Join Rick Hughes in this enlightening episode of The Flatline, where he explores the profound concepts of joy and contentment during the holiday season. Drawing from biblical teachings, Rick delves into how true happiness is rooted not in circumstances but in trust and obedience to God. Whether you’re facing loneliness, illness, or loss during Christmas, discover how you can still find joy by embracing God’s promises.
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 stick around. It won’t be long, only about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education and And as you know, we have no manipulation because we’re not trying to con you. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not going to ask you for anything. But we would like for you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. I hope you’ll enjoy the show. And by the way, Merry Christmas. It’s that time of the year. And it looks like as we approach the Christmas season, many Christians are eager to celebrate the birth of our Savior. the Lord Jesus Christ. On the other hand, unfortunately, there will be those unfortunate few individuals who will face difficult times during this season. Some of those people are spending their Christmases and morning alone. Maybe you’re listening at your radio alone by yourself. Others are spending Christmas day in hospitals and some in nursing homes. Some are home suffering from injuries that occurred recently. The question that I’d like to ask you this morning is can these unfortunate few actually have happiness during these times, or as a matter of fact, for any time? Because this is the Christmas season and everybody wants to be happy. Everybody wants to have the family over under the tree, open the gifts, whether it’s the night before or the day of. Have a great time with the family, but not everybody can do that. So how can you have happiness Even in the unfortunate, if you’re one of the unfortunate few that I’m talking about, someone that’s injured, someone that’s in a nursing home, someone that’s in a hospital, it’s not much fun. But how are you supposed to maintain your happiness during these times and not get depressed, not get down? Well, if you’re a Christian, let’s look at what God has provided us. for the reason that we could be happy and rejoice regardless of whatever circumstances our life is in. We’ll start off with the verse in 1 Thessalonians 5, 16. Here the apostle Paul wrote, rejoice always. Two words, rejoice always. Rejoice is the verb chairo, C-H-A-I-R-O, chairo. And it’s a verb and it’s in what we call the present tense. which means that it’s current. There never is a time you’re not to rejoice. The active voice says the subject produces the actions of the verb, and that’s you. You have to do that. And it’s in the imperative mood, which is a mood of entreaty, a command. So this is a command from God through the Apostle Paul to rejoice, and then we have the word always, the adverb always, pantote, and that means at all times. And this is the word of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. What does that mean? Well, in 1 Thessalonians 5.18, a couple of verses later, if Paul tells us to rejoice always in 5.16, in 5.18, he tells you why you’re supposed to rejoice. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. So it’s not a question of whether you want to or not. It’s a question of what God is his will for you. to rejoice always. You know, the question is how do we maintain joy when things are not especially going good? The first thing to remember is that what we call plus H, a problem-solving device, problem-solving device number nine on the flat line of your soul. Remember the show is called The Flat Line. We’re dealing with 10 unique problem-solving devices. taught in the Word of God, nothing new, nothing we discovered that’s sensational. This is sound Bible doctrine principles that my pastor taught me. So one of them is plus H, sharing the happiness of God. And you know, as well as I know, that that is not related to any circumstances in your life. And so what is the key? What is the key to being happy at all times? Well, I’m going to give you the key. The key is the word trust, T-R-U-S-T. The happiness that God offers for us, you and me, for the believers, is based on trust. In Proverbs 16, 20, the Bible says, one who pays attention to the word of God will find good, and listen now, listen to the rest of it, And happiness belongs to the one who trusts in the Lord. So there’s the key to having happiness, to have trust. Do you trust that what’s happening in your life, God is aware of that? Do you trust what’s happening in your life that God can handle those situations? Or do you panic and do you run to God praying constantly, beating the door down, trying to make it go away, make it go away? The Apostle Paul tried that in 2 Corinthians 12 and it didn’t work. God said, nope, I’m going to leave it in your life because the more you suffer, the more you depend on grace. So the happiness that we’re talking about This real happiness built on trust, it’s not some kind of emotional thing, such as you might experience when good things happen in your life. What it is, is rather a sound, solid confidence, a confidence in our Heavenly Father’s ability to sustain us during times of adversity in our life, during times of testing in our life. And so the happiness that we seek is rooted in trust and obey. Obedience is a key as well. You want to be happy? You must trust God’s plan and obey what God tells you to do. In 1 John 15, 10 and 11, if you keep my mandates, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that, here now listen carefully, so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full. How do you do that? If you keep my commandments, the first verse. If you keep my commandments, my joy will be in you and your joy will be made full. That’s the second key to having happiness. Trust and obey. Notice that the happiness our Lord was offering his disciples was based on their obeying God’s mandates. You see, by being obedient, just as our Lord was obedient to his own Heavenly Father’s will, The disciples would enjoy the same happiness the Lord was experiencing in spite of the impending suffering that was coming his way. And you can tell if we live in the devil’s world, we’re going to have adversity. Adversity is inevitable. But stress is optional. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to be bitter. That’s optional. So let’s get a few simple principles for you. Here’s the first principle. True inner happiness. This inner joy the Lord Jesus Christ talked about. My joy would be in you and your joy would be made full. This inner happiness is based on personal love for your Heavenly Father. and obedience to His directives. So why do you obey God to start with? If you love Him, you will obey Him, and the Bible says His mandates are not hard, 1 John 5, 3. So the true inner happiness we’re talking about is based on personal love for the Father, that’s your motivational virtue, and obedience to His directives. Principle two, unhappiness comes from breaking fellowship with your Heavenly Father. And how do you do that? When you commit a personal sin, whether it’s a sin of the tongue, a mental attitude sin, or even an overt sin, if you fail to recover from that sin, if you fail to rebound, then you know that you have quenched the Holy Spirit, you have grieved the Holy Spirit, and you cannot function in the Christian life without the power of the Holy Spirit. I listen to people teach all the time, and very few people tell you that. They tell you all kind of things, but they don’t tell you. And if you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, If you’re not under control of the Holy Spirit, the old sin nature is controlling you. You got one or two people controlling your life, the sin nature or the Holy Spirit. And here’s the surprising thing about it. The sin nature has an area of strength. The sin nature can be good. The sin nature can teach a Bible class. The sin nature can not drink, not smoke, not do this, not do that. And the sin nature can deceive you into thinking you’re a pretty good guy because you don’t do the bad things that other people do. Listen, understand this. You have to understand you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. You can’t break fellowship with your Heavenly Father by committing sin and failing to rebound or recover from the sin. That’s why 1 John 1.9 is the first problem-solving device called REBOUND. where it says, as we’ve told you a million times, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to purify us from all wrongdoing. If, if, if, third class condition, if we confess our sin. So when you know you’ve sinned, go to the Father immediately. Don’t wait till you go to bed tonight. That’s crazy. Why do you want to sleep in fellowship and live out of fellowship? When you sin at eight o’clock in the morning, Confess that sin at 8.01 in the morning. Don’t wait until eight o’clock at night. That way you can stay in fellowship all day long, as long as you stay out of sin. But that’s the wonderful thing God’s given us, how to stay in fellowship. So unhappiness comes from breaking fellowship with God, committing personal sin, and failure to recover or rebound. Now listen carefully to this principle. A Christian under divine discipline is not ever going to have a good time. A Christian under divine discipline is not ever going to have a good time. And if you’ve got sin in your life, you haven’t dealt with that sin, you haven’t gone to the Father and confessed that sin, it’s no wonder you’re miserable. No wonder you’re unhappy. Because you haven’t trusted what God said and you’re not obeying what God told you to do. Principle three. Here’s a principle you should remember. Unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they may go. If you’re unhappy at home and you go take a vacation, head for the beach, you’ll be unhappy at the beach. If you’re unhappy at the beach, you’ll be unhappy when you get back home. The problem is not your circumstances, the problem is your attitude. So unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. When I spoke in so many schools across the country for 50 years, I saw people change schools. They left this school and went to that school. and they thought maybe they’d be happy at a different school, but they’re still the same miserable person because they carry their unhappiness with them. Now, here’s a great principle I want you to remember. Christians who go to heaven have happiness forever. Christians who go to heaven have happiness forever. In Revelation 21.4, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will no longer be any death There will no longer be any mourning, no longer be any crying or pain. The first things have all passed away. There’s happiness forever. No more crying, no more suffering, no more pain. It’s all gone. We’ll be there in a resurrection body and we’ll be able to worship our Lord and serve him and talk with our family members that are there. What a great thing it’ll be. So if we’re in heaven, we will have happiness forever. You know, our Lord stated emphatically that that happiness is related to obedience. I told you that earlier. Listen to what he told this woman in Luke 11, 27 and 28 about being obedient and having happiness as a relationship to that. In Luke 11, 27, while Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said, and shouted out, blessed is the womb that carries you and the breast at which you nursed. Now here’s the Son of God, King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, teaching a face-to-face Bible class, and this female interrupts him, shouts out, blessed is the womb that carries you and the breast at which you nursed. She’s making an issue out of motherhood. The word blessed is makarios. And that means happiness. So she’s saying that Jesus’ mother must really be happy. But he said, this is what he said, on the contrary, lady, I put that word there, not him, on the contrary, happiness belongs to those who hear the word of God and keep it. There’s obedience. There’s how to be happy. hearing the word of God, and keeping what you hear. If you hear it and don’t keep it, you can’t have happiness, that’s for sure. You’ll try to struggle through life, figure out why the thing’s going so wrong, so bad. Because you’re out of fellowship, you’ve quenched the Holy Spirit. There are basically three different words that we have to understand from the Bible if we’re talking about having God’s happiness. One word is joy, J-O-Y. It’s an English noun, joy, and it refers to a state of happiness or bliss or something which causes happiness. Sometimes it’s the verb rejoice. Rejoice. And that’s defined as an expression of a state of mind, state of happiness. So if you’re happy, you rejoice. And then there’s the English noun happiness. And that’s defined as a state of well-being characterized by relatively permanent contentment. That’s the key word there, contentment. Trust, obey, and contentment. You see, one simple word doesn’t necessarily describe what lasting happiness actually consists of. It’s often understood as being satisfied or content, regardless of the circumstances. So happiness is often understood as being satisfied or content. regardless of the circumstances. Where does the Bible say that? In Philippians 4, 11. Not that I speak from need, Paul said, because I have learned to be content, there’s our word, in whatever circumstance I’m in. In other words, he’s telling you that his circumstances are not dictating his happiness. He said in the following verse 12, I’ve learned to have a lot, learned to have a little, doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m the same person, I’m still content, I’m still happy. You know, it’s strange, but we carry this content notion, this entrenched notion in our life that some of these set of circumstances, you know, people, things, that that can make us happy. But happiness is not something that is made or manufactured by us. We cannot ever refuse, we can’t ever afford to confuse happiness as taught in the Word of God, like we’re looking at it, with the various different stimuli of life, which are enjoyable for the moment, but have no ability to sustain us day to day living. So don’t get that confused. Don’t get the entrenched notion that circumstances will make you happy. Because holidays, like Christmas, can provide what I call a pseudo-happiness, a phony, a fake, a counterfeit happiness. Counterfeit happiness is Satan’s attempt to counterfeit the happiness that God offers, his attempt to counterfeit the contentment, the joy that Christians can experience. How does he do that? Well, he does that by giving you some circumstances. He gives you a little piece of the pie, little goodies, and you think, oh, I’m going to be happy now. I won the lottery. I’m going to be happy now. I got a new car. I’m going to be happy now. We’re moving to a new home. I’m going to be happy now. I got some new clothes. That’s not the source of happiness. That’s not the source of contentment. This is what Satan does. He has a myth of arrogance that both people and pleasant circumstances in your life will make you happy. And that’s propaganda from Satan. His propaganda is that money and success and pleasure and social life and sexual life and public approbation and fame and material things and travel and health, they all make you happy. Well, that may be true under certain circumstances, but there’s limitations. It does not last. Nothing lasts like the happiness that God provides. The contentment that God provides never goes away. So by way of contrast, what God has provided for us in perfect happiness is permanent. It’s a permanent factor, and it’s a problem-solving device called Plus H, problem-solving device number nine, sharing the happiness of God based on contentment, based on obedience and trust. So the permanent happiness provided by God is available by three simple words. I want you to remember these three words. God’s permanent happiness is available by reception, retention, and recall of the promises found in the Bible. Reception, somebody teaches them to you, retention, you remember it, and recall, you pull it out of the memory bank and use it, of God’s promises found in the scriptures. Recalling what you retained is the key, and that’s why repetition is necessary. If someone says, oh, I’ve heard that before. I’ve heard that verse. I’ve heard that. Well, you need to hear it again. Repetition is essential to help you recall things that you’ve learned. But if you ignore the promises of God found in the scriptures, then you are never going to experience the contentment that Paul talked about, which is the underlying basis for all true happiness. Now, I remember, if you let me take you back a few years, I remember when I was young, I competed in a bass tournament. I won my first major bass tournament on West Point Lake in Alabama. The drive home seemed much shorter than the drive over since I was basking in temporal happiness and the $1,000 that I won winning the event. But I soon learned that that type of happiness does not last. The prize money was soon gone and all that was left was the memory of how fortunate I had been. Fortunately, I did learn from the scriptures by my pastor that temporal happiness does not provide contentment. Here’s a verse that gives us our foundation for true happiness, regardless of our circumstances. Listen to this verse, Psalm 118, verse 24. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice, there’s our word, and be glad in it. This should be the first thought in your mind when you wake up in the morning. When you open your eyes and you roll out of bed, take a shower, get cleaned up, get dressed, quote this verse, Psalm 118, verse 24. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice, have happiness, and be glad in it. See, every day God gives you another opportunity to glorify him. How do you do that? By lifting up your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Every day he gives you that opportunity. So when it says, let us rejoice and be glad in it, that’s the choice you have. You’ve got volition. You can have positive volition, say, yes, I will rejoice. Or you can say, no, I’m not going to rejoice because I got a bad day in front of me, bad things happening today. Well, it’s your volition. You can do it or you cannot do it. But this verse tells you that you should exercise your positive volition and do exactly what God tells you to do and that is to rejoice in spite of what may be on the horizon and be glad in it, be happy in it, be glad that God gives you another day. He could have called you home this day and told you that’s it. So rejoicing is a choice you make even though your body might be aging, your elbows hurt, your joints hurt That’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is the physical part of your body. You’re gonna have some pain, but you have to get a couple of Advils a day, but that’s something different. The rejoicing that we’re talking about is a mental attitude in spite of the circumstances that you’re living in. This rejoicing and rejoice and be glad in it has nothing to do with how you feel, but rather it has everything to do with what you’re thinking. It’s your mental attitude. So rejoicing for the believer like yourself and me is having appreciation for God’s faithfulness, not only now in time, but also what’s going to come in eternity. So do you want to rejoice? Do you want to be happy? Then rejoice that this is the day the Lord has made and thank him for your salvation. Thank him that you’re going to heaven. You want to hear what Jesus said talking to the disciples who were enamored with the power that he gave them? the power they had to cast out demons, that he had to remind them about something. Listen to Luke 10, 20. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this. That’s the power to cast out devils. But that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven. So nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, that you can cast out demons, but rather rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven. If you have never accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you really have nothing to be joyful about other than your temporal circumstances, since your future after you die is not going to be very comfortable. But if you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Revelation chapter 20, verse 15. And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. If you live this life and reject Christ as your Savior, the Word of God says you’re going to spend eternity in the lake of fire. I assure you, you will not be happy baking in the lake of fire. You can be happy now. You can have that happiness now by receiving Christ as your Savior and being rejoicing as Jesus told the disciples, rejoice that your name is recorded in heaven. You know, as we move into the Christmas season, as I told you earlier, Merry Christmas. I pray you will not be depending on gifts to make you happy, not depending on the family celebration as your source of happiness. There are a lot of Christian families who will be missing family members that were there last year, but now they’ve departed to be with the Lord. One of my closest friends will be spending his Christmas in a wheelchair. due to a farming accident. But I guarantee you one thing, he’s not unhappy. And the simple reason is what? That he understands God’s plan, and he will be glad in it. He’s not complaining, he’s not upset. He knows God has a reason for what happened. He understands that God allowed the event for a reason, so he will use the faith rest drill, problem solving device number three, and trust in all the Father’s timing. Romans 8, 28 tells us this. And we know that God calls us all things to work together for good to those who love him and to those who are called according to his purpose. In closing, let me remind you that you cannot build your happiness on someone else’s unhappiness. Retaliation and revenge are sins you need to stay out of. Watching someone you dislike suffer should never be a source of happiness for you. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Operation Boomerang or not, but it’s the result of someone going off on a frantic search for happiness and never finding it and simply coming back to where they started and they’re worse off than they were to begin with. Your best efforts to find happiness apart from God’s plan will only create unhappiness, magnified several times over. It happened to me before I became a Christian. I was looking for happiness in all the wrong places and it all boomeranged. So Proverbs 3.13 in closing, let me give you this passage. Happy, happy, happy, happy is a person who finds wisdom and one who attains understanding. If you listen today, I gave you divine wisdom. If you apply it into your life, you will have understanding. This is the word of God There’s no reason for you to be unhappy because the Lord Jesus Christ has made everything possible for you. What a wonderful thing to think about. What a wonderful time to enjoy these thoughts. This is the day the Lord has made. We’ll rejoice and have a super abundance of happiness in it because of his unfailing love and mercy every day. Okay, next week, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
