Rick Hughes invites listeners to explore the pivotal role that love plays in the Christian faith. Through an enlightening discussion, understand how virtues grounded in love for God can be powerful problem-solving devices. Learn about the essence and attributes of God, which form the foundation for a life of spiritual maturity and fulfillment. Whether addressing earthly temptations or understanding the depth of divine love, Rick provides an inspiring narrative that encourages believers to grow in grace and knowledge while embracing a life of obedience and love.
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, I’m going to ask you to stick it out, stay with me. 30 minutes of some motivation, some inspiration, and some education. And we always do that without any type of manipulation. We don’t try to con people. We’re not trying to hustle any money out of you. We’re not going to ask you to join up, fess up, give up, nothing like that. But we will ask you to listen up. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if I can do that, then you have the freedom, you have the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. The plan starts with the best news that you’ve ever heard, the best news I ever heard, that Jesus Christ, the anointed Son of God, redeemed me out of the slave market of sin. In other words, my debt to God was paid for in full by the death of Christ on the cross. And now I’m free of the penalty of the power of sin in my life. And if you can receive Christ as your savior, you can accept the same offering that he made on your behalf. It’s a free gift, compliments of God, because he loves you. Ephesians 2.89 says, For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It’s a gift, a gift, G-I-F-T, a gift of God, not of works, lest any man would brag about it. Titus wrote the same thing. Paul in Titus chapter 3 verse 5 said, not by works of righteousness, which we’ve done, but according to his mercy, he saved us. How did he do that? By the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord, so that being justified by means of his grace, we would be made heirs according to the confidence we have of eternal life. It’s all the grace gift of God. So that’s the good news, the best news. Then I have a question to ask you today. Here on the Flatline, we talk about various problems and we talk about building a main line of resistance in your soul so that you can stop the outside sources of adversity before it ever becomes the inside source of stress. That’s why we always say adversity is inevitable, stress is optional. Building a flatline means you learn 10 unique problem-solving devices. If you learn them and deploy them or use them in your soul, in the thinking of your soul, in the mentality of your soul, then you can begin to advance in the plan of God to a way that’s incredible. And you can begin to experience the most fantastic life the world has ever seen. It’s called the Christian life. But it’s a way to live without worry. It’s a way to live without fear. It’s a way to live without bitterness It’s a way to live without guilt. It’s a way to live with extreme confidence Knowing that the love of God surrounds you cares for you provides for you what a magnificent life and most people that don’t know Christ have no idea that this is available and It is a wonderful life that’s available to you. But in order to take advantage of it, there’s one thing you have to do, and that’s that you must love God. And that’s the question that I would like to ask you today. I know you may be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, or you probably wouldn’t even be listening to this radio show, but what I want to ask you is, do you love God? Do you love God? Now, I know you’re going to say, yes, I asked a friend that yesterday. And he said, well, that’s obvious. Sure, I do. the bible says we love him because he first loved us this is first john 4 19 and that’s called reciprocal love motivation god loved you and me before we loved him remember john 3 16 god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son His love motivated him to provide for us eternal life, redemption from sin, by means of the sacrifice of his only son, Jesus Christ our Lord. That’s a love that is incredible. And yet it’s a love that’s true. And all that we know about God, everything that we’ve learned about God. Let me ask you a question. What do you know about God? You love him. You say you love him. But it’s hard to love someone you don’t know. It’s hard to love someone you don’t identify with in so many ways. I mean, it’s easy to get an emotional love, an emotional attachment, but that doesn’t carry you. So, all you know about God, what do you know about God? If I ask you to write a paper and say, tell me what you know about God, what would you tell me? well everything we know about god everything we understand about god was taught to us by the apostles who learned it from jesus christ listen to john 17 25-26 o righteous father the world has not known you but i have known you and these have known that you sent me and I declare it unto them your name and will declare it that the love wherewith you’ve loved me may be in them and I in them. So how did the apostles come to know the love of God? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ declared it unto them. In John 17, 14, I have given them your word and the world has hated them. in john 17 6 i manifested your name to the men whom you gave me and then in john 17 20 a great verse for you this is where the lord jesus christ was praying for you before you were even born he said in john 17 20 i do not pray for For them alone, but for all of those who will believe in me through their word. That’s the written word, the written word of the apostles. As they wrote and recorded the scriptures, the canon of scripture, the Bible. We know God through what they wrote, and what they wrote they learned through Jesus Christ who revealed it to them. As he said, the world has not known you, but I know you, and these men have known you that you gave me, and because I declared unto them your name, and I gave them your word. So what we know about God, we know from the Bible, which was written by those apostles, And so let’s get some principles. Here it is. Number one, the qualities and the perfections which belong to God are classified as his attributes. The sum total of God’s attributes are his essence. Now I can ask you a simple question. Do you know the attributes of God or the essence of God? Do you have any idea what it is? How can you love him if you don’t know what his essence is? So, too, the attributes or the essence of God belong to three people, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and they are all one in essence. They’re all the same. And three, the believer, that’s you and me, we are totally dependent upon divine revelation from the canon of scripture, from the Bible, to understand exactly what God is like. That means that we can know his nature, we can know his attributes, we can know what forms his divine substance or essence take. the attributes of god as revealed in the bible are only understood in the scripture for example god is love we know that you could have written that one down i understand one of the attributes of god is his love it always has been his love Since God doesn’t fall in love like you do and I do, you know, you fell in love with your spouse or someone you’re dating or whatever, God doesn’t fall in love. His love does not increase and his love does not decline. God is love, not needs love or is more love or less love. He is love. It’s his essence, his character. So, He is love. God so loved the world. We love God because he first loved us. The scripture I started off with in 1 John 4, 19. So God is love. Secondly, God is holy. He has justice. He has righteousness. It’s always existed and they’re incorruptible. God is absolutely just. He’s absolutely righteous. The Bible says there are none that are righteous. No, not even one because our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. Our thoughts are not his thoughts and our ways are not his ways. He’s perfect righteousness. So plus R, perfect righteousness. We are no righteousness or minus R. And he’s absolute justice. Nothing escapes the justice of God. He always has existed like this. And these two essences, his justice and his righteousness, are incorruptible. Not only is God love, not only is God holy, but he’s eternal. Means he’s always existed. He has no beginning and he has no end. It’s hard for you and I to comprehend that because we have a time that we are born and we have a time that we die, as Ecclesiastes says. God has no beginning and he has no ending. That’s why he’s God. He’s eternal life. Never has started, never has ended. You just can’t figure that out. It doesn’t compute in our brain. But that’s what God is. He’s omniscient, means he knows everything. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro across the earth. He’s omnipotent, means he’s all powerful. He can do whatever he wants to do. There’s a song that said he could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free. but he died alone for you and me on the cross. He’s omnipotent and he is omnipresent. That means that God can be with me in my home and with you in your home. He’s omnipresent. And this is one thing you need to remember about Satan. Satan is a created being. He is not omnipresent. He cannot be in two places at one time. So God is love. God is holy. God is eternal. He’s omniscient. He’s omnipotent. He’s omnipresent. He’s absolute veracity. He’s truth. God would never lie. Never lie to you. Never lie to himself. Never lie to anybody. God is immutable. What does that mean? It means that he doesn’t change. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. And God is sovereign. What does that mean? It means that he’s the king, king of kings, lord of lords. There is no other. So there’s some of the essence of God right there. Not all of it, but some of it. If you had to sit down and write a paper for the reason that you love God, here’s why I love God, because he loves me, and he’s holy, he’s eternal, he’s justice, he’s righteousness, he’s omniscience, omnipotent, omnipresence, he’s absolutely truthful, he’s immutable, he’s sovereign. Could you explain what those mean? I mean, should you even know what those mean? And the answer is, well, of course. If you don’t understand what those mean, then you don’t understand the person you love. Let me introduce you to a rather large word that’s found in our language called anthropopathisms. Anthropopathisms. This is when someone ascribes to God a human characteristic which he doesn’t actually possess. These are used in the Bible so man can understand divine policy in terms of our own frame of reference. So once you learn what the essence of God is and you can understand what he’s provided for you in his love, then you’re free to reciprocate that love. But if we have an anthropopathism we’re talking about, he’s got the whole world in his hands. God doesn’t have hands. He sees you. Well, God doesn’t have eyes. See, we want to compare him to a human. We want to make him human. And he’s not. He’s God. I don’t know what he looks like. We can’t see him. The Bible said no one of us could see him and live. We’ve seen Christ. And Jesus said, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. And part of his glory was revealed, but more of it will come in the future. But I have an idea that if we saw Jesus Christ in his completed glory, or God in his completed glory, that we would simply be a puddle of wax. We’d melt in their presence. That’s how holy he is. But we use these terms, the hand of God, the eyes of God, the mind of God, to give human characteristics so we can understand in our own frame of reference what the essence of God is and we can understand what he provided for us in his love and we’re free to reciprocate that love. We call this a problem-solving device. Virtue love is a problem-solving device. Problem-solving device number six, virtue love. It is the greatest motivation in the Christian’s life. If you want to be obedient, it has to start here. 1 John 5, 3 said, if we love him, then we will obey him. If we love him, then we will obey him. So here’s a question. Do you always obey God? I know I don’t. I know I have a sin nature, and I sin, and I know you do too. So I try to obey him. I seek to obey him, but I don’t always do that. So that leads to a question saying, does God ever get disappointed with me when I sin? Does God get upset with me when I sin? We’re told in the scriptures not to grieve the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 4.30. And that Greek word grieve is the word lupeo, and it’s a present active imperative verb. And lupeo means to cause pain or grief or to offend. The present tense says there never is a time we are to offend the Holy Spirit. The active voice is the subject produces the action of the verb, that’s you and I, and the imperative mood is is the mood of command. So we’re under command from God not to offend the Holy Spirit. Well, sin offends the Holy Spirit. Sin breaks fellowship with God. And what we do is we put ourselves on non-speaking terms. I mean, what father does not grieve the broken fellowship of a child who won’t speak to him? And the child of God, you and me, out of fellowship, we have reason to hide from God because of our shame, because of our guilt, or sometimes because we’re bitter towards God, believing God caused something to happen to us that we didn’t like, something that was bad. And if we get out of fellowship, that’s the way we live. What does it mean to be out of fellowship? It means to have unconfessed sin in your life, grieving the Holy Spirit and quenching his power. So if we truly love God, We have to understand God’s essence. And we cannot get bitter towards God because something bad happened. And we don’t need to have shame and guilt because we disappointed God. We do what the Bible says. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to purify us from all of our wrongdoing. Now, love comes under four headings for the child of God. Love towards God, love towards our spouse, right man, right woman, love toward our friends, and love towards the brethren. All of this is taught in the Bible. Love towards God, Deuteronomy 6, 5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. That was an Old Testament passage, but it’s true in the New Testament as well. We are mandated to love God. How can we love someone we don’t know? How can we appreciate someone we’ve never met? How can we have confidence in someone we don’t understand? And so if we love God, then we can begin to appreciate and understand what he does for us. But the only way you can ever love God is to understand God, to understand his essence, to understand what he is and what he can do and will do for you. Love towards your right man or your right woman is a wonderful love. That’s a personal love. That’s your spouse. God designed it that way. Love towards your friends. That’s a friendship-type love. Nothing wrong with that. That’s a good thing. And loving the brethren, well, sometimes we got to love them with impersonal love. Remember, love has two sides to it. It has the personal side, which is personal virtue, and it has the impersonal side, which And that’s a different side. Motivational virtue in life is personal love for God. Always has been, always will be. But when you’re told in the Bible you gotta love your neighbor as you love yourself, if your neighbor’s a jerk, an idiot, a weirdo, how are you supposed to love him? Well, you love him the same way God loved you. God so loves the world. Weren’t you an idiot, a weirdo, a jerk when he loved you before you ever accepted Christ? Before you became a member of God’s royal family, what state were you in? Lost, offensive to God. And so you may have a neighbor that’s lost and offensive to you. Can you love him? Yes. But you love him based on your character, not his. You love him based on what’s in your soul, not what’s in his soul. the truth about impersonal love is a tremendous problem-solving device and i i wish i had time to teach it to you but i don’t it’s one of our problem-solving devices we’ll go back over those soon enough for you i’m sure but personal love for god is your motivational virtue impersonal love for others is your functional virtue You can love people that you dislike. You can love those that don’t like you. And that’s loving the brethren. This sort of love has to be learned in order to execute. In other words, how could you ever use impersonal love as some sort of problem-solving device if you don’t even know what it is? Can you? So if you really truly love God, what are some of the results of loving God? Well, motivation and appreciation. Obedience, prayer, adoration. Motivation, appreciation, adoration. These are all some of the results of loving God. but the Bible also warns you about having displaced love love that you should not have the Bible says in John 2 15 stop loving the world anything related to the world if anyone keeps loving the world the love of the Father is not in him because all that’s in the world the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes the arrogant pattern of life It’s not from the Father, but from the world. That’s called the cosmic system. The devil rules the cosmic system. And you’re mandated by John, don’t love the cosmos, don’t love the cosmic system, the world, and don’t love anything related to that. In other words, your happiness does not come from people or from circumstances. Your happiness comes, as Jesus said, excuse me, In Luke 11, 27, and 28, your happiness comes from hearing God’s word and keeping it. But if you’re loving the world, in other words, what the world offers, success, prominence, attention, approval, if you’re loving the world, this means that you’re under some sort of demon influence in your motivation. Or in your thought pattern. I didn’t say demon possession. I said demon influence. Christians can be demon influenced, not demon possessed. So what’s the motivation for this thought pattern in your life? What motivates you to make these decisions that you act on, the actions that come from the decisions? So you can get ahead in the world. You can have what the world offers. You can gain the attention of the world. People say follow your dreams and you’ll be successful and follow your dreams. You can be rich. You can be famous. You can be successful. You can have this. You can have that. That’s what the world offers. It’s a temporal happiness. It’s a mirage. Because a lot of people have been rich and famous and died very unhappy. You don’t have to live like that. There’s nothing wrong with being rich and famous. That’s not what I’m saying. As long as you understand the real issue. You don’t love the cosmic system. There’s nothing there for you. You don’t belong here. You’re passing through. You love God. How do you love him? With all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. You love him based on who he is, not based on what you are. You love him because of his fidelity, not your fidelity. You love him because of his essence, not your essence. I mean, we distort God’s love all the time by superimposing our own standards on God. You know, I mean, we’ve just had some huge disasters in this country this year from fires and California coast to hurricanes in the southern coast and drought in the mid-country. In times of disaster people often ask a silly question. They say, how can a loving God do this to me? This sort of blasphemy often results from misunderstanding what God’s love really is. You see, divine knowledge Our omniscience doesn’t cancel or change God’s love. God knows every thought that every person has ever had throughout history. That’s why he’s God. And many of the thoughts about God are not kind thoughts. That doesn’t change God at all. God does not stop loving you or turn away from me because we insult him or we blaspheme him. We don’t have the power or the ability to change the love of God because his love is perfect. Because God foreknew human failure in eternity past. He didn’t cancel his love for those who fail. He does not condone sin, but he doesn’t stop loving the sinner. God does not condone legalism or human good, but he does not stop loving the legalist or the self-righteous person who’s full of his own self-importance. God never cancels his love for his creatures, even though we, on the other hand, have different ideas about what he does. We don’t understand. In the last times, the Bible warns us that people will be lovers of self and lovers of money and boastful and revilers and disobedient, blah, blah, blah, blah. Listen, there’s a lot of things to love, but the only thing that ever sustained you in difficult times is the love of God. Do you love God? I mean, if you have fellowship with Christians who have their eyes on self, you’ll quickly get your eyes on yourself, and you can’t learn anything when you’re arrogant. If you love money, you’re preoccupied with the things that money can get you, the world. If you boast about yourself and your money, you’re arrogant and not occupied with Christ. If you’re arrogant, you’re going to malign other people that don’t think like you think. It all starts with loving God. You have no capacity for anything if you’re ungrateful, unholy, and unloving. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure. That’s great. When it takes precedence over love for God, then you will never, ever be able to reach spiritual adulthood in your life and glorify God to the maximum. And that’s all he asks out of you. Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who loved you, gave himself as a ransom for you, paid for your sin, went to the cross, was crucified, died, resurrected, and ascended to the right hand of the Father. And he will come back. He will come back soon. And I pray that when he comes back, you’ll be ready. I sure hope you’re listening. I sure hope you’re paying attention. I sure hope you’re encouraged by this study, small, brief study on the love of God. Do you love God? Love for God is critical in your life if you’re going to obey him in advance in the Christian life. 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.
