SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

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 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stick around. 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, a whole lot of education with no manipulation. because we don’t beg for money, we’re not soliciting membership, we’re just trying to give you some information, we being me, I’m trying to give you some information that’ll help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life if you’re interested. And then if you are, you can orient and adjust to the plan on your own. You have free will, you have your own volition, You’re responsible for your own life, and we always say bad decisions limit future options. Of course, the worst decision anyone could ever make is to reject Christ as Savior, because there’s no answer to that if you reject the free gift of eternal life that God gives to you. A few months ago, I talked with you about a lesson that Jesus Christ, our Savior, reviewed with his disciples the night of the Last Supper. You might remember John 13 where he had the Last Supper and then he got up and disrobed and began to wash the disciples’ feet and went on to teach them some major doctrines. He taught them at least 18 different important lessons that night between the time they had the Last Supper and the time that he was arrested. And this was to give them some comfort and encouragement. They were going to need it to apply these things in the days ahead and the years ahead as they faced unbelievable adversity. And that’s what the Lord Jesus Christ called it, these things, in John 15, 11. He said, I’ll quote it to you, these things I’ve spoken to you so my joy might remain in you and your joy might be full. During the Last Supper, the Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples and teaches us by word of the Scripture How to have God’s joy. God’s joy. And that joy produces two things. It produces a happiness and a contentment in your life. A happiness and a contentment in your life. So you and I both have the opportunity to have the joy of Jesus Christ in us. And that’s pretty amazing. But we have to learn a few things just like the disciples did. Listen again. These things I spoke to you about So that my joy might remain in you and your joy might be full. Now, how can you have the joy if you don’t know what he told him? It’s imperative that you read, for example, John 13 through John 15, 11, and you will see what these things relates to. And I’ve done a radio show on that. We even have the transcriptions on that. We do have transcriptions on most of our radio shows. so you can have the joy of jesus christ in you this means the the very same comfort that he had in those last hours before he went to the cross the same encouragement that he had you can have as you live your life on a daily basis and there’s going to come a time in the future very near future when you’re going to need this comfort and this encouragement because we’re facing a train wreck in this nation. We’ve been saying it for quite a while now, and I think if you look at the trends of history, you can see it coming. It may not be roaring down the tracks 100 miles an hour, but it’s coming. And everything we know is beginning to change, and as we’ve said before, everything that used to be evil is now good. It’s okay now. And everything that used to be good is now evil, and we can’t do that anymore. So America is kind of flip-flopped and inverted. And the wrong people are running the show right now. Unless believers like you and like me, unless we get our act together, we’re not going to have a free nation much longer. So I’m not a political person who’s trying to promote political overthrow of the government. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your spiritual life. As goes your spiritual life, so goes the future of this country. You are critical because you must be part of the pivot, the core group of mature believers. that sustain God’s grace in a nation. How can you do that? How can you have Christ’s joy in you? I want to tell you how. If you listen up, this is how. It starts, first of all, by becoming a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. You can’t possess what he possessed if you don’t have him. And so the Bible says in Acts 16, 31, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. This was what Paul told the Roman jailer. And then in John 14, 6, you listen to this. I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. This is pretty evident and pretty clear as he told the disciples. The only way to come to the Father is through the Son, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. So many people try to get to God on their own, and God says in Jeremiah, I wish you understood me and knew me. He’s looking for people that know him and understand him. And it’s very possible that you may know God but not understand the God you know. We’ve talked about that many times before. What the justice of God, righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God judges. I’m going to say that again. What the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God judges. And very clearly the Bible says he who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God by means of him. The only way we could ever have a relationship with God is through Christ because the Bible says there are none that are righteous, not even one. So in spite of all of your good deeds, in spite of all of your human efforts to be rewarded with eternal life, it will not work because the Bible says our righteousnesses are offensive to God. They’re like a filthy rag in his eyes. The only righteousness that God will accept is the righteousness of Christ. And again, I repeat the verse, he who knew no sin was made sin for us so we might be made the righteousness of God by means of him. When you put your faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, then his righteousness is given to you. And so when he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me, this is what it’s referring to. If you want to have the joy that we’re talking about, the happiness and the contentment that the Lord Jesus Christ had, the comfort that he had in his life, and it starts with knowing him as your Savior. Now, once you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be perfect, not by any means. I remember when I accepted Christ, it didn’t take me but about a couple of hours to sin again. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are perfectly capable of sinning. I had a man tell me one time, I don’t sin anymore. And I thought, really? And by the time we got through talking, he was so mad he could have broke my neck. He was sinning and he wouldn’t admit it. He was angry, bitter, angry, mad because I challenged his false belief. You and I can sin. And probably the last time you sinned was on the interstate, I know, or either with your family. We sin, mental attitude sins, sins of the tongue, overt sins, they’re all there. And so when we sin, we must be sure that we are cleansed from our sin. And this is what the whole illustration in John 13 was about. The foot washing illustration when Jesus washed the feet of disciples, he was cleansing them of their temporal sins. Peter misunderstood and asked for a whole bath, and Jesus said, you don’t need a bath, you just need your feet washed. Anytime you and I use the rebound technique, which is problem solving device number one, found in 1 John 1, 9, we are, in effect, having our dirty feet cleansed. The Bible says if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing. But it’s a third-class condition. It says if, if, if, if we confess, the verb is confess, and its potential is subjective, maybe subjunctive. Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. But if you will name your sin to God, he’s faithful and just, forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And this means this is how you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s not some second blessing that you sit under the apple tree and the apple falls out and balks you on the head and now you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. You’re sealed with the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1.13, the day you get saved. You’re indwelled with the Holy Spirit the day you get saved. And you’re filled with the Holy Spirit the day you get saved until you commit your first sin. Now, you don’t lose the indwelling and you don’t lose the sealing, but you certainly lose the filling because you quench and grieve the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if you’re going to have this joy that we’re talking about, you must be cleansed on a consistent basis in your life, moment by moment, day by day. Don’t wait until you go to bed at night and get down beside your bed and say, Dear Lord, at 8 o’clock this morning, I got mad and lost my temper. Because the Bible says if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. But if we walk in darkness, we lie. And the truth is not in us. So here’s the illustration. If you sinned at 8.03 this morning, you got into the darkness. And you lived all day in the darkness, which means you lived out of fellowship, quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit. And now before you go to bed, you want to ask God to forgive you for the sins you did today, which means you’re going to sleep in the light. Why would you want to sleep in the light and walk in the darkness? It doesn’t make sense. So whenever you sin, whenever I sin, I admit the sin immediately to the best of my ability. Sometimes there are sins I may do I don’t remember, but remember what the Bible says, if we confess our sin, He’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, all unrighteousness, even the ones I don’t remember. So if you’re going to have that joy, you must be cleansed consistently every day, moment by moment. And then you must be faithful. It’s critical. God is looking for people that are faithful, people that learn and pay attention to his word. Listen to John 14, 24. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. That’s a lack of faithfulness. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father, the one who sent me. All God expects out of you is fidelity. That’s it, fidelity, faithfulness, faithfulness to obey his word. In 1 John 5, 3, if you love me, you will obey me, and my mandates are not hard. So that’s a great virtue in your life, having personal love for God. In 2 Peter 3.18, here is a command. If you love God, listen to this commandment. But grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever. Wow, okay. So I am commanded, grow is a verb, and it’s an imperative verb in the Greek New Testament. I’m commanded to grow in grace, to understand living grace, saving grace, dying grace, surpassing grace. I am to have grace orientation, which is problem-solving device number four in the flood line on your soul. When you understand grace, live by grace, appreciate grace, celebrate grace, then you understand how God’s plan works, for by grace are you saved. Through faith, it’s a gift of God, not of works, as any man should brag about it. Being faithful means you learn God’s word, you pay attention to God’s word, you obey God’s word on a consistent basis. And then there must be some compassion in your life towards your fellow believers. The disciples were a lot of type A personalities, and they had a lot of issues. They argued among themselves about who was the best and who was the least. Here’s what the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 13, 14. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, You also should wash one another’s feet. They never practiced foot washing. You won’t find that in the New Testament as a church age practice. So because it was a metaphor, it was an illustration of forgiving each other for sin. So sometime or another, you’re going to be sinned against by a Christian in your church, in your home, in your community, some Christian is going to say something about you or do something in regards to you that is a sin. And you can be bitter. You can be like this guy that I know in Georgia. He said, I’m putting your name in the book, brother. Your name’s going in the book and I’ll get even with you. Well, we don’t put names in the book. We forgive as God forgives. It’s a good thing God doesn’t write your name in the book and come back and whop you on the head every time you do wrong. So you have to learn how to be compassionate for one another, forgive one another. Listen to Colossians 3, 12, 13. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved. Clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, and bear with each other and forgive one another. And if any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive them as the Lord forgives you. There it is in plain black and white. How can you get around that? So if you’re listening to me today and you’re bitter and angry towards an individual in your church or in your family, you are sinning. You’re disobeying that mandate. The Bible says bear with each other and forgive one another, and this is not asking you. It’s telling you. So compassion requires humility. That’s your personality profile, and especially of a mature believer has a personality profile of humility. In John 15, four, the Bible says, remain in me, As I remain in you, no branch can bear fruit by itself. You must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. The humility is you orienting to the occupation with Christ. It’s critical you understand that. Jesus Christ, your Lord, lives in you. Your body is now the temple of the Holy Spirit, according to 1 Corinthians 3. And the Shekinah glory of the Old Testament that they worshiped now lives in you. You are the temple of God, and you must have that humility to understand. In Romans 12, three, for example, the Bible says, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. Your greatest enemy is arrogance. Most people will never tell you that. Most people just say, don’t sin, brother, don’t sin, brother. But arrogance is the number one sin that we do. It’s identified with self-justification. For example, if you justify why it’s okay to do sin, you’re arrogant. And the person that self-justification leads to self-deception. You deceive yourself into thinking you’re right. And then self-deception leads to self-absorption. So it’s a three-step process. Arrogance includes self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, and that always inevitably leads to self-destruction. You cannot afford to be arrogant, and this is exactly what Satan will appeal to your arrogance, to get you to try to justify why it’s okay to commit some sin, justify why it’s okay to be disobedient to God. You can’t do that. If you’re going to have the happiness that we’re talking about, if we’re going to have the joy that Jesus Christ promised the disciples so they could have happiness and contentment, then you must remain filled with the Holy Spirit and you must have that humility profile. And that doesn’t mean you’re weak and a wimp. That means that you orient to authority. If you can’t handle authority, you’re arrogant. Authority, you’ve got to be able to handle the police officer. You’ve got to be able to handle the authority of the school, the parents, the teachers. the principal, the police officer, the pastor. These are authorities in your life you must orient and adjust to, including the authority of the Word of God. It’s alive and powerful. Sharper than a two-edged sword, the Bible says, piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit, and the joints and the marrow, and is a critic of thought and intents of the heart. The authority of the word of God, you must be obedient to that. So stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance and self-justification. I don’t have to do that. That’s written for somebody else. That’s not written for me. You may try to justify your acts. And say, well, if you knew what I was going through, then you would understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. No. No, you’re justifying why you’re doing what you’re doing. Arrogance is your number one enemy. My number one enemy. It was the thing that got Moses in trouble in the Old Testament at the Rock of Meribah when God told him to simply speak to the rock and he would give the water, not get up and slap the rock with the rod of Aaron and give a long speech and call them a bunch of rebels. No, so you must have humility, you must be compassionate, you must be in fellowship, you must be faithful, and above all, you must have confidence in God. That’s a demonstration of your faith. In John 15, seven, if you remain in me, and if my words remain in you, then you can ask what you wish and it’ll be done for you. That’s a great confidence factor. Now that doesn’t mean you can ask for something stupid. A lot of people do that. They ask for stupid things and they don’t get that answered. But whatever the will of God is, if you have confidence in him and ask for it, he’ll give it to you. Maybe not in your time, because you don’t have the capacity to handle it yet. That’s the key to it. There are a lot of things God would like to pour into your life, but you can’t handle it yet. It would destroy you. And so he waits until you have the capacity or the contentment. You know what that means? It means it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Paul said, I’ve learned to be content. Whatever I have, a lot or a little, doesn’t make any difference. So when you have contentment, then you’re like a cup. God can fill your cup up and it can overflow. And like David said, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. My cup runneth over. What a wonderful thing to be in the periphery of someone whose cup runs over and those blessings splash over on you. So if you remain in me, if my words remain in you, you can ask what you will and it’ll be done for you. Now listen to this verse, Isaiah 40 verse 31. Those who have confidence in the Lord will renew their strength, and they will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint. That’s the demonstration of confidence in your life, confident expectation. We call it hope in the Bible, or the Greek word is elpis, but it’s confident expectation. You can, through God’s word and by the filling of the Holy Spirit, soar above any circumstances in your life. You can run whatever the race is and not grow weary. And if you can’t run, you can walk and not be faint. You know, you might not be able to run. You might be older now and you may have some ailments and you can’t run, but you can still walk. Walk and not faint. Run and not be weary. Soar above the circumstances. That’s all related to your confidence and your trust in God’s plan for your life. You know, this is why you can be an extraordinary individual. God takes nobodies and makes somebodies out of them, and I hope he’s done it with you. See, the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 14, 12, Verily, very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater works than these because I’m going to the fathers. In Romans 1.16, Paul wrote, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it’s the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes it, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. To be an extraordinary individual requires you to know God’s word, to apply God’s words, stay filled with the Holy Spirit, and to have confidence and faith in God. And that makes you an extraordinary individual. It gives you the opportunity to seize your mission. And what is your mission? Has God assigned a mission to you? Yes. that you represent Jesus Christ to your friends and your family, that you represent him. And this is why he said, you’ll do greater works than me. He never went very far. He stayed in one central location around Caesarea and Jerusalem. But here, you can go all over the world. With the internet, you can give the word of God all over the world. With our podcasting, we podcast our radio show in many, many, many different countries. We present our radio show with over 100 radio stations across America. That’s doing more than he did. He had to walk around on his feet, but we have the electronic means, the electronic ability. And as we print material and print books and distribute those things from our ministry, then that’s what we’re doing. We’re using the grace assets that God has provided us with to make them available to you. And we’ve done greater things than these. And that’s what the disciples did. They did much greater things than that. That shook them up a little bit. How can we do more than the Lord’s done? Because he said, I’m going to leave and you’re going to be here behind me and you’re going to have to keep going and pick up the cross and follow me. Then he said they needed to be prepared. You know, Satan’s world and his system are evil. And he said in John 14, 30, I’m not going to say much more to you now for the prince of this world is coming and he has no hold over me. That’s as he got to the end of this teaching message from John 13 to John 15, 11. And he knew Satan was coming. He knew he was going to be arrested. He knew he was going to be crucified. He had already told them he was going to be killed. So you have to understand this. Satan is coming for you too. Now you have three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. And just to be quite honest, he’s not gonna bother you if you can’t get victory over the flesh. And why would he bother you if you can’t get victory over the world? But if you learn enough of the word of God to get victory over your flesh, and if you learn enough of the word of God to ignore the lure of the world, then he’s coming for you. So then Ephesians 6 says this, be strong in the Lord. That’s the seed of your strength. And in his power. And then we have the mandate, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of the dark world, against spiritual forces of evil, even in heavenly realms. So because of this, Put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground and after you’ve done everything, to keep standing. And then he tells you, stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, Picking up the shield of faith where you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. Put on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the Lord. And pray on all occasions. Read that again for yourself. Ephesians 6, 10 through 18. That’s your mandate. This is what God’s provided for you. A unique life, a unique lifestyle, a unique person living inside of you called the comforter. John 14, 16, Jesus promised, I will give you a comforter. He’s the spirit of truth and you will know him because he will dwell in you and abide with you forever. There’s so much more that I’d like to tell you. I just can’t have time in a short radio show. If you want to re-listen to any of these shows that I’ve taught, you can find them on our podcast, on Spotify or Apple iPod or Anchor or Breaker, any of these things. And if you want to get a hold of some of the new bookmarks we’ve put out, We’ve got some tremendous bookmarks you can put in your Bible, and they’re all free. One of them is God’s 10 Problem Solving Devices. It lays them out. We have Faith Alone, which is good use for you when you represent Christ. We have a bookmark that tells you how God loves you, one that tells you how to be a spiritual influencer. And a big bookmark dealing with a protocol of prayer. These are all made for you free. You have to contact us. Don’t send money. Just make a request through the website and we’ll send them right on up to you. We’re not asking you for a dime. So think about these things. I hope it’s made sense. I hope you can apply it into your life. It’s critical that you do because what’s happening in the future depends on what you do now with this information. So please, come back next week, same time, same place, same channel, and I’ll be here if you will, okay? Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:12

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.