This episode of The Flatline addresses one of Christianity’s most profound journeys: transitioning from merely knowing to truly understanding God. Rick Hughes examines how believers can nurture their spiritual lives, emphasizing the contrast between living by divine standards and succumbing to the pitfalls of carnality. Learn about the spiritual tools available to every Christian and how to employ them to ensure spiritual maturity and growth.
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, you have a cordial invitation to stick around, listen for a while. We’re not going to try to con you. We’re not going to try to hustle any money out of you. We’re not trying to sell you anything. It’s simply a show about verifying and identifying the will of God for your life. If you’re interested and you listen, you can orient and adjust wherever you want to do. But my job is to be accurate and not to play games. The Flatline is always about explaining God’s protocol plan in a way that you and I can understand. Not using spiritual cliches like just let God do it, brother. Turn it over to the Lord, brother. We’re talking about how this thing, the spiritual life, really works. Remember a key verse that I want to bring to your mind today is in Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24. Jeremiah speaking for God said this, I’m looking for those who not only know me but understand me. My premise is there’s a difference between knowing God and understanding God. Many people know God through Jesus Christ as Savior. They’ve come to experience salvation. They’re born again. They know they’re going to heaven. But they don’t really understand the God they know. If you’re going to grow in grace, you must come to understand the God that you know. And so as we begin to explain some of these things today, I think it’s critical that we understand this. We’re going to talk about spirituality. Every believer must know and understand the spiritual life. If you ever hope to glorify God to the max, you’ve got to understand that. And so in the Bible, it talks about being spiritual, and that’s the first question. What does it mean to be spiritual? I mean, I was around people a lot of times after I became a Christian and in the younger years of my Christian life that I thought were great spiritual people. And sometimes it was based on how they talked. I remember meeting an English man that had the accent like this, and he spoke really godly. He called the god master. I mean, you know, and I listened to that, and I thought, man, this guy really is godly. Listen to how he talks. Listen to how he prays, and he would pray, dear master. And so I was assuming it was a godly man when I was wrong. And, you know, I’ve been around people that didn’t do certain things. They considered this spiritual because they wouldn’t go into a 7-Eleven that sold a beer. You know, I’m a Christian. I’m not going in there and give that place any business. They sell the devil’s liquor in there or whatever. All kind of crazy things. I’m spiritual because I don’t eat bubble gum or chew lollipops or whatever. Come on. What is spirituality? What really does the Bible say spirituality is? What does it mean to be a spiritual person? Is it how you walk and how you talk? Is it the way you live your lifestyle? Or is it what you think? So let’s start in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 2, verses 13 through 15. And the question I want you to answer today, if you listen to this entire show, is are you spiritual? Are you spiritual? Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, 13, and we speak about these things not with words taught us by human wisdom, but those taught by the Spirit explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. The unbeliever does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him. and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The one who is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is understood by no one. The one who is spiritual, understanding spiritual things, First question we must answer is who is the spiritual person? What’s Paul talking about, who’s a spiritual person? In 1 Corinthians 2 verse 12, Paul wrote these words, we have not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. And so a spiritual person is a person who possesses the Holy Spirit. If you have the Holy Spirit, you are a spiritual person. Jesus said this was going to happen, that the Holy Spirit would come to live in people. And listen to that verse again. So that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. We don’t have the spirit of the world, but the spirit who’s from God. The reason God gave you the spirit, the Holy Spirit, is so that you can know the things that have been freely given to you by God. In other words, to understand your grace assets, you must have the Holy Spirit. Jesus told the disciples in John 14, 25, I’ve spoken these things while staying with you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and will cause you to remember, that’s recall. So he will teach you my word, the things that I said, and he will help you to recall everything I said to you. Now remember, these guys wrote the Bible, the New Testament, and they wrote it 30, 40 years after he said it to them. So they had to have recall by means of the Holy Spirit to refresh their memory. so that they could write down and record what we know today is the gospel narratives of the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. John and Matthew were eyewitnesses. Mark was not, Luke was not. They were given information by Peter, who wrote two books of the New Testament himself, 1 and 2 Peter. So if you are a Christian and you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, You are spiritual. You have received the Holy Spirit. When did you receive the Holy Spirit? Ephesians 1.13. And when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed in Christ, quote, you were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. So the minute you believed in Jesus Christ, the minute you heard the gospel and said, that’s for me, I believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God and I’m willing to accept him as my savior. Boom. That’s when you receive the Holy Spirit. You probably didn’t feel it. I know I didn’t. I didn’t hear a heart. The roof didn’t shake. The lights didn’t flicker. Nothing happened. I mean, I got on my knees beside a bed and prayed with a preacher and said, God, please save me, and nothing happened. I didn’t think, but it did. Because it’s not an emotional thing. Some people get emotional about it. Some people weep tears of repentance at the altar, as they say. But salvation and what actually happens, being born again, is not something you will feel. Being born again is a spiritual birth experience. And that’s what we’ll talk about here. When did you receive the Spirit of God? Well, point one. Let’s get this down. Whoever is born of God has the indwelling Holy Spirit and is thus no longer a natural man. But now he’s a spiritual man, referring to his spiritual birth. Remember 1 Corinthians 2.14. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolish to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. So we have two sets of individuals, a natural person and a spiritual person. You may be in your marriage like that. You may have a natural person which is an unbeliever and a spiritual person which is a believer. You may have in your family like that. These are two different distinct classes of people. The natural man has not received Christ as his Savior because he has not received the Spirit of God, and anything about the Bible would be foolish to him. And he can’t know the techniques or the nuisance, the insinuations of the Word of God, the principles of the Word of God. He can’t know them. because they’re only spiritually discerned. He won’t understand why you pray. He’ll think that’s ridiculous. He won’t understand why you claim Bible promises. He doesn’t see the validity to that. He’s a natural man. But point two, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, because of your salvation, you were born again, and you are no longer a natural man. You are now a spiritual man or woman. Either one. This means simply this, that you have a body, a physical body. You can look in the mirror. Don’t laugh. There it is. That’s you. Correct. And you have an invisible human spirit that has been indwelled by God, the Holy Spirit. That’s what salvation is. When you get saved, God the Holy Spirit comes to indwell your human spirit that was spiritually dead. But now it’s been made spiritually alive by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So now instead of just having a body and a soul, now you have a body and a soul and a spirit. When we decease, when we pass away, when we pass on, the body is going to be useless. We’re going to get a new body, a different body, a resurrection body. Like the eyes never seen and the ears never heard. It’s going to be unbelievable, but don’t need this one anymore. but you’re going to have the same soul and the same spirit. It’s going to heaven. It’s going to live in that new body. So if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, when you were born again, that’s when the Holy Spirit came to indwell you. And this is called positional truth. Positional truth. You are in the family of God. You have the Holy Spirit living in you. You are spiritual. You’re not a natural man. You’re a spiritual man. But, but, and this is a big but here, you may not be spiritual in your experience. It may be that you are a believer in Jesus Christ, thus not a natural man, but a spiritual man. But in your experience, day to day, you may not be spiritual. You may be carnal. Paul states this principle of carnality in 1 Corinthians 3, one through four, the same principle I call, from learning it from my pastor, reversionism, reverting back to living like the lost man lives, reversionism. Paul states the principle in 1 Corinthians 3, 1 through 4, And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat, for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither yet now are you able to bear it. For you are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envy, strife, and division, are you not carnal and walk as the lost people walk, walk as men? For while one says, I am of Paul, and another says, I am of Apollos, are you not carnal? Mental attitude sins are indicative of carnality. Sins of the tongue are indicative of carnality. A believer who has known sin in his life is a carnal Christian. And most of the time, he’s not a mature Christian. We’ll study that. What does it mean to be spiritually mature? But so far, we’ve had what does it mean to be a spiritual person? That’s a person who’s born again. What does it mean to have spirituality? And we’re going to see that here. That means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And what does it mean to be a spiritually mature individual? That’s to be controlled by the mind of Christ, having his thinking, controlling you, living by divine viewpoint. So Paul recognized in Corinth there was a problem. There was a lot of problems in Corinth. It caused him to write several letters, two of which wound up in the New Testament. And he called them babies in Christ because they weren’t mature. They were carnal. They allowed their sin nature to control their life, not the Holy Spirit of God. So here’s the principle. The believer, you and me, who has unconfessed sin in his life is not spiritual in his experience since he’s grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit. So even though we are spiritual in our position, we are in the royal family of God, we’ve been born again, we are not spiritual in our experience since we’ve grieved the Holy Spirit, quenched the Holy Spirit. The Bible gives some negative mandates in Ephesians 4.30. Grieve not the Spirit of God, whereby you’re sealed until the day of redemption. God’s not going to take the Holy Spirit away. He’s not going to say, give it back now. He sealed you with the Holy Spirit, but it’s possible when you sin, you will grieve or sadden the Holy Spirit. We say it that way. Now, the Holy Spirit doesn’t have emotions like you and I have, and he’s not emotionally manipulated like you and I have. But this is a way we can understand he does not approve of our sin. And so when we sin, we must rebound the sin, which you should know is problem-solving device number one on the flatline of your soul. It says, if we confess our sin, then he’s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to purify us from all of our wrongdoing. So we are mandated. This is not a request. This is an order from God through Paul. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Do you know what happens when you grieve the Holy Spirit? You wind up standing alone in the devil’s world. You’ve lost the man who protects your back. You’ve shut him down. And think about this. Now, there you are living in the devil’s world, a believer in Jesus Christ, not a natural man but a spiritual man, and you have quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit who has your back, and now you’ve walked out the door into the devil’s world with no protection. That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would you want to do that? Because you’re going to be a victim right off the bat because Satan, I mean, his objective is to intimidate you. His objective is to discourage you, to defeat you in the angelic conflict. He doesn’t need you being a witness on behalf of the prosecution for God. So, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. You are sealed until the day of redemption. You don’t have to worry about losing him, but you can grieve him. And the Bible says don’t quench him, 1 Thessalonians 5, 19. That’s to shut off his power. When you shut off the power of the Holy Spirit, he’s not able to… give you insight. He’s not able to carry your prayers to the throne of God. Romans talks about we don’t know how to pray as we should pray but the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us. So here you are and you’re trying to pray But you have quenched the Holy Spirit, shut off his power, and your prayer will not go any higher than the ceiling because you’re doing it in the energy of the flesh. And unless you are filled with the Holy Spirit, your prayers are not going to go before the throne of God. You can’t do it in the energy of the flesh. That’s not the protocol plan of God. So spirituality is an experience. Spiritual is a birth. You’re spiritual because you were born again, but spirituality is an experience, not a position. Now listen to this principle. One, this was a term used for the filling of the Holy Spirit. So if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you are spiritual. How would you know you’re filled with the Holy Spirit? Is it something you’re going to feel? Is it something you will see? Is it something you must strive hard to obtain? The answer is no. When you name any known sin to God, you are instantaneously filled with the Holy Spirit. You’re already sealed with the Holy Spirit. You’re already indwelled by the Holy Spirit. You’ve already been given your spiritual gift and but you quenched him and you grieved him with your sin. It could be a mental attitude sin. It could be a sin of the tongue. It could be an overt sin. Whatever you decided to do to carry on in your own volition, You know, you are the decider. You have a volition. You make a decision, and you made a decision to do this. It’s expedient for you to do it right now, and you compromised your principles. You compromised your core values because it was expedient. You were thinking about self, and you did it for self, and you quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit. You’re standing alone in the devil’s world with no one to cover your back. And now you look around and you go, good grief. I was a fool. I was an idiot. I can’t believe I did that. Then go to God immediately and confess the sin. Because the Bible says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That’s the rebound technique. That’s problem-solving device number one. So this term spirituality is a term used for the filling of the Holy Spirit. But point two, when we’re in a state of sin, we are not spiritual. We’re carnal. When we’re in a state of sin, that’s unconfessed sin in your life, mental attitude sin, sin of the tongue, overt sin. Let me say mental attitude sin. Worry is a mental attitude sin. Bitterness is a mental attitude sin. Jealousy is a mental attitude sin. Envy is a mental attitude sin. Listen, this Christian life is a unique way of living. This is the most unique life the world has ever seen. It’s the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, manifested in you by means of divine viewpoint thinking under the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s amazing. So you’re not spiritual in your experience when you have sin in your life. Excuse me. all right so it could be mental attitude sins it could be sins of the tongue such a thing as gossip slander maligning criticizing let me just give you a warning you’re watching the television you’re watching your favorite politician and you see some real jerk who hates your favorite politician And that jerk is going off on your favorite politician and telling everybody what a liar he is, what a liar she is, what a reprobate they are, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The public lie, you know, you tell it often enough, loud enough and long enough about half the world will believe it. So people drink the Kool-Aid every day. If you know what I mean, drinking the Kool-Aid from the Jim Jones experience. Listen, if you get mad, lose your temper, stand up, point at that TV and say, that S-O-B, you just sinned. You just sinned. Mental attitude sin. You don’t have to be in front of him and smack him in the nose or say something to her. You sinned by that hatred in your soul. This is where you have to learn to use problem-solving devices. Number six, which is number seven, which is impersonal love for others. Impersonal love for others. You can love the biggest jerk on television if you love him based on your divine standards, not theirs. It’s the same way God loved you. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God loved you. Were you a wonderful, sweet, marvelous, magnificent person? No. You were a sinner just like me. God loved us before we ever loved him. So spirituality, which is the filling of the Holy Spirit, And carnality, which is being manipulated and controlled by your sin nature, they are both absolutes and they are mutually exclusive. You cannot be both at the same time. The believer is spiritual when the Holy Spirit controls his life and he’s carnal when the sin nature controls his life. So which one are you right now? Are you spiritual in your experience? Or are you carnal in your experience? Is there unconfessed sin in your life? That’s the answer. So the spiritual believer You and I, when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are to imitate Jesus Christ. And the carnal believer, he imitates the natural man or the lost man. Ephesians 5.1 tells us this. Therefore, we are to be imitators of God as beloved children. We are to think like he thought. You can’t do this apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit. And the only way to be filled with the Holy Spirit is to use the rebound technique. When you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, you subdue the lust of the flesh. You overcome the flesh. The Bible says if we walk in the spirit, we will not. We will not give in to the lust of the flesh. The book of Galatians talks about it. The flesh wars against the spirit and vice versa. So imitators of God. It’s impossible apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit because we have to imitate his thinking, Philippians 2.5. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. and we have to replicate his lifestyle as we become mature believers, living in the cosmic system, living in the devil’s world, replicating the lifestyle of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there’s a difference between spirituality and maturity. A spiritual person is a person filled with the Holy Spirit. A mature person That’s based on the content of the word of God in your soul. One’s based on the filling of the Holy Spirit and one’s based on the content of the word of God in your soul. No one can ever glorify God to the maximum until he or she, they learn God’s protocol plan. That’s why we have 2 Peter 3.18. Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s why we have 2 Timothy 2.15, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. That’s why we have Matthew 11, 28 through 30, come to me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn, learn, learn of me. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Learn, study, grow. The Christian life is not something you get by osmosis. You must commit yourself to learn the word of God and apply it into your life. It’s known that you’re a spiritual person since your spiritual birth, yes. But it’s possible that you are not a spiritual person right now in your experience, isn’t it? That’s possible since you have unconfessed sin in your life. And if so, it’s highly probable that you’re not spiritually mature. since you have no desire to study god’s word and prove it grow it learn it use it in your life you may have settled for ritual without reality and that’s totally meaningless ritual without reality is you shuffling on down to your local church singing a few do lords and a few praises to the god and and having a 15-minute sermon and heading over to your favorite restaurant and you consider Your Christian deed done. You went to church this Sunday. Well, I thank God you went to church. But that’s not the spiritual life. It’s much, much, much, much more. And your pastor will be the first one to tell you that. You must grow in grace. You must find a well-qualified pastor. Study God’s Word under the mentorship of the Holy Spirit through this man’s spiritual gift and grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I sure hope you’re listening, and I hope I’ve explained the difference between spirituality, carnality, and maturity. 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.
