Join host Rick Hughes as he delves into the profound concept of God’s problem-solving devices. Discover how these timeless tools have been guiding believers for centuries, offering solutions that help prevent external adversities from turning into internal stress. Hughes unravels the eternal battle between the spiritual and the carnal, emphasizing the need for wisdom and constant spiritual growth in leading a life free from worry, jealousy, and fear.
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 give me some time stick around stay with me we’re talking about understanding what god’s problem-solving devices consist of it’s called a main line of resistance or a flot plot line in your soul forward line of troops is a military term And we’re talking about learning 10 unique problem-solving devices. When you learn them and use them, and they are nothing new. These are things that have been in the Bible for centuries. So we didn’t develop some new program we’re trying to sell you or anything like that. This show is not about that. but about learning the problem-solving devices and using them so you can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. Most of us have situations in our life that can cause stress And most of the time, in fact, it is self-induced. We mismanage our health. We mismanage our money. We mismanage our relationships. We just mismanage everything, and we create problems in our life. Part of that is because we have a sin nature. That’s the one thing that can never be changed by the socialists today who would I’d like to change our government and make sure that everybody has a fair break in life, but everybody doesn’t have a fair break. We’re not all the same. We’re all equal under the eyes of the government. We all have equal opportunity and equal privilege to vote and earn a job and learn, but we’re different. Some people weigh 150. Some people weigh 250. So the 150 guy is not going to be an All-American football player. We’re different. But we’re not different internally. We have the same sin nature. And nothing that we do in government can eradicate the sin nature. You can give a person money. You can give them a new home. But the sin nature is not going to change. And that’s the problem in life. How do I deal with my sin nature? How do I learn to control my sin nature? You know, the Bible says we got it from Adam, for by one man sin came into the world and death by sin. You and I have a sin nature. We may have different lust patterns. Not everybody’s on the same page that way because some people lust for sex. Some people lust for money. Some people lust for drugs. Some people lust for alcohol. Some people simply lust for attention, approbation lust. so there are different lust patterns but they’re all part of the same sin nature a christian has a sin nature just like a non-christian has a sin nature when we accept christ as our savior when we are technically born again our sin nature does not depart it’s still there and that’s why the bible tells us that the flesh will war against the spirit and the spirit will war against the flesh and these are contrary one to the other When you believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live in you, and you are, in fact, born again. You become a new creation. And with the Holy Spirit indwelling you and the old sin nature, the sin nature indwelling you, there’s a royal battle taking place. And it’s about who’s going to control what you think. Because you are what you think. You are a product of what you think, not what people see, not your thoughts. image and your style but what you’re thinking that’s where god has the advantage because he can see exactly what you’re thinking he knows what you’re thinking he can lead your he can read your mind he can see everything that goes on in that little brain of yours and you don’t hide anything from him so keep that in mind when you start thinking about what you might be getting away with You’re not going to get away with anything when it comes to hiding something from God. It’s best to be honest, and it’s best to be honest about your sin and to confess your sin and admit your sin. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us is a key problem-solving device called rebound. Every Christian must do it day by day, moment by moment. When we know we’ve sinned, technically what happens is we quench the Holy Spirit and we grieve the Holy Spirit. If he’s quenched and he’s grieved, he can’t do his job. Thus, to make sure that he’s in control and to make sure that we’re in fellowship with God, we use the rebound technique to name our known sins to God, and sometimes even the sins you don’t remember. The Bible says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to cleanse us and forgive us of all sin, the ones you don’t even remember. That’s how good God’s grace really is. So as you move into the Christian life and you learn these problem-solving devices, you begin to accelerate your growth and pick up some spiritual momentum, you can rest assured there’ll be opposition. You can rest assured that Satan’s going to do all that he can to create a stumbling block in front of you, to somehow or another discourage you and eventually defeat you from ever becoming a winner believer, a believer who replicates the life of Jesus Christ. That’s the winner believer. The believer who represents Christ to his family, to his community, and his local church, that’s the winner believer. That’s the person God wants you to be. So it all boils down to whom are you going to trust to lay out the best plan for your life. There is a plan. God has a plan. God has a plan for you, and it’s a plan for you to succeed. And if you want to have this life of happiness, if you want to have this wonderful life, you know, the Christian life, you talk about being a Christian, this is a way to live without worry. This is a way to live without ever being bitter. This is a way to live without ever having temper fits. This is a way to live without being jealous. This is a way to live without having fear. It’s the Christian life. It’s amazing. It’s the power of God residing in you by means of two things. By means of God’s Holy Spirit who lives in you. and by means of the Word of God that is alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword. So when you learn the Word of God, hopefully under the mentorship of your pastor, and then the Holy Spirit takes what you’ve learned and helps you to make the application in your life, that’s what the Bible calls wisdom, biblical wisdom. And then wisdom gives you discernment in your life so that you’re able to tell whether you should go down road A or road B or you’ll flip a coin and just hope you get the right thing. That’s not the way a Christian life is designed. So this life that I’m speaking of to you is an unbelievable life of value. a life of meaning and purpose. And the key thing about the Christian life that’s so unique is one simple word called contentment. It’s characterized by contentment. Contentment with circumstances in your life and also a key word called capacity. You have the capacity, and as a believer in Jesus Christ, learning and using God’s plan, you have the capacity for love and happiness full time in your life. But there’s a lie. Satan propagates this lie, and it’s that people or circumstances can make you happy. That’s the lie. People or circumstances can make you happy. Like if I could just meet the right guy or I could just meet the right girl, then we could get married and have a family and we would be happy. And that’s not true. Marriage doesn’t solve problems. It compounds problems. And I have conducted many marriages. They haven’t all stuck it out either. I’m not a perfect marriage guy. But people have sin natures. And sin natures get in the way of one another. and when you don’t learn god’s problem-solving devices and understand personal and impersonal love sometimes even a marriage falls apart so satan’s lie is that getting married will make you happy no it won’t or if you could just get some money if you could just get that new job you could just make that money you want to make then you could live comfortably and you’d be happy. No, you won’t. Because the bottom line is that unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go in life. It doesn’t make any difference whether you have, as the TV show down in Louisiana years ago said, mailbox money. People that discovered oil in their property had mailbox money, money sent every month, five, six, $7,000 a month from the oil company. That didn’t make them any happier. It just makes you, you know, money gives you the ability to be miserable in a different part of town. How’s that? You can just be miserable on the other side of town in a different home, but you’re still gonna be miserable. But the Christian life is different. God actually designed a life for you to be happy, but it’s not apart from him. And if you’re trying to have that life, if you’re trying to find that peace and security and contentment and capacity, Apart from God, it won’t work. John 15, 11, these things I spoke to you, said the Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples, so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. That doesn’t mean in Hebrews 12, 1 and 2 said that he liked going to the cross. It means that the greatest joy in his life was fulfilling the Father’s plan. The plan all along was for him to go to the cross. Can you say that about yourself? Have you fulfilled God’s plan? Are you in God’s plan? Are you doing what God wants you to do? Or did you marry the wrong person? Did you choose the wrong job? Did you go down the my way highway and make yourself miserable and compound your problems? by making a lot of bad decisions. Can you get out of it? Yes, you can get out of it. First of all, you can confess your sin to God. And secondly, you can begin to study and learn God’s word and grow and realize what he’s given you, what your spiritual gifts are, what grace assets you have, and you can have a wonderful life. I made a terrible mistake in college. I I left high school as an all-American football player, offered many football scholarships, chose to go to the University of Alabama and play football for the legendary Paul Bear Bryant. As a freshman, the team that I was on won the National Collegiate Football Championship, but I was a freshman now. And freshmen in those days didn’t play with the varsity. We just practiced against them every day. We were the dummies. But after my freshman year and got out during the summer, I decided not to go back and finish college. I walked away from that scholarship. That was a stupid, dumb thing to do. No one could tell me because I was so arrogant. I thought I knew what was best. I thought I needed a fast car. I needed a cute girlfriend. I needed a nice apartment. And I got all those things. But three years down the road, I realized how empty my life was. And it was only by accepting Christ as my Savior was I able to make a course adjustment in my life and things turned around when I began to learn the Bible, learn God’s Word, learn how to let the Holy Spirit control my life. learn the advantages and the assets that I had. It’s the difference. And it’s not too late for you. Don’t give up. If you want to learn God’s plan, it’s there. But first of all, you’re going to have to stay filled with the Holy Spirit. And secondly, you’re going to have to get under the ministry of a great pastor that can teach you God’s plan. It’s not designed for you to take a Bible and go out and sit under the oak tree and figure it out on your own. It’s a textbook. It’s designed to be taught to you. That’s why God gave man the gift of pastor-teacher. In the original languages, it’s called poimen kai didaskalos, the shepherd and the instructor, the teacher. And that’s what happened in my life. I got under a great pastor who taught me God’s Word. and prepared me for a life in the ministry that I’ve been in now since 1969. So here we are. It’s a life for you. God has a plan so that your joy may be made full. And it all boils down to where you want to reside. Now look, you can live in the cosmic system. That’s the devil’s world, the cosmos, the K-O-S-M-O-S, the cosmos. You can live inside that cosmos, the devil’s system, or you can live inside God’s divine dinosaur. That’s where you got to choose. Where do you want to live? You want to live under the cosmic influence? You want to live with human viewpoint thinking all of your life? or you want to get some divine viewpoint thinking, you want to have some divine advantages, you want to have the capacity and the contentment in life that I talk about. You must choose whether you’re going to operate under human viewpoint or divine viewpoint. What is divine viewpoint? Well, Jesus, the Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. You have to learn to think like he thought. Why do you think we have the New Testament? Why do you think we have four gospels that parallel everything he said and did? So you can read about it, learn it, and emulate it in your life. That’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s why it’s there. So you can learn how to handle pressure like he handled pressure, how to handle unfair treatment like he handled unfair treatment, how to handle things the same way that he did. Matthew 4, 1 through 4, read how he handled Satan and what he did when Satan tempted him. You can handle Satan the same way. So if you develop divine viewpoint, if you learn to think like Christ thought, then that’s the total opposite of human viewpoint that floats around in the cosmic system human viewpoint is the lure of the cosmic system human viewpoint people or circumstances can make you happy wrong they cannot human viewpoint i need this i need that you need to go here you need to go there human viewpoint is everything the world throws at you You are assaulted 24-7 by television, by radio. I mean, sometimes I get so sick and tired of commercials, I just want to barf. And you do too. But this is all what the world is throwing at you. You can be happy if you do this. You can be happy if you do that. And it’s all a lie. It’s all a mirage. So the question is, where do you get your direction in your life from? Who is leading you or plotting you or showing you where to go? Proverbs 3, 13 through 15. Happiness belongs to the one who finds wisdom and the one who obtains understanding. For the benefit of wisdom is more profitable than silver and her gain is better than gold. Wisdom is more precious than rubies and none of the things you desire can compare with it. That’s how important wisdom is. Wisdom is divine viewpoint. Wisdom is the word of God you’ve heard, learned, and believed and applied into your life. It’s not the stuff you haven’t learned yet. That’s the gnosis, that’s knowledge in the Greek, knowledge. But it hasn’t done you any good until you learn it and apply it and it becomes full knowledge or the Greek word epinosis, full knowledge. So, this show is a peddler of information. We peddle information. That’s all we peddle. We don’t peddle t-shirts. We don’t peddle books. We don’t peddle tapes. We’re not trying to sell anything. We’re not peddlers. I might be a piddler, but I’m not a peddler. I might piddle around, but I don’t peddle anything. So I’m a peddler of information called divine viewpoint. And divine viewpoint is simply called the mind of Christ. That’s why, as I told you in the Bible, we’re told to think like he thought, Philippians 2.5. That’s why I told you everything that he thought is preserved for us in the pages of Scripture. So if we think like he thought, then it becomes obvious we can live like he lived. So wisdom is the result of the information in the pages of the Bible that you have understood and applied into your life. And with that wisdom comes discernment, which the Bible says is greater than gold because having discernment will save you time, having discernment will save you money, having discernment will keep you healthy, but discernment will not stop you from being impetuous. It won’t stop you from being self-centered, but you’ll simply know when you’re doing the wrong thing. Now, you may want to go ahead and do it, but you’ll know you’re doing it. So, but if you don’t know your choices, if you don’t understand your options, then quite frankly, you will be a slave to circumstances and the details of life as long as you live. You know, Satan sells some Kool-Aid. Matter of fact, he gives it away free. He wants you to drink it. And that goes back to the Jim Jones thing and Guyana and people that drank the Kool-Aid, you know, committed mass suicide years and years ago. Here’s Satan’s Kool-Aid that’ll kill you. He promises that people and circumstances in your life will make you happy. That’s a lie. They cannot make you happy. Happiness belongs to those people who hear my father’s word and keep it. Those are the words of Jesus in Luke 11, 27. So if you’re depending on any person or if you’re depending on any set of circumstances to make you happy, you don’t really have the plus H, which is a problem-solving device number nine on the plot line of your soul. It’s the ninth problem-solving device, sharing the happiness of God. Now, there’s a false happiness out there. a pseudo happiness, a temporary happiness, and it’s in the cosmic system and it’s a counterfeit. It’s not the real thing. It counterfeits the happiness and the contentment and the blessing that God gives that can only be accessed by learning and executing the plan. But this pseudo happiness, The one I’m talking about, it could be great stimulation, oh, great fun, great entertainment, and you will enjoy it, but it’s only momentary. It’s not lasting. So sure, you can take a cruise, and sure, you can… get a new car, ensure you can go to a game. It’s momentary. It doesn’t last. The happiness that I’m talking about is an enduring, lasting contentment and capacity for life that most of the world doesn’t have because they don’t know the mind of Christ. They don’t think like he thought. Once you begin to think like he thought, then you will see that your happiness depends on God. God’s true happiness, not some set of circumstances. If you’re counting on circumstances to make you happy, that’s neutral happiness. Just neutral, neutral happiness. And it won’t last. It’s nothing beyond the moment of good times. Because after the good times, you know what comes next. Bad times. You know, I put it all on my credit card and I had a great time, but now I got to pay for it. Routine times, dull times. Oh, I’m back from my trip and I got to go back to work and it’s Monday and back to work I go. Oh, I hate the routine of work. The past good times cannot provide lasting happiness. They may give you some good memories and you have some good pictures and some selfies, but not the lasting happiness that the Bible’s talking about. I call that kind of happiness neutral happiness. It doesn’t motivate you. It doesn’t encourage you when you get under adversity or when you move under testing. Instead, the true happiness that I’m talking about is not in the cosmic system. That’s not it. The cosmic system can only offer you the temporary fix, you know, which is followed by self-induced misery or and sometimes even divine discipline where the Lord has to take you out behind the woodshed because you went down the my way highway and did something stupid and have not confessed it and admitted it to the Lord yet. And you think you don’t know about it. So you still think you pull the wool over the Lord’s eyes and you haven’t done that. so true biblical happiness that i’m speaking of is not some various thing in life that stimulates you it’s the kind of stuff you have with you 24 7. it relates to what you think not what you feel it’s not a body happiness it’s a soul happiness it’s the happiness that can be enjoyed in living and yet even in death You can be happy. In living, we use our volition, which you and I had studied for the last few Sundays. We use our volition to determine our course in life. But in death, well, that’s a different story. God and his sovereignty selects the time and the place and the manner of the believer’s promotion. But the problem is if you live poorly, then you’re going to die miserably. You’re going to have the mental attitude of panic and guilt and self-doubt and pity and fear because you live poorly. You didn’t have any happiness at death. It’s possible that you can enjoy death as much as you enjoyed living. Death is a door. Death is the door that you walk through to the other side. It’s the end of your personal sense of destiny. It’s the end of your journey. It’s where the eye hath not seen, the ear hath not heard, the heart hath not felt the amazing things God has for you. It’s where there’s no more tears and no more sorrow, no more pain. And the old things are passed away. It’s where Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you so that where I am, you may be also. It’s the eternal stage. It’s the eternal life. It’s the resurrection body, the new body. And it is a amazing body. Amazing. And you’re still looking for happiness in time. You haven’t found it yet. In God’s plan, it’s possible to live a wonderful life. It’s also possible to die a wonderful death. Since happiness is simply a state of your mind, it doesn’t depend on what you have or don’t have. Philippians 121, the apostle Paul put it this way. For me, living is Christ and dying is profit. It’s gain. John wrote in 1 John 1, 4, we write these things so that your joy may be full. As the Father has loved me, so I’ve loved you, Jesus said. Now remain in my love. And then he said, if you keep my mandates, you will remain in my love, just as I’ve kept my father’s mandates and remained in his love. And Jesus wound up by saying, I’ve told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. John 15, 9 through 11. That’s God’s plan for you, to have happiness. In Psalm 31, 7, the psalmist wrote, I will rejoice and be glad in your loving kindness because you have seen my affliction and you have known the troubles in my soul. If you’re a Christian, you need to learn that. You’re going to be tested in the devil’s world. The Bible tells you that. In 1 Corinthians 10, 13, no temptation’s overtaken you. That’s not common to man. God provides a way out. And part of the test is just the obnoxious people that bully others and you surround yourself with. So you can’t build your happiness on somebody else’s unhappiness. But you can be happy. You can have a wonderful life. You can learn those 10 problem-solving devices and stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. But without understanding and learning the protocol plan of God, you’re gonna be running in circles all your life. You’re going to be like that thing I used to see at the fair where they had a motorcycle man inside of what looked like a big old tall barrel. And he just went around and around and around and around and around. And he never went anywhere, but he might have ridden 50 miles. He just went around in circles. Is your life like that? Are you going around in circles and not going anywhere? Then it’s time. Get in touch with me if you need to. I’ll give you some more information, but it’s time you straighten things out. Starting with confessing your sin to God. Because if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us. What sin is it? The sin of ignoring God. The sin of going down the my way highway. The sin of seeking your happiness in the cosmic system. If you’ll come to him, if you’ll own up to it and be honest, you can begin to enjoy and learn the most marvelous things in life. Wisdom, insight, discernment. It’s all there. It’s all for you. It’s all God’s plan. Thank you for listening. I hope you’ll come back next week. Same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thanks.
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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.
