In a world filled with uncertainty and the temptation to rely on human wisdom, Rick Hughes provides a compelling case for why accumulating biblical wisdom is essential for personal growth. Through heartfelt anecdotes and scriptural insights, listeners are encouraged to pursue a deeper understanding of God’s word. This pursuit not only equips them to make sound decisions but also fosters a life enriched with joy, humility, and divine purpose. Ideal for anyone seeking to deepen their faith and elevate their spiritual wisdom.
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 Flotline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. And for the next few minutes, please stick around. Simply a show about motivation, some inspiration, some education. All done without any type of manipulation. No conning people, no asking for money, not trying to sell anything. just giving you some information. Hopefully, that information will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. If you can do that and you want to, you can orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. But my job is to be accurate, to be correct, not to try to coerce you, not to play with your emotions, but to give you legitimate information that God the Holy Spirit can use to convince you of how you need to live your life. You know, we started a study last week called The Power of Negative Volition. Negative Volition. If this is the first time you’ve ever listened to the show, we call our show The FLOT Line for a reason. FLOT is the Forward Line of Troops. F-L-O-T, Forward Line of Troops. And what we’re trying to teach here is that there is a tremendous way to live using God’s problem-solving devices as a forward line of troops. There are 10 of them that we’ve been able to identify, taught in the Bible. And when you learn these, they act like a main line of resistance to stop the outside sources of adversity before they become the inside source of stress. That’s why the Christian life is the most unique life in the history of the world, because there is no stress, there is no fear, there is no guilt, there is no worry. I mean, it’s a wonderful, wonderful way to live, but it must be learned. You don’t inherit it. You must learn it. You may inherit a fortune from your parents, but you do not inherit a spiritual life from your parents. Every person must make their own decision to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to accept the good news, that Jesus Christ, the anointed Son of God, redeemed us out of the slave market of sin. And the good news is that our debt to God has been paid, and we are free now from the penalty of sin. You must accept that yourself, regardless of what your parents have done. But sometimes, in our own arrogance, we reject that. We don’t want to receive Christ as Savior, or maybe we did at one time, but now we’ve gotten a lot smarter than that. You think you’re smarter, and that was something you did when you were a kid, and now you found a better way to live, right? So not trying to be arrogant here, but trying to show you what the Bible says about that sort of thinking. Does the Bible guarantee you a life of good decisions? Can you live a life making good decisions? Well, first of all, no one can make perfect decisions except the Lord Jesus Christ. He was God and man in one body forever. And we know he was sinless when he went to the cross as the perfect lamb of God without spot. So that’s why we understand that. But as far as our lives go, did the disciples always make good decisions? No, they did not. A lot of times they made bad decisions. But eventually they learned. And eventually after the Lord resurrected and ascended to heaven, the Holy Spirit came to indwell them. They began to see and things were revealed to them. In the church age they understood. And they pass that information on to us in the Bible. So how can I live a life making good decisions? Well, Proverbs 2.10 tells us this, and this is what we want to talk about today. We want to talk about wisdom. Wisdom, I know you think you’re a wise person, and many of you maybe are very wise. It doesn’t take much to be wiser than me, I promise you. But wisdom is the biblical word we’re going to look at today in Proverbs 2.10. When wisdom enters your heart and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, then discretion or foresight will protect you and understanding will guard you. Here we have the heart, and that’s not talking about the organ that pumps blood. That’s talking about the invisible part of you, your soul. You have a mind. The Greek word is nous, a nous. We get gnosticism or knowledge from that word. You have a mind. and you have a heart. And these are in the invisible part of your soul. And the heart is where wisdom is stored. The mind is where wisdom is learned. So when you hear the teaching of the Word of God and you learn it, It doesn’t do you any good until you apply it into your life. And that’s why the Lord Jesus Christ said, happiness belongs to those people that hear my Father’s word and keep it. In Luke 11, 27, 28. So when wisdom enters your heart, the objective of your life Let me make this plain to you. The objective of your life is to get as much biblical wisdom as you can so you can have foresight and discernment and you will not make bad decisions. Who is the biggest enemy you face? Well, I think that’s pretty obvious. It’s you. You are your biggest enemy. So if you’re going to learn God’s plan for your life, it starts in Proverbs 9, 10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So wisdom and understanding are brother and sister there. Listen to verse 11, Proverbs 9, 11. You will live longer because of me, and years will be added to your life. Because of what? Wisdom. If you’re wise, your wisdom will help you. But if you muck, you alone will be held responsible. There is a divine promise that you can live a long, wonderful, happy, fulfilling life in Christ by learning biblical wisdom. Ecclesiastes 9.16 says, Wisdom is better than strength. Actually, wisdom is nothing more than divine viewpoint. Divine viewpoint, that’s what the Bible is. It’s the source of divine viewpoint. And you say, where do you get the word divine viewpoint? Well, we get it out of Philippians 2.5. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. God wants you to think like his son thought. And the Bible says he humbled himself and made himself of no reputation. And so the personality profile of a mature believer who has wisdom is humility. And the reason is you can’t teach an arrogant person anything. But humility, on the other hand, is actually teachable. Humility is teachability. So there has to be some knowledge. You have to get knowledge before you can convert the knowledge into wisdom. Without knowledge, you can’t build wisdom. So if we take life’s experiences, what you experience in your life every day, and if you add the word of God to that divine viewpoint, things that you learn from the Bible, then you come up with wisdom. Then you have wisdom. Then you know what you should do and what you should not do. And sometimes you learn it the hard way. Sometimes you learn it the easy way. It didn’t appeal to you, so you didn’t try that. But others of you, you tried it, and you got in trouble, and your life got in big jam, and now you realize what a mistake that was. I didn’t listen to the Bible. Most people don’t listen to the Bible, and they don’t have any wisdom. Wisdom means they have foresight. Wisdom means they have discretion. And sometimes they have to get it the hard way. But how does wisdom normally come to us? If you’re going to have a lifestyle of wisdom, You get it by studying God’s Word under a well-qualified pastor who himself studies and prepares to teach you. I’m not a pastor. I’m an evangelist. I don’t pastor a church, but I can direct you to where there is a good pastor. Maybe not in your area. I don’t know where you live. We play shows all across America. But there is information available from wonderful pastors who record their messages. And you can tap into them free of charge. Not one dime is asked of you. And if you do that, you can study at home until God shows you where he wants you to go. But you can get your Bible and get a cup of coffee or a soda, sit down there at your kitchen table or your desk, Put in a DVD or an MP3 and study, study, study. I try to do that every day. My pastor has been teaching a series on the life of Christ. And we are now over 1,000 hours into it. Over 1,000 hours into it. So it’s available. You can get it. It’s free. And many other series, many other studies are free. I know a lot of great pastors that are teaching the Bible. So you might not live in their city, but you can access their information. So let me know. We’ll help you if we can. But if you want to have foresight and discretion, you have to start with wisdom. You have to start with studying God’s Word. then you have to apply what you accept as truth. If you accept it as truth and you learned it, then you have to apply it. That is, if you’re learning anything. I mean, this is where one of the big problems is. A lot of people are not learning anything. Even though the Bible tells you study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. Even though the Bible tells you grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you don’t do it. You’re too busy. Your lifestyle is too cluttered. And you don’t have time to sit down and listen to a DVD or an MP3. And so you go for the easy course. You go to the bookstore and you buy a little daily devotional book and you read a little devotion every morning, a little five-minute devotion, and that’s how you’re going to grow? I don’t think so. You know, if you only go to the first grade five minutes a day, you’re not going to get very far. And a lot of Christians really, quite frankly, never get out of the first grade. Hebrews 5 says you’ve been saved a long time now and you ought to be teaching others, but instead you’ve gone back to where you need to learn the basics of God all over again. And whoever wrote that said, I’d like to give you some steak. but you can’t handle steaks. You’ll have to give you pablum, have to give you baby food. This is true of a lot of believers because they will not take time to learn the protocol plan of God. They’re satisfied living a life of ritual that has no reality to it. and they’re not going to take time. So they’re never going to have wisdom, and they’re never going to have divine viewpoint accumulated from that wisdom. And so eventually their life is sort of like a ship at sea without a compass. They’re just adrift, and they don’t know where they’re going, and they don’t know what they’re supposed to do. So they call the preacher and say, Preacher, what should I do? Or they call a friend, what would you do if it was me? And that’s always trouble. Listen to the words of wisdom from the Bible. Proverbs 1.22, how long will you simple ones love simplicity? Simplicity, this is the problem. People don’t want to learn. They don’t want to learn God’s word. They don’t want to take time to sit down, get a Bible, get a notebook, study and grow. It’s too complicated, they say. I like the simple stuff. I like going to church on Sunday morning and many people will feel that way. Unfortunately, I have a slang term for that. I call it the nod to God crowd. Hello, God. See you next Sunday, God. Thanks for the little message, God. That’s not growing. That’s not advancing in the spiritual life. So how long will you simple ones love simplicity? And how long will the scoffer delight in their scoffing? And how long will fools continue to hate knowledge? Proverbs 122. Hate knowledge. I hated English. I hated chemistry. I hated French. All this stuff in high school. I didn’t want it. I wanted to play football and chase girls. That was fun for me. I didn’t take time to study, and of course that all reflected itself in my scholarship applications, SAT and ACT, and barely, barely, barely got by the skin of my teeth into the University of Alabama. I didn’t learn. I didn’t try to learn. And it wasn’t that I was stupid. I was just dumb. You know, stupid means you don’t have a lot of brains and dumb means you got them, you’re just not using them. And some Christians are like this. You’ve got the brains to learn this stuff. But until you learn the protocol plan of God, you will never be able to execute God’s plan effectively in your life. You must not scoff at knowledge. You must not hate knowledge. You must not say, well, that’s too complicated or that’s too deep for me, preacher. It’s not too deep for you. You must grow. You must decide in your life you’re going to learn God’s plan and get some wisdom from Why? So you don’t make a mess of your life. I can’t tell you how many people I know that have made a total mess out of their life because they reject the word of God and learning the word of God. And even if they know it, they won’t apply it. Proverbs 1.7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but fools despise wisdom and instructions. You’re not a fool, are you? You’re not one of these people that says, I despise wisdom. I despise instruction. I’m not going to let anybody tell me how to live my life. Well, then just dance on down the my way highway. That’s what you’re doing anyhow. And by the way, look behind you at the wrecks you’re causing. Look at the misery that you’re living in. But you don’t want to learn. And so you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, yeah, you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior. But you don’t want to learn God’s plan nor submit to God’s plan. Proverbs 3, 5, trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not into your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge him and then he will direct your path. Is he directing your path? I don’t call the my way highway his directing your path. I call that letting your emotions dictate policy to where you want to go and what you want to do. And then saying those famous words, well, I prayed about it. Most of the time that prayer never got above the ceiling because you had unconfessed sin in your life. But acquiring biblical wisdom is is you storing up an inventory of divine ideas. You storing up an inventory of divine viewpoints, starting with you facing your own trends, your own arrogant trends, self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption. You facing these things, until you start to face that, you’ll never have any real humility in your life because you know, in arrogance, you say, I’m going to do it my way. I don’t care what the Bible says. And I’ve seen that. I’ve done that myself, and that much to my sorrowfulness, the stupid thing I’ve done. Yeah, the Bible says don’t do that, but I’m gonna do it anyhow. And you’ve been there too, haven’t you? And it’s sad to watch people who are destroying their lives who are living miserable lives, wondering why nothing works, nothing comes together, nothing fits. They’re always butting their head against the wall. And they’re believers, they’ve accepted Christ as their Savior, but they will not learn the Word of God, nor follow God’s advice. Proverbs 10.8, the wise in heart will receive commandments, but a fool, a foolish talking fool, will fall head first. This is a warning to you. You’re on track to destroy yourself. You have the ability to destroy your life. You have the ability to mess up the lives of your friends too. You have to learn this. You are in trouble if you’re not careful. So the wise in heart will receive commandment, but a fool does not listen to the teaching of the word of God. So principle, if you are wise in your wisdom, If you’re wise, then your wisdom will deliver you, but if you’re a mocker, you alone will suffer. You alone will suffer. And so too, without humility in your life, you will never orient to God’s gracious wisdom in your life. So I’m gonna give it to you again. Proverbs 10, eight, the wise in heart will receive commandments, but a foolish talking fool will fall head first. Principle, if you’re wise, your wisdom will deliver you, And if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer. And principle number two, without humility, you will never orient the God’s gracious wisdom for your life. The Greek word wisdom is the word Sophia. The Hebrew equivalent is . They both mean the ability to relate the word of God that’s in your soul to life. So if you’ve learned it and believed it and processed it and applied it and related it to what’s in your life with discernment and understanding, that’s wisdom. It’s the ability to deal sagaciously, the ability to have good judgment, good discernment, to deal sagaciously with life from accumulated facts that are found in the Bible, especially in regards to the church. You’re in the church. You’re in the mystery doctrine of the church age. The assets you have are much greater than any Old Testament saint’s assets. They didn’t have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They didn’t have the canon of Scripture. They didn’t have a qualified pastor with a spiritual gift. They didn’t have any of that. And look what you have. And look what you’ve done. Nothing. You know, artificial intelligence is false wisdom. We call it AI, artificial intelligence. false wisdom. It’s arrogance and lack of humility. Artificial intelligence is arrogance and human viewpoint. Those two things come together, and they create cosmic thinking. This is what Satan uses to lure the world into the good times into the cosmic vortex come over here this is where the fun is oh yes if you try this you’ll be fulfilled if you try this you’ll be happy he says and then they get trapped and they get hooked and they stay in the cosmic vortex until they destroy your life their life so artificial intelligence is false wisdom human viewpoint cosmic thinking why is God’s wisdom so essential to you? Why must you learn it? Because it’s not relative, it’s absolute to start with, but it will give you the discernment to make the necessary adjustments in your life when circumstances change. it gives you the ability to make necessary adjustments in your life when circumstances change so the wisdom of god is never relative it’s always absolute it doesn’t change you change when you associate for example with an individual who has acquired a maximum amount of biblical wisdom, then you can have blessing by association. That’s a promise. And whenever a nation such as America ignores biblical wisdom, and substitute some sort of relative wisdom from human viewpoint, then it’s just a matter of time before self-destruction comes to that nation. So without national humility, there’s no teachability. And that’s why nations get wake-up calls from disasters from time to time. God’s trying to wake people up But the desire to seek the Lord only seems to last a short time until prosperity takes back over or until time erases the memory of the pain. I remember 9-1-1 and what happened on that horrible day when we were attacked in New York City and the World Trade Towers were hit by airplanes. And I remember speaking in a church that night and how many people came wanting to know what’s happening, what’s God saying, what’s going on. And in about three weeks, you couldn’t find a person. I mean, it went from 200 to 20. Well, they forgot about it. They went on back to their lifestyle. They didn’t keep their attention. What does God have to do to get your attention? I mean, how far down do you have to go before you’re ever going to wake up and say, I have really screwed this thing up. I have messed this life up. When are you going to get God’s wisdom that is so essential to you? Whenever a nation like America ignores it, we’re in trouble. And there can be no teachability without humility. So you must exercise your own positive volition towards the word of God which has been taught. If you believe the word of God which has been taught, then you can metabolize what you’ve learned. You can put it to work in your life like food, metabolize it. Once you believe it, then it’s transferred by the Holy Spirit to the right lobe of your soul, your heart. And in your heart, once the word of God takes root in your heart, once it begins to circulate around by means of the Holy Spirit, you have a word treasure. You have spiritual value in your life. Once the Word of God circulates throughout your frame of reference, your memory center, your vocabulary, your categorical storage, your conscience, all it begins to get in there, man, it begins to remove the garbage from your subconsciousness, scar tissue, ways that you’ve messed up, doubts, guilt, all is removed, and confidence in God’s plan for you. It’s a wonderful way to live. Proverbs 13, 10, arrogance only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice. Are you going to take my advice today? This is taking advice by learning and applying the word of God to your experience. You’re listening, aren’t you? Are you gonna take my advice? Or do you think I’m nuts? Listen, if you hang out with fools who reject biblical wisdom, you’re gonna get killed. That’s just the way it’s gonna happen. You continue to hang out with fools, you’re gonna get killed. Proverbs 13, 20, he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of a fool shall be destroyed. You want to hang out with somebody? Hang out with somebody that’s got some biblical wisdom. Not somebody that operates on human viewpoint. Not somebody that’s a user and an abuser. Not somebody that’s arrogant and self-justifies why they do what they do. If you’re hanging around somebody like that, listen to Proverbs 14, 7. Go from the presence of a fool when you perceive not in him the lips of knowledge. He doesn’t understand the Word of God. He doesn’t care about the Word of God. He only cares about what he wants to do, even though the Bible says it’s wrong, even though the Bible says it’s a sin, even though the Bible says it can destroy a nation. He doesn’t care. He just is going to use you to fulfill his own desires. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the anointed Son of God, had to acquire his own biblical wisdom. And the Bible says he did it. In Luke 2, 52, Jesus grew in wisdom, statue, and in favor with God and man. Paul the Apostle availed himself to the wisdom of God. Listen in 1 Corinthians 2. My doctrine and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and the power of God. So wisdom is the highest form of happiness that can ever exist because it’s the sum total of the teaching of the word of God under the mentorship of the Holy Spirit and you responding to it and applying it in your life. then you can have the same life our Lord had based on humility, fulfilling the plan of God, having a wonderful life. Wisdom is what you need. Wisdom must be acquired. It’s not going to be inherited, and there’s only one way to get it. Study to show yourself approved unto God, and then you must apply it. I hope you’re learning. I hope you’ll listen. And I hope you’ll pay attention. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.
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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.
