Join Rick Hughes as he guides listeners on the journey to understanding the Christian life through the lens of the FLOT line, an approach based on ten unique biblical problem-solving devices. In this enlightening episode, explore the significance of grace orientation and its pivotal role in living a fulfilling spiritual life. Whether it’s saving, living, or dying grace, Rick emphasizes the importance of God’s grace and its influence on our daily actions and eternal security.
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, and for the next few minutes, please stay with me. It doesn’t take long, just about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education with no manipulation. Something I say, say that to you every Sunday morning, I know I do. But I’d just like to remind you, and there are always those people that are listening for the very first time. You’d be surprised how many people contact me and say, I just happened to hear your show on the car radio on my way to church or at home. And the Lord does wonderful things that way. And I’m always really happy about people that hear it and let us know that they’re learning something. My job is not to be your pastor, My job is to give you some basic understanding of the Christian life and guide you towards a good pastor where you can get into a situation where you can learn God’s word on a daily basis. That’s what I want to do. That’s why I’m doing these shows. By the way, what we’ll do today is 1,024 Sundays on the air across the United States. 1,024 Sundays. that is a testimony to the grace of god not my strength not my ability simply the grace of god and those wonderful problem-solving devices that he lets me use in my life every day last week i reviewed the first three problem-solving devices for you thinking that this wouldn’t help you grasp the concept of having your own personal flatline in the mentality of your soul This show is called the FLOT line. A lot of people miss the word. They think sometimes flat or sometimes flight. You’d be surprised how many people call it the flight line or the flat line. It’s FLOT, F-L-O-T, and that stands for forward line of troops. And what we do there, we have 10 unique problem-solving devices that we teach out of the Bible that This is not something anybody made up. These are all biblical illustrations. And to tell you the truth, it essentially puts the Christian life in a nutshell. This is it. If you understand these and you use these, you are living the Christian life. So as we pick up new listeners like we are today or last week, I’m always concerned they might not know exactly what the FLOT line actually refers to. So I’ve decided to do a series of shows reviewing each FLOT line problem solving device. Hopefully it’ll help you write notes, take it down, order the book, Christian Problem Solving, Order the bookmark to put in your Bible, the problem-solving devices, and it’ll help you remember these. So your individual flatline is your invisible protective barrier in your soul, and it’s built on 10 major biblical concepts. If you don’t understand these concepts, if you don’t understand these doctrines, If you don’t believe them and use them, then you will at best be doing many things the right way, but doing them in the wrong way. And I think that’s the most discouraging thing about Christians. Many Christians do the right thing, but they do it in the wrong way. and you have to remember what someone told me my pastor told me this years ago a right thing done the wrong way is still wrong so you have to do a right thing in a right way and going to church is the right thing but you can be there in the wrong way if you’re in church with known sin in your life then the Holy Spirit is quenched and grieved. And even though you’re there, the Holy Spirit cannot help you pick up divine viewpoint and help you to apply it into your life because you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit. So if someone’s in church and Brother Smith hates Brother John over there on the other side of the aisle, but he’s in the right place, but he’s doing it the wrong way. And prayer is another thing. Same thing. Right thing, wrong way. There’s so much you can do the wrong way, and you think you’re honoring God, but you’re not. So that’s why you have to understand these doctrines so you don’t wind up doing all the right things in the wrong way and then get to the judgment seat of Christ and get embarrassed because it goes up. It’s called wood, hay, and stubble. I want to remind you this concept of having a flat line was first taught by R.B. Thiem Jr. during his 50-year tenure as pastor of Baraka Church located in Houston, Texas. You can always contact them, Baraka Church in Houston, Texas, and ask for his studies on that, and they’ll get them for you. But last Sunday, we looked at rebound, we looked at the filling of the Holy Spirit, and we looked at the faith rest drill. That was problem-solving devices number one, problem-solving device number two, problem-solving device number three, and we have transcripts on that. If you’d like to get the transcript, let us know. So today, I would like to talk to you about problem-solving device number four, grace orientation within your soul’s mentality. This particular problem-solving device is all about the grace policy of God. So if you put it this way, simply put, grace is God doing all the work based on his unfailing love for mankind. When you understand God’s grace, then you can begin to utilize all he provided for you. Those grace provisions are simply this. Number one, saving grace. Number two, living grace. Number three, dying grace. And number four, surpassing grace. So what are these and what is saving grace? What’s that? Well, it’s a reference to what God provided for each of us through the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not have to earn God’s forgiveness since the work of Christ provides it for us. So don’t make the mistake of mixing grace with works thinking that you’re going to go to heaven because you believed in Christ and you don’t smoke or you believed in Christ and you don’t curse. You believed in Christ and you’re good. You’re a good person. That’s works. Those are things that Christians shouldn’t do sometimes, but that’s not how you get to heaven. So let’s remember that. Okay. All right, so let me see. I want to go back to this for a minute. Saving grace is a reference for what God has done for each one of us through the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not have to earn God’s forgiveness since the work of Christ provided it for us, and don’t make the mistakes of mixing grace and works thinking it’s what saves you. Faith added to grace provides eternal life and nothing else. So listen to the verse, Ephesians 2, 8 through 9. For by grace you’ve been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast about it. For by grace you’ve been saved through faith, that’s saving grace, you don’t earn it, you don’t buy it, you’re given it by faith, that not of yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not of works, no way you can work for it, lest you’d boast about it. Titus 2.11 says, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. So saving grace is available to every member of the human race because of what the Lord Jesus Christ did on that cross for us. If you understand this doctrine, then you will understand what God says and you will never have to doubt your eternal security, your eternal destiny. Because you understand you’re going to heaven because of what Christ did for you, not what you’re doing for yourself. That’s saving grace. You’re saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not by something you do. And then there’s living grace. And that’s a reference to what God supplies for you on a daily basis. Listen to the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 5, 12, where he says, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is true, the grace of God, so stand fast in it. So what’s he saying? He’s communicated to them, testified to them, challenged them to live in the grace of God, to stand fast in the grace of God. Living grace, that refers to grace that is given after salvation. And it’s described in this manner. It includes his total divine provision of God for the fulfillment of his plan, for the fulfillment of his will and purpose for our lives. He provides everything we need in our daily life for us to fulfill his plan and purpose. This type of grace is like logistics. It’s logistical grace provision. His grace provides everything we need to live, everything we need to function in the devil’s world, particularly the daily needs that we have to exist as well as our daily spiritual needs. You know, like food, shelter, clothing, a Bible, a pastor, the ministry of the Holy Spirit. These are all grace provisions provided for us freely by the unfailing love of God. So if you’re alive today and you have food today, that’s living grace. If you’re alive today and you have shelter, that’s living grace. If you’re alive today and have clothes, that’s living grace. You have a Bible, that’s living grace. There’s a pastor, that’s living grace. So if you’re confident of God’s daily grace provisions, then you never need to worry about what it’ll take to sustain your life on a daily basis. In Matthew 6, 25 through 34, a rather long passage, but here’s what it says. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life. Don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body or what you’ll put on your body. It’s not life more than food and the body more than clothing. look at the birds of the air for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them are you not more valuable than a little bird which of you by worrying could add one cubit to your statue so why do you worry about your clothes Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, they don’t spin, and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. So if God clothes the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith, that’s the fault, the shortcoming of the faithless drill there, that’s what the problem is. So therefore, don’t worry about And don’t say, oh, what am I going to eat, or what should we drink, or what should we wear? For after all of these things the Gentiles seek, but your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. If you’ll seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all these things will be added to you. Therefore, don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So there we have living grace, living grace. You don’t have anything to worry about. He just promised you in that passage, don’t worry about tomorrow. God will take care of you. He’ll give you food. He’ll give you clothing. He’ll give you shelter. That’s living grace. So orient to that when you talk about grace orientation. You’re saved by grace and you live by grace. And then there’s dying grace. We’re all going to die. You know that sooner or later. There’s no way out unless the Lord Jesus Christ returns to get us before we die. But death is a matter of the sovereignty of God. And it’s based on his omniscience of all the facts in our life. Now listen, because of God’s perfect sovereignty, he’s able to pick the right time and the right place and the right conditions of our death. God predetermined this in eternity past. That’s called dying grace. And that’s defined as the death of a mature believer. That sort of dying grace is the experience of physical death under special provisions of grace where we as believers involved in that experience both blessing and happiness while dying. Some people don’t understand that for sure because they’re afraid to die. But for the believer, especially for the mature believer, it’s a promotion. It’s going to heaven, going to be face to face with his Lord. I call it getting called to the home office. And it’s a wonderful thing because when it comes, you have happiness and you have blessing. And anybody that has any doctrine, anybody that has the word of God understands this. It’s a blessing when you are promoted to be face to face with your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And I know a lot of people that have been promoted today Maybe you’re getting close, I’m getting close, but it’s gonna come a time when we’re gonna be promoted and if we understand dying grace, we understand it’s a matter of the sovereignty of God, we don’t have to be afraid of it, we just have to face it with all the facts that he’s provided everything we need to be happy. It can occur regardless of the amount of pain, regardless of the amount of suffering. While we go through death, dying grace can still occur. I mean, there could be maximum pain or maximum any sort of pain. But in either case, there’s happiness and stimulation of the soul with confidence and hope in God’s glory. In Hebrews 2, 14 and 15, you know, the devil uses death to scare people. And so much then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, and it’s talking about the Lord Jesus Christ now, he himself shared in the same, that because of his death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through the fear of death with all their lifetime subject to bondage. It’s a wonderful thing when you understand dying grace and you don’t have to be afraid of death. You can actually testify to people about the grace policy of God if they see you dying as a mature believer. So understanding this sort of doctrine and believing this doctrine removes the fear of death. And it’s for this reason that the mature believer has an understanding of God’s grace for visions. That’s why for these reasons we have the mandate. Listen, here it is, 2 Peter 3.18, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It doesn’t say please behave and learn. It says grow. And that’s a mandate in the Greek New Testament. That’s a commandment. That’s not a request. Grow in grace and knowledge. Living grace, saving grace, dying grace. You should have that. You should understand that. Okay, so what are they again? Let me ask you again. What’s the first one? saving grace. What’s the second one? Living grace. What’s the third one? Dying grace. Write it down so you can remember it. This leads us to problem solving device number five. That’s called what? Doctrinal orientation. Biblical orientation. Remember this, that every problem in life has a solution stated in the word of God. Every problem. Every problem we have has a solution. This is the believer’s attitude when confronted with the question, what does the Bible say? What should I do? What am I supposed to do about this? Well, here’s where we get into trouble. Because sometimes you ignore God’s advice because of your own arrogance. This sort of negative volition causes you to sin by ignoring divine directives and often results in a life of regret and bitterness for you. That’s why you must learn to be obedient to what the Word of God says. You have to obey. When that verse in 2 Peter 3.18 said, “…grow in the grace and knowledge…” If you don’t have the knowledge of God, you don’t know what you’re supposed to do in any certain situation. And if you ignore God’s advice in the scripture because of your own arrogance and you say, well, I got a better deal. I know what’s better. The Lord said, don’t do this, but I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to do it. I can handle it. then you wind up destroying your life because of your negative volition. The Word of God penetrates into the human soul and the human spirit. How does it do that? Through the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian, you have the equal ability to understand Bible doctrine. Hebrews 4.12 talks about how the word of God can get into your soul. Listen, for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of the soul and the spirit and of the joints and the marrow and is discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. So when you understand and learn and apply and use the word of God, then you have a fantastic opportunity to have a wonderful life. But when you reject the word of God, when you don’t spend time studying the word of God or learning the word of God or paying attention to the word of God, then you’re gonna mess your life up and I guarantee you, you’re gonna make a stupid decision That doesn’t mean you can’t recover from it. You can always rebound and confess your sin and get back in fellowship. But why do you want to go down a dead-end street? Why do you want to do that? Why do you want to go down a dead-end street and spend two or three years in the wrong marriage or spend two or three years in the wrong business, spend two or three years doing something you shouldn’t have done, only then to figure out that was a dumb thing because you didn’t listen to God to start with? What does the Bible say about the word of God? Prophet Jeremiah put it this way in Jeremiah 15, 15. He said, your words were found and I ate them. I devoured them. I consumed them. And your word was to me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart. For I’m called by your name, O Lord God of hosts. What a wonderful thing. Is the Word of God your joy? Do you feed on the Word of God on a daily basis? If you don’t feed on the Word of God on a daily basis, you’re going to starve to death. That’s why I’m always harping on you about you think you’re getting enough by going to church once a week. I’ve used this illustration hundreds of times. If you put a kid in the first grade and they go for an hour a week, they’re never going to get out of the first grade. If that’s all you get out of church an hour a week, you’re still a baby Christian. You’ve got to get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor that will teach you the Bible on a daily basis. When you get to where you can take it in every day and apply it every day in your life, then you’re going to lag, L-A-G, lag. Learn, apply, and glorify. That’s what God wants you to do. And so the Word of God has to be the number one priority in your life on a daily basis. So number one, stay filled with the Holy Spirit. Number two, take in the word of God every day. Because I can absolutely guarantee you that you will have a life of regret if you ignore God’s word. It’s your source of confidence. It’s your source of assurance. Plus it’s the key to happiness throughout your entire life. In 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, the Bible says, all scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God might be capable, equipped for every good thing. Did you hear that? All scripture, that’s the Bible, is God-breathed. It didn’t come by some man. Some guy didn’t sit there and decide to write it. It was inspired by the Holy Spirit and it’s profitable You want to make an investment? Invest in the word of God and it will bring profit to you. It is profitable for teaching and for reproof, correction. It’ll guide you. It’ll tell you when to slow down. It’ll tell you when to speed up. It’ll tell you there’s a dead end ahead. It’s called biblical wisdom. which is a combination of insight and understanding and discernment. When you have insight, understanding, and discernment, you have biblical wisdom. And when you have biblical wisdom, then you have reproof and correction from the Word of God. And it equips you so that you can live your life as God would have you live your life. But without the Word of God, without learning and applying the Word of God in your life, at best you’re just gambling with it. Why in the world would you sabotage your future happiness? Just because you’re not willing to make time on a daily basis to learn God’s Word. And some people say, well, I got a little daily devotion. I bought this little book for $19.95, and I bought it in a truck stop somewhere, a Christian bookstore, and I read a little two-minute devotion, a three-minute devotion out of it every day. That’s not studying the Word of God. That’s like an appetizer. I’m talking about sitting down with a Bible and with a notebook and listening to someone teach you the Bible. You say, well, I don’t have anybody in my area that can do that. I know that. I talk to people every day that are dying for a great pastor. But I can tell you where to get it. It’ll take a little effort, but you can get it through the Internet. You can get it through print. You can get it through a lot of different ways, through tapes, through disk. The teaching of the Word of God is available to you if you want it. If you don’t want it, then I can’t help you. But I’m telling you that it is important for you that you take in the Word of God on a daily basis. because if not, you’re gonna sabotage your future happiness just because you’re not willing to take the time to learn it. Living your life unto the Lord demands what? Consistent cognition and consistent inculcation of the word under the objectivity of the filling of the Holy Spirit, not the lust pattern of your sin nature, but the filling of the Holy Spirit. So if you’ve got a great pastor, and you can sit there and fill with the Holy Spirit, you can listen to him teach you the Bible, teach you the Word of God, and apply it into your life, then you’re going to be a hearer of the Word, not just a doer. not just a peeker, but a seeker, I call it. I’m not just talking about one service on Sunday morning, but rather studying daily under a well-qualified pastor. I’m often amazed at some churches that have, well, we’re going to have a January Bible study. Well, and they go through the whole book of Romans in a week. You’ve got to be kidding me. My pastor taught the book of Ephesians. It took about eight years. My pastor taught a life of Christ study, and that took several years. You can’t go through it like that. If you’re going to dig in and learn it on a daily basis, it’s going to be line upon line, word upon word, precept upon precept. If you want that, you get in touch with me, I’ll tell you how to get it. I’ll tell you how to get a Bible and a notebook and sit down at a table with a cup of coffee or a soda and listen and learn and apply it into your life. I’ve met many people that this has changed their life. I had a friend of mine that I met who came to work in our house, do some work, and I told him, if you would do this, a year from now you won’t recognize yourself. And he’s told me many times I was right. He started studying, started learning, started growing instead of operating on his emotions, and today he’s a totally different person. So unfortunately, many Christians are just too busy to give much attention to God’s directives. too busy having a good time, too busy taking the kids to the ball game, too busy doing this, too busy taking a vacation, too busy doing this, too busy doing that. They just don’t have time to get doctrinal orientation. And it’s a lack of problem-solving advice in their soul. And they’re gonna be a flawed believer. What I mean by that, they’re gonna be a handicapped believer. What’s a handicapped believer? You’re handicapped by your own negative volition and you’re doomed to a life of mistakes and a life of regrets because you’re handicapped and you are blinded to your own failure and possibly becoming neurotic and full of hypersensitivity and insensitivity to the needs of others. So these two devices that I’m talking about this morning, problem-solving device number four, problem-solving device number five, grace orientation, saving grace, living grace, dying grace, and doctrinal orientation, growing in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, learning the Word of God, living the Word of God on a consistent basis is what will make a difference in your life. I want you to get to heaven, and I want you to hear, well done, my good and faithful servant. And I hope you’ll apply this information. And I hope you’ll come back same time next week, same place, same station. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying 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.
