Critical Thinking Skills – Part 1
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 610 aired on May 7, 2017
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes I ask you to stay with me. Listen to me, hang in there. It’s going to be a few minutes of
motivation, some inspirations, some education, all done without any type of manipulation. We’re
not trying to con you. We are not trying to hustle you. We’re simply trying to give you
information that I believe will help you verify as well as identify the plan of God for your life.
You can orient and adjust to the plan or you can continue to live your life as you wish. That’s up
to you. I’m not here to coerce you to do anything. I’m here to give you the facts and it’s between
you and God the Holy Spirit. On this radio show we’re going to be accurate. We’re going to give
you the accurate facts and we’re not going to hustle you in any way whatsoever. We have been
on this radio show for over 10 years now. It’s been an amazing journey for me. I never thought I
would have a radio ministry and yet here we are, you’re listening to me this morning and I’m
excited about this. I’m excited about the letters that we get and the testimonies from those of you
who are getting it, you’re understanding. We predicate our show on you developing a FLOT line
in your soul. FLOT is a military acronym for a forward line of troops. We are teaching that there
are 10 problem-solving devices that if you will learn them and use them, deploy them in your
soul staying in this military vernacular, then you can stop the outside sources of adversity before
they ever become the inside sources of stress. We’ve learned that adversity is inevitable and most
of the time it comes from our own bad decisions. We’ve also learned from the Word of God, that
because of our unique life, stress is optional. We have the most unique life in the history of the
world. We live in the Church Age and we have the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. We have
the indwelling of Jesus Christ. We have the indwelling of the Father. We have the living Word of
God, the canon of Scripture. We have a local church and assets in that local church of Christians
with different spiritual gifts. We have a qualified pastor.
Look at the resources we have
available to us, there’s no reason we should ever fail.
There’s no reason that we should ever
fall behind. There’s no reason that we should ever forget the wonderful things that God has for
us. So as we continue to broadcast this radio show, trusting the Lord to expand our ministry,
expand our horizons and give us more venues, I covet your prayers for these opportunities and
ask you to always stick with us. If you ever have a question you can always go to my website
and you can contact us there. You can order material there. It’s all free of charge, no charge ever
and we’ll be glad to respond in any way whatsoever. Today we want to dive into your mind. I
know it’s a dangerous pool to dive into but we want to talk about your mind. We want to talk
about your
nous,
that’s the word mind in the Bible. There’s also another word in the Bible called
kardia,
meaning your heart. These are two Greek words and both of these are involved in the
human IQ and spiritual IQ. This is what we’re going to talk about today. If you are a believer in
Jesus Christ, you’ve accepted Him as your Savior, I pray you have and there’s no one listening to
me that hasn’t made this decision.
It is the single most significant decision you can make in
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your entire life, Matthew 22:42,
“What think ye of Christ?”
Paul told the Roman
jailer,
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved”
(Romans 6:31). It’s a simple act
of faith. That’s why Ephesians 2:8-9 says,
“For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift
from God not of works lest we would brag about it.”
If you’ve made this decision, then spiritual
IQ far outweighs any human IQ you may have. We’re not all geniuses. We’re not all smart. Some
of us including myself have to have help from time to time with various math or English things
because we’re not geniuses. Some of you are geniuses. You can spell any word, diagram any
sentence, add up any calculation, but human IQ doesn’t cut it with God.
It’s spiritual IQ that
counts and that comes from equal privilege and equal opportunity.
See, we all have the
privilege to receive Jesus Christ as our Savior. It’s a free gift from God and 2 Peter 3:9 says,
“He
is not willing that any should perish.”
We all have the opportunity to take in the Word of
God and be filled with the Holy Spirit, to use these two power sources
. If we use the filling of
the Holy Spirit and we use the Word of God metabolized and stored in our soul, this is
technically called wisdom, there’s no reason for us ever to fail. As goes your thought life, so goes
your spiritual life. You are a product of what you think and by the way, if the Lord wants to
check you out this is how He does it.
“I am He who searches the minds and the hearts and I will
give to each one of you according to your production”
(Revelation 2:23). This was a message to
the church at Thyatira, the Lord Jesus Christ was giving a message to the pastor there. Notice
“I
search the minds and the hearts.”
Then Isaiah 26:3,
“You will keep him in total peace
[perfect
peace, total rest]
whose mind is stayed on Thee because He trusts in Thee.”
If you’re using the
faith-rest drill, problem-solving device #3, and you have mental dependence upon your
Heavenly Father, upon the Word of God, He will give you total rest, perfect peace.
Your
mind, this is where the battle rages most of the time. Your mind is your source of thought and
one of the thoughts is called recall. Recall is like watching a movie projector. We can recall
thoughts and we can remember. In Lamentations 3:21 it is written,
“This I recall to mind
[this is
remembering the Scripture, recalling what you’ve learned] t
herefore I have hope.”
Let me
repeat,
“This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope.”
Hope here is not like “I hope it doesn’t rain
today” or “I hope we get to make it on time.” It’s a different hope. This is absolute confidence. In
the Greek New Testament the word for hope is
elpis
and means assurance. I have assurance, I
have confidence.
Lamentations 3:22-23,
“The Lord’s mercies never cease, His compassions
never fail. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness.”
We see His mercy, His
compassion and His faithfulness, this is what we recall.
This is what we remember. This
should be the source of your thought when you get up each day. Write this down, Lamentations
3:21-23, you should read this every morning if you can.
“This I recall to mind, therefore I have
hope. It is because of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed. The Lord’s mercies never
cease, His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness.”
In 2
Corinthians 11:3 Paul said,
“I do not want your minds to be led astray from the simplicity that
is in Christ Jesus.”
This is what Satan likes to do.
He likes to recapture your thinking,
recapture your thoughts. Satan tricked Eve through his own craftiness and do not think that he
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cannot trick you. He certainly can trick you. He always wants to neutralize your spiritual life and
oddly enough, sometimes you wind up doing it for him, don’t you? There are five objectives that
you need to be careful about.
Satan wants to neutralize your spiritual life by always trying to
reclaim your affections.
1 John 2:15 tells us,
“Do not love the world neither love the things that
are in the world. Because if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
This
is occupation with the details of life. You are told in the Scripture not to be preoccupied with the
details of life. This is not your home. You’re not going to stay here forever. You are called a
sojourner in 1 Peter 2:11. You have a different home, your home is
ouranos,
the Greek word
heaven, that’s where you’re headed. So anything in this world that God gives you can be enjoyed
but don’t fall in love with it.
Happiness is not dependent on circumstances or people.
Jesus
Christ our Lord told us in Luke 11:28,
“Happiness belongs to those who hear My Father’s
Word and keep it.”
If you want to have some real happiness in your life, it comes from
developing momentum, hearing and keeping the Word of God on a consistent basis. This is what
Satan does not want you to do. He would like to neutralize your spiritual life by reclaiming your
affections. If he can do this, then he can recapture your thoughts. You cannot let him recapture
your thoughts. 2 Corinthians 10:5,
“Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts
itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of
Jesus Christ.”
This is where Satan attacks. He tries to get to your thinking. Recapturing your
thoughts means you can think in one of two ways. You can think in terms of humility as Romans
12:3 says,
“Stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance which is beyond what we should
think, but think in terms of humility which is God’s plan.”
When you’re thinking in terms of
arrogance, then you have an unrealistic self-image. Casting down imaginations is an unrealistic
self-image. Every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, that’s human
viewpoint thinking. Someone is telling you they’re smarter than God, they know the solution,
God’s not real, you can’t trust the Bible, you know how it goes. The humanist has all sorts of
reasons why the Bible is not true, why it’s not real, and you will face this all of your life. You will
face all sorts of pushback, “Well, man really wrote it so is full of mistakes, yada, yada, yada.” We
have to bring every thought into captivity because this is where Satan will attack you. He will
attack your mind. He will attack what you think. Satan wants to recapture your thoughts by
appealing to your arrogance. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says,
“Bring every thought into the obedience of
Christ,”
to obey Him.
“If you love Me you will obey Me and My mandates are not hard”
(1 John
5:3).
Satan wants to reclaim your affections. He wants to recapture your thoughts. He
wants to redirect your focus in life.
What is your focus in life? What is your primary desire in
life? It should be to glorify God to the max. It should be to reach spiritual maturity. It should be
to be an invisible hero, to be a silent professional in the plan of God. See, you can have an
invisible impact, a historical impact, a national impact all by becoming a mature believer, all by
being a member of the pivot that we talk about, that group of mature believers that sustains the
nation. This is what Gideon had to have, 300 pivot members. God delivered the nation Israel
through the ministry of Gideon with 300 solid people. God doesn’t need 35 million, God needs a
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few like you to be consistent, to stay filled with the Holy Spirit, to be consistent with
“Grow in
the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
(2 Peter 3:18), to keep your
affections where they should be, to keep your thoughts where they should be, and to keep your
focus where it should be. What should our focus be? Satan wants to redirect my focus. What
does 2 Corinthians 4:18 say?
“We look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are
not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are
eternal.”
Satan would love for you to get your eyes on the temporary, on those things that don’t
really mean anything, things that you think could make you happy. If you covet your neighbor’s
property, you covet your neighbor’s house, you covet your neighbor’s whatever, your eyes are on
the wrong things. You think, “Well he’s got it made. Look at the money he’s got. Look at the
house he’s got. Look at the car he drives.” Don’t look at those things. They are not the things that
make you happy. They are temporary things. You don’t take them with you to heaven, that’s for
sure.
We are to focus on the things which are not seen, things that are eternal. This is the
plan of God for you.
This is the promise of God for you, you will have a resurrection body. You
will never hurt again.
“You will have no more tears, no more pain, no more sorrow. All of these
things are passed away”
(Revelation 21:4). You will rule and reign with Jesus Christ our Lord in
the Millennium for 1,000 years. You will live an eternal life with God the Father in heaven.
These are promises you can focus on. When you leave this body which is getting older and hurts
and gets sick, don’t worry, you’ll have a new body, a resurrection body. This is Matthew 6:19-20,
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon this earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves break in and steal but instead lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves cannot break through and steal.”
The
treasures that you have are eternal treasures. If you stay filled the Spirit and grow in grace,
if you magnify Jesus Christ, you’re going to have divine good production.
Your divine good
production is going to be gold, silver, and precious stones as per 1 Corinthians 3:11-15. Gold,
silver and precious stones, that’s anything you do for God while you are filled with the Holy
Spirit. This is divine good production. No one can steal it from you. No one can take it away
from you. This divine good production are your rewards throughout all eternity. We have to keep
our values. What are our values today? What we acquire in time or what we acquire in eternity?
Remember, Satan wants to neutralize your spiritual life. He wants to recapture your
thoughts, reclaim your affections, redirect your focus and redefine your values. Lastly be
careful because Satan would love for you to reorder your priorities.
In other words, to get
you off track, to get you to go down the My Way Highway. Matthew 6:33 says,
“Seek first the
Kingdom of God and seek first His righteousness and then all these other things will be added to
you.”
These are logistical details, things that you need to sustain your life, things that you need
to handle the details of life. The Lord promises He will not hang you out to dry. He promises He
will meet your logistical needs. This says
“seek first” protos
in the Greek meaning our first
priority must be the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all these other things will be
added to you.
There’s a whole sermon right there, a whole message right there. You must have as
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priority number one, learning God’s Word. Why? So you can replicate the thinking of Christ and
you can reflect Christ in your life so that your life becomes a light or a testimony and you are salt
or a preservative, this is why God left you here.
God mandates that you think divine
viewpoint, not human viewpoint. Divine viewpoint comes through the Scripture. It’s called
the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:16,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord and who will
instruct Him?”
Paul said,
“We have the mind of Christ.”
The mind of Christ is the New
Testament, the Word of God. So here you have it. Learning the Word of God, learning to think
like Christ thought, it’s a perspective of life based on the infallible Word of God. He won’t lie to
you. He won’t mislead you. He won’t manipulate you, not like Satan will, and so that’s what you
have to think.
You have to learn to think divine viewpoint. This is why Philippians 2:5 says,
“Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.”
Here’s an interesting thing. God can
read your mind. He knows what you’re thinking. He can read you like an open book. He knows
your thoughts, He knows your attitudes, He certainly can see your actions, and He knows the
results. Your thoughts, “This is him, this is it, this is great, this is bad.” Your attitude, “I can do it,
I can’t do it, I will, I enjoy, I don’t, etc.” Hebrews 4:13 says,
“There’s not a creature hidden from
before Him but all things are bare, having been exposed to the eyes of Him to whom our account
is given.”
God can read your mind. You can’t go in your room, turn off the light, pull the
curtains, get under the covers, and hide from God. He is omniscient and He is omnipresent. He is
with you and He knows what you’re thinking. He holds us responsible for what we think and
what we choose. Our thinking is very important.
Proverbs 23:7 clearly says,
“As we think in
our heart so we are.”
The real you is what you think.
The real you is not what you look like,
not the image you project, not how you might promenade around and act like you’re something
really holy when in fact you’re not. He knows what we think and He sees our hearts and so
Proverbs 23:7,
“As you think in your heart so you are,”
your
kardia.
Here’s what you are. You
are the sum total of your motives. You are the sum total of your intentions and you are the sum
total of your desires. This is you – what you intend to do, what you desire to do and what
motivates you to do those things. The Bible always relates our thought pattern to our heart or the
right lobe of the brain. The left lobe is the
nous,
that’s where the information comes in and
information in the
nous
or in the mind is just information. That information has to be transferred
by faith to the right lobe or to the heart. There are two lobes of the brain, left lobe, right lobe.
When information gets in the right lobe or in the
kardia
it’s called
sophia,
it’s called wisdom in
the Bible. So God is always is looking at our hearts and this is where you can apply the Word of
God to any experience in your life. Whenever you learn the Word of God it goes into your frame
of reference. It goes into your memory center and you retain it there and store it there until you
need it. Listen, the rate of forgetting can be greater than the rate of learning. That’s why I started
this off by telling you you have to recall,
“This I recall,”
I remember. Going to church and
taking notes and getting a big notebook and then putting it on the shelf and not ever looking at it
again, you’re going to forget it. You’ve got to recall, you’ve got to remember. That’s part of the
pastor’s job by teaching with repetition. He repeats himself and if you ever say, “I’ve heard that
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before preacher,” you’re totally out of line.
Repetition in learning is important.
My pastor used
to say, “Repetition, repetition, repetition.” He drilled it into us so we didn’t forget it. That’s the
way it has to be. You have to learn it. The Bible relates our thought pattern to our heart and the
right lobe of our soul. This is where we apply God’s Word into our frame of reference, our
memory center, and retain it and pull it out and use it.
The effectiveness of our Christian
spiritual life depends on what we think.
It does. If you say, “I’m worried sick,” well there’s a
connection between your physical health and your thought patterns. Did you know that? Any
psychiatrist can tell you that. Any mental attitude of fear or worry or anxiety or continuous
mental tension is going to eventually overflow and affect your body. It has to, that’s the way it
goes. It’s common for people to suffer from such ailments as eczema, skin rash, warts, allergies,
asthma, hypertension, ulcers, and other disorders that come from the overflow or pressure in
their life, from the overflow from the mind to the body. Sometimes when the mental attitude is
stabilized these symptoms go away. Physiological problems can indeed be related to the thought
process. When your heart or the right lobe of your soul thinks divine viewpoint thinking, you can
have what the world doesn’t have and that’s an inner peace, a relaxed mental attitude, a stability
of thinking with inner happiness. When we think human viewpoint or when we get involved in
mental attitude sins like jealousy and arrogance, then we wind up in self-induced misery. If
you’re miserable today there may be a reason for that. Maybe you created it yourself. There are
many different attitudes but there are only two basic viewpoints in life, divine viewpoint or
human viewpoint.
Divine viewpoint, God said in Isaiah 55:8-9,
“I don’t think like you think.
My thoughts are not your thoughts.”
Our objective is to think like He thinks,
“To think in
terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from His
Word”
(Romans 12:3).
I sure hope you’re listening and I sure hope you’re learning. I thank you
for being a part of this program for all these years. I pray you’ll continue to stick with me and
find a qualified pastor you can sit under and study and take in the Word of God on a daily basis.
That’s my prayer for you. Thank you for being with me. This is Rick Hughes, the host of The
FLOT Line. We’ll see you next week, same time, same place