Join Rick Hughes as he explores the transformative power of a relaxed mental attitude in this enlightening episode. Through a blend of humor and biblical insights, Rick discusses the benefits of maintaining a non-judgmental and grace-filled outlook on life. Discover how spiritual maturity and personal growth can lead to peace and inner contentment, free from the constraints of ego-driven legalism. This episode also highlights the significance of laughter and positivity as vital components of spiritual resilience and Christian living.
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 am your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It’ll be a few minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education without manipulation. We don’t con people. We’re not asking for money. We’re not trying to sell anything. We’re not trying to solicit membership. We’re just trying to give you accurate information, information that’ll hopefully help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if you want to orient and adjust to the plan, you have the privilege and you have the honor to do so. But let’s remember this, that God gave you two ends. Wasn’t there any doubt about that? Look in the mirror and you can see them both. God gave you two ends, one to sit with and one to think with. And success in your life depends on which one you use. If it’s heads, then you’ll win. And if it’s tails, then you’ll lose. And so this show is about getting you to think, think properly, to orient to the grace of God. In 2 Peter 3.18, the Bible says, grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Flatline is about developing grace orientation and about developing biblical orientation, doctrinal orientation, so that you build in your soul a main line of resistance that’s based on 10 unique problem-solving devices. If you learn these 10 unique problem-solving devices and apply them into your soul, then it’s possible you could stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. That’s why repeatedly I say stress is optional. Adversity is inevitable because adversity is what those circumstances do to you and however, stress is what you do to yourself. So you do not have to worry. You do not have to be angry. You do not have to be disillusioned. You do not have to be bitter. These are things you do to yourself. So the Bible mandates, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, that you grow and understand God’s grace purpose for your life and get some knowledge, understand his plan, how his plan works. If you’re not a believer in Jesus Christ, I cannot imagine you listening to the radio show, but let me encourage you that the single greatest decision you could ever make is to accept Christ as your Savior. It’s a simple act of faith. You don’t have to join up, show up, fess up, give up. You just have to believe. And that’s why the Bible clearly says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus himself said, this is the will of the one that sent me that you believe in me whom he has sent. And so believing in the Lord Jesus Christ means you recognize that he’s the anointed son of God. And you recognize that he died as a substitution for you. He took your place. He paid the penalty for your sin. And you’re willing to receive the forgiveness that he offers in love and grace. And so the Bible says, whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That’s anybody. And you can go to God the Father and you can simply say, I believe that Jesus Christ is your anointed son. I believe he died and paid for my sin and I want to accept him as my savior. That simple act of faith, three short lines there, will guarantee you eternal life forever. Because the Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith and it’s a gift from God. not of works that someone would brag about it. It’s an amazing thing to know Christ and to begin your life all over again, to reboot your life, we say sometimes, where the Bible says if any man’s in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away and behold, all things become new. The day you believe in Jesus Christ is the day you were born again. It’s your second birthday. That’s why the Lord Jesus Christ told Nicodemus he needed to be born again. You couldn’t go to heaven unless you’re born again, Nicodemus. And Nicodemus was a little taken back by that because he didn’t quite understand what it meant. He thought maybe Jesus was referring to a physical birth. And he said, that’s impossible. And the Lord said, no, it’s a spiritual birth. Born again means that spiritually you’re made alive in Christ. And the wonderful news that Jesus Christ said, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. Also, John recorded, these things are written so that you may know that you have eternal life. Not try, hope, wish, want, but you can know that you have eternal life. He goes on to say in 1 John 5, 11, he that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God has not life. So with that in your mind, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, your objective is to learn God’s protocol plan, to understand how God’s plan works, and to put it to practice in your life. And that requires the thinking part of your soul, the end that you think with your mind. And if you think right and learn God’s protocol plan, then you wind up doing right things in the right way and you will hear God say someday, well done, my good and my faithful servant. But the Christian life is not ritual without reality to it. So many people seem to want it to be that. They don’t want to take the time to understand the mechanics. They just want to go through the motion. the nod to God crowd that shows up every Sunday. Hello, God. Nice to see you this morning, God. I’ll see you next Sunday, God. And then it’s off to the races for the rest of the week. I mean, you can be a Christian and do that, but you’re never going to grow up spiritually until you begin to actually sacrifice some time and begin to study God’s Word and learn God’s Word and apply it into your life. Now today, I want to talk to you a little bit about a relaxed mental attitude. if you’re able to build a main line of resistance in your soul which means you learn those 10 problem solving devices starting with rebound dealing with the problem of sin, then moving to the filling of the Holy Spirit, dealing with the problem of the sin nature, and then moving to faith rest, where you deal with the problem of unknown circumstances, and then to grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, eventually having a personal sense of destiny, and then developing virtue love with personal love for God on one side of the coin and impersonal love for others on the other side of the coin, This giving you the happiness that God has for you to share with him and finally to be occupied with Christ. Those 10 unique problem-solving devices, by the way, we put them in a bookmark. If you want a bookmark, just write us. No charge, they’re free. We’ll be glad to send you as many as you’d like. And you can put it in the pages of your Bible. It’s a beautiful bookmark about 10 inches long and not too wide. And it lists all 10 problem-solving devices for you. You should be able to say them by memory because it’s important that you know. how these work, each one of them works. And part of them are definitely related to you having a relaxed mental attitude in your life. Because having a relaxed mental attitude is one of the advantages to establishing a flight line in your soul. It’s a tremendous advantage for you to be relaxed and not to worry, not to panic. I mean, I can best describe this RMA, I call it. Let’s refer to the relax mental attitude as an rma i can best describe this attitude as you having the mind of christ since we are mandated to think like he thought in the scriptures in philippians 2 5 let this mind be in you that was also in christ jesus when we have three enemies the flesh and the world and the devil they all fight to control what you think they manipulate you by controlling your emotions And this is not what God does. He’s not a manipulator. God gives you the choice to learn his word, use his word, and live a phenomenal life, or ignore his word and trot down the highway. That’s up to you. But if you can understand what having a relaxed mental attitude means, it means that you never worry. Jesus Christ our Lord, if we’re going to have the mind of Christ, if we’re going to assimilate his thinking by learning the scriptures because the Bible says the New Testament is the mind of Christ, so this means he never worried, he never gave in to any jealousy, and he never was intimidated. by irrational fear, nor did he ever become bitter, and many, many other attitudes. So I can definitely assure you that our Lord had one thing. He had a sense of humor. I believe that with all of my heart. Just look at the ones that he chose to be his disciples, a bunch of fishermen and a tax collector and others. I mean, good grief. What a bunch of guys that you would have thought he didn’t choose any of the educated ones. He’d choose the undereducated ones, and they had a sense of humor. Don’t tell me fishermen don’t laugh and joke and cut up. Carry on. And it must have been a hoot traveling around with these disciples because I can assure you they had a sense of humor. And I know that our Lord had a sense of humor. And I could tell you many things about that, but we won’t go into all of that. That’s not necessary. But having an RMA doesn’t just mean you have a sense of humor. That’s not all it means. It also means you use faith rest in your life and you have virtue love. You understand impersonal love and personal love. If you have these things, it gives you the ability to look at people, that’s virtue love, and look at circumstances with faith, rest, drill, in an entirely different way so that you don’t think like the rest of the world thinks. You live to the different drumbeat. You live to the drumbeat of the scriptures, the word of God, what we call divine viewpoint, not human viewpoint. The world lives by human viewpoint. You live by a divine viewpoint, and so it’s a different way of thinking. It’s a relaxed mental attitude, and it’s the ultimate attitude that comes with occupation with Jesus Christ. When you get to problem-solving device number 10, occupation with Christ, this is the ultimate attitude, a relaxed mental attitude. You see, once you begin to have personal love for God and once you begin to be occupied with the person of Christ, then you will no longer feel threatened by things in your life that used to disturb you. And you’ll lose that inferiority complex, which is part of arrogance most of the time. and you can replace it with a relaxed mental attitude. What a way to think. Love for other believers, even the weird ones, that’s a relaxed mental attitude. I mean, you got to be able to love one another. The Bible says this is how the world can tell that you’re a Christian, that you have love one for another. But sometimes it’s hard to love the weirdos. And there are a lot of Christian weirdos like me or you. And so how do we do it? We do it with virtue love. We do it with impersonal love, one of our problem-solving devices. Impersonal loves means that we love them based on who we are, not based on who they are. It’s the same love God used for you in John 3, 16, where it says, God so loved the world. He loved you, but weren’t you a jerk before you accepted Christ as your Savior? Weren’t you a bit of a weirdo even now? And he still loves you. He hasn’t given up on loving you. You may have walked out on God, but I promise you, he never walked out on you. So in your life, you may have just a few true friends, but you must have a relaxed mental attitude towards all believers, including the worst kind of believers, the legalistic, nosy, emotional believers. And this relaxed mental attitude, we call it agape love. You know, there are several words in the Bible for love. They’re all translated love. Agapao, stokeo, erato, phileo, all different words for love. But agapao is a wonderful love, and it’s a category of love. of love that’s related to the person. This relaxed mental attitude of agape, or love, category three love, regardless of what the person is like, the believer’s like, you are to never have any mental attitude sin towards any other believer, including your spouse. You say you love your wife, or you love your husband, and you get angry, and you say things you shouldn’t say. That’s not a relaxed mental attitude. So when your spouse does something that irritates you, a relaxed mental attitude can forgive and forget. But an obnoxious, emotional, reactionary jerk is going to make an issue out of everything because you want it your way all the time and you can’t handle anyone else making any decisions that you don’t agree with. And so that’s not a relaxed mental attitude. The relaxed mental attitude is you not having anger, you not having bitterness, you not having jealousy towards any believers. And it comes from the balance of residency in your soul. That is, when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, problem-solving device number two. And when you have Bible doctrine in your soul, problem-solving device number five, then, then and only then, personality is no more an issue because you’re going to get along with even the bad personalities. So this wonderful attitude of impersonal love from the filling of the Holy Spirit and from doctrine in your soul gives you a relaxed mental attitude towards all men because you have some spiritual momentum in your life. Spiritual momentum means you’re growing, you’re processing information, and you’re moving from a baby Christian through a student Christian to eventually, hopefully, an adult Christian, to be a mature believer. It’s important you understand that. So even in death, I mean, that’s going to come someday too. Then the mature believer, the believer who’s grown, the believer who’s learned God’s protocol plan can actually laugh at Satan’s intent since he knows the one who holds the future. In Job 5.19, we have an illustration illustrating the concept of grace deliverance in living grace and even in dying grace. And this is grace orientation. Problem-solving device number four, listen carefully. This is the illustration of the relaxed mental attitude when grace delivers you at that point. In Six Troubles, written in Job 519, He, that’s God, will deliver you. Furthermore, in seven, evil will not touch you. In famine, he will preserve you from death, and in combat, from the stroke of the sword. You will be hidden from the lash of the tongue, and you will not be afraid of violent death when it comes. You will laugh. That’s the relaxed mental attitude, a wonderful sense of humor. You will laugh at death. and famine, and even from wild animals of the earth, having nothing to fear. Does that mean you literally laugh? No. What it means is you’re not intimidated by death. You’re relaxed. You’re not intimidated by the criminals. You’re not intimidated by these things. This is not some hysterical laughter, but it’s referring to a relaxed mental attitude. And it’s humorous because you’re not afraid of dying, as most people are, because you know who holds the future. It’s a perfect happiness at work in your soul. And that’s problem-solving device number nine, perfect happiness at work in your soul. Even in military combat, a mature believer, a believer who’s grown in grace and knowledge of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, he can maintain the same RMA. Laughter, you see, expresses the right mental attitude of the mature believer, even in combat. Job 41, 26. The sword that reaches him cannot prevail, nor the spear, nor the dart, nor the javelin. He regards iron as straw, bronze as rotten wood. The arrows cannot cause him to flee. Sling stones are turned into stubble for him. Battle clubs are regarded as stubble, and he laughs at the rattling of the javelin. Again, the laugh, the relaxed mental attitude in combat. The mature believer can laugh or have an RMA at whatever the enemy throws at him because he knows Jesus Christ controls history. He knows God has a marvelous, wonderful plan for his life. What is there to fear? There is nothing to fear. If Jesus Christ is in control and God the Father knows what’s going on, what is there to fear? Nothing. That doesn’t mean you jump up out of your foxhole and go running towards the enemy saying, shoot me, shoot me if you can. That’s not what it’s saying. But it’s saying you will not be frozen by fear. You will have a relaxed mental attitude. You will be calm when other people are panicking because you have doctrine in your soul. Now, remember that a relaxed mental attitude gives you the ability for you to think under pressure, just like what I’m telling you. You can think under pressure. So when tranquility and contentment become a major part of your life, then people will no longer be able to hurt you. They won’t shock you. They won’t cause you to react. And you will have capacity for life and love and happiness. So you now have the capacity to see objectively with a relaxed mental attitude all the things that used to disturb you When you react to unfair treatments, you show lack of spiritual maturation. You haven’t grown spiritually. And so there you have it, the RMA. The RMA in your life. People can’t hurt you. People can’t shock you. You’re totally relaxed. You know the Father’s in control. You know the plan goes on. You have the capacity to see things objectively with tranquility and contentment in your life. You’re not under an emotional overload which can steal your RMA. I’m not describing an RMA as an emotion, but it’s a way of thinking. As a matter of fact, many, many believers get distracted with their emotions, and they want to have some type of spiritual high or spiritual feeling. And these sorts usually, in my opinion, they take, therefore, themselves way too serious. I don’t know if you’ve been around any Christians like that, but I have. And they’re obnoxious. They take themselves way too serious. And they will be quick to judge you if you don’t fit into their expectations. I assure you of that. If you don’t take it as serious as they take it, then you must not really be a Christian. And they will judge you and malign you and try to manipulate you into doing things that are not normal. You know, like, brother, if you love the Lord, get some tracks and go out on the street corner and pass them out to everybody. Tell them Jesus is coming soon. Or, brother, if you love the Lord, you won’t go down to that Walmart and shop because they sell alcoholic beverages there. Our brother, if you love the Lord, you won’t do this and you won’t do that. This is the craziest thing you’ve ever heard in your life. And these are manipulators, legalists, that try to impress God with some sort of legalism, no more different than the Pharisees that our Lord faced. It’s another form of intimidation that you will face as a believer, a legalist. As a young Christian, one time I bought a handgun. I’ll never forget this. And a legalist said, you bought a gun? And I said, yeah, I did. And they said to me, well, brother, don’t you trust the Lord? And I said, yes, I do. And I’m always thinking about the joke. I’m trusting him to make that bullet go right where I aim it. I didn’t buy a gun to shoot anybody. That was not my objective. But I did buy a handgun for protection, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The Lord even told the disciples, take a sword with them when they go out on the road. But that doesn’t, you know, the legalist is going to do anything he can to make you seem not very spiritual. I even had a guy one time, he was a pastor. wouldn’t fish in a bass tournament with me because he said that was gambling. And I said, what? Yeah, brother, that’s gambling. And my people wouldn’t look on me very good if I was gambling. Well, it wasn’t like we were going to the casino to play blackjack. We just in a bass tournament. fishing for a trophy. Anyhow, this is how ridiculous it gets. So I pray that you will grow in grace and break the chains of legalism that hold you back. And unfortunately, sometimes it comes through denominational traditions and denominational expectations. like, you know, you can’t be a good Christian, brother, if you eat peanuts. Stupid stuff like that. Legalists will try to impose that on you, and they will be offended if you seem to be having a good time in life. You know, people, it’s interesting what people think about life and what is fun and what’s not fun. Let me tell you what I have. I have the most fantastic relaxed mental attitude based on God’s plan for my life. based on the word of God for my life. You should have it too. You should have a sense of humor. You should be able to laugh. You should be able to not take yourself too seriously. Our Lord was in business way before you got here. And he’s going to be in business long after you’re gone. So saving the whole world doesn’t depend on us. We need to do our share to represent Jesus Christ, represent him to our family, to our friends, to our neighbors, anyone we can come in contact with, offering them the good news. But remember this, God the Holy Spirit is always going to be here working, promoting the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, helping people to see who and what they really are. And so you have to be careful here when you get into this overly hyper Jesus attitude sometimes. And I’ve seen it destroy friendships. So your RMA is your attitude. Mental attitude is a function of human thought and your mental attitude is what you are at any given time throughout the day. Consequently, the real battlefield for your soul is what you think. And the life of every believer is in his mental attitude. The life of every believer is determined experientially by two principles, what he thinks and what he decides. God knows what you’re thinking, what your intentions, what your motivations, what your desires are. That’s why he’s God. He knows all of that. So divine viewpoint mental attitude is a part of the greatest delegation of divine power in human history. when you can have divine viewpoint or the mind of Christ because you’ve learned it, you’ve grown in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, then what you think is more important than anything else in your life. But so many believers are struggling through life as mindless losers, full of emotion, not thinking, What counts is the power of divine viewpoint in the stream of consciousness. What you really are as a person is what you really think, not what you appear to be on the surface. Not the way you dress or the way you’re groomed. But on the inside, the real you is the invisible you. So keep that in mind as we wrap this show up today. It’s your soul that’s the real you. You’re not always what you appear to be on the surface. and some people can hide their thoughts some people can’t people hide their thoughts and become adept at practicing hypocrisy that’s why galatians 6 3 says for if anyone thinks he’s something when he’s nothing he’s deceiving himself thinking is either the application of doctrine to your life or the application of arrogance and ignorance which is nothing more than human viewpoint So there you have it. Do you have a relaxed mental attitude? Are you able to be relaxed because of the word of God in your soul? Do you have a sense of humor? Do you not take yourself too seriously? This is all about having an RMA, which is the reason you build that flat line in your soul. That’s what glorifies Jesus Christ to the maximum, when you think like he thought. Until next week, 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.
