In this enlightening episode, Rick Hughes explores the profound concept of grace within the Christian experience. Join us as we delve into the different facets of grace, from saving grace to grace orientation, providing insights into living a fulfilled, spiritual, and inspired life. Whether you’re a long-time listener or new to the Flatline, this episode offers you a clear path to understanding how divine grace can serve as a formidable problem-solving device in your life’s journey. Tune in to learn how embracing grace can fortify your soul’s line of defense against life’s adversities.
00:00:08 Introduction and Overview of the Flatline Podcast
00:02:53 Understanding Grace through Biblical References
00:05:45 Paul’s Example of Enduring by God’s Grace
00:11:47 Grace Orientation and Problem Solving Devices
00:22:43 Prayer and Divine Resources for Believers
00:25:31 Resources for Spiritual Growth and Maturity
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. The Flat, F-L-O-T, the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. And for the next 30 minutes, stick around. It won’t be long, just 30 minutes of motivation and Some inspiration, a whole lot of education with no manipulation. That’s right, we don’t con people here. If you’re new to this radio show, we are adding a lot of new stations this month. We’ve added over 30 different radio stations to our program list. So some of you will be hearing the FLOT line for the first time. F-L-O-T stands for Forward Line of Troops. It’s a military term describing a main line of resistance. And what we’re going to teach is that you can have a main line of resistance inside your very own soul by learning and applying the Word of God into your life. That’s what this show is about, giving you the mechanics to the Christian life, or hopefully helping you to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. So the Flatline will be on your radio station every Sunday morning, same time, same place. And if you’ll give me a few minutes of your time, I think you’ll learn something We’re not like other radio shows. We’re not going to beg you for money. We’re not going to try to sell you anything. We’re not going to do anything like that except give you information, and you can make the decision. If I can verify and identify the plan of God for your life, then you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. I’d like to thank you for all those of you that do write to us and so gracious to hear from you, to hear how the Lord’s been working in your life. We currently broadcast in 170 different radio stations every Sunday morning. We appreciate your prayer support and encouraging us to hear from you. Today we’re going to talk about grace, G-R-A-C-E, grace thinking, thinking about grace, living by grace. There’s saving grace, which is how you get saved. There’s living grace, there’s dying grace, and there’s even surpassing grace in heaven. So grace is a wonderful thing. That’s what I’d like to talk to you about, to see how much you understand about grace. Because once you come to understand God’s grace and use it as a problem-solving device on the flatline of your soul, then it takes the monkey off of your back and lets you orient to God’s plan and relax and have a wonderful mental attitude and a lot of joy that other people don’t have because they don’t understand grace. Listen to John 1, 16 and 17. and all of his fullness we have received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So there’s our introduction to grace in John 1, 16 and 17. Grace for grace. God’s plan operates on grace, saving grace. The word grace is the Greek word, and I say that because remember, If you listen to this radio show, we’ll try to go back to the original languages. The Bible was not written in English. It was written in Greek and Hebrew and some Aramaic. But the Greek word for grace in the New Testament, we spell it G-R-A-C-E. Actually, it’s spelled C-H-A-R-I-S, caris. Caris, that’s the word grace. So in the Bible where you see the word grace in your Bible, it’s the Greek word caris. What does it mean? It means divine favor. The Bible recognizes saving grace, as I said in Ephesians 2, 8 through 9. For by grace, caris, you have been saved. So the person doesn’t get saved by buying it. You can’t purchase your salvation. You can’t work for your salvation because the Bible says there are none that are righteous, no, not even one. All of our good works are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. So the only way that we have any opportunity to go to heaven is a free gift from God. But you must receive the gift. You must take the gift. It’s offered to you. It’s offered to you free. It’s grace. You don’t have to pay for it. You don’t have to earn it. Somebody else paid for it. Somebody else paid the price for you, and that’s called the Lord Jesus Christ. When he went to the cross, when he was crucified in your place and my place, And when he walked out of that tomb to guarantee us eternal life. So we have living grace, saving grace. Sustaining grace is what I call living grace. Sustaining grace. And that’s God’s sustaining power. Listen to what God told the Apostle Paul concerning a thorn in the flesh. My own pastor was teaching about that this week. About having a thorn in the flesh. You may have one in your flesh. It may be something that bothers you. It won’t go away. I have those things myself as I get older. I have those thorns in my flesh. We all pray and ask God to make it go away. And that’s what Paul did. Paul had something that was bugging him, hurting him, causing him to lose sleep at night, causing him to be in pain in the daytime. He didn’t have any Advil or stand back to take. So he was in pain and he was suffering and it was a thorn in the flesh. So he went to God three times and prayed for God to remove it. This is what God said about grace. In 2 Corinthians 12, 9, And he said to me, this is God telling Paul, calm down, relax. My grace is sufficient for you. My grace. My grace provisions. My divine favor is sufficient for you. For my strength is made perfect. in weakness. So Paul’s response to those words is this. This is what Paul told God. I gladly glory in my infirmities so that the power of Christ may rest on me. So as a result of what he was going through, God’s grace provisions gave him the ability to handle it So that it didn’t sidetrack him and knock him down. And the power of Christ rested on him. This is something we learned. It’s very important to remember. I’m going to give you a principle. I think you’ll like it. Try to write this down and remember it. Human solutions are no solutions. But divine solutions are the only solutions. I’ll say it one more time. Human solutions are no solutions. Divine solutions are the only solutions. So the only way that that could be handled in Paul’s life was grace. God gave him the grace to live with it. God gave him the grace to endure it. And Paul was able to do so because he was made strong in his weakness. The weaker he was, the stronger he is. This is what people don’t understand. We go through testing sometimes to strengthen us, not make us weak, but to make us stronger. And that’s what happened to Paul. This made him stronger. because he could rely on the power of Christ in his life. Okay, now let’s move on. So far I’ve identified two areas of God’s grace provision. First, saving grace, and secondly, sustaining grace. There’s also something we call dying grace, but we’ll leave that for a later study. But I can assure you when it comes time for you to go to heaven, if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, It will not be a bad time. It will be a great time. Be one of the greatest times in your life. I remember one of my friends who passed away was in the hospice and the hospice nurse came out and told the daughter, your mom is really suffering. She’s moaning in there. The daughter went in to be in the room with her and came out and said, she’s not moaning. She’s singing Amazing Grace. And that’s exactly what she was doing. So there is dying grace. When that time comes, It’s not a scary time. It’s a wonderful time because that’s your promotion. That’s when you’ll be called to the home office, when you’ll be face-to-face with your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So the mature believer, when it comes time to transfer to heaven, will go through dying grace. There’s more to say about that, but we’ll leave it for now. For a moment, let’s focus on this word, grace orientation, problem-solving device number four. Grace orientation, problem-solving device number four out of the 10 problem-solving devices that make up the flat line in your soul. The word grace is the means of conveying the power of God to the life of you and me. We’re ordinary believers and grace means that we can access the power of God as an ordinary believer. We can tap into it. We can use it. It’s ours. It’s available for us. That’s what Paul said. I take glory in my infirmity so I can tap into the power of Christ and it will rest on me. So grace is the means of conveying the power of God to the life of the ordinary believer What I’m telling you is there is a supernatural divine provision given to every Christian, and that divine provision is identified in 1 Corinthians 15.10. Listen carefully. But by the grace of God, there it is, the divine favor of God, I am what I am. And his grace, his divine favor towards me, did not prove to be in vain, but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. So the grace of God gave Paul the ability to do things that other people couldn’t do. And then in Ephesians 1.6, Paul wrote these words. To the praise of the glory of his grace, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he, God, bestowed on us through Christ Jesus, our end, the beloved. So here’s a few principles I want to leave with you this morning. Number one, the Lord Jesus is the greatest grace gift God ever bestowed on mankind. None of us deserve to be forgiven for our sins, but God the Father, motivated by his undying love for us, allowed his only begotten Son, to be judged in our place. That was grace, God’s wonderful grace, because if we had to earn it, or we had to pay for it, or we had to deserve it, we’d be out of luck. So point two, grace means that all things from God, including our salvation by grace through faith, are received from God as a totally free gift, apart from any type of human merit or any system of human works. So grace, point three, is all that God is free to do for you and I without compromising his divine essence. And that includes his righteousness and his justice. God is not compromising his righteousness. He’s not compromising his justice when he gives us salvation. The only way we can come to God is to have equal righteousness, and we don’t have it. There are none that are righteous, no, not one, the Bible says. So how can I become equally righteous with God? Well, clearly the Bible says, he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we may be made the righteousness of God through him. Once the righteousness of Jesus Christ was transferred to our account through faith alone in Christ alone, then the justice of God was satisfied. and you and I will not be cast into the lake of fire because we stand with the Lord Jesus Christ. Point four, grace, charis, is the manifestation of God’s holiness, God’s power, God’s virtue, God’s mercy, God’s compassion, God’s indulgence, God’s forbearance, God’s pardon, It’s a lot, isn’t it? It’s unlimited, unmerited favor based on the exclusive work of God himself. That’s what grace is. The manifestation of his holiness, his power, his mercy, his compassion, all of it given to you through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Now, there’s something called common grace, point five. Common grace is what everybody experiences prior to salvation. He’s provided all that we need to survive and to know him, the Bible says. There’s not a creature alive on this planet that didn’t have the opportunity to know God if they wanted to. This is common grace, and it happens prior to anyone being saved. Listen to Romans 1.20. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen. Being understood, do you hear that? Seen and understood by the things that are made, that’s you and I, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. So no one has an excuse to reject God, to say God doesn’t exist. Since the creation of this world, his attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so they’re without excuse. That’s common grace. Every human being has that opportunity. If you go positive at that point of God consciousness, maybe it’s six years old, maybe it’s seven years old, maybe it’s eight years old, maybe it’s nine years old. Once you realize there’s a God, you see the attributes of him through the world, through the sun, through the stars, through the clouds, through the waves, you know God’s real, you know somebody created it, you know somebody held it together. And if you want to know that God, he’ll send somebody to give you the gospel so you can know him. That’s why we have missionaries that go all over the world to give the gospel, the good news, the free gift of God to those that are looking for it. And then common grace is one thing prior to salvation. And then there’s also saving grace. And that we’ve talked about already, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by grace are you saved through faith. And then there’s living grace, living grace. We call this logistical grace provisions. Logistical grace is defined as divine planning, divine support, divine provision, and divine blessing for the execution of the plan of God by members of his royal family to fulfill his will, his purpose, and his plan for your life. So what I’m telling you is that God will give you what you need to carry out his plan for your life. He gives you the support you need, that’s your logistics, and you can read about that in Matthew 6, where it says don’t be looking around worried about everything, see how God takes care of the bird, and you’re more valuable than a bird. He will care for you. As his child, he’s not gonna let you starve to death. As his child, he’s gonna provide for you, support you, provide for you, and bless you so that you would be able to execute his plan and you would be able to glorify God to the max. And that’s what grace is about. The whole reason that all this grace is there is so that you can glorify God to the max. When you learn about this living grace, this sustaining grace, this saving grace, you bring God great glory when you have confidence and trust in God’s plan and God’s grace provisions. Now let’s look at some of our grace assets. Grace assets, that’s the things that God provides for us. I like to call them divine resources and they come with unconditional guarantee. You know, if you buy an refrigerator or you buy a stove or you buy a car, they got to get a guarantee. These have an unconditional guarantee. First of all, one of their grace assets are the promises of God. God gives us the opportunity to have an eternal guarantee and it freely bestows on us. So listen carefully to this passage. This is God’s eternal guarantee that he freely bestows on you. Romans 8, 38 and 39. For I am persuaded 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 created things shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is a divine promise. That’s an eternal guarantee. Nothing can separate you from the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord. No height, no depth, no angel, no principality, no power. Absolutely nothing can separate you from God’s loving care. We know that in the Bible there are several thousand promises listed in scripture. Those promises are like money in the bank. But in order to cash in on them and spend them, you have to know what bank they’re located in. I mean, if somebody said, I’m gonna put $1,000 in the bank for you, you’d say, oh, thank you. They said, but I’m not going to tell you what bank it is. You’ve got to find it. Well, that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. If you don’t know what bank these promises are in, you can’t cash them and you can’t use them. If you can’t cash them when you need them, they’re not going to do you any good. So this is a good test now for you to consider. You probably know exactly how much money you have in your local bank or close to it. I mean, if you’re like most of us, you have to be careful that you don’t overspend and get to wind up in negative. So, well, what about God’s bank of promises? What about God’s bank of promises? How many promises do you know? I want you to do me a favor, would you? Try writing them down on a blank sheet of paper, the promises you know. Can you list 10 promises? Can you? Could you write down 10 different divine promises? If you cannot, then I suggest you start making a list so you can actually cash them in when you need them. I have published a book called Promises and Principles of the Word of God, and it’s free. If you’d like to have it, just contact us through our website, rickhughesministries.org. rickhughesministries.org there you’ll find a list of books and click on promises and principles and we will send it to you free of charge if you give us your address or you can call me at 800-831-0718 God’s book on promises and principles so the promises of God are an eternal guarantee that he freely bestows on us and nobody can take them away from us All right. A grace-oriented believer has to seek another wonderful gift. Here’s another grace asset I want to tell you about. You know about it. It’s called prayer. It’s the most misused, misunderstood word in our Christian vocabulary today. When we’re praying for you, brother, most of those prayers never go any higher than the ceiling. And they explained why. A right thing has to be done in a right way. Prayer is definitely a right thing. God wants you to pray. He wants you to understand how to pray. But if you’re doing a right thing in a wrong way, it’s not going to be answered. For example, if you’re praying to Jesus, that’s not going to get answered. Because the Bible says you pray to the Father in the name of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. If you’re praying in the energy of the flesh because you have unconfessed sin in your life and you question and grieve the Holy Spirit, that prayer will not be answered. I know that because the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So this grace provision of prayer is a wonderful, wonderful gift from God. It’s a wonderful divine asset. Psalm 66, 18, I quote it to you. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Listen to Philippians 4, 6, talking about prayer. Be anxious for nothing. Don’t be nervous. Don’t be upset. Don’t be fearful. Listen to the verse now. But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. So, you know, like with our radio shows, when we broadcast to 170 stations, Nobody pays for this. I don’t have any backer. We don’t sell any commercial time. You hear the show. Have you heard us advertise anything? Have you heard us try to sell anything? So what we do is we live by faith, trusting God will pay for it. And if he doesn’t pay for it, then we’ll go off the air. So with Thanksgiving, thanking God, we let our requests be made known to God to actually finance our radio show. so we can continue to bring the good news to you. That’s a wonderful thing we live by. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And we do that, and my team does that. We all pray. We all ask the Lord to supply our needs, and he does every time. Sometimes people say, if you need something, brother, let me know. Why would I let you know when I can let the Lord know? He’s the one that can meet my needs, not you. Now, here’s another principle about prayer. All prayer is directed to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, it’s not going to be answered. Romans 8, 26, Likewise, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don’t know what we should pray as we ought to, but the Holy Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. What a shame it would be in your life and in my life if we are directing our prayers to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, because as I said, we would do the right thing in the wrong way. If you think about it, maybe this is why your prayers are not being answered. another wonderful divine resource is protection notice the alliteration i’m using p as in prayer p as in promises p is in protection a grace-oriented person is relaxed christian that person knows god has assigned an angelic being to watch over them and protect them did you know that you have an angelic being watching over you a guardian angel a ministering spirit Hebrews 1.14, are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation? In Psalm 46.1, God is our refuge and our strength and a very present help in time of trouble. So we have protection. We also have provisions. God will meet every need we have. Psalm 37, 25, I have been young and now I’m old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging for bread. That’s grace provisions, grace protection, grace promises, grace prayer answered. And then there’s the power of the word of God. For the word of God is living and powerful, Hebrews 4.12, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and is the discerner of the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. When our Lord Jesus Christ was confronted by Satan at the beginning of his ministry, he quoted scripture to defeat and foil the attack. You can read about it in Matthew 4, 4-6. I’m telling you the word of God is your best weapon against satanic attacks. The grace-oriented believer knows scripture and he uses that scripture daily. If he doesn’t, he’s in trouble. That’s why Ephesians 6, 17 says, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Another wonderful grace provision is a what? A well-qualified pastor. Another P word, a pastor. In Ephesians 4.11, he’s identified as the one who is our shepherd, who protects the sheep from the wolves and protecting the sheep from getting lost. So he’s the instructor. He’s the teacher. The Greek word for pastor-teacher is poimen kai didaskalos. Everybody has to have a well-qualified pastor if they want to grow to reach maturity spiritually. Sadly, many pastors today don’t meet these requirements and don’t teach the word of God. And finally, the grace-oriented believer taps into the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 2 Peter 1.3, his divine power had been given to us all things that pertain to life and God of this through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue. So we have the power of Christ in our life. It’s made available through the knowledge of him. It’s a clear indication that means the Holy Spirit which the Lord Jesus Christ sent and the word of God which the Father provided, we can understand all matters clearly. that pertain to him. Great happiness is yours. Great happiness is available to you. It’s all grace. Therefore, Psalm 119 said, I will meditate on your precepts, contemplate your ways, delight myself in your statutes. And I will not forget your word. Grace orientation. What a wonderful way to live. Making up the flat line on your soul. This is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening. See you next week. Same time, same place.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
