SPEAKER 01 : 0:06

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 : 0:22

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few minutes please stay with me. It will not be long, only about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education. and no manipulation because we don’t con people here. We’re not soliciting you for money, not asking for anything, not trying to sell you a book, not trying to sell you a t-shirt, not trying to ask you to join up, fess it up, give it up. We just want you to listen up. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. So thank you for joining the Floodline this morning. You may be hearing it for the first time in your local radio station because We have expanded our show, pressing now on upwards to a great many shows across America. If this is your first time to hear us, we are called the FLOT, F-L-O-T line, L-I-N-E. FLOT is a military acronym for Forward Line of Troops. What we try to teach you and give you instruction here is something I learned from my pastor years ago, that if we will establish a main line of resistance of the word of God in our soul’s thinking, then we can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. So we deal with 10 unique problem-solving devices taught in the Word of God on this radio show. We have many books out available. You can check them out. One of them called Christian Problem Solving that lists all 10 of them. And it’s free. You can go to our website, rickhughesministries.org. and see whatever we have available there, all free of charge. We don’t sell anything. Okay, you know what day it is? It’s Mother’s Day. Good morning to all you wonderful mothers who might be listening this morning. You know this is your special day, and I hope your children are letting you know just how special you are. Many years ago, I played some football at the University of Alabama. I was not a star athlete, nor did I finish my career at Alabama, but I was there with the famous Joe Namath and of course the head coach being Paul Bear Bryant. Coach Bryant required all freshman football players when we got to campus to send a postcard back home to our mamas, letting them know that we had arrived on campus safely and we were there for fall practice. At one point, South Central Bell asked him to do a commercial for them on television. In that commercial, he asked these words, Have you called your mama today? And then he followed it up by saying, I sure wish I could call mine. My mother’s name was Violet, and her nickname was Boots, B-O-O-T-S. She raised me as a single parent and remarried when I was 18 years old. This very special day for mothers was conceived by Julia Ward Howe. and she was best known for being the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. In 1870, she issued what came to be known as the Mother’s Day Proclamation. The version of Mother’s Day that we celebrate today is rooted in the work of Ann Jarvis and her daughter Anna Jarvis. In order to honor her mother’s legacy, Anna set out to establish a National Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May, the day her mother died. She chose white carnations as an emblem and urged people to write heartfelt letters of gratitude to their mothers. In Anna Jarvis’s eyes, sending a pre-printed card just didn’t cut it. Anna succeeded in her quest for official recognition, and President Wilson issued a proclamation on the first National Mother’s Day just before the start of World War I in 1914. Now, let’s take a moment and look at some mothers found in the Bible. However, these are not the traditional mothers you’d be thinking about. This is a little take on Mother’s Day, a little different take. Of course, you know the first mother mentioned in the Bible is none other than Adam’s wife, Eve. We know that she made a critical mistake when she listened to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. And we know this mistake led her to entice her husband, Adam, to eat of the same tree she had partaken of. What’s amazing is Satan convinced a smart woman to disobey God because of her arrogant curiosity. If you don’t think Satan’s smarter than you, just think about what Eve had there going for her. She had it made, and yet Satan was able to trick her because of her curiosity to get her to go against what Adam had told her. In Genesis 2, 16 and 17, the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree in the garden you can eat freely, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat thereof you shall die. He didn’t die physically, but he died spiritually as well as Eve, and they disobeyed God and ate that fruit. If you open your Bibles and read Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 through 6, Genesis 3, 1 through 6, you will see how her disobedience led to enticing Adam to join her. and the resulting spiritual death and the dismissal for both of them from the Garden of Eden for the rest of their life. You can read about that in Genesis 3, verses seven through 20. Fortunately for them, God prepared a sacrifice for their sin and clothed them. In Genesis 3, verse 21, and this is the first picture of Jesus Christ being sacrificed for the sins of the world. You might remember, Eve went on to have many children, But the three we know about most often are Cain, Abel, and Seth. Eve was a mother. You also may remember that Cain murdered his brother Abel because of his jealousy. Genesis 4, verse 9. How do you think the mother felt when she found out that her son had killed his brother? Never to see Abel again. Was she angry? Was she confused? Was she brokenhearted? It’s a horrible thing for a mother to have to deal with that one son killed another son in an argument. In Proverbs 17, 25, the Bible says a foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her that bore him. There’s nothing more heartbreaking to a mother than to have a child who’s on their way to an early grave. Unfortunately, many mothers have not learned the necessary spiritual skills to handle the wayward child, and the mothers find themselves brokenhearted because of it. Most of the time, it’s guilt-related and thinking they failed. When it was the negative volition of the child all along that caused them to head off down the my-way highway. So if you are a mother with a child that’s gone completely negative to how you raise them, And you must learn how to use impersonal love as a problem-solving device. It’s one of those ten problem-solving devices we talk about on the flatline of the believer’s soul. Impersonal love does not imply you’re ignoring their bad behavior, but that you love them based on your integrity, not theirs. But lashing out at them in anger will solve nothing. I get a lot of calls from mothers or letters from mothers who have children that are in jail asking for help. Fortunately, I have a friend who’s able to minister to those incarcerated through his ministry called Philippi Freedom Ministry. He’s been able to reach thousands with Bible study programs that give the individuals a way to start over by accepting Christ as their Savior and growing to spiritual maturity. Now let’s talk about another seldom mentioned mother in the Bible. These are the ones I want to really get to. This is going to surprise you. A seldom mentioned mother in the Bible is the wife of Noah. Remember Noah’s Ark? Well, Noah had a wife, and we don’t know her name, but she had three sons we know about, Shem, Ham, and Jephthah. Even though her name is not revealed in the scripture, it’s obvious that she backed, supported, and endorsed her husband’s work. And she encouraged him, probably prayed with him. But can you imagine your husband working on building a large boat for 120 years, according to Genesis 6.3? You know the neighbors all laughed at this persistence that he had. And the question always had to be, why are you building a boat? What’s going on with the boat? I mean, after all, it never had even rained at that time. You can imagine Noah’s wife every time she went to Walmart or to the Dollar General store to pick up something. You can imagine all the snide remarks. You can imagine what their children had to endure with. Yeah, old Sham, Ham, and Jepeth always got made fun of in school. Your dad’s crazy. Look what’s he building that big boat out there. Has he lost his mind? So the mother had to stand behind those kids and stand behind that dad. I want to give you a principle here that I think you should remember. Great mothers make great dads. Great mothers make great dads. The great dad comes from the great mother because they support their men and they encourage their men and their role is head of the house. Proverbs 31.10 says, Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. In verse 11 in Proverbs 31, The heart of her husband does safely trust her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. And she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. That’s a perfect picture of Noah’s wife, whatever her name was. In Ephesians 5.22, the Bible says, Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husband as unto the Lord. That means to be under their authority. That doesn’t mean they’re allowed to browbeat you or intimidate you or make a slave out of you, but that means that when the bottom line gets down to making a decision, the man’s responsible for any decision that is made, and mama needs to back him up. These verses that I just read describe the character of the spiritually mature wife and mother. And so I’m asking you a simple question. Do they describe you? One mom that is seldom mentioned in pulpits today is a divorced mother. Did you know that Moses had two sons? You might ask, well, who was his wife if he had two sons? Better yet, who was his first wife and the mother of those two sons? Because he was married twice. To understand this, you need to know that Moses’ parents were Amron and Jochebed. They lived in Egypt and were facing a decree from Pharaoh to kill all the Hebrew male babies. In Exodus 1.22 we read, And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive. Moses avoided this fate when his mother placed him in a watertight basket. and hid him among the reeds in the Nile River, telling his sister Miriam to keep an eye on him. But in God’s plan, make a note of this, what appears to be a complete disaster is sometimes God preparing to do something amazing. That basket floated away out of those reeds and went down the river and was discovered by the Pharaoh’s daughter. Once she realized it was a baby boy because he was a Hebrew, she could tell that from the circumcision, she asked Moses’ sister, who was watching and panicking, by the way. I’m sure she was running down the river trying to get the basket back. And then she’d run into the corner and there was the Pharaoh’s daughter picking it up. And she just happened to come up. And so the Pharaoh’s daughter said, I need to find a babysitter. I need somebody to take care of this baby. And she said, well, I can find somebody. And she went and got her own mother. And the Pharaoh’s daughter hired Moses’ mother. to nurse him to health, eventually turning him back over to Pharaoh’s daughter after he was off his breast. And she raised him with a great education, gave him a place of leadership. You can read all of this in Exodus chapter one, verses one through three. Chapters one through three. Now, in those chapters, Exodus chapter 1, 2, and 3, we find Moses committed murder and wound up fleeing out of Egypt at the age of 40 to a land called Midian. It was there that he wound up marrying the daughter of a Midianite priest, and her name was Zipporah, Z-I-P-P-O-R-A-H. This is the mother I’m talking about. She bore him two male children, Gershom and Eleazar, and you can find their names in 1 Chronicles 23, 15. At the age of 80, God called Moses out of a burning bush, Exodus 3, 1 through 6, and directed him to go back to Egypt and set free the Hebrew children that had been enslaved by the Egyptians. And so Exodus chapter four, verse 20, Moses took his wife and his sons and set them upon a donkey and returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. It was on this particular trip back to Egypt that Moses required his wife to circumcise those two boys, Exodus 4.25. She got so angry about it that she cast the foreskins at the feet of Moses and left him and returned back to Midian. She abandoned Moses. Later her father brought her back to Moses, but things did not work out, so they separated. And Moses later remarried in Numbers 12, 1. And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married, for he married an Ethiopian woman. Where is Ethiopia? Well, it’s in the Horn of Africa. There’s roughly 132 million Ethiopians that live there. Their next door neighbor is Somalia and Uganda. So you can see this is an African woman. But whatever became of wife number one, we don’t know. But I’m sure she probably regretted leaving him and having to raise those two sons back in Midian. A single mother raising two sons must not have been easy. Here’s the principle. Divorce does not solve problems, but it happens, and often for nefarious reasons. A mature spiritual life overcomes the difficulty of divorce. Any sin or any failure regarding marriage or divorce on your part before you became a believer, before you became a believer, was totally blotted out at the moment of salvation. Isaiah 43, 25 says that along with Psalm 103, verse 12. Therefore, you are not held accountable for any sin that you did before you got saved. If you are a divorced single mom, for whatever reason, you can still recover and have a fantastic life by receiving Jesus Christ as your Savior and learning God’s plan for your life. Isaiah 43, 25, as I told you, I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my own sake. So God wipes out all the transgressions of the people that get saved prior to becoming Christians. I will wipe them out for my own sake and I will not remember your sin. In Psalm 103, verse 12, as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. The Christian mother, the one who brings about a divorce because of her own behavior, can be cleansed from her sin by using rebound, problem-solving device number one, where it says if we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That’s like setting a sinking ship upright again. And now you can begin to move forward as you learn God’s word and apply it to your life. So a divorced mother has a hard time, very, very hard time trying to raise her sons, especially Moses’ two sons. In Judges 13, we find the story of Samson’s mother. You remember Samson? We don’t know her name, but we know that an angel of the Lord appeared to her with a message, came and spoke to her. In Judges 13, two through five, and there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and bore not, she couldn’t get pregnant. Angels of the Lord appeared unto the woman and said unto her, behold now you are barren and you cannot able to bear children but you shall conceive and you will bear a son. Therefore beware, I pray you, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and do not eat any unclean thing. For lo, you shall conceive and bear a son, and no razor shall come on his head. For this child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines. Numbers chapter 6 verse 1 through 21 details the law of the Nazarite vow in the Bible. It’s where individuals consecrated themselves to God through special dedication. It included abstaining from grape products, not cutting your hair, avoiding dead bodies. And upon completion of the vow, then they would offer a sacrifice and shave their hair and end their separation. You know, being the mother of the strongest guy in the Bible and the most stubborn man in the Bible was not a very easy task because Samson was very stubborn and, of course, we know of his feats of strength. On more than one occasion, he broke his mother’s heart, not to mention the capture and the circumstances of his death. To his mother’s surprise, for example, he insisted on marrying a Philistine woman, Judges 14, 1 and 2. That woman eventually betrayed him, Judges 14, 17. They had a child together that his mother never got to meet because the wife’s father gave that child to another man. Because when Samson deserted her, he left the child. This led to revenge motivation on Samson’s part. And he wound up killing 1,000 Philistines because of that. Samson was a judge in Israel and judged it for 20 years. Eventually, he fell in love with a woman named Delilah. You might have heard the song, My, My, My, Delilah. That’s the lady that betrayed him for 1,100 pieces of silver. She was able to get him to admit his source of strength and told the Philistines, In Judges 16 through 17, he told her all his heart and said unto her, There has no razor come upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb. And if I be shaven, then my strength will go away from me, and I will become weak like any other man. Of course, for those 1,100 pieces of silver, she told on him. And the Philistines were able to capture him, put his eyes out, bound him up in temple made fun of him it was his capture and demise that amazed it’s amazing because god used samson to destroy the entire philistine army the philistines had been a source of contention for israel read it for yourselves but imagine what all his mother had to endure can you figure it out if you read about samson his mother went through a lot I don’t know if she was alive when he was captured and blinded, but you must wonder how she dealt with all those circumstances. This leads us to another principle. Maybe your child has broken your heart. Please keep praying for that child. There’s still hope that God will intervene and use that child for his glory. The verse I want to give you here today should be one that you send to your stubborn child every day. You should write it down and put it in an envelope and mail it to them every day. Proverbs 3, my son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commandments in your heart because they will prolong your life for many years and they will bring you peace and prosperity. I wish our children would listen to those words, don’t you? Obviously, many times they don’t listen. And so the Bible is very clear about what happens when they don’t listen. The Lord Jesus Christ said, Don’t suppose that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth, because I didn’t 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. In our split society today, you may find that if you’re a Christian, your child may decide to go another direction and may even turn against you and may even report you somewhere down the line. It may come to that someday where you may be reported as an outlaw because you’re a Christian. In Matthew 10, 37, Jesus said, anybody 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. Love for family members must not be greater than your love for the Lord. I know you love your children, mothers. I know you love your son. I know you love your daughter. But do you love God? Is your personal love for God greater than your love for your children? Because if not, you’ve got things backwards. It’s your personal love for God that has to be first. Jesus said it’s the greatest commandment of all to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. If you have a problem with your children and you just can’t get them to act right, what do you do? Psalm 34, 17, the righteous cry out and the Lord hears them and he will deliver them from all of their troubles. Pray for your children. Confess your attitude of frustration and despair, which can be sin. Bitterness can happen. Confess those mental attitude sins to God. Don’t let them eat you alive because if you stay full of bitterness, if you stay full of frustration and you have no hope, then you’re going to live a miserable life as an individual. That’s not God’s plan for you. This is what is hard for parents to understand. At one point in time, your children has to be turned loose. You do all you can do to evangelize them. You do all you can do to implant the word of God in their soul. You do all you can do to teach them the divine institutions of freedom, marriage, family, nationalism. You want them to understand God’s plan for their life. But at some point in time, they have to make up their own mind. And so you have to remember that these are God’s children, not necessarily yours. Yes, you took care of them when they were born. Yes, you bore them from your own womb, but now they’re grown. And now they’re responsible for their own decisions. And you cannot let your children steal your joy. That was one of the things I’ve talked about before on this radio show. You cannot let your children steal your joy. So pray for your children, mothers. Lift your children up before the Lord. Relax. Stand firm. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart. You can read about the prodigal son in the Bible. Look it up for yourself and say that he went wayward down the my way highway, but he returned. After he got under some discipline, he came back home and said, Father, I’ve sinned. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father received him back home again, loved him. And I’m sure the mother did also as well. A lot of times mother’s names aren’t mentioned in the Bible, but these are some of the women I’m talking about. The mother of Noah, the mother of Samson, the mother of Moses. And of course, we talked about Eve, the wife of Adam. So what do you think? Are you a mother? This is your mother’s day. This is your day to rejoice and be, if your kids are squared away and they’re all doing fantastic, I know some families like this, I’m actually jealous of them because they have such wonderful children. And you wonder, what did they do that I didn’t do? Well, I don’t know what they did I didn’t do. But they have phenomenal children that go on to be great, wonderful Americans, great, wonderful Christians that love the Lord with all their heart. That’s what all of us want. We want our kids to grow up to be fantastic kids and have fantastic grandchildren and all of that to glorify God to the maximum. So I sure hope you’re listening this morning. If you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, it is the single most significant decision you could ever make. The Bible says, whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. There’s no reason for you to walk around wondering if you’re going to heaven. Because the Bible says these things are written so that you might know that you have eternal life. Not hope, not try, not wish, but you can know it. Because the Bible says, he that has the Son has life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life. If you’ve never received Christ as your Savior, this is the day to do it. You can do what the Bible says, whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. In a minute, you can bow your head and you can tell God the Father you’re a sinner and you’re willing to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. And that single act of faith will be the greatest decision you ever make in your entire life. It will be your ticket to heaven. It’ll be your ticket to a fantastic future. No more pain, no more tears, no more sorrow. The old things will be passed away. Okay, Mama, I hope you enjoyed the show today. And kids, if you’re listening, I have one final question. Did you call your mama today?

SPEAKER 01 : 27:14

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.