Review of Problem-Solving Devices 1-3
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 536 aired on December 6, 2015
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes, please stay tuned. As always, we have 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education,
and it’s always done without any manipulation, no gimmicks, no games, not asking for money,
not trying to get you to join up, fess up, give it up, nothing like that. This show is simply about
giving you accurate information. We do it every Sunday here on this radio station, accurate
information. That information is designed to help you verify as well as identify God’s plan for
your life and if you can do that, if you’d like to do that, you have the freedom, you have the
privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you but my job as the host of the FLOT Line
is to get it accurate, give it to you correctly, not to mix it up, not to play emotions into it, but to
simply tell you what the Bible says and that’s what we’ve been doing for over 500 Sundays across
the United States. The FLOT Line, F.L.O.T. is the name of our show and sometimes it’s important
that we go back and remind you about that. Some people say, “Well, what is a FLOT line?” That’s
a military term, it’s a military acronym for the forward line of troops, F.L.O.T., and we use that
military analogy to explain how the Christian life works. You may think a military analogy is
unusual but it isn’t. In the Bible in Ephesians chapter 6 Paul uses a military metaphor to
“Put on
the armor of God”
and he describes a Roman soldier and what he wears. And he relates that to the
Christian life and how we also should
“Put on the breastplate of righteousness,” “The helmet of
salvation,” “Pick up the shield of faith,”
all military metaphors. Well we’re using that on the
FLOT Line, we’re talking about 10 unique problem-solving devices that were taught by my pastor
many years ago and when you learn these 10 unique problem-solving devices you can use them as
a protective line in your soul, a FLOT line, a forward line of troops. And what that is designed to
do is to pick up the adversity that comes into your life. Any adversity that comes into your life
whether it’s weather-related adversity, social adversity, self-induced adversity, any adversity that
comes into your life, if you have a well maintained FLOT line, then you can stop it from
becoming stress in your soul. So what we have said in this show all along is adversity is
inevitable, however stress is always optional. Adversity is what circumstances do to you,
sometime self-induced. Stress is what you do to yourself when you let adversity overrun the
command post of your soul. You say, “Well what is the command post of my soul?” That’s your
thinking, that’s your mentality, that’s your mind, and that’s why the Bible says,
“Let this mind be
in you that was also in Christ Jesus.”
The Bible all the time implores us to think like Christ
thought and you may wonder, “How did He think?” First of all, Philippians 2:6-9 says He thought
in terms of humility, not arrogance. And then if you go to what Paul wrote
“Let this mind be in
you that was also in Christ Jesus”
in Philippians and then in Romans,
“Stop thinking of yourself
in terms of arrogance but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a
standard of thinking from His Word.”
That’s right, we are designed as Christians to think like
Christ thought and we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:16 tells us the New Testament is
the mind of Christ. So when we learn God’s Word, we begin to think like Christ thought in terms
of humility. One of the things this means is that we never react to circumstances. We always
respond to circumstances. You can react with emotion, you can respond by thinking, thinking in
terms of humility, emoting in terms of arrogance. So if you get emotional, you’re going to get
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arrogant, you’re going to seek revenge, you’re going to be angry, you’re going to be motivated to
have some sort of vindictive, bitter emotional feelings. But if you respond with humility, then in
regard to some sort of people test, you can always forgive and forget. That’s right, forgive and
forget and it goes into any area of life.
So if you have a well maintained FLOT line, if you
know these 10 problem-solving devices and use them, then you can stop the adversity before
it ever becomes stress in your life.
What a wonderful, wonderful way to think. That’s why we
have those 10 unique problem-solving devices. This is nothing new, this has been in the Bible
ever since it was recorded by the apostles. These problem-solving devices are not something that
we coined up, they’re not something new. These are Biblical doctrines that have always been in
the Word of God. For example, what is problem-solving device number one? Before I tell you,
remember this, that the Christian life is a supernatural life. You cannot live the Christian life in the
energy of the flesh. The Christian life cannot be lived by an unbeliever. A person that is not a
Christian cannot live the Christian life. A person that’s not a Christian can be nice, a person that’s
not a Christian can be humble, a person that’s not a Christian can be fair, but he is not a Christian
and he cannot live the Christian life. What do I mean by that? I mean this, that a Christian has
three parts to him. He has a body, he has a soul, and he has a human spirit. A person that is not a
Christian has a body and he has a soul, but he has no human spirit. He’s dead spiritually,
spiritually dead. That’s why the Bible says we have to be born again. Our human spirit that was
identified with Adam’s original sin, we are born spiritually dead. When we believe in Jesus Christ
and receive Him as our Savior, we are made spiritually alive. God the Holy Spirit comes to live in
you, indwells you and your human spirit and you are spiritually alive. Now you can have
fellowship with God because the Bible says,
“Those that worship God must worship Him in spirit
and in truth.”
If you don’t have a spirit, how could you do that? So the supernatural life is God the
Holy Spirit living inside of your human spirit, allowing you to have a day by day, moment by
moment, personal relationship with God the Father by means of God the Holy Spirit. So problem-
solving device number one is what we do when we break fellowship with God, not break the
relationship. You will never break the relationship. Once you enter into the royal family of God by
means of receiving Jesus Christ as your Savior and you are born-again, you are made three parts,
body, soul, and human spirit. When you sin you don’t die again and have to be born again. That’s
not the way it works. Jesus Christ said,
“I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.”
He said,
“I give unto them eternal life and they will never perish, and neither shall anybody ever pluck
them out of My Father’s hand.”
What happens when we sin is we don’t break that relationship, we
break fellowship and thus we have to be restored to fellowship. That’s because the sin nature has
taken control of our lives, and God the Holy Spirit has been quenched, God the Holy Spirit has
been grieved, and thus we have to use the first problem-solving device. And that problem-solving
device is what we call rebound to use a phrase that my pastor coined many, many years ago.
Rebound simply means this, when you bounce out of fellowship with God because you
committed personal sin, then you bounce back into fellowship. The passage that we use in the Old
Testament is Psalm 32:4&5 and in the New Testament, 1 John 1:9. 1 John 1:9 simply says this,
“If
we confess our sin,”
notice it’s conditional, if.
“If we confess our sin then He is faithful and just to
forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
As a Christian you still have a sinful
nature and as a Christian you have a propensity to sin, maybe not in the same area as me because
maybe you don’t have the same weaknesses that I have. But when you sin or when I sin, we both
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must go to God the Father and admit the sin.
Sin can be something we think, sin can be
something we say, or sin can be something that we do. It can even be something that we
don’t do.
“To him that knoweth to doeth good and doeth it not, to him it is sin,”
the Bible says.
Yes, we can sin by not doing what we know is right because we’ve disobeyed the will of God. So
if I sin, I break fellowship with God. If I go to God and admit my sin, if I name my sin to God in a
rebound prayer,
“If we confess our sin,”
then God said,
“He is faithful and just to forgive me.”
So
every time I name a sin to God, I’m back in fellowship.
The FLOT line will not work, the
FLOT line will not protect you, if problem-solving device number one is not in place. You
can’t use the others, they’re all united together, and the power of God the Holy Spirit is
essential.
You cannot function in the Christian life as long as the Holy Spirit is quenched, as long
as the Holy Spirit is grieved, as long as there’s unconfessed sin in your life. Now somebody says,
“I can’t keep up with every sin I do, that’s impossible.” You’re exactly right and remember what
the verse says,
“If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness,”
all, A.L.L., even the ones you don’t remember. Isn’t that neat? You
go to God, you admit the sin you’re aware of, He will even cleanse you and forgive you of the
ones you don’t remember. Don’t do this when you go to bed at night, don’t wait until you go to
bed at night. If you sinned at 8 o’clock in the morning and waited until 10 o’clock at night to
confess your sin, then you lived all day long out of fellowship and you’re going to sleep in
fellowship. That’s crazy. If you’re going to name your sin, name it right immediately when you do
it. If you lose your temper, step aside and admit it to God. If you lie, step aside and admit it to
God. Whenever you do it, admit it to God, He is aware of it. As soon as you commit a sin, that’s
the moment the sin nature takes over, that’s the moment you’re out of fellowship with God, and
that’s the moment the FLOT line shuts down, the 10 problem-solving devices won’t work. You are
stranded on an island, just you and your sin nature, and that may be what you want. Maybe you
want to feel angry. Maybe you like to feel sorry for yourself. Maybe you like to hold a grudge.
Maybe you like feeling bitter and seeking some sort of malice toward the person you’re angry at.
Maybe that’s what you want. That’s not what God wants for you and that’s not the Christian life.
That’s guaranteeing you a miserable life because you don’t have the ability to orient and adjust by
responding with forgiveness.
Rebound is problem-solving device
number one, it solves the
problem of sin.
Problem-solving device number two is the filling of the Holy Spirit. That’s what
happens when you rebound. When you use problem-solving device number one, then problem-
solving device number two kicks in. What problem does the filling of the Holy Spirit solve? It
solves the problem of human good. What is human good? Human good is the exact opposite of
divine good. Human good is something you manufacture through the energy of the flesh, divine
good is something you manufacture under the filling of the Holy Spirit. The difference between
human good and divine good may not even be known until the Judgment Seat of Christ where all
the human good is burned up. It’s called wood, hay, and stubble, it did not glorify God. Human
good would be for example you giving a tithe or an offering or a financial gift to your church
while you are out of fellowship. That means that it was not motivated by God the Holy Spirit. It
was motivated by your sin nature, maybe through tradition, maybe through pressure, whatever
but it did not glorify God. It was human good, you did it in the energy of the flesh. You didn’t do
anything that an unbeliever couldn’t do. An unbeliever can give money to a church too. Only the
Christian can live the Christian life and only when you are filled with the Holy Spirit can you
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manufacture divine good and only divine good is acceptable and rewardable. Only when you’re
filled with the Holy Spirit can you maintain your FLOT line, this is critical. You can’t live the
Christian life without the filling of the Holy Spirit and you cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit
unless you rebound when you are aware of your sins. You got it? Without the filling of the Holy
Spirit, the Christian life is just an exercise in morality and unbelievers can be moral. So get that
in your head, remember that. The third problem-solving device that is essential that we all
remember and we all learn and we all don’t forget is the importance of faith. The faith-rest drill is
important. It’s very important for you to operate under faith because without operating under
faith, then you can’t live the Christian life effectively either.
The faith-rest drill, problem-
solving device #3 is a critical doctrine for you to know. It means you’re living by faith,
you’re operating by faith. In 1 Corinthians 2:12,
“We have been given the Spirit of God so
that we may know the things God has provided for us,”
and the things that God has provided
for us, or what we’re talking about, called the FLOT line.
The Christian life can only be lived
by faith, that’s the power cell in the Christian life.
You know to crack the sound barrier
you’ve got to go really, really fast, excessively fast. To crack the faith barrier, you have to stand
absolutely still. Exodus 14:13,
“Stand still and watch what God is about to do.”
That’s what
Moses told the children of Israel when they came to the Red Sea and the Pharaoh was in hot
pursuit and he intended to kill them all and the Red Sea was in front of them and it looked like
they were doomed until God parted the Red Sea. God can part the sea for you. Not literally, I’m
not talking about walking to London, but God can part the sea of adversity for you as well if you
stand still, if you trust Him. Faith-rest is trust. It’s a supernatural trust. It’s inspired by two things.
This supernatural trust of faith comes by the filling of the Holy Spirit and the content of
God’s Word in your life. There are over 7,000 promises recorded in the Bible. Those
promises are the fuel for the faith-rest life.
This is what we use to stand on. There’s no work,
no movement involved at all. Just believe and trust the Lord and keep on believing and keep on
trusting, keep on waiting on Him. Look, if you trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ to save you which
is the biggest event in your life, could you not trust Him for your needs and the everyday
problems and the difficulties that you face in your life? I mean they’re not near as big as your
salvation. If He handled your salvation, could He not handle the rest of it? So are there real
answers for all the heartaches, the problems, the adversities, all the frustrations, and the
difficulties and troubles that we have in our life? Are there real answers? Yes, John 16:33,
“These
things I have spoken unto you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have
difficulty
[tribulation, adversity]
but be of good cheer; I overcame the world,”
and He’s
insinuating that you can overcome it as well. You can use the same problem-solving devices that
He used. The Lord Jesus Christ used the filling of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ used the
promises of His Father’s Word. You can read about it in Matthew chapter 4 where He was led by
the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil before He began His earthly
ministry. And the very way He overcame it is the same way you overcome it, by using the faith-
rest drill under the filling of the Holy Spirit. Salvation not only means that you’re going to go to
heaven, but it means this as well, you now have a new way to live, you now have the ability to
stabilize your thinking, and to meet every problem and every difficulty with peace and tranquility
in your soul because it’s only when you’re in the place of hopelessness, only when you’re helpless
that you can really see the extraordinary power and the extraordinary grace of God. When there’s
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no human solution, when you are numb from the shock or the pressure, when you can’t even pray
like you want to pray because you’re so numb, then God the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:26,
intercedes for you in prayer. It’s only in the most desperate situation that you can then avail
yourself of God’s perfect provisions and enter into the perfect peace, the perfect rest that the
faith-rest drill provides. No fear, no hostility, no anger, no bitterness, that is a supernatural way of
living, the world doesn’t know that. The world cannot produce that, only the Christian has that
opportunity. Isn’t it amazing? It’s amazing the provisions that God has given you so that you can
live in the devil’s world, rebound, confessing your sin, the faith-rest drill, filling of the Holy
Spirit. Concerning the faith-rest drill, the Bible says in
Hebrews 4:2,
“The Word they heard did
not profit them because it was not mixed with faith.”
When you learn God’s Word you have to
trust it. The promises of God’s Word can only profit you if you mix it with faith. That means
you’ve got them, know them and you must believe them. You must know them and you must
believe them. Hebrews 4:3,
“For we who have believed do enter into rest.”
You know, many
Christians spend their whole life seeking something called happiness. They spend money they
don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t even like because they’re
trying to find something that will give them stimulation, satisfaction, something. The more they
search under their own power, the more they walk away from the power that God provided. So,
using faith, you can claim a promise from God. You cannot enter God’s rest with unbelief,
Hebrews 3:19 tells you that. If there’s a verse, you must claim it and stand on it. Those verses are
designed to give you strength. They’re designed to give you stability. It’s a signature guarantee
that God will not let you down. You can claim a promise from God,
“What time I’m afraid I will
trust in Thee,”
the Bible says, or,
“No weapon that is formed against you will ever prosper,”
Isaiah 54:17. Stand on the promise, stand on it, right on top of it and say, “Heavenly Father, You
said this and I’m claiming this as mine.” You see, people that are not Christians can have some
sort of fleeting happiness. They depend on people or circumstances but they don’t have what you
have. They don’t have this guarantee that every time there’s a problem and every time there’s a
crisis, there is a way out of it. There’s a way for you to stand, God has given you His resources,
they’re yours. Listen to Matthew 11:28,
“Come unto Me and I will give you rest. Take My yoke
and learn of Me and you will find rest for your soul.”
Notice two conditions, take and learn.
You’re not going to have use of the faith-rest life if you don’t learn the promises and you’re not
going to learn the promises if you don’t take them, if you don’t go after them. That’s why I
constantly tell you, unless you’re sitting under a well-qualified pastor that is teaching you God’s
Word, you are being short-circuited in your Christian life. You’re not getting what God intends
for you to get. You don’t learn God’s Word by singing. You don’t learn God’s Word by giving
money.
You learn God’s Word by sitting under a well-qualified pastor who teaches it to you.
It’s designed that way. This is why the Bible says that God has equipped men with the gift of
pastor teacher in Ephesians 4:17 so they can study and teach God’s Word to you. That’s all it
takes. It’s just a little bit of time every day learning God’s Word and standing on faith, the faith-
rest drill, an amazing, amazing way to live. Mark Shannon, a Pharmacist Mate in World War II,
used it on an island when the Japanese began to bomb the island. A tremendous bombardment
came in and people were dying, planes were being blown up, quonset huts where men were
sleeping, hospital barracks blown up as the shells rained down from the Japanese destroyers.
Mark Shannon, a Christian, was able to hold it together and find the blood plasma and administer
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first aid for which he won an amazing award from the Navy for bravery. When the Admiral
decorated him he asked him, “How could you do that son? How could you risk your life?” He
said something so amazing. He said, “I was scared to death, but when I stuck my head out of that
foxhole, I saw a bird and he was sitting in a tree and I knew if God could protect that bird, God
could protect me.” That’s faith, that’s the faith-rest drill. If God can protect a bird, God can
protect you. You want to think about that for a little bit? You want to remember that? This is the
faith-rest drill in action. We only covered three problem-solving devices, filling of the Holy
Spirit, rebound, faith-rest drill, there’s more to review. I hope you’ll be back next week, we’ll
press on with this review. Until then, I’m your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to
the FLOT Line