Join Rick Hughes in this enlightening episode as he delves into the heart of Christian living. Discover the significance of God’s plan and how it frames our decision-making processes. Explore the transformative journey that follows the pivotal decision to embrace Jesus Christ as Savior, setting the foundation for a life oriented around divine wisdom and spiritual growth.
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 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, I’d like to invite you to stay with me. It won’t be long, only about 30 minutes. But it’s 30 minutes of inspiration, some education, a whole lot of motivation, and absolutely no, no, no manipulation. That’s right, we’re not trying to con you into buying anything. We’re not trying to con you into selling anything. Not trying to ask you for money, but we are asking you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify God’s plan for your life and for my life. If you’ll do that and you enjoy listening, you can orient and adjust to the plan if you want to. That’s up to you. We know that God gave you volition. You have the ability to choose. The biggest decision you could ever make is the decision to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. That’s the most important decision. That’s why Paul asked the Roman jailer, recorded in Romans, what think ye of Christ? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, and thou shalt be saved. I don’t know if you’ve ever made that decision, but I pray you will. If you haven’t, that you will make a decision to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That’s my prayer. Our ministry offers a lot of printed material. I want to emphasize one more time our transcripts. All the shows from 2019, 2020, and 2021 have been printed in book form, and they’re available for you to order, and you can read through them. There’s 52 shows in a book, and you can read through them just as if you were listening to me and kind of have those notes there to go through and study if you’d like. So all you got to do is contact us through the website, rickhughesministries.org. rickhughesministries.org, and you’ll be able to order those from there. And also we have our latest book, God’s Grace in Aging, is now up as an audio book, and you can listen to it on the website, or you can order it there as well. Okay, I have a lot of things to tell you today, and I’m very grateful that you’ll give me some of your time. I’ve been reading letters all week from people, emails and letters, telling me how the Lord has used this show to transform and change the direction of your life. And I’m so honored that he’s done that. This is 965 radio shows we’ve done. And if you can average 52 a year, you can figure out how many years we’ve been at it. And so I want to wrap this up by making something clear to you today. We all know we have three enemies called the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world, the flesh, and the devil. But I’m going to introduce four terms to you today that we need to remember and four things that are very key for you to remember as we go through this study. See, I became a Christian in 1967. And that was and it still is the greatest decision that I personally ever made in my life. However, it took me a couple of years before I truly realized, fully realized what was expected of me and what exactly God did for me. And it’s not that I didn’t have Christian friends. I did have a lot of friends. Heck, I even enrolled in Bible college in preparation to enter the ministry. But interestingly enough, I did not get instructions in Bible college about how to live the Christian life. No one ever taught me that I had a spiritual life and how to live it and what it meant. So I did learn in Bible college about the Bible, but nothing that could really help me figure out why I was the way that I was. It was a couple of years later that, in fact, the Holy Spirit led me to a well-qualified pastor, the kind of pastor I keep encouraging you to get under. And this individual began to teach me how to live a victorious spiritual life. And that’s not saying I’m perfect, not by any way, not at all. But as a Christian… It is saying that I know my enemies and I know how to recover when I fail. And you know, I’m frequently saddened when I meet believers who have no drive to discover the dynamics of their spiritual life. Some of them don’t even know they have a spiritual life. They don’t even know what the word spiritual life means. Unfortunately, the impact of organized religion is the result of this because there are so many rituals without reality and it has dulled the senses of many people in regards to the function of the spiritual life. And many people think they’re spiritual because they go to church and they tithe or they sing in the choir, they took communion, and they think that’s what Christian life is. It’s much, much, much more than that, okay? So today, I would like to ask you a question. What must I do to be a good Christian? Do you know what you must do to be a good Christian? Sometimes when I ask people that question, it’s pretty predictable what they’re going to say. They’re going to say, well, you know, Rick, you’ve got to read your Bible. Okay. You’ve got to pray. Okay. You should obey God. Yes, those are things good Christians do for sure, but how do you become a good Christian? Well, you’ve got to be faithful in church attendance. Okay. You meet your obligations at the church, but nobody seems to know the answer about how to become a good Christian. Today, if you’ll let me, I would like to discuss with you four different terms that you must learn if you hope to glorify God to the maximum during your time on this earth. The first term is called personal sin. Personal sin. I met an individual one time that told me he did not sin. And I was quite amazed at that. And I said, you don’t sin at all? He said, no, brother, I don’t sin. We got through with the conversation. He was sinning because he was mad at me. But 1 John 1.8 tells you, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And then in 1 John 1.10, if we claim we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar and his word is not in us. People don’t realize personal sin can be one of several things. It could be something you think, as simple as something you think. Or it could be as simple as something that you say. Or it could be something that you do, something you think, something you say, something you do. But one thing is true, that every Christian will sin after he gets saved, but not all sin in the same way. Unfortunately, the legalistic self-righteous Christian might not get drunk or commit adultery, but he will judge you and malign you if you do that. That’s why Psalm 34, 13 says, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. That’s another way of saying stay out of other people’s business. You’re not better than anybody else because you don’t get drunk and you don’t commit adultery. You just have different sins. That’s the legalistic self-righteous believer. What about the lascivious believer? That’s the guy that gets drunk and fornicates. He may not actually lust or get addicted to sexual sins, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not saved. He may get addicted to this stuff. It could happen. He couldn’t get addicted to pornography or sexual sins, but he still saved. I remind you of David, 2 Samuel 11, 2 through 5. In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israeli army. And they destroyed the Ammonites and besieged the Rabbah, but David stayed back in Jerusalem. Mistake, he wasn’t with his crew. Should have been with the troops. One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. This is in 2 Samuel 11, two through five. And the man came back and said, well, that’s Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Uriah the Hittite was a mercenary that fought for David and his army. So David sent messengers and got her and brought her to him and he slept with her. That’s adultery. And she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness. She went back home and she conceived and she sent word to David saying, I’m with child. Big mistake. All believers have to recover from sin the same way, whether you’re lascivious or whether you’re legalistic, whether it’s the sin of the tongue or sin of the mind or overt sin. How do you recover from sin, personal sin? How do I deal with my personal sin? In 2 Samuel 12, 13, David said to Nathan the prophet, I have sinned against the Lord. Nathan replied, the Lord has taken away your sin. You will not die. Had he not admitted the sin, he would have died the sin unto death. And the same thing goes for you and I too. In Psalm 32, three through five, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. Verse four, Psalm 32, for day and night your hand was heavy on me. That’s discipline. My strength was snapped, sapped, S-A-P-P-E-D, as in the heat of the summer. Here comes rebound. Here comes problem-solving advice number one. Then, after the discipline, I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover up my iniquity, and I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Now, that’s an Old Testament believer, but for you and I in the church, it’s the same thing. 1 John 1.9 is how we deal with personal sin. It says, if we will confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us from our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. It takes some humility to recognize and confess your sin. And unfortunately, many people fail to admit it. Because for the church-age believer like you and I, this confession is called rebound, one of the 10 problem-solving devices on the flatline of your soul. And it is the recovery process for the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you fail to rebound after you’ve sinned and you don’t recover from your sin, then you can be ensured that there will be divine discipline coming into your life and it is not pleasant. So I’m telling you right now, if you’re hiding sin, you better rebound, you better recover from it. Listen to Hebrews 12. If you endure discipline, God deals with you as with a son. For what son is there whom the father does not discipline? But if you’re not having any discipline, of which all have to be partakers, then you’re not really a son. Furthermore, listen to this now, we’ve had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more be in subjection to the Father’s spirits and live, and live, and live? Proverbs 15, 10, he that hates the reproof of God shall die. When discipline comes into your life, it can be warning discipline, It can be intense discipline or it can be dying discipline. That’s how you deal with sin. If you have unconfessed sin in your life, you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, you’ve quenched the Holy Spirit, and you’ve grieved the Holy Spirit. You have to recover from that. Not only must you be able to recognize your sin, how to recover from your sin but there’s one other thing you have to learn to do you have to understand what arrogance is it took me a long time before i got that arrogance is the root cause of the sin that’s another term you need to learn arrogance personal sin now arrogance see when i was a young christian i knew enough to identify my areas of weakness and my personal sins But no one taught me what arrogance was. No one taught me the reason I did these things because I was arrogant. I was failing to obey God. And very few pastors that I’ve ever met even mentioned arrogance from the pulpit as a mental attitude sin. The first recorded incident of arrogance in the scripture is found in Ezekiel 28, 15, talking about Lucifer, aka the devil. Here’s what’s recorded. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty and you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. Arrogance has an unrealistic self-image and unrealistic expectations. And I don’t know what caused Satan to do what he did, but he thought he was something that he was not. He was not God. And he wound up being kicked out of heaven, kicked to the earth, and awaiting the lake of fire. You see, arrogant tendencies can begin at an early age. That’s why the Bible tells you to discipline your children. Listen to Ephesians 6.1. Children, obey your parents. That’s called authority orientation. A child must learn to respect authority because an arrogant child cannot handle authority. The arrogant individual always justify why he’s right and the teacher’s wrong. He’s right and his parents are wrong. He’s right and the preacher’s wrong. He’s right and everybody else is wrong. That’s arrogance. When we disobey the mandates of God, we’re demonstrating our own arrogance when we say, no, I’m not going to do that. I’ll do what I want to do. That’s arrogance. This type of self-justification always leads to self-deception. In other words, you think you’re something you’re not. And the sad thing is the religious self-righteous arrogance is very destructive. Because in this case, the religious person assumes that God is pleased with him. He assumes his actions are pleasing to God, when in reality, he might be doing the right thing, but doing it in the wrong way. For example, the Bible says in John 4, 24, God is a spirit and those that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And you cannot worship God when you have unconfessed sin in your life, you must be in fellowship with God to worship God. And thus we must be filled with the Holy spirit as mandated in Ephesians five 18. I’ve seen many church services where they attempt to set the tone for worship by singing praise music. And they do not instruct the congregation to make sure they are in fellowship first. How do you do that? Well, you have a time of silent prayer. You tell the congregation, if you’re here with any personal sin in your life, bow your head now and confess that sin to God. Not to the church, not to anybody else, but to confess it to God. Because if you don’t do so, you can’t worship God as long as the Holy Spirit’s quenched and grieved in your life. And when you sin, you quench the Holy Spirit and grieve the Holy Spirit. I don’t care how much praise and worship service music you sing. I don’t care how much you sway back and forth or raise your hand. You’re not worshiping God if the Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched in your life. So any Christian must confess any sin that has quenched the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So I would suggest you pray a prayer before a worship service. Next time you go to church, try this, Psalm 139, 23. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. The arrogant religious type will assume he’s worshiping God by singing repeated stanzas of holy, holy, holy, but in reality, he’s doing a good thing, but he’s doing it in the wrong way because he must be filled with the Holy Spirit to worship God. So two terms we’ve identified that are unusual, personal sin and arrogance. Arrogance always follows self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, and yes, self-destruction. Unfortunately, the arrogant person will destroy himself and sometimes other people with him. So please understand, you cannot afford to let arrogance control your life. Another principle that believers have to understand, another word that’s key for you to learn is a word called evil, evil. In Isaiah 520, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. And then in Romans 1221, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. In 1 Thessalonians 5, 22, abstain from every form of evil. And you may be wondering what evil is. If you think evil is sin, all sin is evil, yes. However, all evil may not be an act of sin. It may be an act of human good. See, this is what Satan does. He takes God’s word and twists it. You know, Satan says, okay, you want to be saved? Accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and give up smoking and you’ll be saved. Accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and be baptized and you’ll be saved. Whatever you add works to the grace of God, that’s evil. Because the Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of yourself, so anyone should brag about it. Evil is Satan’s policy to try to justify why he did what he did. Evil can be human good. It can be humanitarian things, trying to solve the world’s problems apart from God’s word. Evil is a horrible thing. Evil is Satan’s failure to produce a system of good in mankind and society that could bring in some sort of pseudo-millennium. Remember, he’s the god of this world. He doesn’t necessarily want the people in this world to do all sorts of nasty things. He wants to vindicate himself. He doesn’t want to go to the lake of fire. He wants to prove to God that he can orderly control the world and make things orderly here, and he can’t do that. So we have all this good in mankind, good in society, hopefully bringing about some sort of millennium, false millennium. The only time the world will be in perfect order is the thousand-year reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s not evil, that’s God’s plan. Evil is a system that Satan administers where he rules this world. Unfortunately, he cannot restrain sin of mankind. And he will parlay all of our human good into sin and evil. Human good, what is that? That’s you doing the right thing in the wrong way. Going to church can be human good. Tithing can be human good. Singing in the choir can be human good. What do I mean by that? I mean, if you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit when you do it, It’s what the Bible calls wood, hay, and stubble. It’s a right thing done in a wrong way, and it’s human good. It does not glorify God. You must be in fellowship. You must be controlled by the Holy Spirit because you confessed your sin, or you’re going to just produce human good, not divine good. Divine good glorifies God. Divine good has an eternal reward attached with it. That’s called the gold, silver, and precious stones of 1 Corinthians 3. So evil has two sources, comes from sin and erroneous thinking. Human good is the motivation of all evil, erroneous thinking. The sin of self-righteousness plus human good or sincerity, when those two things come together, then there’s a saturation of evil in a nation, and we’ve got it in America today. We’re full of it. We’re gonna join this and solve the world’s problems. We’re gonna go green and solve this. We’re gonna go black and solve this. We’re gonna go white and solve this. Always somebody thinks they had a better way to run things. If we just operate under the divine institutions, freedom, marriage, family, and nationalism, we will be fine. But we don’t wanna operate under that because that’s from the word of God and people don’t like that. That’s a shame. Just as grace and Bible doctrine represent the genius of God in relationship to us, you and I, so evil represents the genius of Satan in relationship to the human race. So if we’re talking about God, God’s work is called grace, grace. And when you talk about Satan, his work is called evil. It’s the opposite of grace. It may sound right, it may look right, it may smell right, but it’s not right. because he’s a counterfeiter. He counterfeits God’s plan, but it is not God’s plan. So just because you went to church, just because you sang in the choir, just because you took a youth trip, just because you tithed your offering doesn’t mean you’re spiritual. It doesn’t mean God has been glorified if you have unconfessed sin in your life, if you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit. And that’s what evil is good at getting you to do. Evil is good at getting you to do ritual that has no reality to it. And ritual without reality is meaningless. Evil can be a distortion of God’s word, even a distortion of the laws of divine establishment. This whole idea of the government trying to abolish sickness, the government trying to do away with mental illness, The government trying to solve economic problems, frustrations, human problems by legislation, human solutions, that’s all evil. The world’s problems can never be solved apart from the word of God and the laws of divine establishment. You can bank on that. However, I want to tell you the greatest of all evils, the greatest of all evils is religion. Organized religion. Organized religion hates us. Organized religion would like to kill every American and subjugate us to a different religion. And organized religion within our own country can judge and malign and criticize you because you don’t believe like they believe. So legalism and apostasy are great manifestations of that evil. Legalism and apostasy are great manifestations of that evil. Did you hear me? I said it twice. Now I’m gonna give you another word. This word’s very critical for you to understand. It’s the word called discernment. Discernment. In this time, in this country, you must have discernment. You must be able to discern what is truth and what is not truth. You must be able to discern what’s going on that you don’t know, because I can assure you there is a lot going on you’re not even aware of. Many people are manipulated in their thinking because they don’t have enough discernment. Discernment is key for you, and you must have it in your life. Proverbs 3.13, how blessed is the man, that blessed word is happiness, how happy is the man who finds wisdom, that’s from the Bible, and the man who gains understanding. That’s the word discernment. You want to be happy? Learn God’s word and get some insight, some understanding. Proverbs 3, 21 through 23 tells us also, keep sound wisdom and discretion so they will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck. Then you will walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble. Keep sound wisdom and discretion. There it is. Other than our Lord Jesus Christ, Solomon was the wisest of all men, and his famous prayer for wisdom is found in 1 Kings 3.9, where he prayed to God and asked these words, Give me an understanding mind to govern your people so that I may discern between good and evil. I wish our presidents would pray that. Give me an understanding mind to govern your people so I can tell the difference between good and evil. You must be able to tell the difference between human good and divine good and human good and evil. You’ve got to know that. So God’s answer to Solomon’s prayer was, quote, I will give you wisdom, a wise and a discerning mind. I’ll give you the ability to understand things, to see things other people don’t see. Our Lord Jesus Christ had fantastic discernment And you and I are mandated to think just like he thought in Philippians 2.5. This new way of thinking is called divine viewpoint, and that’s discernment. It’s taught in Romans 12. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, Romans 12.1, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed. by the difference in how you think, the renewing of your mind so you can prove what is good and what is acceptable in the perfect will of God. Because when God wants to check you out, he’s not looking at your image and your style. He’s looking at what you’re thinking. So Paul in verse three of Romans 12 said, I say through the grace given me to everyone that’s among you, don’t think of himself more highly than he ought to. That’s arrogance. But think soberly, that’s humility, as God has dealt to each one of us a measure of faith, as the faith rests real. So discernment is critical for you. Divine discernment comes from the wisdom of God’s word accumulated in the mentality of your soul, learning the scriptures. And when you ignore God’s divine directives, you will undoubtedly destroy your life. I warn you today that impulsive decisions will lead you to a dead-end street. Get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor. Start studying the Word of God on a consistent basis, and you will have the life that you’ve been looking for. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
