In this episode of The Flatline, host Rick Hughes delves into the concept of the FLOT Line, exploring how 10 unique problem-solving devices from the Bible can protect us from external adversities turning into internal stress. Through meaningful discussions on faith and spirituality, Rick offers insights on how adopting the mind of Christ can lead to a proactive and fulfilling Christian life. Join Rick as he guides listeners through the process of becoming a new creation in Christ while understanding and overcoming our hidden flaws, like arrogance and impulsiveness.
00:25:21 Avoiding Impulsiveness with Spiritual Guidance
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. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, I’d like to invite you to stick around. Just merely about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, And you know the drill. No, no manipulation. That’s right. No con games. We’re not asking you for money. We’re not trying to solicit support. We’re not selling anything. We’re just trying to give you some information. Information that I believe will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if you’re able to do that, and you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to. But the FLOT line is a show that we use the word FLOT as a military acronym. F-L-O-T stands for the Forward Line of Troops. And what we’re teaching is there are basically 10 unique problem-solving devices in the Bible This, by the way, was taught to me by my pastor years ago. And so I’m not anything original with me. And these are simply age old biblical terms. We just put a little different word phrase with them. So to make them fit into this situation, but the 10 unique problem solving devices, if you learn them and if you will use them, then you can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. Again, every show we tell you adversity is inevitable, but stress is optional. So you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to be bitter. You don’t have to have guilt. These are all stress-related sins, and there’s a better way to live. It’s called the Christian life. And you live the Christian life by acquiring the mind of Christ. Philippians 2.5, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. It means you learn to think like he thought. And that’s called divine viewpoint as opposed to human viewpoint. When we live our lives, we need to go to the scripture to find out what the Bible says, not what some writer says in some newspaper. What does the Bible say about it? And then we get back to do you believe the Bible or not? And then we get back to the fact that are you even a Christian or not? Some people listen to this radio show that are not Christians and some listen that are Christians. Becoming a Christian is not a hard thing to do. Very simply, the Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care what’s in the past. If you would like a chance to start your life all over again, listen carefully what the Bible says. If any man’s in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things become new. When you’re born again, you become a new person. You’re made alive spiritually, and you’re able to have fellowship with God through the ministry of God the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell and live in you. And you’re able to receive direction by means of the Bible, the Word of God, which is the textbook that God gave us. And we’re able to receive inspiration through the indwelling of the Lord Jesus Christ as he loves us and encourages us. So it’s up to you. If you want to become a Christian, it’s a simple thing to do. We all have to face that fact sooner or later. What thank you of Christ the Bible says. And a lot of people make it very complicated. They want you to jump through some hoop and promise God you’ll never fornicate again or you’ll never cheat again or you’ll never steal again or you’ll never whatever. That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible just simply says, whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Obviously, a Christian don’t want to do some of those things we just mentioned, that’s sure. But when you become a Christian, it’s a simple act of faith. You’re putting your faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and what he did for you. That’s why the Bible says he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God through him. He took our place. He was our substitute. He was judged in our place. If we go to him and tell the Father we are believing that and we would like to receive Christ as Savior in a simple prayer, expressing it in your own words, That’s the minute it’ll happen. Whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It’s that simple. Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your anointed son and I’m willing to accept him as my savior is a great place to start a simple prayer of faith. Please consider that. Those that are Christians that listen to the show, thank you for writing. Thank you for staying in touch. Thank you for your encouraging letters and mostly thank you for your prayer support. We obviously take a big step of faith by broadcasting on 113 stations across the United States every Sunday morning. They’re not free, it’s a big step of faith on our part. So we thank you for your prayer support and encouragement. Now let’s talk about something today that I believe will encourage you. And as we do, let me remind you before we get started that we do podcast all of our radio shows. on different podcast venues such as Apple iPod or Spotify or Breaker or Anchor. You can go to any of these podcast venues and type in The Flotline and you can hear the radio shows 24-7. Anywhere, anytime, any day. And again, we have all of our printed materials free of charge. If you’d like to get any of our material, go to the website, RickHughesMinistries.org, and they’ll ship it out to you the next day in the mail free of charge. Okay? Now, I want to talk to you about hidden flaws. Hidden flaws. Flaws that you and I have we might not be aware of. Of course, the number one flaw that we have is arrogance, and people that have arrogance sometimes don’t recognize it. People that have arrogance have unrealistic self-image, and the unrealistic self-image motivates unrealistic expectations of how they ought to be treated. I mean, if they don’t see themselves as they really are, then they want to be treated in a way they’re not worthy of being treated. Arrogance is always spotted by self-justification, self-absorption, self-deception, self-destruction eventually. The arrogant person will eventually destroy himself. That’s the number one hidden flaw we have in our life, and very few preachers preach on arrogance. They mostly talk about the big five, don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t smoke, et cetera. But I want to talk to you about another hidden flaw that comes out of arrogance. And this is get ready because this is kind of different. But I want to talk to you about being impulsive. Impulsiveness is a hidden flaw that many arrogant people have. What is impulsiveness? It’s acting or doing something without forethought, without thinking it through. There’s a difference between being impulsive and being compulsive. A compulsive person is a person who has an irresistible urge against his wishes. irresistible, compelling him to do something. And that’s like a sin nature on steroids. So when that happens, you usually go for it. But impulsive, now that’s a different thing. This is you getting all hyped up, all excited, thinking something’s gonna work, I need to do this, I need to do that, and you don’t think it through. You don’t check it out in the scriptures, and off you go, tooly down the my way highway, and then it winds up wasting time. and giving the devil an advantage. So I want to talk to you about being impulsive. You’ve got to stop letting yourself be manipulated like this. The key passage I want to give you is Proverbs 29, 11. It says, a fool expresses all of his emotions, but a wise person controls them. And that’s the key, controlling what you think. Because emotions are not thoughts. Emotions are feelings or actions. You can’t live the Christian life based on your emotions. This is where organized religion gets off the page sometimes when they get emotional. Go to church, have a big worship service, everybody sings hallelujah, praise the Lord, and get emotional. but that’s not growing in grace. The Bible does not say, let these emotions be in you that were also in Christ Jesus. It says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. So who is the wise person? That’s the person who has the divine viewpoint of the mentality of Christ, and he controls his emotions. James 1.19 says, understand this, my dear brothers and sisters, Let every person be quick to listen, but very slow to speak and very slow to anger. Don’t be impulsive. Don’t get into this. And Philippians 1.9 says, this I pray for you, that your love, Paul wrote here, your love may excel and be abundant in knowledge and perception. The word knowledge is an interesting word. It’s the word, and I’ll give you the Greek word and show you the difference. There are two Greek words for knowledge. Both words are translated in the Bible, knowledge. But in the Greek, they are not the same. One word is gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S, gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S, and that’s where we get the term Gnostics from. There were a lot of Gnostics around in Paul’s day. But the second word is epinosis, E-P-I-G-N-O-S-I-S. And epi is a preposition meaning full. There’s a difference between knowledge and full knowledge. And knowledge you hear is not epinosis, it’s knowledge you acquired. Epinosis is knowledge you hear and believe and apply into your life. So when the Bible says to be abundant in epinosis knowledge and perception, and here’s a word, it’s only used one time in the whole Bible right here, the Greek word is eistasis, A-I-S-T-H-E-S-I-S. It’s the only place it’s used in the Bible, eistasis. And it means discernment, discernment. So this is a characteristic of wisdom. Wisdom gives you understanding and discernment and insight. And what Paul is saying is that your love and that your virtue love, that’s your personal love for God the Father and your impersonal love for other individuals in the plan, that your love would grow or be abundant by means of epinosis and eistasis, knowledge and discernment. Virtue love is a directional asset. It’s a directional asset. And virtue love is directed towards God the Father. That’s personal love for God. That’s one of our problem-solving devices. And if it’s directed towards other people, it’s impersonal love, another problem-solving device. So our love must grow in epinosis and in discernment. Discernment is very critical. You have to be able to discern where your tragic flaw could be located. If you’ll let me give you an illustration, I’ll try not to bore you with it, but this deals with General Jimmy Doolittle. General Doolittle is a Medal of Honor winner for the United States Air Force for his raid on Tokyo. And during World War II, it took off from the decks of aircraft carriers and bombed Tokyo, one of the reasons Japan eventually surrendered. There was a film made about it called 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, which detailed the Doolittle Raid in April 18, 1942. General Doolittle was quite an individual. I wish I could have met him personally. Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Clusters, Bronze Star, Air Medals with Oak Leaf Clusters, Graduate of MIT with a Master’s of Science and a Doctor’s of Science, and eventually a three-star general in the United States Air Force. General Doolittle writes in one of his books about one of his impulsive acts. He wrote a book called I Can Never Be So Lucky Again, published by Bannum Books in 1991. And he wrote about this incidence that almost ruined his career, his hidden flaw, his impulsiveness. He met with General George Patton and with great General Eisenhower, we call him Ike, who was eventually the president. And they were discussing the invasion of North Africa and Operation Torch. And during that meeting, Ike was to decide who would indeed head up the air unit assigned to the British American Task Force. It was already known that General Patton would be the ground commander, and Ike needed to approve Doolittle as the air commander. And he sensed that Ike didn’t like him. Doolittle figured that out right off the bat. He knew that Ike knew about his reputation as a pilot and a reckless pilot. and he thought that maybe Ike would consider him too reckless to command an air force like this. So Ike asked a question, and here’s what he said. Eisenhower said, our first job will be to acquire airfields in North Africa, and as soon as they are acquired, we’ve got to be able to operate from there. General Doolittle made a mistake. He said, Eisenhower was right, of course, but instead of saying, yes, sir, that’s exactly what we will do, yes, sir, General Doolittle said, I very stupidly said to General Eisenhower, Eisenhower, the fields will be of no value to us unless the ground forces have cleared and occupied the air bases and had brought in fuel supplies, ammunition, bombs, food, and spare parts, and then we’ll be able to operate. I saw his face change, General Doolittle said, and I knew I had blown it. It was a dumb, impulsive thing to tell a general with as much logistical experience in military service as Ike Here was a then one-star reserve officer implying to a two-star general officer who had spent his entire adult life in the service that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Doolittle said, I realize I made a horrible mistake, but it was too late. Well, fortunately for Doolittle, Eisenhower got upset about it, but Eventually, he did choose him to command the 12th Air Force Group in the battle for Northern Africa. He did promote him to two-star major general. But it took him years to learn what you and I are talking about here today. Think before you speak. Think before you speak. I’m going to say it again. Think before you speak. Here’s a principle. You should remember this. It’s not new. You’ve probably heard it before. It’s better to keep your mouth shut and look like a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. Please keep in mind that the enemy, aka the devil, Lucifer, he’s always seeking to gain an advantage and by that impugn the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if you and I fail to have perception of any situation, if we fail to have cognition of what’s going on around us and we give an advantage to Satan, who will in fact use our lack of discernment to cause confusion and to cause controversy within the ranks of the local church or any organization. And if he can cause confusion and controversy, he can divide and conquer. Confusion can be created by an emotional response. Listen to John 18 10. This is the episode where Simon Peter made a terrible mistake. He was impulsive. Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and smote the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus. Now, Malchus made it into the Bible, into the word of God, by getting his ear cut off. I’m sure that Peter was aiming for his neck, but the guy apparently was quick and dodged and then only whacked his ear off. Now, the Lord had something to say about this. In John 18, 11, he said, put your sword back in the sheath, Peter, Put your sword up. In Matthew 26, 52, put up again your sword into its place for all they that take the sword will die by the sword. By resisting arrest in his impulsive act, Peter was actually playing into Satan’s hands. And those guards could have immediately killed all of them on the spot and been absolutely justified in doing that. It’d be like you trying to pull a gun on a police officer, you’re gonna get shot. Peter tried to kill an officer of the court. This brings up a question that a lot of people like to know about, were the disciples armed? It’s obvious that Peter was armed, he had a sword with him. Yes, he was armed. In Luke 22, 35, Jesus asked them, When I sent you without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything? And they said, No, Lord, we had everything. And then he said to them in Luke 22, 36, But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag, take it. And if you do not have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. As it is written, he was numbered with the transgressors, and I tell you that this must be so. Yes, times were changing. Times were changing. And they were instructed to buy a sword and take with them on the road. Well, what do you think about that? Lord, one of them said, I got two swords. And the Lord said, that’s enough. And he replied, that’s enough talking about that. Okay, you understand. Get a weapon and take it with you. When he was through talking about the matter, he implied that two weapons would be sufficient. They didn’t need to have a whole army. Did Peter seek to prevent the Lord’s arrest by attacking the duly appointed arresting officer? Yes. Was Peter’s act an impulsive decision? Yes. Was he thanking or emoting? His appreciation and love for the Lord Jesus Christ caused him to make an emotional decision, an emotional outreach, an emotional overload. Because emotions often trigger spontaneous actions. Remember Proverbs 29, 11. I read it to you earlier. A fool expresses all his emotions, but a wise person controls them. We must live by thinking, not by emoting. This means you and I have to pay attention to details and be sensitive to the situation we find ourselves in. Number one, God did not send us to straighten out the devil’s world. So you have to remember that impulsive actions like this can be triggered by emotions. And what are emotions? They are the enemy of thought. You see, anytime something happens in your life, you can do one or two things. You can respond or you can react. If your emotions kick in, you’re probably going to react. If you’re thinking, considering, calculating, you can respond. When you’re under pressure, do you react with emotional outbursts or do you respond? Let’s say somebody treated you unfairly. Do you react and get mad or do you respond and forgive them? Impulsive actions can be triggered by these emotions. You got to remember winners execute losers emote. If you live by your emotions, you’re going to be a loser in life. Uncontrolled emotions are an indication of self justification. That’s your arrogance. So the Bible goes on to say in Ephesians 4, 31, let all bitterness, emotional sin, let all wrath, emotional sin, let all anger, emotional sin, let all clamor, that’s sin of the tongue, evil speaking, sin of the tongue, be put away from among you along with all malice, hatred, mental attitude, sin, but rather be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God of Christ’s sake forgave you. The word kind, krestos, is a Greek word. C-H-R-E-S-T-O-S, krestos. And it means fit for use, not harsh. Pleasant, virtuous, kind, tenderhearted. Interesting Greek word. A big word, uspleknos, uspleknos. It means showing compassion, having compassion. You can read about it, 1 Peter 3, 8. And then forgiving, forgiving. And that means to show favor, to be very gracious, to be very kind, to be very benevolent. These things I just read to you, kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving, are the mindsets of the Lord Jesus Christ in Philippians 1, verse 9, the mind that we are told to emulate. In the Old Testament, we have some of the same situations. Impulsive negative volition. In Numbers 13, 32, you can see this in your Bible. There’s spread among Israel a bad report about the land they had explored. You remember Moses sent in 12 spies to look at the promised land and they came out. 10 of them said, nope, can’t do it. Nope, nope, can’t do it. Here’s what they said. The land we explored devours anybody that lives in it. Those 10 failures dead. And the people we saw are great size. We saw Nephilim. That’s impossible. The Nephilim were destroyed in the flood. There’s no way they saw Nephilim. But they claim we saw Nephilim, the descendants of Anak, come from the Nephilim. And we look like little grasshoppers in our own eyes. That night, all the members of the community raised their voice and cried emotional outbursts. They grumbled and complained and mad at Moses and Aaron for trying to get them to go into the land to start with. And the whole assembly said, we just wish we had died in Egypt or the wilderness. Why does the Lord bring us to this land? To let us fall by the sword. And now listen to what they’re about to say. This is typical of religion. Our wives and our children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt, they said to each other? How many stupid, impulsive decisions have been made because of our wives and our children? Oh, the children. Yes, we love our children. Yes, we want to protect our children. But we don’t go against God, worrying about what’s going to happen to our children. The Lord will take care of that. They were using that as an excuse. They were hiding behind the children and their wives. The arrogance of emotion is some sort of irrationality just like this because arrogant people stop thinking and their emotions become the substitute for thought and that’s total preoccupation with self-arrogance. From the emotional complex of sin comes hysterical personalities. Those who fail to prevent the conversion of adversity and distress in the soul make a weak person a manipulator The manipulator, now he’s trying to change everybody else to conform to what he wants them to do because he’s weak. He’s a manipulator. I want to give you some principles that I’d like for you to remember. Write this one down. Be very careful when you give advice. You start informing others about what is the Lord’s will for their life. Okay? Got to be very careful about that. And you have to remember this. We live in an impulse driven society because people act in haste and people are very excitable. And Satan, the devil, will use that emotional impulse you have to set you up and lure you into the trap. If you act in haste, you may possibly expose yourself and others to chastisement. So here’s the number one question. Do you have enough humility? Do you have enough humility to admit your mistake? and recognize the confusion and the controversy you create by doing things like this? Do you have that ability? Here’s some key principles that I would like for you to remember. In here, in this situation where the Jews didn’t go into the Promised Land, after Moses told them what was gonna happen, that they were gonna die in the wilderness for their rebellion and disobedience, were ready to go up and take the mountain now they’re ready to go but no one confessed their sin it was just an impulsive act of self-survival and sometimes it’s just too late sometimes the wheels are already in motion first john 5 16 if you see your brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death then you should pray and god will give an opportunity but i refer to those who sin does not lead to death There is a sin that leads to death, and I’m not saying that you should pray about that. There are believers under the sin of the death, their toast, their history, because of their arrogance and their rejection of God’s word. So stay out of God’s way. There has to be a chain of command in life. It has to be. This is God’s design to protect you, protect me from our own bad decisions, from making impulsive acts in our life. So it’s never wrong for you or for me to postpone a decision or to seek advice from our commanding officer, hopefully your pastor, your local church commanding officer, the Holy Spirit. Unless it’s a matter of life and death, slow down, okay? Do not give Satan an opportunity to discredit you due to your impulsive behavior or to even discourage you due to the confusion and controversy you yourself can create. One of Satan’s traps is to get you out of sync with God’s timing due to your impulsive behavior. It might not be a sin, but it’s equivalent to a tight end taking his eyes off the ball and running down the field before he makes the catch. So if Satan can lure you out of God’s plan by means of subtle distractions, then you can lose years going down the wrong road. Impulsiveness is a destroyer of many Christian’s destiny. So sum it up, listen carefully. I had to learn about this as a young Christian. Well-meaning actions are not sin, but they should be avoided to maintain undistracted momentum. Because Satan’s key objective is to distract you, keep you from reaching spiritual momentum in your life, ever becoming a spiritually mature believer. And that’s very possible if you let your emotions get in charge. Did you learn anything? I hope so. It’s great to give you that information. I shortened it up quite a bit, but I hope you heard it, and I hope you’re listening. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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.
