In this episode, experience the assurance of God’s unfailing love. Delve into the various aspects of love as defined in the Bible and learn about the importance of divine viewpoint thinking. Understand how unwavering confidence in God’s love can act as your greatest defense mechanism, empowering you to live a life free of fear and guilt. With a focus on the immutable love that God offers, Rick outlines practical insights to help navigate life’s challenges with faith and humility.
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 Flotline, Flot, F-L-O-T. I’m Rick Hughes, your host, and for the next few minutes, stick around. I repeated Flotline. Sometimes people get that mixed up and they think Flatline. It’s not a Flatline. It’s a Flotline. The FLOT line stands for the Forward Line of Troops. We’re using a military analogy here to describe how the Christian life works. The Word of God forms a main line of resistance in your soul to stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside sources of stress. Adversity, as you well know, is unavoidable. I mean, it’s going to happen. But stress is optional. It’s up to you. You can refuse to give in to that sort of stuff. No need to worry. No need to be afraid. No need to live in guilt. No need to live in fear. That’s not the Christian life. So the Flatline teaches you 10 unique problem-solving devices found in the Bible. And this is not something new. This is not some new discovery. This is not some book we’re trying to sell you. This is simply something my pastor taught me many years ago. And when we learn these 10 unique biblical problem-solving devices, then we can use them to stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. So that’s why we always say God gave you two ends, one end you can think with and one end you can sit on. And success in your Christian life will depend on which one of those ends you use. Heads, you’ll win. Tails, you’ll lose. What does the Bible say about that? It says, let this mind be in you, that was also in Christ Jesus. That’s telling you which end to use. Use your head. The Christian life is lived in your thoughts, in your brain. That’s where your soul exists. And that’s why the Bible says, as a man thinketh in himself, so he is. That’s you. The real you is what you think. And the consideration is whether you’re going to think divine viewpoint, which is based upon what the Bible teaches, or whether you’re going to take human viewpoint, which is based on what your friends may tell you, or what the news may tell you, or what the world may tell you. But divine viewpoint is the way to think. That’s why the Bible says in Romans 12, three, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance, beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility. as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. There’s divine viewpoint thinking, thinking from his word. So let’s remember that as we go through our studies. We’re always talking about the spiritual life, And the spiritual life is lived with inside of you. That’s what we do. We want you to orient and adjust to the spiritual life. If we can verify it and identify it, you can orient and adjust if you want to. Thank you for listening. We have our show now being podcast across America. on the various podcast venues such as Apple iPod or Spotify or Breaker or Anchor. Any of these podcast venues, you can pick up The Flot Line. Also, we began to offer transcriptions of our various messages that we give every Sunday morning on your radio station. And so if you’d like a transcription, we can email it to you or print it out and mail it to you, and you can read over it. We are printing a book now in the process. And it will include the whole year of 2019. All of the Flatline radio shows will be in print in three different books, four months at a time. And you can access that free of charge if you’d like. So just let us know. You can always go to our website, rickhughesministries.org, request any of the things that you need. We’ll be glad to fulfill those requests at no charge ever. Okay, now here is the greatest truth that’s ever been told. Absolutely, the number one greatest truth that’s ever been told. Here it is, God loves you. You say, me? That’s right, God loves you. Now, my particular pastor spent a lot of years talking about the unfailing love of God, even wrote a book about the unfailing love of God. And it is something that taught me so many things about the love of God. God’s love for us and our love for him. Many years ago, I remember reading about a lonely, abused teenage girl who allowed so many males to abuse her, and she said she did it because she was just looking for someone to love her. Well, I’m not trying to humanize our mighty God, but I’m taking this approach so that we can urge you to experience the reality of God’s love in your life every day. That’s what I’d like for you to realize. I’d like for you to come to realize that, that he’s dealt with our sin, He’s demonstrated mercy, mercy to those who accept the gift of Jesus Christ, sacrificial death on their behalf. And thus the guilt of all sin should be removed by faith alone in Christ alone. And it should be replaced with absolute confidence in his love for you. Now, you should know the mechanics of love, personal love, impersonal love. It’s part of the problem-solving devices, problem-solving device number seven and number eight, the virtue of love. We call it the virtue love series, personal love for God, impersonal love for your neighbor. Now, I want you to experience not the mechanics but the confidence. the confidence of his love for you, and I would like for you to embrace that confidence, to grip it, to grasp it, receive it, and believe it and use it in your life. God truly does love you. The greatest truth ever been told. He demonstrates that with his compassion, with his patience, with his forgiveness, with his concern, with his protection, every moment of every day. If you don’t believe me, listen to what Paul wrote in the Bible, Romans 8, 38 and 39, about God’s patience, forgiveness, concern, protection, compassion. Here it is, Romans 8, 38 and 39. I am persuaded… That Greek word persuaded is pathio, P-E-I-T-H-O, pathio. I am persuaded or I have absolute confidence that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. There are several words for love in the Bible. We’re going to look at those, but this word is agape, agape. Oh, so nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God. In 1 John 4, 8, John wrote, he that loveth not knoweth not God, because God is love. Now, God is justice and righteousness. We understand that. And what the What the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God is forced to judge. But all of this is wrapped up in God is love. He loves you. He would judge you in love. He will forgive you in love. In John 5, 42, again, I know you, Jesus said to the religious leaders, you do not have the love of God in you. He could tell because of the way they acted, they didn’t have it. In John 3, 16, a verse you’re very familiar with, the reason God sent his son. God so loved the world that he gave his uniquely born son so that whoever believed in him would not have to perish. but have everlasting life. In this verse, God revealed himself to us with this one word, God so loved the world. The written word, the Bible, is his revelation to us of his divine character. That’s where we learn about this amazing love that God has for you and for me. The Bible. Now let’s say about the Bible, 2 Timothy 3.16. All scripture that’s in the Bible is inspired by God and it’s profitable for teaching and for reproof. for correction and for training in righteousness. That’s why you hear me constantly referring to the Bible, to scripture, not human viewpoint, not rationalization, not some kind of empirical data, but the scripture, faith, this is what it is. All of the scriptures are inspired by God and profitable for teaching. When I’m teaching you that God loves you, that is for your profit. It is a wonderful problem-solving device. God loves you. In the faith rest drill, you can stand on those promises found in the Bible. In Proverbs 30, verse 5, every word of God is tested. That means every word of God is proven true. He, that’s God, is a shield to those who take refuge in him. That’s amazing. That’s how much God loves you. He protects you. He watches over you. He blesses you. And many people, sadly, they don’t think they can be loved. They think they’ve done something bad. They have the wrong view of what love really is. I don’t know. Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’ve done something that’s absolutely horrible, and you know it is. and you feel like you’re unlovable because of some failure in your life in the past. I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care where you are, free or not free. God loves you. In Romans 5.5, the Bible clearly says hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit who was given to us. In 1 John 3, 1, behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the sons of God. If you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are a son or a daughter of God by faith alone in Christ alone. That’s the love God poured out on you. He made it available for you to be brought into his royal family. You know, when two people get married, they express their love for one another by the vows that they take and the tokens that they give. And their love for one another is really mesmerizing to each other. But that does not even come close to the love that God has for you. Because God’s love would never vary, even in your darkest failures. His love never, ever varies. Do you remember the illustration our Lord Jesus Christ gave of the prodigal son who wasted everything on while living and came back home and said, Father, forgive me? And you remember how the father loved him and welcomed him back? This is exactly what happens through rebound in your life. You can get out of fellowship today. You can commit sin. You may be judged for your sin, just as the prodigal son was disciplined until he came to his senses and went home. But God never quits loving you. You may be involved in something right now that’s dishonest. You may be involved in something right now that’s immoral, but God loves you. He’s not mad at you. He doesn’t hate you. He loves you. And his token to you, just as a man and a woman would give a ring as a token, his token to you in demonstration of his love is this. Ephesians 1.13, this is what he gives you. In whom you also trusted, after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after you believed, here it comes, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. God’s guarantee mark on your life is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Now, the filling of the Holy Spirit is different. You can quench the Holy Spirit with your personal sin and grieve the Holy Spirit, but you can recover the filling of the Spirit by using problem-solving device number one, and that’s the rebound technique where it says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us. So, our point of reference for the operational spiritual life that we’re trying to live is indeed the love of God. It’s our security, it’s our comfort, and coming from us, our love for God. There’s the two different loves, the love of God for you and your love for him. The love of God, our security and our comfort, and our love for God, that is the greatest virtue that you could ever possess. Personal love for God is a tremendous virtue. That’s why the Bible says, In 1 John 5, 3, if you love me, you will obey me, and my mandates are not hard. So ask yourself this question, okay? Does God really love you? Does he? Is that some kind of term that some biblical theory or can you really prove it? Does he really love you? And here’s another question. Is this love something you can feel in your life? You can experience it, you know, emotions. Can you feel it? And can you get God to love you more? Can you get closer to him than you’ve ever been? And here’s another question. Would you be jealous if God loved me more than he loved you? That’s a good question. So here’s some principles. The first one is this. The love of God never changes towards us. The love of God never changes towards us. He’s immutable or unchangeable and it doesn’t change. So there is no such thing, point two, as the diminishing of God’s love because of our failure. So one, the love of God never changes towards us. And point two, there is no such thing as the diminishing of God’s love because we fail. He loves you just as much in your failure as he does in your successes. You may walk away from God, but he will love you from behind. So point three, God’s love for us will never and does never change, demonstrated by the cross. And point four, it maintains the same intensity. We cannot do anything to change God’s love for us. Point five, he may approve of what you’re doing. He may disapprove of what you’re doing. But love or not never changes. It’s not a matter of does he love you or not love you. It’s a matter of does he approve of what you’re doing or does he disapprove of what you’re doing. So let’s just start with this word, L-O-V-E, love. Most misused word in the world. You know, you have to watch out for a mouth full of teeth that says, I love you, baby. Look out. That’s not love. That may be emotion, but that’s probably not love. The characteristic of God is a tremendous problem-solving device. This love of God, a tremendous problem-solving device. But the real issue may not be, does God love you? The real issue may be, do you love him? That might be the issue. You know, Peter said in 1 Peter 1.8, whom having not seen, you love. Do you love God? I mean, we know he loves you, but do you love God? Let’s look at these words in the Bible about love. Agape, the word we have in the Bible for love, the noun agape and the verb agapao. The verb agapao means to have a virtue-driven love. Your love for God is the greatest virtue you have. The cognitive noun is the word agape, characterized by devotion and respect in your life. What does the Bible say about respecting God? Does it have anything to say about that? You better believe it. Proverbs 1-7, Respect for the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So a total soul love that you should have as virtue in your life is based on your respect and your reverence for God who loves you. A lack of love for God can be seen in your arrogant intelligence, artificially motivated by your own arrogance. Proverbs 3, 7 talks about this. Don’t be wise in your own eyes. That’s the delusional daydreamer we’ve talked about on this radio show. Wise in your own eyes is a person steeped in human viewpoint that thinks he knows all the answers. He doesn’t believe the Bible is relevant to his life, or he or she may indeed be a Christian and just ignore the Bible and make decisions based on emotions. Every decision you make is going to be based on one of two things. It’s either going to be based on what you think or what you feel. It has to be. There’s no other way to make a decision. And if you are a daydreamer, deluded, you’re probably going to make decisions based on what you feel. And so that’s not necessarily the love of God. That’s arrogant intelligence. So agapao, this is the verb, the one we’re talking about, this wonderful love of God, respect for the Lord, is the beginning of knowledge. This is where all wisdom comes from. It starts with being respectful and reverential towards God himself and believing and understanding that God loves you and has a perfect plan for your life. But there’s another word for love found in the Bible. It’s always translated in English, L-O-V-E. But in the original manuscripts, it could be agapao, or it could be phileo, P-H-I-L-E-O, phileo. And we get the word Philadelphia from that. The word phileo, or to love, is used for an intimate love, and it means to have some sort of strong affection, to regard or treat someone as your own. And it’s a love among members of a family. And this is interesting, that all discipline from God comes from family love. He loves us. We’re in his family. So he doesn’t discipline us because he hates us, and he doesn’t discipline us because he’s mad at us. He disciplines us in love, just as a parent would do to a child, trying to break the arrogant streak in the child and keep that child from self-destructing in their own life later because they can’t handle authority. This is what every parent must do. They must orient their child to authority, and God does this as well. He punishes us in love. You don’t believe that? Listen to Hebrews 12, 6. Those whom the Lord loves, agapao, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. This love discipline keeps you and I from self-destructing if we will listen and take heed. This agapao is a specialized soul love which requires the filling of the Holy Spirit in our life And phileo is a complete and total soul love and rapport, and that’s developed over a period of time. Those are words from my former pastor, Colonel R.B. Thame, Jr., who pastored his church in Houston, Texas, for 53 years. These are his words. Agapao is a specialized soul love which requires the filling of the Holy Spirit, and phileo being a complete and total soul love and rapport must be developed over a period of time. So principle, when love emphasizes the object, it’s personal. And when it emphasizes the subject, it’s impersonal. We have two loves, personal and impersonal. God loves you impersonally when it says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You were a sinner. You were in sin. And he gave his son who became your substitute on the cross. He was judged in your place. So on the cross, there’s the judgment. Now, God allowed that to happen because he loved you. You were his creation. When you believe in Jesus Christ and receive him as your Savior, you’re brought into the family of God by being given the righteousness of Christ. Listen again. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. So when we receive that equivalent righteousness, Christ took our sin. He gives us his righteousness. Now this impersonal love that God has for us becomes personal. Now we’re part of the family of God, and it’s a personal love. It’s amazing. There’s another word in the Bible that we’ve given you two words, akapao and phileo. Now we’re going to go to arao. Arao is the word, we get an English word from it, erotic. And that’s a love of passion. And it’s based on body chemistry. And it actually can control and seize control of your mind. You have to be very careful about erotic type stuff. I don’t think there’s anything as addictive as erotic images or what we know today as pornography, which is freely distributed over the social media today. It is one of the most addictive things in the world. And then there’s another word for love, our fourth word, storge. S-T-O-R-G-E, storge. And that’s translated in the Bible without natural affection. In Romans 1.31, in Romans 12.10, 2 Timothy 3.3, storge. No love without natural affection. So we have agapao, phileo, arao, and storge. Now, These four words are the words for love in the Greek New Testament. Now, the Greek New Testament doesn’t use the word erao anywhere, but it’s a Greek word. We know about that. So here’s the question. What proof do you have that God loves you with his impersonal love? Because as someone once said, he knows me better than I know my own self, and he does. God knows you better than you know yourself. Did you realize that? Listen to what the Bible said in Psalm 139. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. David wrote this. You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thoughts from afar off, and you comprehended my path and my lying down, and you are acquainted with all of my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, you, O Lord, know it altogether. God knows you better than you know yourself. and again in psalm 139 13 and 14 for you form my inward parts you covered me in my mother’s womb i will praise you for i am fearfully and wonderfully made marvelous are your works and that my soul knows very well god knows you better than you know yourself Because you and I are a product of what we call a divine design. A divine design. In Jeremiah 29, 11 through 13, for I know the thoughts that I think towards you, God said. That’s the divine design. Says the Lord, I think of peace and not of evil. I think to give you a future and a hope. And then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart. I hope that’s what you’re doing. I hope you are searching for God’s will in your life, motivated by the fact that he loves you and you reciprocate that love by loving him. In 1 John 4, 9, by this the love of God was manifested to us that God sent his only begotten son into the world so that we might live through him. That’s how we know he loves us. And in 1 John 4, 10, in this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us. and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sin. That’s how much God loves you. He gave his only begotten son. There’s so much more to say about this, and I will give you some demonstrations of that love, how it plays out in your life in the next radio show. but I hope this is making sense to you because I want you to understand the critical concept. God loves you. Sure, you failed. Sure, you’ve messed up. Sure, you’ve done some dumb and stupid things, but he loves you. He hasn’t given up on you. Maybe you gave up on yourself, but he hasn’t given up on you. I hope you will use problem-solving device number one, rebound, confess your sin to God. He will be faithful and just to forgive you. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
