In this episode of The Flatline, host Rick Hughes dives into the intricate layers of spiritual growth and the importance of nurturing one’s spiritual life. From exploring divine institutions to the critical role of volition and the soul’s mentality, Rick provides listeners with a comprehensive look at how a mature spiritual life influences both personal and national well-being. As he wraps up his series on the family, learn about the unseen yet powerful impact a strong spiritual foundation can have in combating societal challenges and personal struggles.
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.
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Good morning and welcome to The Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long, just about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and done with no manipulation because we do not con people. We’re not hustling money. We’re not trying to sell you a product. We’re not asking you to join anything. But we would like for you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify God’s plan for your life. And if I’m able to do that, then you can orient and adjust to the plan if you want to. It’s your life, your decision, and remember, bad decisions limit future options. God gave you two ends, one to sit with and one to think with. Success in your life will depend on which one you use, I promise you. No one once said, heads you win, tails you lose, so listen carefully. In the last few shows, I mentioned to you that after the new year begins, we’ll start dropping a few stations and adding some new ones. I’ve really been humbled by all the requests that have come in both by email and voicemail and where many have said, please don’t quit broadcasting in my town. I assure you, we’ve been very cautious in making these decisions. I state again, it’s not because of finances. That’s not the point. God has faithfully provided all of our financial needs since we started this journey 20 years ago. These decisions are based on lack of interest in that specific location or that town where that show plays. And that just simply means there’s no request coming in for material, no contact from listeners. So if you are in one of these locations, you can still access the show even if we go off the air on your local radio station by going to rickhughesministries.com. on the internet, rickhughesministries.org. And if you will click on the tab that says Flotline, F-L-O-T, Flotline, then you can hear every show we’ve ever done. They are all posted there on the internet on our website for your listening 24 hours a day. You can also access the shows via podcast platforms such as Apple iPod or Spotify, both for free apps. both of them can be downloaded on your cell phone or your ipad tablet so if you want to listen you can do it that way as well in case we dropped your particular station in your town but thank you for all of you that have called and said please don’t drop it in my city we’re taking that into consideration today we’ll wrap up our study on the family if you just tuned in let me bring you up to speed so you’ll understand what i’m talking about In the beginning of this series, I told you the family is one of God’s divine institutions. Remember, there are four divine institutions that God has established for the orderly function of the human race. And these four divine institutions apply to Christians as well as non-Christians, regardless of race or gender. While dealing with the family, I began to study using family as an acrostic. We studied, for example, Elf stood for fathers. who are essential in the family. We studied A, and I said would deal with authority and authority orientation, which is critical in raising your children. We studied the word M for mothers, the letter M for mothers and their essential role in the family. We also took the letter L and related it to, letter I, excuse me, and related it to intercessory prayer, which is the job of each family member praying for one another. We took the letter L and related it to God’s logistical grace provisions for all members of the human race, including family members. Today we will wrap up this study of the acrostic family by looking at the letter Y. What is Y going to stand for? I’m going to use Y to stand for your spiritual life. Your, Y-O-U-R, spiritual life. You know, I heard our outgoing president in a recent speech saying that we are in a struggle for the soul of America. I guess he was relating to the Democratic Party being in a struggle for the soul of America. I wondered what he meant by those words and what he was implying. And here is my conclusion. I know that every individual has a soul. There’s no doubt about that. It’s the invisible, immortal part of your personal makeup. For example, your body will die. I’ve done many funerals, conducted many funerals, and watched many people die, but their soul lives on forever, and hopefully in a resurrection body, hopefully enjoying eternity with their Heavenly Father. But I believe the soul possesses volition, which is your ability to choose. You choose to listen to this radio show. You can change the channel or turn off the radio. But if you’re listening, you used your volition. You chose it. Your soul has mentality, and that’s your ability to think, logic, reason, comprehend, and conclude. Your soul has a conscience, and this is where you house all your norms and standards. what’s right, what’s wrong, freedom, privacy, patriotism, things like this. So you have norms and standards in your soul, and that’s exactly what parents are supposed to plant, good norms and standards in the lives of their young people. And your soul has a self-consciousness, and this is an undue awareness of one’s appearance or one’s action. So, in other words, you can go stand in front of a mirror with five other people and pick yourself out. You have self-consciousness. The mentality of the soul is where we’re supposed to have insight, where we’re supposed to have discernment and understanding, three critical things in your life you must have if you’re going to make good decisions. Insight, discernment, and understanding. The question we have to ask is how do you dumb down the soul of an individual? And the answer is simple, change the way they think. If you can change the way they think, you can infiltrate a person’s mentality then obviously you can control their decisions. Progressive politics in our current nation is an attempt to change the way young people think. It begins with a public lie. If you tell it often enough, if you tell it long enough, then people will begin to believe it. And by the way, this is a tactic of the devil, it’s his specialty. In John 8, 44, our Lord Jesus Christ made these words. He said these words. You are of your father, the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He’s talking to the religious crowd now, the scribes and Pharisees, the Sadducees that were persecuting him. He went on to say about Satan, he was a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks, he speaks a lie. He speaks from his own resources because he is a liar and the father of all lies. Lying is interesting. It’s a type of manipulation. When our Lord said in John 8, 32, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, he wasn’t talking about you shall know a lie and the lie will deceive you and entrap you. Truth frees you. Our Lord Jesus Christ was implying that by understanding who he is and by putting your trust in him for your eternal salvation, then you will be redeemed from sin and free from satanic deception. Listen to John 8, 12. Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, thank goodness, but have the light of life notice again in john 6 excuse me in john 8 23 and 24 he said to them you are from beneath i am from above you are of this world i am not of this world therefore i said to you that you will die in your sins for if you do not believe that i am he You will die in your sins. If you are redeemed from the slave market of sin, if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, no longer do you have to walk in darkness, and that’s the lie. No longer do you have to be deceived. You can have the light of life or the light of the word of God in your soul that gives you insight, discernment, and understanding. Your spiritual life that we’re talking about, the critical piece for the family, the spiritual life of each individual in that family, the father, the mother, the siblings, the youth, the brothers, the sisters, That begins the moment they believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior. That’s called being born again, the biblical term, born again. Once you make that decision, you begin a new life. He that believes in him shall never perish and have everlasting life, and he that believes not, the wrath of God abides on him already. And Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, told Nicodemus personally in John 3.16 that he needed to be born again. What exactly is born again mean? What’s he talking about? Well, in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, again, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, and that’s what happens when you get saved, you are a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Now, it’s obviously when I received Christ as my Savior back in 1967, I didn’t change outside. I still looked the same. Still big, ugly guy as I always was, but inside something changed. Inside, I had a new life in Christ. I had a dead human spirit that was made alive. See, I was born physically alive, but spiritually dead. And by receiving Christ as my Savior, I was made spiritually alive. That’s when my spiritual life began. The moment I believed in Christ and accepted him as my Savior, I became a third person. I have a body, I have a soul that lives forever, and I have a human spirit indwelled by God, the Holy Spirit, that allows me to have a relationship with God the Father. So if I have this new life, which I do, it required a new way of thinking. So in other words, now that I’m a Christian and now that Christ lives in me, now that my human spirit is made alive by means of the Holy Spirit, now I have to learn how to think and not think the lie. In Philippians chapter two, verse five, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, the apostle Paul wrote. In other words, you have to learn to think like he thought and humility was his mindset. There may be things you’ve believed in the past in your life, but now, once you accept Christ as your Savior, you have to recover from that retarded way of thinking. Thus, we have the new spiritual life, your spiritual life, a new way of living, the new you inside. No one will see it on the outside, but God will recognize it because he is a spirit, and those that worship him, the Bible says, must worship him in spirit and in truth. This new spiritual life requires you learn how to function in it. What are your assets? What are your abilities that you now possess? What is this new spiritual life? Hopefully we’ll be able to have a book out about this very soon. My friends and I are working on this book and we’re trying to get it all together about your spiritual life so that you’ll be able to comprehend it, understand it, and pass it on to other people if you’d like to. But it begins with a new way of thinking, as I said. Learn how to think. That’s why we have mandates like 2 Peter 3.18. That’s a mandate. That’s a command from God through the Apostle Peter. Here’s what he said, 2 Peter 3.18. But grow in the grace and in the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s not a request, that’s a mandate. Grow is a verb, and in that verb we do the morphology of that verb, and we know from the Greek morphology that that is a present, active, imperative verb. He’s not asking believers to grow, he’s telling them to grow. And grow in what? In the grace, prepositional phrase, in the grace and knowledge of what? Of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So here’s what you can get from that. If you’re not growing, you’re sinning. If you’re not growing, you’re sinning. How would you know if you’re growing? Well, are you learning anything? Are you learning any new biblical concepts? Are you studying the scripture? You shouldn’t go a week or two living the same life. You’re supposed to learn. Look at an infant. They learn how to crawl. They learn how to walk. They learn how to talk. They learn how to eat. They learn how to stand. They learn how to whatever. You have to learn these things. And that’s why you’re told by the Apostle Peter, grow up as a Christian. Learn about grace. What do you know about grace? Saving grace, living grace, dying grace, surpassing grace. all grace provisions. What do you know about our Lord Jesus Christ? Undiminished deity, true humanity, and one body forever. We call that the hypostatic union. He who knew no sin was made sin for us. There’s knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There’s a lot in that verse. If I just took 2 Peter 3.18 and taught that verse in a local church to a Sunday school class or even to a congregation, I could teach on that verse for a while. That’s why we have the mandate. Spiritual growth means For the spiritual life requires that we study the scriptures and we apply what we learn, if we learn anything. Why do we have to apply it? So we can replicate the life of Christ and thus introduce the world to him. The profile of an individual with a fully developed spiritual life is found in Galatians 5, 22 and 23. Check this out against your own profile. Your personality traits, see if any of this applies to you. I call it the personality trait of a mature believer or the profile of the spiritual life. The fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5, 22 and 23, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Now, how long do you think I could teach on that one? If I taught a class on this, we could spend a whole lot of time talking about the virtue of love and personal love and personal love. So my friend and I were talking to him the other day about why did the Lord Jesus Christ go to the cross? Why did he just not tell the Father, no, I’m not going to do it? He did pray, if this is your will, let this cup pass away from me, but nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. Why was that? Because he loved his heavenly Father. Personal love for God is so great that it motivates us to be obedient. And he was obedient to his Heavenly Father’s will even to death. So we could study love for a long time. And joy is a mental attitude. Peace is a mental attitude. Long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. My goodness, we could study all of this. One verse at a time, one word at a time. And it may take as much as a year to go through that verse and break every one of those down. so we would understand what each one of them is. That’s the profile that the mature believer has in his spiritual life. Personality traits like this are a replication of what our Lord Jesus Christ thought while he functioned in the devil’s world. And they can also be yours if, and I say if, conditional clause, if you follow the protocol plan of God. And that plan is best observed by understanding and using the flat line in your soul. That’s why God gave it to you, so that you can have a flat line. 10 unique problem-solving devices that encapsulate your spiritual life. Your spiritual life can’t function without rebound. That’s 1 John 1, 9. Your spiritual life can’t function without the filling of the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 5, 18. Your spiritual life cannot function without the faithless drill. Your spiritual life cannot function without orienting to grace and orienting to the Word of God, grace orientation, doctrinal orientation. Your spiritual life cannot function without a personal sense of destiny, understanding, knowing what God’s plan for your life is, what your spiritual gift is, and where God designed you to serve. Your spiritual life can’t function without having personal love for God, which is your motivational virtue, and impersonal love for everyone, which is your functional virtue. And if all these things are at work in your life, you will share the happiness of God and you will be occupied with the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the flat line in your soul, those 10 unique problem solving devices. If you don’t know them, why don’t you write to me and get the book, Christian Problem Solving. We list them all and we break them all down in the book Christian Problem Solving. And it’s free. Just go to my website. Click on the books. Go down to the bottom and order Christian Problem Solving. And we will send you the book on the Christian Problem Solving Flatline of your soul so you’ll understand how each one of them works. Okay? Please do that. So now listen. As a parent or even a grandparent, if I’m talking to you, you may be a grandparent like my wife and I. Your job is to protect the soul of your precious children or your grandchildren. How do we do that? Well, we do that by planting the word of God in their souls mentality at a very young age. Maybe by just having them bow their head and say the blessing. They learn that there is a God and you’re asking God to bless the food. Why do you say the blessing? So you don’t get sick. You pray over the food for God to sanctify it, set it apart so it doesn’t make you sick, and thank him for what he gave you. That’s why. So we do that with our grandchildren and our children just to instill the idea that there is a God and he is in charge. Don’t forget the devil wants to hijack the thinking of your children and hijack the thinking of your grandchildren. And he will use all available means to do this. He wants to battle for your soul, as the ex-president said. We’re in a war for the battle for the soul of the American people. No, we’re not. We’re in a war to lift up Christ and make him plain. We’re in a battle for their spiritual life, for their eternal life. Subtle messages in TV, cartoons, internet, websites, social media influence. All these things are mostly designed to lure the spiritually retarded person into the cosmic vortex where destruction and disaster will be guaranteed in his life. That’s why 1 Peter 5, 8 said, be sober. Be vigilant because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion seeking who he can devour. You have a choice. If you’re a believer, if you’re not growing, you’re going to become lion bait. And I don’t have to tell you what a lion does after he eats. That’s what you’re going to wind up being, a pile of lion defecation. I hope that’s not true, but unless you learn the word of God, unless you sober up and are diligent, unless you begin to understand and apply the word of God to your spiritual life, that’s exactly what’s going to happen to you. You’re going to die. You’re going to go to heaven. You’re going to have eternal life, but you’re not ever going to replicate the life of Christ. You’re never going to be able to represent him to your friends. You’re never going to be able to bring God any glory because you functioned outside the flood line. You didn’t have a flood line. You never learned the plan of God for your life. You made your own plan up. You did things your way. As many times as I encourage you to get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, and yet you don’t do it. You say, oh, well, I just listened to you on Sunday morning. Now I get a little nice little message. That’s not what my radio show’s about. I’m not here to give you a nice little message. I’m here to challenge you to grow up to get with it so that your spiritual life will take centerpiece so that you will be able to glorify God to the maximum and your family will have a maximum impact in this nation. To most conservative individuals, it appears that God may have granted a reprieve to this nation. by allowing a person of their choice to be installed as the next president coming up very soon. It’s the hope of many that this next person that would have been elected will help us restore traditional values to our national institutions. Perhaps those things will happen. I hope it does. But I caution you not to depend on a man and not to depend on a woman to restore order or to bring change to this ailing nation. Listen to what the scriptures say. Hebrews 17.5, thus say the Lord, cursed is the man who puts his trust in man and who makes man his strength, flesh his strength, from whose heart will depart from the Lord. So the true solution to the stability, the peacefulness, the prosperous function in our nation lies in your spiritual life, in your soul’s mentality, because that’s where it is. As goes that, so goes your spiritual life. So goes the course of this nation. Perhaps you’ve heard me quote these verses that talk about God’s discipline on a nation. But I want you to listen to them again, okay? Hosea 4, 1 through 3. Listen carefully. See if you can figure out why a nation goes under divine discipline and is destroyed. Nations such as ours. Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel. For the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land. Hosea 4, 1 through 3. There is no truth, no mercy, and no knowledge of God in the land. by swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery. Well, that’s America right there. They break all restraint with bloodshed upon bloodshed. Therefore, the land will mourn, and everyone who dwells there will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Even the fish of the sea will be taken away. Now, you may ask, why would these things happen to a nation like America? Well, the answer is found in the following verses, Hosea 4, 6. Here it is. Listen carefully. My people, and we believe we are, America is God’s land, are destroyed, and we can be, for lack of knowledge. Knowledge. Because you rejected knowledge, I will reject you from being a priest nation for me. Because you forgot the laws of your God, I will forget your children. That’s why it’s critical that you have a spiritual life so that your children will have freedom in the future because as goes your spiritual life, so goes the freedom of this nation. National degeneration is a result of failing to anchor your spiritual life in the word of God. I don’t care who we elect as our leader. If we continue to ignore the mandates to grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, then national destruction is just a matter of time. So I encourage you to make your spiritual life priority number one by staying filled with the Holy Spirit and by getting under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor who can shepherd your soul. Because if you continue to put your hope in a politician, you’re going to be disillusioned and eventually disappointed. One well-qualified, squared-away pastor-teacher is much more valuable than any political leader, I promise you. The spiritual life of the mature Christian will represent Christ to those in his periphery and will bring the gospel to those who are lost. Your ministry and my ministry on this planet is not to promote a political party, but to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ and declare God’s plan for all. Romans 10, 14 says, How shall they call upon him whom they have not believed? And how say they believe in him whom they’ve not heard? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how say they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, and they bring glad tidings of good things. So I leave you this morning with one final thought. The impact of the spiritually mature believer can be visible or invisible, but very powerful. Blessing by association to others. National blessing as a member of the pivot which stabilizes the nation. International impact through missionary outreach. Angelic impact by being a witness for the prosecution of Satan and his attempt to avoid eternal damnation and lake of fire. This powerful, invisible impact will only be revealed in eternity at the judgment seat of Christ. That’s why your spiritual life is so important. Gee, I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re paying attention. We can provide these notes for you and a transcript if you need us. Just get a hold of us through our website or contact us at our 800 number. We’ll be glad to help you. If you call, remember, we don’t always answer the phone early in the morning on Sunday morning, okay? So remember that. If you want to call 800-831-0718, 800-831-0718. We’ll do all we can to provide you with this information. But my prayer is you’ll get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, you’ll grow in grace, and you’ll replicate the life of Christ. That’s my prayer for you. So thank you for listening this morning. Thank you for listening to my series on the family. Beginning next week, we’ll move into a new topic. So until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you so much 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.
