you. They will. They may very well reject everything that you taught them. They may reject all the warnings and the directions you gave to them. Our Lord warned his disciples about this, that their children may turn on them if they identified with him and turned away from strict Jewish laws and Jewish ritual that was taught in the synagogue. You want to hear where he did that? Listen to Matthew 10, 34. Do not suppose that I came to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. So if you were a Jew living in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ and you decided to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, you were immediately cast out. You immediately became an enemy You didn’t go to the synagogue anymore. You didn’t live by the law of Moses anymore. You found a new relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. So following the Lord Jesus Christ came with a price then, and it still comes with a price today. It meant that a follower must love Jesus more than family. You hear me? A person who’s going to follow the Lord Jesus Christ must love him more than they love their family. In Matthew 10, 37, I’ll read it to you. You can make your own mind up here. Anyone who loves their father or their mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So love for family must not ever be greater than love for the Lord. This is part of the cost of discipleship. And it’s very, very possible that your children may turn on you for what you believe. At least they may reject it as they get older. Our primary responsibility as parents is very simple. I’m going to tell you what it is. Your number one goal as a parent is to evangelize your children. You brought them into this world. You birthed your children. Now you got to show them how to get out of this world and live forever in heaven. So that’s your number one job to evangelize your children, expose them to the gospel message while they’re young, so that you can be assured that they’re going to go to heaven, even though they may claim later, they don’t believe it anymore. They’re going to be recruited by the cosmic system when they get to school and get to college, get the job. They’ll hear all the cosmic lies. They’ll hear all the cosmic promises when they leave home. And they may turn their back on what you taught them. But listen to this, 2 Timothy 2.13. This should be comfort for you. If your children are going against what you taught them, but you evangelize them when they were young, you led them to Christ when they were young, it says this. If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself. Once a child is brought into the family of God, God’s not going to kick him out. God will discipline him. We’ll talk about that shortly, but he’s not going to kick him out because God is faithful. You may turn your back on God, but he will never, ever, ever turn his back on you. He’ll just love you from behind. So can you even imagine what would happen? The tears of thank you, thank you, thank you once all of you are in heaven together. Can you imagine that? There’s no doubt they would be so grateful for your faithfulness in evangelizing them while they were young. And they would be so ashamed that they followed the call of the world during their adult years. So I can just see that in heaven. They’d be surprised they’re even there. They didn’t even believe in heaven anymore. Ah, what is this place? It is heaven. And you’re here because your parents evangelized you when you were young. They told you about the Lord Jesus Christ. They prayed with you. You received Christ as your Savior. And yes, you left it later on. Yes, you went off to college. Yes, you got a career. Yes, you married. Yes, you turned your back on all of that. But God is faithful. He did not disown himself. I’ll tell you something else that happens in families. Sibling rivalry. Sibling rivalry occurs in many families. Adam had a son named Cain and he murdered his brother Abel. That’s sibling rivalry. That’s one son killing another son. Maybe you’ve got children that hate each other too. Maybe you’ve got children that fight, children that can’t get along. That’s not unusual. The story of Jacob’s son, whose name was Joseph, is a lesson in the faithfulness of God in spite of horrible circumstances. See, Joseph grew in a very large disjointed family where he grew up. His father, Jacob, had four different wives producing 12 sons and maybe even one daughter. The real trouble began when Jacob favored the children of the wife named Rachel more than the others. And in doing so, he gave her two sons special treatment. And that caused a real problem in the family. So much so that the brothers decided to get rid of their younger son, their younger brother, Joseph. See, Joseph received a very colorful robe from Jacob. Joseph even had a vision from God that one day he would be over his ten brothers, and they would bow down to him. And when he told them about this vision, oh, they got so mad about it. This created hatred for Joseph and eventually led his brothers to throw him in a pit and sell him into slavery and went back home and told his father that he was killed by a wild animal so they could cover it up. However, later in life, the other brothers were facing death from famine, so they had to go to Egypt for help, and they discovered their brother, when they got to Egypt, was still alive, the one they thought was dead. He was now the viceroy of Egypt, second in command, representative of the Pharaoh. Here’s what he told his brothers once they discovered it was him. He said in Genesis 50, verse 20, you intended it to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done and the saving of many lives. So being sold into slavery was actually God’s plan for his life. This is an illustration of divine viewpoint, and it proves that God is at work even when you don’t think he is. So sibling rivalry may be real, and they may hate each other. Take, for example, David, the young shepherd boy who killed Goliath in one of the combat battles. But he was despised by his older brother Eliab. Prophet Samuel showed up one day at Jesse’s house looking for the future king of God as God has instructed him. In 1 Samuel 16, I want you to go down to Jesse’s house and one of his sons is going to be the new king. So Jesse, the Bible said, had seven sons at home and one son in the field with sheep. And the prophet was impressed with the older son, whose name was Eliab, because he was a military officer. And he thought, surely this is God’s anointed man right here before me. And he’s tall, he’s good looking, handsome, wearing a uniform, a warrior. But here’s what God said about Eliab. Do not consider his appearance. Do not look at his height, for I reject him. The Lord does not look on the things that people look at. People look on the outside, but I look at the heart. So God had looked into that heart of Eliab and saw that he was a coward, he was a liar, he was jealous, he was bitter, and God said, he’s not qualified. And of course, you know how Jesse said, well, that’s it. You’ve looked at all seven of my sons, and You didn’t select any of them. And, of course, Samuel said, well, wait a minute. Either God’s lying or you’re lying. Who’s lying? And he said, do you have another son? Of course, Jesse said, well, yeah, I do have one more, but he’s a sheepkeeper. And, of course, Samuel said, go get him, and nobody better sit down until he shows up. And, of course, that was God’s man, David, the sheepkeeper, tending the flock in the field. Principle. God is not impressed with your image. God is not impressed with your style. He’s impressed with what you think. That’s why the Bible says in Proverbs 23, 7, as a man thinketh in his heart, So he is. And as believers, we are told what to think. Stop thinking of self in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. Think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word, Romans 12, 3. We’re told to think Philippians 2, 5, the very mind of Christ is to be ours. So how do you know what Christ thought? Well, it’s in the Bible. As you learn the Bible, learn the Scriptures, learn the Word of God, you are learning the thinking of Christ. That’s what you’re to think. Divine viewpoint thinking. Not human viewpoint. Divine viewpoint thinking. In the New Testament, our Lord gave the parable of the prodigal son, which was a story of two brothers. One of those brothers was licentious. The other one was self-righteous. You know, one was a party boy and the other was self-righteous, probably uptight religious kid. This conflict motivated the licentious brother to insist on getting his inheritance early so he could get out of Dodge. So he talked his father into giving him his share of the inheritance. Normally the way that worked is the older son got two-thirds and the younger son got one-third. So I call these two kids Frick and Frack. So Frick got his money and shipped off. He went off to go live his party in the city, go live a party life. And that impetuous decision that he made almost cost him his life. Eventually, he came back home to his father. This is called enforced humility. God humbled him. Eventually, he came to his senses and returned home to ask his father to forgive him, which the father was indeed willing to do, but the self-righteous older brother was jealous and had himself a little pity party. In Luke 15, 21, you can read the whole thing, Luke chapter 15. The older son, the self-righteous son, the arrogant son, this is what he said to his daddy. He said to him, I have, no, this is the younger son, excuse me, the younger son when he came home said, I have sinned against heaven and against you and I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. so what he did is what we call rebound he confessed his sin to his father this is what you and i must do if we’re going to stay filled with the holy spirit we must learn to confess our sin to god because the bible says if we confess our sin he’s faithful and just to forgive us and to purify us from all wrongdoing when you sin if you don’t confess it you quench the holy spirit you grieve the holy spirit You break fellowship with God and you come under God’s discipline. And it comes in three stages, warning discipline, intense discipline, and even dying discipline. So this younger son, old Frick, was in trouble. He was about to die, if you read that story in Luke 15. And he decided, after a little enforced humility, God humbled him. He’s having to feed the pigs and eat what the pigs slop. And of course, they didn’t eat pork. So he went home and asked for forgiveness. This may be a lesson to you. Should you go home and ask for forgiveness from your heavenly father for the way you turned your back on him? Should you? Have you indeed turned your back on your heavenly father? then maybe you need to consider rebounding. Problem-solving device number one on the flat line of your soul is rebound. This gets you filled with the Holy Spirit and takes away the quenching of the Spirit and the grieving of the Spirit. They’re removed and now you’re filled with the Spirit. Now you’re able to produce divine good and glorify God to the maximum. So he came in and he admitted his sin, asking for forgiveness. All these stories, and every one of these stories, we have fathers dealing with siblings. Siblings doing what they wanted to do, not what they’d been taught to do. You know, it’s a very, very, very hard thing to watch someone self-destruct. But the hardest thing is to watch your own children self-destruct. So what should you do as a grieving parent? How should you handle that? If your children are self-destructing, how do you handle it? And this is why I get a lot of letters from parents. Pray for my son. Pray for my daughter. A lot of times they’re in prison. A lot of times they’re having a divorce. A lot of times weird stuff going on. Pray for them. They’re grieving. Their parents are hurting. How should you deal with this? If you’re a grieving parent and your children are like this, Well, in Psalm 34, 17, the righteous cry out and the Lord hears them. And he delivers them from all their troubles. And I can guarantee you the father in Luke 15 of the prodigal son prayed for him daily, that God would protect him, God would watch over him, and God would bring him back. And God did. God answers prayer. He does. Psalm 34, 17, one more time, listen. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them. He delivers them from all their troubles. What does that tell us? Pray for your children and for your attitude of frustration and despair about your children. Pray for your children and about your attitude of despair and frustration. You might not realize that’s a sin, but worry is a sin. Getting desperate is a sin. Being frustrated is a sin. Mental attitude sins. All three of those are mental attitude sins. And you can solve all of that by the faith rest and drill. Turn them over to God. Let God handle it. If you evangelize them when they were little, if you evangelize them when they were your children, and they’re now God’s children. In 2 Corinthians 4, eight and nine, the Bible says we are hard pressed on every side but not crushed. We’re perplexed but not in despair. We’re persecuted but not abandoned. We’re struck down but not destroyed. What does that mean? It means the faith rests drill. Standing on the promises of God. Having a relaxed mental attitude. Whatever the difficulty is, whatever the despair is, whatever the persecution is, you don’t worry. You don’t get afraid. You turn it over to the Lord. And again, the verse, Psalm 34, 17, the Lord hears you and he will deliver them from their troubles. Another verse in Ephesians 4, 32, be kind and compassionate to one another. forgiving each other just as Christ and Christ God forgave you. Remember what the Lord Jesus Christ said in Luke 23, 34, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. You have to learn to forgive your children who have disappointed you. You have to learn to forgive your children who have caused you to go into depression. You have to learn to use impersonal love. It’s a problem-solving device. A virtue love is an impersonal love for mankind and personal love for God, a wonderful thing. If you haven’t learned about that, you need to get our book called Christian Problem Solving, and it lists all 10 problem-solving devices. We’ll send it to you free of charge, and you can learn these 10 unique problem-solving devices when put together and make up the floodline in your soul. So be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other. There may be, these kids of yours, maybe at the age where it’s now out of your hands, right? I mean, maybe they’re 25, 26, 27, 30, 35. It’s now out of your hands. If you led them to Christ at a young age, they are now God’s problem, not your problem. And I promise you, God knows how to break the spirit of an arrogant person. And God knows how to humble the proud. So if they are a child of God, you did evangelize them when they were young. You led them to Christ when they were young. And then when they got into the world, they followed the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. They got with it. They turned their back on what you taught them. They walked away from what you believe. And now they think you’re kind of out in the Lulu land. This is God’s problem, not yours. He can break that arrogance and he can humble the proud. Here’s a principle. Do not, and I repeat this, listen carefully. Do not let your children steal your joy. Do not let your children steal your joy. You did your job. You evangelized them. You led them to Christ. Now it is up to them to respond to God’s discipline that will come into their life or else they will suffer the consequences of their rebellion. But what should you do? Philippians 4.4 tells you what to do. Rejoice in the Lord always. I say again, rejoice. Praise the Lord. He is faithful and just. He’s not going to turn his back on them and he’s not going to bear his children now, not yours. They moved out of your house. And he can deal with them. He will deal with them. He will discipline them. And it will come through warning discipline, intense discipline, and dying discipline. Like the father of the prodigal son, you just need to be there when they come home. Once they turn back and once they come back to you, you need to be there. Don’t be bitter. Don’t be mad. Just love them. Take care of them. Provide for them. Get them back on their feet. The Lord will do the rest. They’re not your responsibility anymore. They’re grown. And it’s now their heavenly father is dealing with them, just as if their earthly father was dealing with them. Does that make sense to you? I hope so. I hope you’re learning something. If you’re just beginning to listen to The Flatline, this is what we do. We teach the Bible. We teach biblical principles in the Bible. So our book on The Family, Your Enduring Legacy, will be available very soon if you’d like to have it. Just contact us through our website, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org, or call us at 800-831-0718. We’ll put your name on the list, and as soon as the book’s out of the press and in our hands, we’ll mail it to you free of charge. So thank you for listening. I hope if you’re a new listener, you enjoyed the show. I hope you’ll come back next week at the same time. We’ll be here. The Lord provides it, if the Lord’s willing, and I think He will be. So we will be here for you to give you some more information. I call it accurate information, not human speculation. We don’t have AI here. We don’t have artificial intelligence or what I call arrogance and ignorance. We have the word of God, and it’s alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. So thank you for listening. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
