Join Rick Hughes on this special episode as he celebrates 20 years of broadcasting The Flatline. Gain insights into God’s plan for your life as Rick reflects on his journey from a single broadcast in Birmingham to over 120 stations every Sunday morning. Discover the principles of trust, obedience, and Christian service that have guided his path, and learn how they can influence yours.
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 won’t be long 30 minutes of motivation some inspiration a whole lot of education and no manipulation no con games no soliciting money not trying to sell you something we just want to give you information information that will hopefully help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life and if you can do that then you always have the freedom to orient and adjust to that plan If you’re listening this morning, I would like to inform you that this show that you’re listening to today marks 20 years of broadcasting the flight line over America’s airwaves. What started as one show broadcast in Birmingham, Alabama has now turned into 120 plus stations every Sunday morning. Today you’re hearing show number 1037. That’s 1,037 Sundays we broadcast the Flatline Radio Show. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your prayers as well as the encouragement through calls and letters. Let me remind you that we also podcast all of our shows on Apple Podcasts as well as Spotify and a few other podcast venues. And this means that you can hear various shows 24 hours a day, seven days a week from anywhere in the world that’s internet service. And none of this would be possible without the grace provisions of our Lord. I say that again, the grace provisions of our Lord. He has been so gracious to me during these years of broadcasting, providing leadership through my board of directors as well as team members who offer services and assistance without charge. We do have two ladies that are on part-time basis who distribute mail and handle bookkeeping services. as well as we maintain an office space locally. Our producer, radio producer, you hear him every show, is Jack. He handles the distribution of shows every week to the stations that we broadcast with. So hopefully you will understand that I am not a one-man show. You might wonder how I knew I was being led by God to enter this arena of contention that I call it. When I was first converted to Christ, I read a scripture in a group Bible study that caught everyone’s attention. including mine, and this is the passage. I’ll read it to you. Ephesians 6, 19 through 20. Pray for me that utterance may be given unto me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in change, that I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. These are the words of the Apostle Paul writing to the saints in Ephesus as he closes out his letter to them. And those words had an impact on my thinking as well as several friends who asked me, did I realize what I just read? At the time, I had no clue what it would indicate, but I claimed that verse as my own. All the enthusiasm, that’s right, all the emotion would have had no impact had I not gotten under the teaching of a well-qualified pastor. Because if I was going to have a ministry that would impact lives across America, then I must learn how to effectively proclaim the message of salvation and the spiritual life mechanics of how it works. At the time, I had no idea what God’s plan for my life would consist of. But I soon found myself having opportunities to share my story with schools and churches. And as I grew older and travel became tougher, the Lord opened the door for this radio ministry. And now, 50 plus years later, I’m so grateful to still be useful to my Heavenly Father. Two things have been the testimony of my life and they must be yours as well. Those two things are first of all the word trust and secondly the word obedience. Trust and obedience. Listen to the words of King David in Psalm 28 verse seven as he amplifies the trust part. The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in him, and I am helped, and with my song I will praise him. My heart greatly rejoices. This statement by David is a clear indication of his complete trust in God’s provision for his life. You and I understand this to be what’s called the faith rest drill. We know it as problem solving device number three on the flat line of your soul. The question that I need to ask you is do you have the same confidence in God? Because if not, you will encounter many hours of doubt and worry when it’s not even necessary. Trust is essential for you to have the faith rest drill. obedience is the other side of the coin where God trusts you. Obedience is a demonstration of your personal love for God. If you do love him, and you say you do, do you love God? That’s a legitimate question because in 1 John 5, 3, John wrote these words, this is the love of God. In other words, here’s the proof that we keep his mandates and his mandates are not hard. They’re not burdensome. This statement is not saying if we love God, we won’t sin. That’s not what it’s saying. Listen to 1 John 1.8, where John wrote these words. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. The Apostle Paul admitted he had a struggle with his sin nature in his letter to the Romans, in Romans 7, 18 through 20. For I know that in me, he wrote, that’s in my flesh, nothing good dwells, for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil that I will not to do, that’s what I practice. Now, if I do what I will not to do, it’s no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. Like Paul, you and I, there are things we don’t want to do, and we wind up doing them anyhow. The question you may ask yourself is, why do we do it? And Paul said, it’s sin that dwells in us. We have a sin-infected nature. And you’re not perfect. No one’s perfect. All of us fail God from time to time. Thank goodness we can rebound problem-solving device number one and recover from our sin, stay filled with the Holy Spirit, and move on in our spiritual life. But all of us have a sin-infected nature. Now, we all have different lust patterns that can surface and control our thoughts if we allow them to do so. But no pastor, no evangelist, no missionary is free of sin-nature influence. The sad thing is that we often expect individuals like this to be free of sin and its influences in their lives. That’s simply not true. However, the greatest failure is when those people who claim to serve God actually misrepresent God by teaching things that are not completely accurate. For example, traditions are hard to break. Organized religion uses ritual traditions to manipulate individuals into following a code that simply does not exist. Listen to Colossians 2.8. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy or empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ. What is one of the traditions we’re talking about? Well, you’ve got to remember that morality is not spirituality. Even a lost person can be a moral person. But one of the biggest areas of manipulation I find in the society today is giving. No servant of God, no missionary, no pastor, no evangelist is authorized to charge for their message, be it through book sales or through some form of honorarium. Another form of manipulation is emotional appeals. In the early days of my ministry, and that’s the early 60s when I first started speaking as a Christian, some in the early 70s, I was taught to get people to come forward in church services if they wished to be saved. Church musicians would often play Just As I Am over and over and over again while I would wait on people to come forward. But when I started speaking to schools and large assemblies with hundreds of kids at a time, I realized I could not give a public altar call to the hundreds in attendance, but I could make the gospel message clear and invite them to receive the Lord Jesus Christ where they sat. Using this approach, I was able to see many students make a private decision to accept Jesus Christ without the need for them to come forward. I always ask them to let somebody know if they did it, be it their pastor or their parents or even a Christian friend. But please tell someone, I would say to them, tell someone what you did in the assembly. and from 1969 to the year 2022 i spoke in hundreds of school assemblies across the southeast even a few as far north as michigan and as far west as colorado these opportunities were extended by the influence of god the holy spirit as he opened the doors for me and provided the means to carry the message. I simply had to be obedient and trust God. There it is. I had to be obedient and trust God. I tell you these things to encourage you in your spiritual life as well and in your particular ministry because every one of us, you, me, and every Christian is in full-time Christian service. All of us are required to teach precisely correct procedure. That’s why the Bible says, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, but rightly dividing the word of truth. There’s no way that this ministry of the Flatline Radio Show would have existed for the last 20 years if I didn’t understand the principles of grace and exactly what is the procedure to live the effective Christian life. So let me ask you this simple question this morning. Do you understand God’s purpose for your life? I mean, do you know what his plan for your life is? Do you know that? What is his plan for you? Not only on a daily basis, but where does he want you to serve him? There are three questions every Christian must answer. What does he want me to think? What does God want me to do? And where does God want me to be? Determining these three questions is something each of us must come up to grips with. Thank goodness we have what’s called divine guidance in the scripture. Let me quote to you from the book Divine Guidance published by Harvey Themes Jr. Ministries. Here’s a quote. As the personal emissary of the Lord Jesus Christ, you represent him effectively after salvation only by obeying God’s will for your life. Learning the mandates, categories, and mechanics of divine guidance gives you the basis for doing his will. As you continue to grow to spiritual maturity, you continue to become confident and you know God’s will for your life at any time and under every circumstances. That’s a wonderful thing to understand, God’s will for your life. Some things are directly stated in scripture and some things are determined by the leadership of the Holy Spirit using the insight you gain from studying and applying God’s word into your life. For example, I did not hear an audible voice tell me to start a radio ministry. It wasn’t like I was out fishing one day or sitting in a tree or driving my truck and God said, start a radio ministry. That did not happen. But it became clear through the encouragement of the Holy Spirit whereby he opened the doors and provided the necessary funding and supporting individuals that would be required to produce the 100 plus shows every Sunday morning. Clearly my gift of evangelism was the key, but that gift would not have been effective had I not understood the mechanics of salvation and spirituality. And so I thank our Lord often for leading me to Baraka Church in Houston, Texas, where I was able to get solid, sound Bible teaching. Likewise, you will never be able to effectively serve your Savior if you don’t get accurate instruction from a well-qualified pastor. In Proverbs 1.5, the Bible says a wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding, wise counsel. Did you hear that? A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel. So if you want to be wise and understanding, You need to learn and listen. That’s what it’s saying. In 2 Timothy 2.15, be diligent to approve yourself to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed. I quoted that already, rightly dividing the word of truth. So God has called both you and me into full-time Christian service. It’s not just Rick Hughes on the Flatline radio show. It’s you in your home, in your life, in your community, in your church. You are in full-time Christian service just as much as I am. So here’s some principles I’d like for you to remember. One, the phrase full-time Christian service means does not imply the narrow view of simply being a pastor, an evangelist, or a missionary, or even a person involved in some Christian service organization. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s much more than that, okay? So let’s see what point two says here, if I can pull this page apart. Point two, full-time Christian service means more than spending a maximum amount of time performing good deeds or functioning in some extensive system of works. You know, like you help little old lady across the street or you go down to the shelter and feed the homeless. That’s great, that’s wonderful. Full-time Christian service is much more than that. Three, it’s not what you do that counts. but your status quo as a Christian that determines the legitimacy of your Christian service. Service is a result, never a means of fulfilling God’s plan. Excuse me. So remember this. If you are not filled with the Holy Spirit when you do these things, they do not glorify God. You can do a right thing in the wrong way and it’s just in the energy of the flesh. So let’s say like this. If you have unconfessed sin in your life and you go down to feed the homeless or you go to visit someone or you take some money to the poor, that doesn’t glorify God if you have the sin nature control. When you’re in the flesh, anything you do like that without the sin nature in control, it’s called wood, hay, and stubble in 1 Corinthians 3, and it’s burned up to the judgment seat of Christ. But the same thing, tithing in your church, giving money to your church, giving money to a missionary, singing, doing whatever you do through your local ministry there in your local church, it can be a right thing, but it can be done in a wrong way and not glorify God For example, if Brother Smith is called upon to pray and he steps up to the pulpit to pray and he hates Brother Jones on the back row and can’t stand him, but he prays an eloquent prayer and it sounds all sanctimonious and holy, But that prayer went no higher than the ceiling because the Holy Spirit was quenched and grieved. And the Holy Spirit could not intercede for prayer as the Bible says he’s supposed to. He quenched the spirit. He grieved the spirit. So the prayer sounded great. It was totally ineffective because it was prayed from the energy of the flesh. Think about your spiritual life. How many times have you done things that you think glorified God and you think you were doing Christian service and it’s just going to wind up being wood, hay, and stubble because you had unconfessed sin in your life at the time? Can’t work that way. It’s not what you do that counts, but it’s your status quo as a Christian must be filled with the Holy Spirit to be an effective believer. That’s problem-solving device number two. Problem-solving device number one, rebound, confessing your known sin. Problem-solving device number two, the filling of the Holy Spirit solves the problem of the energy of the flesh. Problem-solving device number three is the faith rest drill or the trust part. So there are five categories of Christian service. Now think about this. Christian service related to your spiritual gift, for example. Every Christian has a spiritual gift. Every one of us does. My gift is a gift of evangelism. I didn’t ask for it. I got it when I got saved, and I didn’t even know what I had. I didn’t know why God was going to use me. You have a spiritual gift. It could be a communication gift like me. You could be an evangelist. You could be a pastor teacher. You could be someone who has a gift of help. You could be someone who has a gift of administration. Somehow, somewhere, your gift functions in the local church to complete the body of Christ. So when someone sees the church and all the gifts working, they see the body of Christ. So you have a spiritual gift and your spiritual gift will not work effectively unless you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. So Christian service, point one, related to your spiritual gift. Okay, so what’s your gift? Do you even know what your gift is? You should. I mean, it’s working whether you know it or not, I promise you, but it would help to know what your gift is because that way you don’t waste time spinning your wheels trying to figure it out. Two, Christian service related to your royal priesthood. You are a believer priest. You don’t need a priest to pray for you. You are a priest. Example is prayer. Prayer. You can pray yourself. You can go to God the Father and pray yourself as long as you pray correctly. And by that I mean you don’t pray to Jesus and you don’t pray to the Holy Spirit. You pray to the Father which is in heaven in the power of the Holy Spirit. and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus taught us that, and when he said, when you pray, pray like this in the Bible, our Father which art in heaven. So that’s you. You have to pray correctly, and your Christian service is related to your royal priesthood through prayer. And then you have Christian service related to your royal ambassadorship. You’re God’s representative in the lost world. It’s your opportunity to give the gospel to people, to share Jesus Christ, to be a royal ambassador for God. And that’s your Christian service. So every day when you step forward out into the world, you can look for an opportunity to share Christ. Some people pass out tracts, some people pass out books, some people talk to people. You are an ambassador of God. Don’t fail to talk about the ministry and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s your Christian service related to your royal priesthood, royal ambassadorship. And another example is evangelization of other people, as I just said. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. So then there’s Christian service related to your invisible impact. As a believer that is mature, you have a historical impact, an invisible impact on society. Because as goes the spiritual life of believers, so goes the history of the nation. It’s not related to who’s president. It’s not related to who’s your congressman or who’s your senator. It’s related to your spiritual life. As goes your spiritual life, so goes the history of your nation. And your Christian service has to be related to that invisible impact you have in your home, in your community, in your church. The invisible impact of the mature believer is unbelievable. And then there’s Christian service related to the laws of divine establishment. Freedom, marriage, family, nationalism. Could be military service. Should a Christian serve in the military? Absolutely, every young man should if they can. Christian service related to voting. It’s your responsibility to vote. It’s your responsibility to pay your taxes. These are all things you do as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ that glorifies God to the maximum. Christian service in these areas. There’s much more to learn about this in regards to God’s divine guidance for your life. And I’m gonna try to study this subject a little bit more for more clear understanding in the future. But before I wrap it up, let me give you an illustration. Many years ago, you may have heard me use this illustration, but many years ago I had the privilege of knowing a Medal of Honor winner This particular individual was a retired military Medal of Honor winner who was considering running for senator in the state of Alabama. He had been financially unable to do the gift, and he was talking to me about it, and we were driving in my automobile, and I said, how do you know this is God’s will for your life, for you to be a senator in the state of Alabama? And he was taken aback that I would ask him that question. He said, well, how do you know? And so I tried to give him an illustration that I learned many years ago about a ship going into a harbor. If you can picture in your mind a harbor where a lot of ships were docked up at the dock. But in order to get into the harbor, you had to go through a very narrow channel. And it’s night. You can’t see. And you’re up on the bridge with the captain. You say, how do you get in there without running aground in this narrow channel? And the captain says, you see those three red lights? In the bay, I have to line my ship up, the bow of my ship up with those three red lights. And if I keep going straight so I can only see one, I’m safe. But if I see two or see three, I’m off course and I’m about to run aground. I used that analogy to share with him how he could know God’s will. From the witness of God’s word, the witness of God the Holy Spirit, and the witness of the circumstances. I tell you again, when you want to know God’s will, he will speak to you through the Bible, the witness of the word. He will speak to you through the circumstances. You don’t have to force it. The doors are open. You don’t have to beat them open. And you will have the peace of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the Word, the witness of the Holy Spirit, and the witness of the circumstances. These all three have to line up for you to know it’s safe to proceed ahead and not run aground. So this is part of the way you understand what God’s will is for your life. It’s just a simple little illustration of divine guidance. I’ll tell you next week how to order a book called Divine Guidance that a personal friend of mine wrote. It’s got some great information in it for you. But as long as you do not understand your gift, as long as you do not understand what Christian service is, you’re never gonna be able to fulfill the plan of God for your life. He has a wonderful plan for you. You’re still alive, aren’t you? You’re still breathing. You’re still occupying space. So it’s essential that you learn the plan of God and you live it. I can tell you this. The plan of God is for you to be saved. I assure you of that. It’s not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If you’ve never made that decision, It will be the single most significant, important decision of your life. As the Bible says, what thank ye of Christ? Do you believe he’s the anointed son of God, that he died on the cross for your sins, that he resurrected from the dead? He’s alive today. Are you willing to put your faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross? If so, then you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t have to go forward. You don’t have to raise your hand. You don’t have to go backwards. You just have to do what the Bible says. believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. So I hope you take that to heart. That’s what this show is about, giving you accurate information, not human speculation. Thank you for listening. I hope you’ll come back next week. We’ll pursue this a little bit further. But until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you, thank you, thank you for listening for 20 years 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.
