In this insightful episode, Rick Hughes delves into the pivotal role of client nations like the USA and the responsibility of Christians within these nations. He stresses the importance of spiritual growth and maturity, warning against the dangers of national moral decay and the decline of genuine Christian values. The episode encourages self-examination and highlights the crucial function of individuals and churches in evangelizing and preserving biblical doctrine for future generations.
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 01 :
Good morning and welcome to The Flotline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, please give me a chance. Listen to me. Pay attention. 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education. Always done without any type of manipulation. That’s what the FLOT line is about, and it’s interesting, I get radio calls or emails, people say, what is a FLOT line? Sometimes people that are new to the show don’t know really what a FLOT line is. Well, we’re using a military analogy, what that is. FLOT, F-L-O-T, stands for Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T. And what we’re doing is teaching how the Bible shows you there are at least 10 wonderful problem-solving devices that you can learn and deploy in your mind. In other words, use them to stop the outside sources of adversity before it ever becomes the inside source of stress. That’s why we always say adversity is inevitable, but stress is optional. So as a believer in Jesus Christ, you have these phenomenal 10 problem-solving devices. If you learn them and use them, they act as a main line of resistance. They act as a flat line. on your soul. And you say, well, why a military analogy? Well, Paul did the same thing in Ephesians 6, where he talked about putting on the armor of God that you could stand against the strategy of the devil, put on the belt of truth, pick up the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the spirit, et cetera. So this is nothing unusual about using a military analogy. And it helps us to understand that God has a process That process includes us learning and applying His Word into our life. If we learn it and apply it, then we are faithful to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But learning the Word of God is not an easy thing to do. Because first of all, it starts with the filling of the Holy Spirit, which is problem-solving device number two. If we’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, then we don’t pick up the information God wants us to get. For example, Jesus said, when I go away, I’m going to send a comforter. I’m going to send a mentor, and it’s the Holy Spirit. And Jesus said, I’ve been with you, and I’ve been teaching you, but I’m leaving, and now he’s going to teach you. Well, the Bible says you can quench the Holy Spirit, and you can grieve the Holy Spirit by committing sin. With unconfessed sin in your life, the Holy Spirit’s not able to reveal divine truth to you. He’s quenched, his power is eliminated. So the first most important thing in the life of any believer is to learn how to recover from sin. And this is problem solving device number one, which says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And remember that sin can come in three areas. It can even be something you think, just that subtle, something you think. Because the Bible says in Proverbs 23, 7, as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. So a mental attitude sin, a sin of the thought might be worry or it might be fear. It might be anger. It might be implacability, something like that. But there’s also the sins of the tongue. And James talks about that in the book of James, whether it could be lying, slander, gossip, maligning, criticizing, backbiting. These are sins. And then it could be an overt sin. It could be something you did, something you actually did, like stealing. or fornicating, or adultery, or whatever. It could be any of those things, like that drunkenness, an overt sin. So sin can come in one of three areas, and don’t think Christians are impervious to sin. We all sin. And the reason we do is we have a sin nature. And the Bible says there’s a battle inside of you in Galatians 5, 17. The flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit wars against the flesh, and they’re contrary one to the other. And so the objective of the believer who wants to grow and become a mature believer and glorify Jesus Christ to the maximum in his life is first of all to learn how to let the Holy Spirit control his life by the use of rebound, problem-solving device number one, by consistently confessing his sins when he knows he’s committed them. And then number two, to take in God’s Word on a consistent basis so he fulfills the mandate, grow in the grace, and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, I will admit some people want to grow at a slow rate, and some people want to grow at a fast rate. I travel up and down the interstates, and I know some people drive 50, some people drive 90. I don’t know what your rate of growth is, but I can tell you this, distractions will keep you from growing altogether. If you don’t make taking in the word of God a priority in your life, you will not grow spiritually. If you want to grow spiritually, then you can replicate the life of Christ and represent him to your friends and glorify God to the max. But if you don’t grow spiritually, if you just operate under the energy of the flesh, in other words, you’re trying to be a good boy and look like a nice Christian and you go to church and you don’t cuss and you don’t drink and you don’t dance and et cetera, well, those are all fine, wonderful things for you to do. But that’s not living the mature Christian life. It’s much, much, much, much more than just a few physical limitations of personal sin in your life. You have to grow. You see, this is the one thing Satan doesn’t want you to do. He goes around like a roaring lion seeking who he can devour. We know he’s the God of this world. He doesn’t need any competition here. And when you grow as a believer and begin to reflect Jesus Christ through your life, you become competition. You become a light to the world and you attract people. You become salt to the world. You preserve a nation. And this is what Satan does not want. He does not want you to grow in grace. He does not want you to become a material believer. Let’s look at it this way. When you accept Christ, you’re a baby Christian. I accepted Christ, and maybe for a year or two, I didn’t go very far because I didn’t have a good pastor to teach me anything. I just tried to figure it out on my own. Most of the time, it’s emotional. But finally, when I found a pastor, God led me to a man who was a serious student of the Bible and who could teach the Bible to me. And it wasn’t about his personality or It wasn’t about whether or not he would hold my hand and tell me I’d be okay, don’t worry about it. He actually told me, sit down, shut up, and learn something. And I had to because I never realized I was going to have a life of being in the ministry, but I’d realized that I needed to know something because I knew nothing. And through the ministry of my pastor, I began to learn the Word of God. As I learned the Word of God, I grew from being a baby Christian to being a student, hopefully to being an adult, mature believer. And one of the problems today is a lot of churches don’t want a pastor like that. They don’t want a pastor that does a lot of teaching. They want a pastor sometimes that teaches a little bit and then does a lot of other things, kind of manages their church like a cruise ship, makes sure everybody has a good time. And I guess that’s okay, but I want a pastor that will feed me. I want a pastor, if he’s got the gift, to study and teach and teach and teach. And as I was talking to one of my friends this week, you can never get out of the first grade if you only go an hour and a half a week. And if that’s your routine of going to church, 30 minutes on Sunday morning, 30 minutes on Sunday night, and 30 minutes on Wednesday night, that’s an hour and a half a week. You’re never, ever, ever going to become a spiritually mature believer. That’s why the writer of Hebrews said, I got a lot of things to say to you, but I can’t say them because you can’t digest them. You still need the bottle. You still need milk. And that’s a believer that hasn’t grown. That’s a believer that’s still waddling around in his diapers. We have to grow up. I remember one time I was visiting a church and a guy told me, he confronted me and he said, I’m not gifted to quote scripture like you are. I’m not gifted to quote scripture. I’m the biggest dummy you’ve ever seen. But I did study and I did learn and I did apply. And I do remember even when I go fishing, bass fishing, which I love to do. I remember where I caught a bass and what I caught the bass on. And I can remember the Bible verse and what the Bible verse was about and what it meant to me. The problem is if you don’t study, you don’t remember anything because you didn’t read anything to start with. And so if you get under a good pastor and you’re studying God’s Word, then you can grow. And once you grow, you begin to have an invisible impact on your nation. You begin to be what’s called the pivot of the mature group of believers in that nation. We live in the US of A, the United States of America. And it’s an amazing place. It’s a client nation. Here we are living in a client nation called America. Here we are with plenty of opportunities to grow and to glorify God with everything that we have in our life. And it’s called a client nation. We represent God. We are a client nation for God in this world. And you may say, what’s a client nation? Two things I’m concerned with. I’m concerned with what is a client nation and what is the pivot within that client nation. The pivot is what you are supposed to be. It’s like the 300 that Gideon chose, a few well-qualified people. God doesn’t need millions. He just needs you to be well qualified. So what’s a client nation? Well, a client nation is a national entity such as America under the patronage of God, and we are assigned the responsibility for the formation, for the preservation, for the communication, and the fulfillment of the Bible, the canon of Scripture. It’s our job to take God’s Word, guard God’s Word, deliver God’s Word across the face of the world. Secondly, a client nation to God is a nation under divine protection. So as long as we’re a client nation, He protects us. He guarantees us that protection. And the reason is because within the client nation, there’s a large pivot. There’s a large group, a large core of mature believers. Now there’s a lot of believers in America, a lot of believers in America. I see churches everywhere I go. church after church after church, and I have no doubt that many of these people are sincerely saved. But I don’t see a lot of mature believers. I don’t see a lot of people that know their way around the Bible. I don’t see a lot of people that know the Scripture and know how to apply it into their life. And part of that is because I don’t meet a lot of pastors that are teaching very much. I know some, and they’re wonderful, and they’ve been in their pulpits 20 and 30, 40 years, some of them. That’s what we need. So a client nation is a nation under divine protection because it has a large pivot of mature believers. These types of believers… whoever they are, wherever they are, they have blessing by association to those around them and historical blessing to their nation. So if you’re a mature believer living in Mississippi or you’re a mature believer living in Alabama or you’re a mature believer living in California or you’re a mature believer living in Wyoming You’re a mature believer living wherever. You have an impact. Your impact. It brings impact to your community. And those around you are blessed by association to you. And contrary, on the other side of the coin, a client nation like us can be destroyed. by believers who abandon the plan of God, who spin away from the plan of God and reject God’s word. And that would cause the pivot to shrink or to become smaller. And the nation loses its client nation status When God loses the client nation status with God, when we undergo discipline and the pivot shrinks and down we go, and the good thing about that is once the nation goes under, and it could, and that’s what I’m going to get to today with us, at least the pivot survives and comes out the other side. So if you are serious about learning God’s Word, you can count on one thing. Whatever happens in the future, If you’re growing in grace and replicating the life of Christ, you will be protected. You will be delivered. God always delivers a remnant of his people. Now, God directs and controls history on the basis of client nations like USA. And if we are a client nation, here’s what we must do. We must, number one, evangelize our own population at home. I made a statement the other day somewhere. I was speaking. I said, I don’t think we’ll ever see another Billy Graham, another big giant crusade. I’m afraid those times are gone because people don’t want it. People are not interested in the Word of God much anymore. People are not interested in evangelism and holding big crusades, and they feel like they might be a target and something bad might happen or anything of the above. They don’t want it in the public venue. Nobody wants to use a university campus to preach the gospel. It’s against the law. You can’t be talking about Jesus on the campus, and it’s crazy what’s happening in this nation. We’ve got to evangelize our own population. So We do it through the radio. We do it through the television. We do it through the local church. But you must do it through your own testimony, through your own lifestyle, through your own neighbor, through your own community. It’s your job, not the pastor’s job, your job, to live your life in such a way that it reflects Jesus Christ and your neighbors find you attractive and they want to know what it is about you that’s different. You must evangelize your own population. and secondly a nation like america who’s a client nation to god must communicate bible doctrine to the believers in that nation we must have men in pulpits that teach god’s word faithfully we must have men in pulpits not men that are worried about building membership That’s all fine and dandy because you’ve got 25,000 members. That’s nice. But we need men in pulpits that will build mature believers, whether it’s 100 at a time or whether it’s 500 at a time, men who will study and teach, study and teach, study and teach, and sacrifice their life to teaching the Word of God to their congregation. Thirdly, we must be responsible for the custodianship of God’s Word. We’ve got to make sure that it’s not covered up, taken away, destroyed. There are a lot of people today that would like to do away with the Bible, do away with the Word of God. It’s already been taken out of the public venue. We’ve already done everything in the world we can to get rid of it in the public venue. We must be responsible to guard the Word of God. And next, we must provide a haven for the Jew. And God says, if you protect me, I’ll protect you. If you look out after them, I’ll look out after you. Those that you bless, I’ll bless. And those that curse them, I’ll curse you. It’s clear in the Bible. We must be a haven for the Jew. And thirdly and lastly, it’s responsible, we are a client nation, to send out missionaries around the world to evangelize other nations. So whether it’s in the Philippines, whether it’s in South America, whether it’s in the Russian continent, wherever it may be, Africa, wherever it is, there’s got to be missionaries going out, taking God’s Word, preaching God’s Word, leading people to Christ, introducing young men in the ministry to the Word of God so that they can pastor their own people. So when the importance of God’s word is ignored, when the word of God is shut down and people become ignorant about it, then the client nation status is in danger. For example, in Ephesians 4, 18 to 19, the Bible talks about scar tissue. People that have a lot of scar tissue, and we have that in America. I’m going to talk about that here in just a minute. A lot of hard hearts, people whose heart are very hard. If you read Ephesians 4, 18 and 19, you’ll see what scar tissue does to someone. And then in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, examine yourselves, Paul said, as to whether you’re in the faith. And this is what I’m asking you, examine yourself. Are you in the faith? I don’t mean are you saved, I mean are you growing? Test yourself. Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless you’ve been disqualified and that means you’re out of fellowship and you’re not growing and you’ve no longer remember the pivot and you’re going backwards. I hope that’s not you. So the pivot is the remnant of mature believers in a nation. Those people who become mature believers and adjust to God by their own positive volition to the word. If it’s a large pivot, then the nation is delivered. If it’s a small pivot, the nation’s in trouble. Because the size of the pivot in history determines the outcome of what’s going to happen to that nation. And the question I have to ask you is, what size is the pivot in America? Is there a large contingency of mature believers in this country? Or is there a large contingency of religious people in this country? Religion is not Christianity. Christianity is a relationship. As a believer in Jesus Christ with a personal relationship with him, He said, come unto me, all you that labor and heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest. He said, take my yoke and learn of me. Learn, learn, learn of me. You must learn. That’s why the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God. And work when it needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. If you don’t understand your way around the Bible, if you don’t understand what the Bible’s about, then even taking communion is a waste of time for you because you’re just doing the ritual and there’s no reality to it. There has to be a reality to it. You have to know what the cup represents. You have to know what the bread represents. It’s a test. Can you recall the doctrines that go in behind those articles of the communion? So if judgment falls on this nation, I promise you one thing. If you’re in the pivot, you’ll be secure. If you’ve adjusted to God’s word, you’ll be okay. Is the judgment going to fall on this nation? Well, I think possibly it may. You see, mature believers like you and hopefully like me, we’re supposed to be blessing by association. We’re supposed to have a historical impact. But if the pivot is small, then historical disaster is on the horizon. And it looks to me like the pivot is very small. very very small the united states as a client nation is reflected even in our constitution we still have all the ingredients but looks like things are getting worse i mean we have a pivot of mature believers but a lot of the believers are spinning off going into into reversionism backsliding a lot of evangelism is just lip service The Word of God is rarely taught properly or accurately anymore. A lot of missionaries no longer go out or go out and do everything but teach the Word of God. And we’re in trouble. You want to see how much trouble we’re in? Paul talks about it, and I’m going to read this to you. This comes out of 2 Timothy, where Paul talks about what’s going to happen in the last days. Now, that could be the last days in reference to the return of Jesus Christ in history. And I’m going to use it as the last days of a client nation like America. In the latter times of American history, it seems that the trends of the client nation begin to get emotional. Listen as I read this and see if you identify with it, with what’s going on in the United States of America. And if you do, you can see why God is holding us accountable. Realize this, 2 Timothy 3, 1 through 7. In the last days, difficult times will come because men will be lovers of self. Lovers of self. This is one of the arrogant skills is called self-absorption. Arrogant people self-justify. They self-deceive and they get self-absorbed. Self-absorption means you think you’re something you’re not. You have an unrealistic self-image of your life. If you have an unrealistic self-image, you expect people to treat you in a way you’re not worthy of being treated. So men are going to be lovers of self and lovers of money. Well, that’s easy. Frantic search for happiness in the details of life. Everybody trying to say, you know, you got to have life’s a tough thing. The more bread you got, the easier it is to swallow. So you think money’s going to be the cure, money’s going to make you happy, give you security. Wrong. The Bible’s clear on that. But this is lovers of money, can’t wait to get it. Frantic search for happiness. And then it talks about they would be boastful, excessive pride in their achievements. Arrogant, revilers. using verbal abuse and slander to malign because of even your faith. They will malign you, slander you, criticize you. Here’s a key. It’s not patriotism that holds this nation together. I’m patriotic. You’re patriotic. I love our flag. You love the flag. What holds us together is our spiritual heritage. What holds us together is our spiritual heritage, and that’s what we’re losing. So disobedient to parents, that’s where we start losing it right there. Breakdown of authority in the home. Ungrateful. No appreciation for what is provided, especially freedom. that was bought and paid for by blood, the sacrifice of the lives of many great, wonderful American men and women who died in combat to give you freedom, and you no longer appreciate it. And if there’s ever a nation that has no appreciation for the sacrifice of the military, it is us today in one way. It’s unbelievable. Unholy, which means no respect for God or his word. Unloving, verse 3, 2 Timothy 3.3. Unloving, that’s not the word for love normally found there, agapao or phileo, but this is a word called astorgos, and that Greek word means without any affection, inhuman. And then the Bible goes on to say they’ll be irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal people, haters of good, treacherous. Wow. Does that sound like this client nation to you? As I’m reading it to you here today, conceited, there’s another unrealistic self-image of insolence and pride, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. In other words, people begin to love the gift and forget who the giver is. And then verse five, holding a form of godliness, although they deny the power. That’s a self-righteous pretender who acts like a Christian, sounds like a Christian, walks like a Christian, but he’s not. He’s a pretender. Avoid these people, the Bible says. And it’s the imperative mood in the Greek New Testament. This is not a request. This is a mandate to stay away from these idiots that act like this, that live like this. you’re not to associate with them because we live in a society that has no restraints and no values. We live in a nation that thrives on emotion, both in politics and in religion. All you gotta do is watch TV and look at the Supreme Court nominee and you talk about emotions out of control. The future generation of young Americans that are coming up behind you and me have a heavy amount of scar tissue in their life because they’ve been into things they shouldn’t have ever been into. They’ve been into premarital sex. They’ve been into drugs. They’ve been into alcohol. They’ve been into everything you can imagine at 14, 15, 16 years old. No ability to concentrate is another problem, and that’s what happens when there’s a lot of scar tissue. No ability to concentrate, and the conscience is destroyed. So what we have is a nation full of scarred up conscience, young people that are about to come on the scene to take charge, don’t have a clue what it’s about, and here we are sitting here as believers a generation that’s going to be passing away soon, what are we leaving them? What are we leaving them? What are you leaving them? What are you leaving your children and your grandchildren? Are you the man God called you to be? It’s a reasonable expectation. It’s not unreasonable. God is looking for a few good, well-qualified men like you and me and ladies as well. So please listen. Please pay attention. Please pray for our nation that we survive the coming years. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Floodline.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
