This week on The Flatline, Rick Hughes addresses the crucial aspect of thinking as it pertains to our spiritual journey. Discover how to guard against the deceitful lures of the world, and learn about the importance of the armor of God in combating spiritual attacks. With the integration of humility, obedience, and wisdom, Rick guides listeners through the steps necessary to transform the mind and reach full potential in glorifying God.
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, please stick around. It’s going to be a short time of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and obviously no manipulation, no con games. We’re not trying to solicit money. We’re not asking you to join anything. All we’re asking is if you will listen for a little bit. Let me try to verify and identify God’s plan for your life, and if I can do that, then you have the freedom to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s always up to you. But the Flatline is brought to you every Sunday by the Rick Hughes Evangelistic Ministries Incorporated, based in Alabama, where we live. And it’s our pleasure now to broadcast over 100 stations across America every Sunday morning. One of the things I’d like to make you aware of is our tremendous resource material that’s free, resources of books. If you go on our website, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. You will find all the books that we offer free of charge and many of our bookmarks, which are tremendous bookmarks, stick in your Bible. The one we’ve had a lot of interest in lately is called 10 Reasons Your Prayers Aren’t Answered. A lot of people have been requesting that based on a past radio show. But anyhow, we have all kind of bookmarks involving the thought line and problem-solving devices and all kind of stuff that will help you. Take a look at it on our website, rickhughesministries.org. Contact us if you’d like to get the free material. Let me give you a scripture verse this morning before we dive into what I want to cover because it’s pretty unique what I’d like to say to you today. Here’s Proverbs 3.13. How blessed is the man, that means happiness, how happy is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. For her profit, that’s wisdom, is better than the profit of silver. and her gain, that’s wisdom, is better than the fine gold. She, that’s wisdom, is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire compares with her. The wisdom of God is unbelievable, and when you have the wisdom of God, you have an unbelievable wealth in your soul. What I’d like to try to share with you this morning is something I haven’t heard many people talk about. I would like to talk to you about how you think, the mental dynamics of your soul, Because the plain truth is this, the plain truth about your spiritual life, if you’re a Christian, if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, the plain truth is you are what you think. Not what you think you are, but you are what you think. Proverbs 23, seven says, for as the man thinketh in his heart, so he is. The real you is the thought content of your soul, your motives, your intentions, your desires. And when the Father wants to look at you, that’s what he looks at. He’s not concerned with your image and your style, what you’re wearing, how you walk, what you look like. He’s concerned with what you think like. And the scripture tells us that once we become believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are to change the way we think. We’re not supposed to think the same way anymore. In Romans 12, two and three, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that means changing the way you think, so that you may now be able to prove what is the will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect, For through the grace given to me, I’m saying to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment as God has allowed to each one of us a measure of faith. So what Paul is saying there is stop thinking in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. And this is a mandate for believers in Rome to quit being so self-centered. This is where the problem comes in. If you listen to me very carefully, I want to give you some insight. Everything you do starts in your mind. Everything you are is sourced in your mind. Your mind is where you live the spiritual life. You have a body, and what comes out of that mind is what comes out of the body. The body is a slave to the thoughts of the mind, so to say, and we have an enemy in the body, the sin nature, we know that. But we have victory in the mind through the Holy Spirit and the living Word of God. And so you’ve got to understand this. You are a product of what you think. Your mind is essential. Not what you do, not how you act, not how holy you sound running around saying brother this and sister that and praise God this and holy God that. All that phony baloney stuff doesn’t count. I know you may be sincere and you may be real about it, but it doesn’t mean anything until you’re thinking right. So this verse is mandated that I just gave you in Romans 12, two and three for those believers in Rome to quit being so self-centered because the lure of the world is very, very strong. And that’s called the cosmic system. And it promises things it cannot deliver to you, such as happiness and contentment, offering to find them in people or circumstances. And you can’t find happiness and contentment in people or circumstances. But this is how the world lures you, lures you through your emotions. And your emotions are not thoughts, they’re feelings. and you’re not designed to let your emotions run your soul because I want you to understand there is a constant appeal to your emotions every day through television, social media, friends, family. Somebody’s always appealing to your emotions and you have to learn not to let your emotions dictate your spiritual life. The emotions have no place in the spiritual life except capacity to appreciate what God has done. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a sunrise, nothing wrong with appreciating a sunset, nothing wrong with appreciating something that God created, but this is not how we worship God in our emotions. We worship God by what we think, understanding him. That’s why this passage says that wisdom is more valuable than gold or silver and more precious than jewels because nothing can compare with her. God wants you to have his wisdom. So this verse tells you not to think in the way the world thinks. Don’t conform to their way of thinking. The word conform is a verb in the New Testament pronounced . Let me see if I can back that up. . And it is the imperative mood, which is the mood of a direct spiritual command from God through the writing of Paul. Do not think. Do not think like the world thinks. Don’t be conformed to the world. Do not be conformed to the world. And that’s a command from God. It simply means this. Don’t follow the patterns of the world or conform to the world’s standards. Politically, this infers a lot to believers today who are assaulted with progressive ideology daily. And don’t buy into that. We’ve got several generations of young Americans who have been hammered daily with satanic viewpoint, which is evil to the core, and will eventually result in the destruction of this client nation if they continue to believe the false narrative they hear every day. And they get it every day through social media, the influence of the news media, movies, television, music, and our young people are being assaulted every day to change the way they think, to line up with satanic viewpoint and the cosmic system of thinking. So this verse tells a believer there must be a renewing of his mind. And one, this is an adjustment of your moral and spiritual compass to be more like the thinking of Christ. That’s why Philippians 2.5 says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who humbled himself, or who took a humility profile that resulted in obedience. If you’re going to be obedient to God, it takes some humility. Arrogant people justify why they don’t have to be obedient. Arrogant children justify why they don’t have to obey their parents. Arrogant students justify why they don’t have to obey the teacher. Arrogant citizens justify why they can revolt against the police. And this is a lie. You have to change the way you think, and humility is required. It’s a humility profile that our Lord Jesus Christ had. And when we do that, the New Testament that we’re going to study is called the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ, learning to think like he thought, having his mind. And 1 Corinthians 2.16, for who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ, that’s the New Testament. The mind of Christ for you and me is called, and I give you a word I like to use, it’s called Bible doctrine. And Bible doctrine refers to his instruction to his disciples And those disciples recorded it and passed it on to us in the New Testament scriptures. Here’s what Jesus told the disciples in John 15, 11. These things, these things I taught you so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. These things refers to a lot of various doctrines he taught between John 13 and John 15, 11. So the threat that you and I face from the devil’s world is mental distractions. That’s our threat, mental distractions. Trying to take charge of your mind so that they manipulate the way you think. Satan would like to manipulate your thoughts and manipulate you by manipulating your thoughts. And you must not allow that to happen. You must not allow mental distractions to steal your thoughts. Because his objective, as far as you and I are concerned, is to frustrate the will of God in our lives mentally, geographically, operationally. And the devil often appeals to our own arrogance to lure us into his sort of cosmic thinking. For example, one of his favorite ways of doing this is to get you thinking you’re doing something good to assuage your guilt complex, or even think you’re helping God to get you involved in the improvement of the devil’s world. And the humanistic activities, becoming occupied with temporal solutions to man’s problems, advocating systems to improve man’s environment, socialism, social activism, the welfare state, the social gospel, the whole bit, All of this is part of Satan’s system. And if that doesn’t work, then the inculcation of fear regarding death is a way he will go at you. That’s his trump card. He’ll play with you. So he wants to get you thinking away from Bible doctrine into helping the world and improving the world. And it’s his world. He’s the God of this world. The Bible tells us this. We don’t even belong here. We’re leaving. We’re going somewhere else. But if he can get you involved in cleaning up his world, that’s what he’ll do and you’ll waste your time. So we do have a way to protect ourselves from these tactics and these schemes, but it really all depends on your humility. It all depends on your obedience. It all depends on whether or not you’re willing to learn and apply God’s word into your life. And that’s what I’ve been hounding for 16 years on this radio show. Grow up, learn, apply, and glorify God. Learn God’s Word. Study to show yourself approved unto God. Grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Two verses that are key verses. So that’s what it depends on, whether you will take the time to learn God’s Word in your mind, in your head, in your thoughts, store it in your stream of consciousness, and utilize it and use it when you have to. That’s called application. But, you know, I’m not naive. Some of you just may be too lazy to spend the time necessary to renovate your thinking. You may think a simple, you know, like God help me prayer will sustain you in times of adversity. And that maybe God will miraculously give you an answer or miraculously give you the strength to handle the situation that you’re going through, even though you neglected to prepare yourself for what was coming. You didn’t learn God’s word. You didn’t cycle it into your soul. You didn’t put it in your stream of consciousness. You don’t use it under the faith rest drill. You get into a situation, a problem, you’re going to run and ask the preacher, what should I do, preacher? Are you going to call one of your friends up? What should I do? And I already made it the worst that you’re going to do. What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do is he wouldn’t think the way you’re thinking, I can tell you that right now. He would use the faithless drill. So this is what I’m concerned with. Some people are just too lazy to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Grow requires some effort. It requires you eating something and nourish something nourishing for your soul. And that’s the teaching of the word of God. So it’s foolish thinking that you can get by with just a simple prayer. God help me prayer. That’s foolish thinking. You have to train your mind to spot evil. You have to train your mind to avoid distractions. And you must know when you’re being manipulated by the world, being manipulated by the flesh, or even being manipulated by satanic forces. If you don’t know that, I mean, then you’re going to go through life being a loser. never glorifying God to the max, never reaching your true spiritual potential, because you wouldn’t take the time that it requires to grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And I know you’ve got excuses. My kids take a lot of time, and I work, and I don’t have time to come home and study, and I don’t have time to listen to that pastor teach me the Bible. If I go to church for an hour a week, that’s all I need. And you’re kidding yourself. This is why your spiritual life is going nowhere, and this is why you’re still stuck in a rut spiritually, because you won’t put learning God’s Word and applying God’s Word under the filling of the Holy Spirit, priority number one in your life. You’re just not gonna do it. You just got too many other irons in the fire, don’t you? All of this is taught in Ephesians 6, 11 through 18. And I would like to try to explain how each one of our resources are related to what we think because it’s our mind that we have to transform. Our minds must be transformed into thinking divine viewpoint over human viewpoint. Human viewpoint is prevalent today, it’s everywhere. And we have to learn not to buy into it, and we have to learn how to think divine viewpoint, not be manipulated by this human viewpoint stuff. So we have to train our minds so that we don’t fall into the traps of the devil, we don’t be caught in his snares that lead to confusion, distraction, or even failure spiritually. You don’t want that to happen, and I don’t want that to happen. I want my audience to grow in the grace and the knowledge of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I want you to replicate the life of Christ. I want you to reflect Christ in you. And you only do that by reflecting what he thought, not how you act. not acting all holy and acting like you’re some kind of saint, which everybody knows you’re not. So let’s look at what Paul taught about our resources, the resources we have to combat satanic attacks in our lives, because these attacks are not the only attacks you’ll face. We actually have three adversaries called the world, the flesh, and the devil. But the devil will use the world to lure you, and he will use the flesh to ensnare you in your lust pattern. So let’s take a look at the passage found in Ephesians 6, 11 through 18. Here’s where we get to the meat of what I want to teach you. We start off with the word put on. Put on the armor of God. Now read this passage to you if you’ll let me. It’s just a lengthy passage, so please bear with me. Put on the full armor of God so that you’ll be able to stand firm against the strategy of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, and against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, In addition to all of this, taking up the shield of faith with which you shall be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, and take the heaven of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and all petition, pray at all times in the spirit. And with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for the saints. I know I read a lot. I’m sorry, but it’s important because we’re going to break this down for you. This will take a couple of weeks. If you’ll hang with me, you’re gonna learn this. You’re gonna learn what the word put on means to start with. Put on the full armor of God. What in the world is put on referring to? I mean, is it something you can literally pick up and wear? Can you go to the store and buy it and purchase it? No. This is a mental attitude dynamic. It is you putting on the mind of Christ. That’s what it is. It is you preparing yourself mentally to go into war, to go into battle, because we are facing the angelic conflict. We live in a war. The Bible says the flesh wars against the spirit. The spirit wars against the flesh, and they’re contrary one to the other. So there’s a war right there. And we know that Satan hates you. We know that Satan would love to destroy you and defeat you. And we know that Satan doesn’t want to go to the lake of fire. So there’s the angelic conflict, trying to vindicate himself and get out of God’s just judgment. So put on is an imperative mood in the verb in the Greek New Testament. It’s the word enduo, enduo. And it’s an imperative. This is not a request. This is not Paul saying, hey, guys, would you listen to me? You know, would you consider me? doing this. No, this is Paul saying, put on now, put it on the armor of God. This imperative mood means to clothe yourself. And it’s not a literal change of clothes, but it’s an illustrative analogy to a Roman soldier putting on his uniform before he goes out to do battle. And when it says put on, it’s referring to you doing this mentally, mentally, by use of those 10 problem-solving devices I’ve been teaching you for 16 years. Those are your spiritual resources in the daily arena of contention. Do you know them? Do you understand the 10 problem-solving devices? Do you understand rebound? Do you understand the filling of the Holy Spirit? Do you understand the faith rest drill? Do you understand grace orientation or doctrinal orientation? Do you understand the personal sense of destiny or personal love for God and impersonal love for others? Do you understand sharing the happiness of God or occupation with Christ? These are the 10 unique problem-solving devices. If you haven’t heard them, write to me, and I’ll send you the book, Christian Problem Solving, and I’ll send you a bookmark with all of them on it. This is not something I discovered. It’s something my pastor taught many years ago. This has been in the Word of God forever. These are unique problem-solving devices, and when the Bible says put on the armor of God, this is what it’s referring to. You do it in your mind. You do it between your ears. You do it in your thoughts. It’s not a physical act. It’s a mental recall of all of the doctrine you’ve learned and all of the doctrine you already possess. It’s not a call to go to the quartermaster and be issued a uniform. You must already have it to put it on. It’s called the whole armor of God. The Greek word panoplia, the Greek word panoplia is the whole armor of God. And it refers to every divine asset you’ve been provided by God during your time in the devil’s world. And these assets are in your thoughts if you’ve learned them. So how could you use assets that you don’t know of? How could you use assets you’re not aware of? How could you put on something you don’t even know you possess? That’s why it’s critical to grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I get back to it again. This takes place in your mind. Your life every day is a battle for your thoughts. And you can think divine viewpoint or you can think human viewpoint. You can think the mind of Christ or you can think the lure of the world, the deed of the flesh. You can think those things. You’re going to be thinking something from the time you woke up this morning, your mind kicked in gear. It might have been in gear in the subconscious last night. Maybe you dreamed, but you’re awake. Your eyes are open. You brushed your teeth. You combed your hair. You showered. You shaved. Now, what are you thinking? I hate going to work. I hate that place. I hate this. I hate that. You’re not thinking. You’re emoting. You’re letting your self-pity get in charge and your emotions are kicking in. You got to get over that kind of stuff. That’s not the spiritual life. So the whole armor of God and all these assets you’ve got of God, from God, put on the whole armor from God or literally supplied by God from the source of God. This is a direct reference to Bible doctrine available to you through the pages of the scripture and accessed by the filling of the Holy Spirit. Hopefully taught to you by a well-qualified pastor. Again, these assets are called wisdom in the scripture. Since they give you insight and they give you discernment if you understand them, they’re called wisdom and you must learn them. So if you’ve learned God’s problem-solving devices and if you use them in your thoughts, then you will be using the mind of Christ with the end result that you won’t be a Christian casualty in the arena of contention that we call the angelic conflict. So we have a purpose clause in this passage. Put on the whole armor of God so that, here’s your purpose clause, so that, which is the intention of the instructions we’re about to study, Why does Paul want you to put on the armor of God in your mind, in your thoughts, be prepared the way you think, so that you will be able to stand against the strategy employed by the devil in order to defeat you? This simply refers to you succumbing to Satan’s deceptive strategy, the strategy that diverts you from ever reaching spiritual maturity and from ever glorifying God to the max. And maybe that’s happened already. Maybe you’ve been a Christian a long time now and you should have already been a mature believer and you’re not. You’re not. You know you’re not. You haven’t spent time in the Word of God. You’ve been totally distracted. And every now and then the Holy Spirit will tug at your heart and you’ll feel it. And you’ll say, oh, I’m going to do better. And you don’t. Off you go down the my way highway again. If Satan can distract you, he will discourage you. and he will defeat you and he’ll boast to God about your weakness and your failure. That’s why he’s called an accuser. In Revelation 12, 10, then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ has come for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, the one who accuses them before God day and night. Yep, he has a dossier on you. He knows your weaknesses. He knows your failures, and he reports it to God, trying to get you disqualified. 1 John 2, 1 and 2, thank goodness for this. My little children, I’m writing these things to you so you’ll understand and won’t sin. If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, which is Jesus Christ, the righteous one, and he himself is our propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world. So your defense attorney that represents you is the Lord Jesus Christ. And he can say, nope, this is our child. He or she has accepted me as Savior. Satan has no right to them. That’s a wonderful thing. So make no mistake about what I’m telling you. Failure to learn and failure to execute spiritual life is a grievous sin, and it’s being committed by Christians in America on a daily basis. Those who substitute ritual for reality, wonderful, kind Christian people, maybe just like you, the ones who settle for milquetoast teaching and blunder their way through life, self-centered, defeated, depressed, discouraged Christians, who never glorify God because they cannot defend against the tactics of the enemy. Oh, there’s so much more to say. Will you come back next week? Will you stick with me as I continue this study? I hope you will. I hope I haven’t offended you because I’ve tried to challenge you today for you to be the person God designed you to be. not to be some loser that doesn’t ever get with it spiritually. Think about these things. Pray over these things. Consider them. And if you need to contact me, feel free to do so. Rick at rickhughesministries.org. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Fly Line.
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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.
