Join host Rick Hughes on ‘The Flatline’ as he delves into the intricate concept of faith and its pivotal role in our lives. Discover how our justification through faith, not works, secures peace with God. This episode illuminates the profound idea of salvation by grace, illustrating it through biblical passages and personal insights, urging you to embrace faith as a way of life as fundamental as the very air we breathe.
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 01 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next 30 minutes, stick around. It’s a short time of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and absolutely no manipulation, no begging for money, not trying to sell you anything. We’re not going to ask you to join up or fess up. We just would like for you to listen. Listen as I try to identify the plan of God for your life. If I can do that, then you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. But thank you for listening to The Flatline. We’re going on show 902 this morning. That’s 902 Sundays across America we’ve been giving this Flatline show. All trusting the Lord to provide our needs, and he always had. He’s never failed us yet. And you may notice the unique thing about this show is we don’t ask for money, we don’t solicit money, we don’t sell things. We depend on the grace of God. And by the way, last week we talked about letting go of the past. Our book, Practicing Your Christianity, has a lot to do with that, one of the new prints we’ve done. So if you’d like to get a copy of Practicing Your Christianity, contact us through the website, rickhughesministries.org. Don’t make the mistake so many people make of going to richardhughesministries.org. That is not me. It’s rickhughesministries.org. And we’ll be glad to send you any of our books that we have available, Practicing Your Christianity, Christ’s Course in Christianity, Life’s Toughest Years, Divine Pardon, or any of the transcripts of all the radio shows we’ve done since 2018, we put those in book form for you. So I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy the information we make available to you. Now, if you’ve been listening to our show for any length of time, you’ve heard me mention Faith Rest Drill. You know, our show is predicated on building a FLOT line in your soul. That stands for Forward Line of Troops. Ten unique problem-solving devices taught to me by my pastor years ago, which I reteach to you every time I get the opportunity. But on the problem-solving device number two for the believer, we deal with, or number three, I mean, we deal with the faith rest drill, standing on the promises of faith. Problem-solving device number three. I want to take a little bit of an in-depth look at this amazing provision from God this morning and hopefully motivate you to use the faith rest drill. Now, first of all, we know that our salvation is secured by faith. In Romans 5, verse 1, therefore, having been justified by faith, not by works, justified by faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ or by means of the Lord Jesus Christ. So our justification doesn’t come by being good, doesn’t come by not sinning, doesn’t come by being baptized, doesn’t come by giving money. It comes by being justified by faith, faith alone in Christ alone, faith alone in the finished work of Christ on the cross. That’s how we get to heaven. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. In eternity past, the angels of God were faced with the same choice, follow Satan or follow God. And through personal faith in Christ, mankind, you and I, we duplicate the decision that the elect angels made in eternity past when they decided not to go with Satan, but to go with God. You know, a third of the angels did go with Satan. A third of the angels followed him, and they were cast out of heaven along with Satan, and they are what we call today demons. Those are fallen angels. So, but whenever salvation through faith in Christ is rejected… then the sovereignty and the justice of God has the right to condemn us and the right to judge us. So don’t reject the forgiveness that Jesus Christ offers on the cross for you. He took your place. He died in your place. He paid for your sin, past, present, and future, and not only for yours, but for the sins of the whole world. And when we reject the free gift of salvation, then God has to condemn us according to his justice. So the imputation of divine righteousness at salvation, God gives us his righteousness, it comes through faith in Christ. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we may be made the righteousness of God by means of him, the Bible says. When we believe in Christ, it results in instant justification because we become the objects of God’s personal love because we now possess his very own righteousness. And that’s the basis for God then pouring out into your life all sorts of logistical grace blessings. So this is called saving faith. And at one time or another in your life, you must make this decision either for or against God and God’s plan. Now let’s look at faith in your logistical grace provisions for everyday living. In Matthew 6, 25 through 34, I’m going to read a lengthy verse for you, but stick around and listen to it for a minute. “‘Therefore,’ Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “‘therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, “‘what you will eat or what you will drink, “‘nor about your body, what you will put on. “‘Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? “‘Look at the birds of the air, “‘for they neither sow nor reap nor gather in the barns, “‘and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. “‘Are you not of more value than they?’ So which of you by worrying can add one day to your life? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. So if God can clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith, short-time trusters, little faith, short-time trusters? Therefore don’t worry, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For after all these things the Gentiles seek, but your heavenly Father knows that you need all of these things. So if you will seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own troubles. So this passage started off with a divine mandate, not a request. It’s a mandate. Do not worry. The Greek word merimenao simply means this, merimenao. It means this, don’t be anxious or don’t be troubled. And it is what we call in the morphology of the Greek text a present active imperative verb. The present tense means that this is a durative present. There’s never a time in your life when you’re not to worry. And there never is a time in your life when you are to worry. I mean, you’re not supposed to ever worry. And the active voice says the subject, which is you and I, we produce the action of the verb, and it’s an imperative mood verb meaning a command from the Lord Jesus Christ during the Sermon on the Mount. And it applies to us as well as God’s royal family, everybody. We are never to doubt. We are never to worry. We are never to fear concerning logistical grace provisions, what we wear, what we eat, what we have available for life. So again, the mandate is repeated in verse 31. Do not worry. And don’t worry about food. Don’t worry about shelter. Don’t worry about clothing. Don’t worry. I hear from friends sometimes that will call me and say they’re having financial difficulty and they want prayer for their financial difficulty and they’re worried about they’re not going to be able to make it. This is where your faith comes in. Your father promised he will provide for you. He’s not going to hang you out to dry. Your priority has to be in verse 33. You seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and And then all these other things will be added to you. Seek first another present active imperative of zeteo. The Greek word is zeteo, and it means to seek after, to crave, to desire. You want to crave something? You want to worry about something? Seek this first. Seek God’s kingdom. Don’t worry about saying we’re going to do this. Seek your Heavenly Father’s kingdom. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Now we have a contrast in commands. Don’t be anxious, but rather replace that with a desire to have confidence in God’s kingdom, which is your salvation, and in his righteousness, which is the righteousness of Christ imputed to you at the moment you believe in him. Hebrews 1.8 says, but speaking of the Son of God, he, that’s God the Father, says your throne, O Lord Jesus Christ, is forever and ever mine. And righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. In his kingdom, we know that’ll happen at the second advent when he sets up the millennial kingdom and then eventually the eternal kingdom. So we currently live in the kingdom of Satan. Don’t mistake that. We live in the kingdom of darkness and sin. But at the second advent, Satan will be imprisoned for a thousand years and his kingdom will come to an end. So throughout the tribulation, the gospel, the tribulation, the seven years that after we leave at the rapture of the church, you have seven more years of the Jewish timetable. Throughout that tribulation, the gospel will be proclaimed as never before in human history, like a warning to things that will come in the last half of the tribulation. Matthew 24, 14, this gospel of the kingdom of God. The kingdom shall be preached in the whole inhabited earth. That’s the thousand-year reign of Christ. It’ll be preached in the whole inhabited earth for a witness to all nations. And then the end will come. Therefore, the unbeliever will be without excuse. That’s the baptism of fire, which I haven’t spoken to you about before. But just as believers are taken off at the rapture of the church, Unbelievers are removed at the beginning of the millennium through the baptism of fire. So keep that in mind. Principle, you cannot participate in the kingdom without having made equal righteousness on your behalf. Until you have equal righteousness with God, you will not participate in the kingdom. In 2 Corinthians 5.21, he made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that we could become sinners. the righteousness of God in him. There’s equal righteousness. Once you believe in Christ, his righteousness is accredited to you and you have equal righteousness. So you and I, we handle the adversity we face in the devil’s world every day if we use the faith rest drill, problem solving device number three. Remember what the Bible says in Hebrews 11, six, without faith, it’s impossible to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of anyone who seeks him diligently, those who seek him diligently. So that word faith, pistis, P-I-S-T-I-S, it’s a non-meritorious system of perception based on the confidence in the authority and the veracity of God. Not you, not your neighbor, not your friend, not your preacher, God. So faith is not based on one’s own knowledge, as is some sort of rationalism or empiricism, you know, rational data, empirical data. That faith is pisticism. Pistis is trust in God’s word. The Greek word pistis. The Greek word pistis has a verb counterpart called pistouo, and that’s the word believe. So faith is pistis and pistouo is believe. The verb pistouo means to believe, to trust in something, to trust in someone, to use someone as an object of your faith. It only takes a little more than no faith at all for a person to be saved. That’s why Paul told the Roman jailer when he was set free, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You have to understand that. I don’t know how much faith you have. I don’t know how much faith you think you have, but faith is related to the scripture. The more of the word of God you know, the more the resources of faith you have. There are over 7,000 promises in the Bible that you can claim. Over 7,000 promises you can use. We’ve put a few of them in a book. We have a book of promises and principles that we make available free of charge. And it deals with certain situations in your life and promises you can claim. But that’s where faith comes from. It comes from believing the Word of God. In Galatians 2.16, the Bible clearly says, “…knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.” So even if we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. For if by the works of the law, then no flesh would ever be justified. I mean, the Old Testament says there are none that are righteous. No, not one. All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. In spite of what you may think, you cannot conjure up your own righteousness. Your membership in a church, your giving, whatever you think is going to do it, won’t do it because you’re infected with a genetically formed sin nature. And until you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and become a member of the royal family of God, you will have no righteousness ever because it’s only through Christ that that righteousness comes. A description of faith is found in the Bible in 2 Corinthians 4.18. Listen carefully. We look not at the things which are seen, but at things which are not seen, like the essence of God, his sovereignty, his righteousness, his justice, his love, his immutability, his veracity, his omnipotence, his omniscience, his omnipresence. We look at these things, they’re not seen. For the things that are seen are but temporal, but things which are not seen are eternal. The eternal promises of God may not be seen, but they’re there. And faith is you living by those promises, believing those promises, and committing yourself to the trust and care of God who promised in Matthew 6, he would not abandon you, he would not let you do without, he will provide your needs. Sometimes both the faith rests drill. And the word of God or Bible doctrine is described in the meaning of pistis, as in 2 Corinthians 5, 7, where it says, we walk by faith and not by sight. We walk by faith and not by sight. So your eyes are in your soul. And your soul must have the Word of God to see the unseen. Remember, your soul has mentality, volition, a consciousness, a self-consciousness. And the mentality of your soul is where you store that Word of God. You listen to your pastor. You learn it, you apply it, and you live by it in your life, and that’s how you develop your faith. You have faith in things that are real, things that you might not see, but you believe in them. It’s in your soul. You’ve learned it, you’ve applied it, and you live like this. Unseen faith because of the Word of God in your life. So let me ask you a question. What is the object of your faith this morning? What is it? Oh, I know, it’s the government. Oh, if I can just get the right president elected, things are going to go good. Wrong. The Bible says, curse it as the man that trusteth in man. Oh, I know, if I can just find the right scientist to tell me how to cure this disease and everybody will be okay. Wrong. Oh, I know if I can just be healthy and take enough vitamins and work out enough and run enough and have strength, I can live. Wrong. The object of faith always has the merit. And there is no merit in the subject that’s you because faith is a non-meritorious system of perception. So your faith is not based on the government, not based on scientific discoveries, not based on whatever strength you can conjure up. Your faith must be based on the word of God to have any effectiveness. It’s not something we do, but it is the channel by which we appropriate what God did already for us. So you want to live by faith? You must be exercising your faith as you develop it. You must learn the word of God that develops faith. That’s why you keep hearing me harp on get under a well-qualified pastor. Start studying the word of God under a well-qualified pastor. And I have any amount of people I could tell you that write to me and say, I don’t have a church locally. I don’t know where I can go to get it. I can tell you how to sit down with your Bible, with your notebook, with a cup of coffee or a glass of tea and sit there and study in your home by men that teach the Word of God and make it available by means of streaming video or audio or whatever you want. You can get it in your home until God shows you where he wants you to go. But there’s no excuse for not learning the word of God. There’s no excuse for not growing in grace and the knowledge of the word of God. That’s why the Bible says, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Who’s ashamed? The lazy believer, the sluggard, the person that has every opportunity to glorify God to the max but won’t take the time to do it because he’s distracted. So faith must be exercised as it develops. You must learn God’s Word to develop your faith. And as this occurs in your life, and it’s not going to occur once. If your idea of learning God’s Word is going to church on Sunday morning for a 30-minute sermon and then check out the rest of the week, that means you’re a nod to Godder. Hello, God. Goodbye, God. See you next Sunday, God. You are kidding yourself. Oh, I know you go home and you read a daily devotion. You know, I read my little devotional book this morning, my little 10-minute devotion. That’s not getting it either. I am telling you, you must sit down under a pastor who has the word of God and has studied it and he can teach it to you. And I’m talking about more than 10 minutes. You say, is that possible? Yes, it is possible. There are many men that I know personally that have that kind of ministry. And you can sit down on a daily basis and study and learn the word of God in your own home if there’s not a church available for you. But as these things occur, your faith has the increasing ability of perception. The more the word of God you know, the more perception, the more perception, the more learning, and the more and more greater details you learn from the word of God. So Hebrews 4 says, therefore, such a promise remains of entering his rest. Let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of that promise. For indeed, the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word they heard was not mixed with faith. It didn’t profit them. So if you hear the teaching of the word of God and you don’t mix it with faith, it doesn’t profit you. It’s just gnosis, gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S. It’s not what the Bible calls full knowledge or epinosis. Remember, when you hear the word of God taught, it assimilated in your heart, in your soul. You understand it, but it does you no good until you metabolize it and apply it into your life. That’s where the Bible distinguishes between gnosis and epinosis, knowledge and full knowledge. So in this passage in Hebrews, the gospel was preached, but it didn’t help them because it didn’t mix it with faith. The mechanics of the faithless drill comprise three stages in your life. If you’re going to live by the faithless drill, there are at least three stages that we go by. Stage one is you claiming promises from the Bible. The passage we just read to you, mixing it with faith, promises from the Bible, Hebrews 4, 1 through 3, which can be called mixing the promises of God with faith. And I told you already, there are over 7,000 promises in the Bible. Consider that to be checks for you. Consider that’s a bank account with your name on it, but you can’t cash them until you discover where they are. learning the word of God, learning those promises and collecting those promises and claiming those promises and living by those promises, that’s where you get the wealth of your faith. Mixing the promises of God with faith is the first step of the faith rest drill. And then stage two, Is faith claiming a biblical rationale? You say, what’s that? It’s a set of reasons or a logistical, or excuse me, a logical basis for a course of action. It’s something you believe in, in your particular belief. So if you claim a promise like no weapon that is formed against you will ever prosper, then you go to something like the biblical rationale, the plan of God, the essence of God. I know he’s sovereign, I know he’s righteous, I know he’s just, so I can depend on his sovereignty to be aware of what I’m going through. I can depend on his justice to protect me and take care of me. I can depend on his immutability never to change on me. If you just go through the essence of God rationale, then you can calm down when you go through these adverse testings. So you’re going through some sort of adversity, some sort of health test, some sort of financial test, some sort of marriage test, some sort of national test. You can get upset, you can react, you can complain, you can scream, you can yell, or you can trust God. He’s well aware of what’s going on. I made a statement not long ago about the President of the United States, and I said, if you were God, Would you have put him in office? And a lot of people got vibrated over that. Why did God put him in office? Well, you’ll have to figure that one out. It’s either to bless us or to curse us. Now, you figure it out. Why did God put him in office? This is where you have to trust what God’s doing. Romans 13, 1 through 5 says God doesn’t make a mistake. Nobody can hold an office that he doesn’t allow. Why did he allow it? That’s the question. Figure it out yourself. Stand on your faith. Believe what you’ve learned. Mix those promises of God with your faith. And when you understand that, then you reverse your concentration or back up your concentration and you apply it. For example, let’s talk about the dying phase of life. The dying phase of the protocol plan of God emphasizes the fact that every believer has no control in three areas of his life. The time, the manner, and the place of his departure. These all belong to the wise and sovereign decision of the grace of God, God’s volition. So the physical death of the believer is the decision of the sovereignty of God based on God’s wisdom, God’s integrity, God’s love for every believer in Christ because he’s holy. He’s absolutely fair regarding the time and the manner and the place of our departure. He’s infinite, he’s eternal, he’s perfect in wisdom and love, perfect in integrity, perfect in sovereignty. He is capable of deciding the time, the manner, and the place of our departure. So since our death is the decision of God, totally apart from our own volition, then the death of any believer, winner or loser, is God’s victory. While death is God’s victory, he gives to us that victory by deciding the time, the manner, and the place of our departure. Thus, we can relax and we can know God does not make a mistake when it comes to our departure. This is a biblical conclusion and it eliminates all fear, all doubt, and all confusion. So, stage three, reach the doctrinal conclusion, biblical conclusion. God’s in control of the situation. This is the function of you doing this, being spiritually self-esteem, having enough doctrine in your soul to understand and realize and believe it. It’s the third stage of the faithless drill, and this brings you to spiritual self-esteem. So what is the victory of your faith? 1 John 5, 4 through 5, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world? But he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Relationship with the integrity of God is greater than any pressure or any disaster in life. And it’s more important than anything in life, whether failure, success, pressure, or prosperity. In Matthew 8, we learn of the disciples’ lack of faith when they encountered the storm on the bad Galilean Sea when Jesus tried to cross the Sea of Galilee. And the storm came up. Read it for yourself. And they were afraid they were going to die. And Jesus, they woke him up. They screamed for help. And he called them short-time trusters. And he stood up and he calmed the storm. If there’s a storm in your life, are you a short-time truster? Do you complain? Do you worry? Do you fear? Or do you use the faith-rest drill? Stand on the promises of God. Trust the integrity of God. Trust the sovereignty of God. He knows the time and the manner and the place of even your departure or mine. So I hope this has helped you. I hope you’ve learned some stuff this morning. And I hope you’ll come back and be with me next week. Same time, same place, same station. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
