In this eye-opening episode, Rick Hughes delves into the protocol plan of God, emphasizing the importance of divine inspiration for a stress-free Christian life. Learn the critical differences between sin and evil, and understand how your core beliefs can guide you toward spiritual maturity. Tune in to enrich your faith journey, centralize your core values, and become a role model to those around you through grace and integrity.
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 Good morning and welcome to the flatline
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This is your host, Rick Hughes, thanking you for coming in this morning. Thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time. My job is to give you some divine inspiration, motivation from the Word of God. Your job, orient and adjust as you learn God’s plan, if you have a desire to do so. That’s up to you. But we’re going to get it right, and we’re going to give you accurate information, because God gave you two ends. One of those ends you sit on and one end you think with. And quite frankly, success in life depends on which one of those you use. Heads you win, tails you lose. This is all something that someone said many years ago, but I think it’s great. Real great cliche. 2 Peter 3.18 tells us to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s my objective, to get you to a well-qualified pastor where you can study, learn, and apply God’s Word to your life. We use a little acronym called LAG, L-A-G, Learn, Apply, and Glorify God. And so I thank you for listening. I thank you for so many of you that send me notes and letters. It’s amazing to hear from you. I do really enjoy that. I’ve thought about reading a few of them over the air, but I don’t think I really have time to do it in such a short show such as we have 30 minutes, and that’s about it. But thank you. I love hearing from you. And I appreciate those of you that are telling me the show is definitely playing on your station when it’s supposed to. We have a hard time with that, keeping up with shows that don’t play due to technical error or just oversight or whatever. It’s hardly a week that goes by that it’s not a station or two that fails to air the show properly. So thank you for letting me know that. And thank you for writing. And thank you for your prayer support. So we will continue our study. Today we’re going to take a look at something that’s very unique. I think this is, you know, our show is called The Flot Line, F-L-O-T. This is something my pastor taught many years ago. The Flot Line is the forward line of troops, we call that. It’s a military analogy. to the Christian life and staying secure in your Christian life by learning 10 unique problem-solving devices. When you learn those 10 problem-solving devices, and this is nothing new, this is age-old biblical doctrine that’s been there forever, It’s not something new he invented, he came up with, nor did I. This is sound, solid biblical principles. But when you understand them and when you learn them and use them in your life, then you are able to stop the outside sources of adversity before they become the inside source of stress. That’s what makes the Christian life so unique. It’s a wonderful way to live without stress. It’s a wonderful way to live without worry, without fear, without bitterness, without antagonism, without jealousy. All the mental attitude sins that plague people of arrogance. You can actually get away from that. You don’t have to be controlled by your sin nature. You can walk under the filling of the Holy Spirit. You can have a relaxed mental attitude. You can have the mind of Christ instead of thinking human viewpoint. It’s awesome. And so all of this is what you do when you build a flatline in your soul. When you build that flatline, F-L-O-T, when you learn those 10 problem-solving devices, and we do have them now on a bookmark. If you’d like a bookmark, write to us. Don’t send money. I’m not asking you for money. Just send us a a note, an email, we’ll send you a bookmark, or we have the book Christian Problem Solving that lists all 10 of them for you. But anyhow, when you learn those 10 problem-solving devices, this gives you a standard by which you can establish a core values in your life, core values, C-O-R-E, your core values. And that’s my question for you today. What are the core values of your life? You know, some people say God, family, friends. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about deeper than that. I’m talking about the fundamental beliefs of your life, the guiding principles that dictate the behavior of your life and can even help you understand the difference between right and wrong. What are your core values? A lot of people don’t understand the difference between sin and evil. They think they’re two different things. Well, let me explain something to you. God’s plan is called grace. Grace goes like this. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should brag about it. That’s grace. It’s a free gift. Now, what about evil? Evil takes grace and changes it. Adds a twist to it. So evil would say, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and give up smoking. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and give up moon pies. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and quit drinking sodas. See, they want to add something to it. Whenever you add to grace, you destroy grace because it’s no longer grace. It’s grace plus works. If you believe that giving up something gets you saved, you’re wrong. First of all, your personal sins are not what sends you to hell. You may not realize that, but people don’t go to hell because they fornicate. People don’t go to hell because they steal. People go to hell because they don’t believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s, we were born spiritually dead, already destined to hell at our birth. The Bible says, for by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and death is passed on all. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. This is why you have to be born again. It’s not related to sins that you do. You’re going to commit sin because you have a sin nature. And as long as you’re alive on this planet, you’ll have a sin nature. But evil is the genius of Satan. So sin and evil are very close. Sin and evil are very close, but they are both. One’s a product of Satan and his genius, and one’s a product of your sin nature and its lust pattern. Both are wrong, and it’s wrong for the Christian to get into sin or to get into evil. Evil can be organized religion. The most evil thing in the world is, in fact, organized religion because it’s what Satan uses to trick people into thinking that they’re saved because they joined up, fessed up, gave it up, did up, threw up, whatever they did. That’s not salvation. And remember, let’s remember, it was the religious crowd that shouted to Pilate, crucify him, crucify him, and let Barabbas, the criminal, go. We want the Christ guy dead. That was the religious crowd. They thought they were doing God a favor. They didn’t want to give up any of their power, that’s for sure. And so they wanted Christ dead. And it is organized religion today that will hate grace. Organized religion can’t stand grace because organized religion wants to control you and manipulate you by a system of do’s and don’ts. So sin and evil. Sin, all sin is evil, yes, for sure. But all evil is not necessarily sin. It’s a system. It’s something you do. It can be a political force, like put a chicken in everybody’s pot and we’ll all be equal. That’s evil. And that’s not gonna make everybody equal because you give everybody a chicken. We’re different. We have different IQs, different mentality, different size. There’s never gonna be a level playing field. If you gave everybody the same amount of money, they’d still wind up different. So we have to understand the core values in our life so that we can essentially understand sin and evil. We know how to live and avoid these things. We have to have those guiding principles in our life. We, as believers, operate under something called divine establishment. That’s our value system. And it’s the royal family honor code. This is where we get our core values and the royal family honor code. So if you are a member of the royal family of God, because you have trusted Jesus Christ to be your Savior, we say faith alone in Christ alone. You haven’t said, I’ve trusted in Christ and I’m giving up smoking. I’m trusting in Christ and I’m giving up this, that, and the other. No, did you go to the Father and say, I’m a sinner. I believe Christ died for me. I’m willing to accept him as my Savior. It’s that simple. Because the Bible says, he that believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Jesus told Nicodemus, he that believes must be born again. Nicodemus didn’t understand being born again. And the Bible goes on to clearly say that believe it or not, the wrath of God abides on him already. In John 6, 40, this is the will of the one that sent me, that you believe in me whom you have sent. And that’s grace. So this honor code that we have, the Royal Family Honor Code, it relates to personal integrity in my life and in your life and the way that we treat other people. using obviously one of those problem-solving devices that we know as impersonal love. So the honor code would include on the flat line of your soul. This is what I’m telling you. As you build a flat line, you develop an honor code. And the honor code includes the filling of the Holy Spirit. It includes doctrinal orientation, grace orientation, and a personal sense of destiny as long as all those other problem-solving devices exist. That’s your honor code. So you don’t operate under the sin nature control. You operate under the filling of the Holy Spirit. You don’t operate under human viewpoint. You operate under divine viewpoint, which is biblical orientation. You don’t operate under work salvation. You operate under grace orientation. And you have a personal sense of destiny. You know God’s plan, what that plan includes for you. So this is a code that you have to develop and adhere to in your life. as you learn and as you apply the word of God. And this is not a request, by the way. It’s a demand. In 2 Timothy 2.15, study to show thyself approved unto God. You want God’s approval? Then grow up spiritually. Learn his word, apply it into your life, and glorify him. How do you do it? Under a well-qualified pastor. You say, well, there’s not one in my area. Well, there is a way to do it. You can order tapes. You can order, I say tapes. Today it would be CDs or MP3s or DVDs. I can show you a list of many great pastors you can study under, and all of their material is free. They don’t charge you $19.95, $10.95, $9.99, nothing like that. It’s free. And if you don’t have a good church close by where you can learn, And you can get up in the morning like I do, get a cup of coffee, open your Bible, put in a DVD or an MP3 and take notes and study and grow and learn right there. And God will show you what you need to know. It’s a wonderful way to grow spiritually. until he shows you where there’s a good qualified church where you can find a pastor. But that’s what you got to have. You got to have that pastor. If there’s not one close by, then there’s one you can get under. You don’t have to be face to face always. Sometimes you have to do what I do. And that’s get up, listen, shut up, get up, shut up and grow. So as a member of God’s royal family, you are, I am, we unfortunately are considered aristocracy. And if we are aristocracy, which we are, we’re a member of the royal family of God, then there’s a code of ethics that we have to live by. That code of ethics or that core value that we have that is a much higher standard than what the world is by. The world under the cosmic system lives by relativism or humanism, but aristocracy has a standard based on the example set by the Lord Jesus Christ during his time in the devil’s world. And so if we think right, if we learn God’s word, if we think right with divine viewpoint, then we live right with right motivation. Right motivation means we do the right function. And we’re not motivated under arrogance. We’re motivated under grace. And that’s the thrust of the royal family on our code. It’s executed by means of the filling of the Spirit. So in your core values, when you develop those core values in your life, you can only execute, live under, and sustain yourself by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit. The protocol plan of God is what we call it. It’s the greatest producer of honor and integrity in the history of the world. It’s an honor and integrity produced by the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, and this honor and integrity is produced by you receiving and applying God’s word into your life. Learning the protocol plan of God. What does that mean? It means the right thing must be done in a right way. A right thing done in a wrong way is absolutely wrong. A right thing done in a right way is absolutely right. You’ve heard me say this. Is it right to go to church? Yes. Is there a right way to go to church and a wrong way to go to church? Yes. Well, what’s the wrong way to go to church with unconfessed sin in your life? If you have unconfessed sin in your life, you’ve quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit. Thus, if you go to church to worship God with the Holy Spirit quenched and grieved, you’re not going to get anything out of it. You’re not going to get any divine insight because you shut the Holy Spirit’s ministry down. This is why rebound is so important. That’s the core value for you. 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us. and to purify us from all of our wrongdoing. We have to have that system of core values. We have to have the protocol plan of God. We have to understand a right thing must be done in a right way. Paul had a core value system in his life. He wrote about it in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 10. This is what he said about his core values. He said, you are witnesses to the Thessalonians, And God also, by the way, you have family that will witness you and you will have God who watches you. You are witnesses and God also how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we’ve behaved ourselves among you who believe. There are three core values, devout, just, and blamelessly. This is amazing. This is what God expects out of you just like he expected it out of the Apostle Paul. He expects you to be just. You’re not allowed to judge other people. You’re not allowed to stick your nose in other people’s business. You are to live blamelessly. You’re not allowed to commit sins of the tongue, overt sins, mental attitude sins. You’re not allowed to have people pointing fingers at you and saying, oh, that’s a Christian, but I saw him do such and such. Listen, if you’re going to sin, do it at home. You understand why I’m just kidding now, all right? I’m not giving you a license to sin. Well, what I’m telling you is that people love to blame you for their problems. And this is going to get more and more and more and more. If you’re a Christian, the world is going to blame you for a lot of things because they hate Christianity. They hate God’s grace. They hate the word of God. You’ve seen in the news already how much our nation is shifting towards a hatred for Christians. So we have to live blameless. We have to live devoted to God, which means we are consistently learning and applying his word into our life. We’re consistently staying filled with the Holy Spirit. We’re consistent in our prayers for others. We live justly. We don’t criticize, malign, judge other people. And we live blamelessly. You know, all of this comes from absolute truth. Absolute truth. That’s the Bible, the Word of God. And that tolerates nothing less than the honor code. Absolute truth tolerates nothing less than integrity, virtue, honor. All of this comes from the filling of the Holy Spirit and the perception and the application of the Word of God in your soul. this causes spiritual growth as you grow spiritually then you enter into the first stage of spiritual growth listen carefully it’s called spiritual self-esteem spiritual self-esteem it’s the mental attitude of self-confidence all based on knowing and applying those 10 problem-solving devices into your life, building your core values. So let me stop right now and ask you, can you tell me the 10 problem solving devices? We’ve only been on the air for 13 years and we’ve talked about them constantly. Do you know any of them? Do you know rebound? Do you know the filling of the Holy Spirit? Do you understand the faith risk drill? Do you understand grace orientation, doctrinal orientation? Do you have a personal sense of destiny? Are you motivated by personal love for God and using impersonal love for mankind? Do you share the happiness of God and are you occupied with Christ? That’s 10 of them right there. And we could teach several days on each one of those things. Do you know those? Because if you don’t know them and you don’t live by them, you don’t have a core value system in your life. This would give you a dependency on the word of God if you have it. If you learn these 10 problem-solving devices, you can have self-confidence and depend on the Word of God, not counseling from another believer. That is the worst thing you could do, to go to another believer and ask them, what should I do, brother? There was a movement around to be accountable to other people. You’re not accountable to other people. You are accountable to God and the Holy Spirit. They’re perfectly capable of keeping you in line. So the word of God is what you depend on, not some other believer. If you have to depend on another person, you wind up using that as a crutch. You’ve got to learn to stand on your own two feet. You’ve got to learn to act independently of other people. If God is going to be glorified in your life, you can’t depend on other people to tell you what to do. What should I do, preacher? The preacher already told you what to do from the pulpit. You want him to come over and hold your hand while you go through this rough time? How does it glorify God if you’re depending on somebody else to give you strength? In spiritual self-esteem, when you have that, you can deal with every stress, every problem, every adversity. You can even deal with prosperity, which you would like to deal with, wouldn’t you? You’d love to be able to be tested by winning the lottery and winning $10 million in the lottery. That’s a test you’d like to have. Well, who wouldn’t? But if you can have spiritual self-esteem, you can handle all of these things because the core values in your soul The ones that are developed will guide you, lead you, protect you if you will live by them. You know, there’s a term called professionalism. You must be a professional. A mature believer must be a professional. He must understand the mechanics of the Christian life. You and I must. We must be spiritual, quiet professionals. We have to understand humility, which is the mindset of our Lord Jesus Christ, minus any personal arrogance. I mean, the Bible tells us, you’ve heard me say it to you, Philippians 2, 5, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus Christ. who humbled himself and made himself of no reputation. Humility is a core value for you. You must have it. It’s the opposite of arrogance. Humility is responding to living under the grace provisions of God, having a relaxed mental attitude, not being arrogant. That’s humility. And then integrity. That’s the spiritual strength to carry out the things that you learn, the spiritual strength to execute the plan of God in your life. When you have that, along with humility, then you have mental stability, and that stability is marked by composure in your life, self-assurance in your life. These are the kind of traits that make you a person of honor. Very attractive, too, I might add, to the lost man who will see it in your life But also you can get aware of this, it’s gonna put a target on your back with Satan and the angelic conflict because the devil would love to see you fall. That way he can impugn the name of God. That’s what he’s all about. He doesn’t wanna go to the lake of fire. he wants to get out of the lake of fire by impugning god’s name and proving that god’s not fair so if he can point out your failures then he can ask why are you sentencing me to the lake of fire and yet you’re letting rick go look what he’s done yes i’m a sinner yes i’ve sinned but yes i’ve accepted jesus christ and trusted him as my redeemer my savior and my sins have been paid for So, you know, the devil wants to see me fall. The devil wants to see you fall. Does this sound like you? You know, a lot of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ lack this self-esteem. They suffer from dependency on something else or someone else. They don’t really have the ability to depend on the Word of God. They live what I call scared lives. And when you are scared, when you don’t have that confidence and that dependency on the Word of God, sometimes you turn to depend on other things. You know, I mean, it could be alcohol. It could be drugs. It could be anything to remove the pressures of self-pity. Not self-esteem, self-pity. What a horrible sin of arrogance self-pity is. This is a form of arrogance that produces flaws in your character. You don’t have to live like that. There’s a better way to live. Proverbs 13.10 says, through arrogance comes nothing but strife, which means anger or bitterness. But in wisdom, wisdom is with those who receive instruction. One of the fantastic four, wisdom. It’s the information you learned and applied into your life. It’s called epinosis doctrine, full knowledge of doctrine. Remember, your pastor teaches, and you get gnosis. You get knowledge. But until you, by faith, believe it and apply it, it’s not full knowledge. It’s just information you heard. You might have even learned it. You might even be able to repeat it back, but did you apply it? That’s where the wisdom comes in. Information you learn and apply becomes wisdom, and it’s on the launching pad of your soul, ready to be fired off when you need it. And that’s why you have to recall and go back over your notes, study your notes. And by the way, any of those radio shows that you might have heard us say, we can provide them for you on a CD or an MP3, or they’re all on the website. You can go to the website and listen to all of them. So you may even have this flaw I’m talking about, some genetic flaw, some weakness that you’re born with. Some people have a propensity to alcoholism because their parents were alcoholics. But then there’s environmental flaws, and those are the flaws we acquire through our sin nature patterns and our sin nature trends. You can’t afford to have a flaw. If you’re going to have core value system from learning the protocol plan of God and applying those 10 problem-solving devices in your life, then you can’t allow your sin nature to dictate policy. You can’t follow a sin nature pattern or sin nature trend. You know, it all boils down to one thing. This is as simple as it gets. If I put it at the bottom line, it all boils down to your volition. Your volition. Volition, that’s the decider, that’s the chooser. You know, God put it in his word. I can tell you what the word says, your pastor can tell you what the word says, or you can read the word for yourself. But the bottom line is, will you obey? Will you comply with what’s there? And we know it’s the commander’s intent. We know this is what God intended for you to do. Will you do it? And you say, well, I just can’t do it right now. Okay, it’s up to you. You can live your life however you want to live it. But at least you know what your choices are and you know what your options are. So when divine discipline smacks you on the head and drives you to the ground, you can take one look in the mirror and know why. Because you heard and decided to reject it as truth. You heard and walked away from it and went down the my way highway. And every bad decision you make just compounds the problems that much more because you have no core values in your soul. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re learning. And I hope you’ll come back next week. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening 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.
