Join Rick Hughes in exploring the profound differences between spirituality and spiritual maturity. There’s an urgency in understanding these distinctions as they influence our faith journey. Rick delves deep into how our connection with the Holy Spirit shapes our spiritual state, distinguishing between spirituality as a state and spiritual maturity as an ongoing process. Through scripts such as 1 Corinthians 3, the discussion contrasts divine good against potentially misleading human efforts, urging listeners to reflect on their spiritual standing.
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. For the next 30 minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long, just a few short minutes of motivation, inspiration, education, and always without any 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. We’re just wanting to give you the Word of God, and hopefully, hopefully if you hear it, you’ll be able to understand God’s plan for your life. And if that happens, then you can orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. But it’s been my honor to give you this radio show for 20 years now, and we’ll press on as long as the Lord allows us to do so. Thank you for giving me a few moments of your time this morning. And we just finished up a series on the family. I think you might have heard, if you’ve been listening very long, you heard the last few voices, the last few messages on the family, if you listen regularly. And the last one that I did dealt with your spiritual life, the why in family stood for your spiritual life. And that’s a subject I just cannot let go. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go back to your spiritual life. Because there’s an urgency in my soul’s mentality to communicate how important it is for you to understand the mechanics of what we call spirituality and the difference between spirituality and spiritual maturity because they are not the same thing. They are two different things. The word spirituality is a term used for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if we are in a state of sin, we may still be performing some human good task like giving money to the church or singing in the choir or helping out in the community or promoting some cause, some political cause that might even be evil. But We are not spiritual. We are carnal if we are not filled with the Holy Spirit. So at this very moment right now, if you’re listening to me, I’m telling you, you are either spiritual, filled with the Holy Spirit, or you’re carnal, quenching the Holy Spirit. The difference is, is there sin in your life? Is there unconfessed sin in your life you haven’t dealt with? Remember, rebound says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and to purify us from all wrongdoing. And when you fail to rebound or name or recover from any sin, you remain in a state of carnality. But spirituality and carnality are both mutually exclusive. It’s like a dark room and a bright room. You’re either filled with the Holy Spirit or you’re not. On the other hand, the term spiritual life refers to something completely different. Your spiritual life will not function on a substitute that some people call good works, and I’ll call it human good or evil. This leads us to the question, and think about this, will you please? Can I be filled with the Holy Spirit, well that means no one confessed sin in my life, and still not function as a spiritually mature Christian? And the answer is yes, absolutely yes. It’s found in the difference between sin and evil. And here’s what the difference is. Sin, think about this now. Listen to me. Sin is an act of your volition. You decide to create a sin. You make a choice. Do you know what’s wrong? The Holy Spirit tells you it’s wrong, the Scripture tells you it’s wrong, you do it anyhow, that’s a sin. It’s an act of our volition. You do it and I do it, we both do it. Evil, on the other hand, is a system. It’s not necessarily an act, it’s a system. And it can be a system of good works or good deeds, which appear to be very legitimate Christian production, but in reality, All of the good works or the good deeds or the evil will be burned up at the judgment seat of Christ because it’s labeled as being wood, hay, and stubble. I’ll read to you out of 1 Corinthians 3, verses 11 through 15. Here’s what it says. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. That’s a builder’s metaphor for building a home. So considering you lay the concrete foundation down, you’re going to build on top of the foundation. So the foundation is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon the foundation, and here it comes, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble. These are two different categories. The gold, silver, and precious stones is going to be a rewardable category, and the wood, hay, and stubble is the good deeds and is not rewardable. So the verse goes on to say in 13, verse 13, 1 Corinthians 3, 13, every man’s production or every man’s work will be made manifest for the day will declare it, it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he has built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. But if any man’s work shall be burned up, then he will suffer loss. But, here’s a conjunction of contrast, he will be saved, yet so as by fire. This is not about you losing your salvation. It’s about you losing your rewards in time and in eternity because you failed to live the spiritual life. Not necessarily that you failed to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but you failed to produce divine good production called gold, silver, and precious stones. Now listen, it’s not a sin to feed a hungry person. It’s not a sin to promote a system that offers services to the disadvantaged, but it definitely can be a process called evil if you substitute that for spiritual good production. Spiritual good production only comes through the filling of the Holy Spirit. Anything good you do for God when you are not filled with the Holy Spirit is wood, hay, and stubble. So, for example, if you go to church and you sing in the choir and you give money and you go visit and take the choir tour, whatever, and you have known sin in your life, you’re doing a good thing, but in the wrong way, and it will be burned up at the judgment seat of Christ because it’s evil. It’s you trying to produce your own righteousness, and it doesn’t work. You see, Satan is the originator of all evil. Evil is the policy that he uses as the ruler of this world. And evil is the modus operandi of Satan from the time of his fall throughout the angelic revolution and even down to the point where he became the ruler of this world. He is the ruler of this world, the Bible tells us that. We don’t belong here, we’re sojourners, we’re just passing through. Our home is in heaven, the Greek word ouranos, our home’s in heaven. But evil, the term evil, is Satan’s failure to produce a system of good works in mankind and in society that would bring up a pseudo millennium. He doesn’t want to go to the lake of fire. And so if he can produce in time a pseudo-millennium where everybody’s good, everybody does good, then he can show God he’s just as good as God is. And of course we know that’s not possible because every person has a sin nature. and evil again is a policy that satan produces human good human works right thing wrong way all evil all evil of satan has two sources it can come from sin or it can come from erroneous thinking that erroneous thinking is called human good and that’s the motivation to produce evil where the sin of self-righteousness and you add to that human good when they combine together then in a nation you have a saturation of evil so again listen carefully if you have a combination of self-righteousness plus human good Right thing, wrong way. They combine to saturate the nation in evil. So just as grace and the word of God or scripture represents the genius of God, in relation to the human race, thus God’s game plan is grace, for by grace are you saved through faith, God is grace, then evil represents the genius of Satan in relation to the human race. So God has a plan called grace, Satan has a plan called evil. What’s the difference? Evil is a counterfeit. In salvation, we’re saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Under the concept of evil, we’re saved by faith and plus baptism and plus good works and plus giving up smoking and plus doing something. What evil does is it adds a twist to grace. It adds something on to grace and thus nullifies the grace. So keep that in mind. Evil represents the genius of Satan, and he is best at it in religion where he promotes evil so people will think they’re going to heaven, people will think they’re saved because they did some good deeds called evil. So recovery from sin can be instantaneous. If you sin by mental attitude sin or sin of the tongue or some overt sin, then you can use the rebound technique of 1 John 1, 9. But if you get involved in evil, well, it takes a long time to recover from that. The only way you’re ever going to get out of evil is by learning God’s plan and recovering from your deception. My very own pastor used to call it a big word. I had to have a dictionary to look it up, what he called it. He called it post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation. That’s right, post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation, which meant learning God’s plan and recovering from my deception. So the number one promoter of evil in this world is what? Religion, organized religion. On the other hand, spiritual maturity, which is what I want you to do, I want you to grow to be a spiritually mature individual, not just be filled with the Holy Spirit and spirituality, but to be spiritually mature. Again, two different things. Spiritual maturity is a state of being where the believer has grown to an autonomous position of spiritual independence and you are now able to stand alone if need be, and replicate the life of Christ by thinking divine viewpoint and functioning as a Christian warrior inside the devil’s world. Now listen, in order to lessen the impact of the word of God, Satan has a plan. Satan doesn’t want people to learn the word of God because it gives them, breaks them free from evil. So if he can lessen the impact of the word of God, he’ll do it. How does he do it? Hold your hat when I tell you this. He does it by dumbing down believers. Satan can dumb down believers. He does this by lessening the importance of the scriptures and strengthening the appeal of emotions and worship. Never forget what I’m about to read to you. Hebrews 4.12, and think about the difference between emotion and scripture. Hebrews 4.12, for the word of God, the word of God, is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. The word of God. That’s why you hear me giving you scriptures, not illustrations of nice little doggy illustrations. Isaiah 40, verse eight. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever. The word of God. Satan wants to dumb you down. He doesn’t want you to learn the word of God. He will do anything to stop you from learning the word of God. some way to distract you, some way to discourage you, some way to get you into some church where they don’t teach the Word of God. Oh, they may sing songs, and they may sing praise and worship, and they may get all excited, but they don’t teach you the protocol plan of God. In Romans 10, 17, faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. The Bible is the Word of God. pick it up read it and you will hear god speaking to you it’s the word of god in the inventory of your stream of consciousness that feeds your thoughts and gives you the insight needed for you to live the christian life and bring maximum glorification to god if you only get taught to scriptures for 30 minutes on sunday morning you’re never going to learn enough to sustain you in time of frustration or failure You’ve got to have more than that. It’s imperative. 30-minute shot on Sunday morning is not learning the Word of God. Extended song services, special music from talented performers, they might be entertaining and enjoyable and you sit there waving your hands back and forth, but it doesn’t plant the scripture in the mentality of your soul. The sad thing is that modern day Christian celebrities often travel from city to city hosting services designed to inspire you in your walk with Christ. The problem is they charge admission. Yeah, that’s right, you gotta pay to go here and speak. And they sell materials at each of these events, like T-shirts and hats and books. Listen, nobody is authorized to sell the scriptures ever, regardless of their celebrity status. In 2 Corinthians 2, 17, Paul wrote, unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. on the contrary in christ we speak before men with sincerity as those sent from god this is exactly why we don’t charge for any of our books we don’t charge for any of our material you don’t sell the word of god our objective for you and me is to become spiritually mature believers not just spirituality, not just filled with the Holy Spirit from time to time, but spiritually mature believers that are filled with the Holy Spirit 24-7 and learning Scripture 24-7 and operating under those Scriptures. We do it by learning and applying the Word of God to our inventory of ideas and our soul’s mentality. Your soul has mentality, your soul has volition, your soul has a consciousness, and your soul has a self-consciousness. The mentality of your soul is where you live the spiritual life. It’s what you think. And this absolutely cannot happen unless you are filled with the Holy Spirit and unless you’re studying the Scriptures on a daily basis. In 2 Timothy 2.15, we have the command, the mandate from the Word of God. Study to show yourself approved unto God. a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Study is an imperative mood verb, it’s not a request, it’s a command. To show yourself approved, can you be disapproved? Yes. Where? At the judgment seat of Christ. All that good work you did, all those good choir trips you took, all that money you gave burned up at the judgment seat of Christ as wood, hay, and stubble. Because why? You were not filled with the Holy Spirit and you did it in your human good efforts. It turned out to be nothing but evil. So we don’t need to be ashamed. What does that mean? We want to hear God say, well done, my good and faithful servant. So to do that, we must rightly divide the word of God. Can you wrongly divide the word of God? Yes. That’s why I implore you to get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor who can teach you scripture the correct way, line upon line, word upon word, and not just give you a lot of little stories and illustrations. It’s really pitiful that the believer who wants to grow spiritually, and I talk to people every day about this, They want to grow spiritually. They contact me and say, where can I find a well-qualified pastor? Where can I find somebody to teach me something? It’s pitiful that people like this want to grow spiritually and they can’t even find a pastor that will teach them on a consistent basis or who has to purchase some devotional book so he can get a short appetizer of spiritual insight daily. That’s right. They may have to go by the bookstore and buy somebody’s daily devotional and read it and that’s not growing spiritually. That’s an appetizer. Spiritual maturity represents the maximum spiritual growth of the believer in time. Spiritual maturity is the objective for keeping God, keeping you here in time after you got saved. He could have took you on to heaven, but he left you for a reason. Spiritual maturity is the divine objective for each one of us in time. The purpose for all commands of scripture related to time and it’s the only way that we will ever glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in time and it is the basis for temporal and eternal rewards and blessings. Now, I said a lot in that paragraph. I probably don’t need to say it again, but I want to quote one more thing again. Therefore, spiritual maturity is the divine objective for the believer in time. God wants you to grow up and to be a spiritually mature believer, and it’s the purpose for all commands of Scripture related to time. Study, grow, learn, these are all commands. The only way you can glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in time is to learn to operate the spiritual life and reproduce Christ in your life. And that’s the basis for all blessings, both in time and eternity. With all the social media impact in today’s world, the opportunity for deception is found around every corner, I promise you. I’m amazed at the churches that promote activities What do they do? They want to attract their little children, ultimately come for the Halloween party, come for the Christmas party. We got dancing balloons and we got hot dogs and we got popcorn and come and let us entertain you. And it’s all designed to ultimately recruit the parents. And I’m all for getting mom and dad into Christ. I’m all for teaching them the word of God. I’m all for the kids learning to come to church. but I’m not all for using gimmicks and games to try to recruit the children. I’m amazed at the churches that don’t know how to address the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords Our Lord Jesus Christ, and I shudder when I hear them talk about that. They talk about the Lord Jesus Christ as if he was their best buddy or their best friend. I hear them talk about Jesus this and Jesus that and the Jesus way and the Jesus that. He is the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. When you talk about him, address him properly. In Philippians 2, 10 through 11, listen to this. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in things of heaven, things on the earth, and things under the earth. That’s how powerful that name is. He’s not Jesus. He’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord to the glory of God the Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ became a man. He emptied himself of his divine operational assets. Theologians call that hypostatic union. It’s called God and man in one body forever. He’s the God-man. He’s in heaven today as God, and he’s in heaven today as a man in a resurrected body. But he came into this world as a human in order that he might rescue you and I from sin and death. Philippians tells us this in Philippians 2, 7 and 8. But he made himself of no reputation, and he took upon himself the form of a servant, a doulos, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, here it is, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. That’s what he did. He emptied himself of his divine operational assets. He never used his deity to sustain his humanity while he was here. He lived like a man, thought like a man, ate like a man, walked like a man, and demonstrated to you that it is possible to live like this. And he followed his father’s orders all the way to the cross. As a man, the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated how it’s possible to live in the devil’s world and glorify God to the maximum. And he did this by living the prototype spiritual life. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior tested and proved this spiritual life for us. We call it the prototype spiritual life because he was the first one to live it. The Christian life, he lived it and he demonstrated it to us. So now you and I offer up spiritual sacrifices by the fulfillment of the stages of the adult spiritual life, spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, eventually spiritual maturity. So that’s what we do. God does not want us to offer sacrifices. He does not want offerings. He wants us to sacrifice him by learning to live and produce the spiritual life. Listen to Hosea 6.6. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice. There it is, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. That’s what God wants from you. He wants you to understand him and know him. Hebrews 13, 15, through him let’s continually offer up a sacrifice, a praise to God, and that is the fruit of lips praising his name. Listen to Jeremiah 9, 24. Let the one who boasts, boasts about this, that he understands and knows me. that I am the Lord who exercises mercy, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for these are the things I delight in, declares the Lord. I’ve told you this before, and I remind you there’s a difference between knowing God and understanding God, and I assure you Satan does not want you to understand the God you know. If you don’t understand the protocol plan of God and you wind up doing all the right things in the wrong way, neutralized by being dumbed down by the devil. Yep, you know all the words to the hymns, you know all the words to the praise and worship songs, but you don’t understand the God you claim you worship, and you’re not going to take time to correct a mistake, and that’s pitiful. The spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God are simply as I’m about to put it to you right now. Stay filled with the Holy Spirit. That’s called spirituality. How do you stay filled with the Holy Spirit? When you sin, confess the sin. Rebound, recover from the sin. Problem-solving device number one. The second spiritual sacrifice is Operation Z. What does that mean? It means you gotta have a pastor You got to have the filling of the Holy Spirit. You got to understand what he taught, and then you have to believe it and apply it into your life. We call it LAG, learn, apply, and glorify God. Those two power options, the filling of the Holy Spirit and learning and applying the word of God in your life, glorify God to the max. And the third spiritual sacrifice of those 10 problem-solving devices, we call the flatline of your soul. rebound, filling of the Holy Spirit, faith rest drill, grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, personal sense of destiny, personal love for God, impersonal love for all, sharing the happiness of God, and lastly, occupation with the Lord Jesus Christ. And finally, as you fill with the Holy Spirit, sit under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, learn and deploy those problem-solving devices in your life, you execute to the fullest of your ability the protocol plan of God, and you go from being a spiritual infant to being a spiritually mature individual, replicating and representing the life of Jesus Christ. So the question that I must ask you is where are you in this process? Where are you today? Have you grown to become the spiritually mature individual we’re talking about? The spiritual life is critical. If I ask you, how is your spiritual life, what would you say? Are you growing in grace? Are you representing Christ? Are you becoming the person that I’m talking about, filled with the Holy Spirit, operating Z, Operation Z, functioning under the well-qualified pastor, learning those 10 problem-solving devices, executing the protocol plan of God? That’s a lot I just said. I rattled it off quick. I hope you’re listening. If you don’t understand it, get in contact with me. We got a book we’ll send you called Christian Problem Solving. It lays it all out free of charge. 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.
