Dive deep into the core of spiritual growth and motivation with Rick Hughes on The Flatline. This episode highlights the critical role of the Holy Spirit as a mentor and guide in the life of a believer. Rick passionately articulates the necessity of consistent scripture intake and a renewed mindset to reflect divine viewpoints, drawing from biblical sources like Philippians 2:5 and Romans 12:1-3. With captivating explanations of prayer, faith, and eternal security, Rick encourages believers to stand firm in their faith, equipped with the armor of 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.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few minutes, please stay with me. It’ll be 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, but obviously no manipulation, no games, no con artists, no tricks, no gimmicks. We’re not trying to solicit money. We’re not trying to solicit membership. We’re just simply here to give you some information. Information that’s designed to remind you of biblical truths and introduce you to an in-depth way of studying and learning the Word of God. My job is to educate. Your job is to evaluate what I say. And if you agree, then you can orient and adjust. That’s up to you. But I’m going to get it right, I’m going to get it accurate, and I’m going to give it straight. No games, as I said. The Flatline is always about teaching the wonderful problem-solving devices found in the Word of God. FLOT stands for Forward Line of Troops, and this is a military metaphor for using 10 unique problem-solving devices like the military has a main line of resistance to keep the enemy out of the command center. And the enemy for you is human viewpoint thinking, it’s satanic strategy, it’s the evil system of the cosmic system that we live in, and by learning God’s word, are establishing a flat line in your soul then you can stop the outside sources of adversity from overrunning the command post of your soul, which is the way that you think. Your spiritual life is always lived the way that you think. And so today, as we continue in the Floodline, our message today is the gift of our resources. Our resources, things that God has provided for you. And those spiritual resources are unbelievable. The spiritual life that we live and that you live has divine resources. The unbelieving world does not have that. I guess I call them disadvantaged because they don’t have the resources that you have. These resources for the believer must be in your soul if you’re going to utilize them. If you ever hope to glorify God to the maximum in your life, you must know your resources and you must use your resources. Glorifying God is what we are mandated to do. Listen to 1 Peter 4.11. You see, this is what our spiritual life is all about, this glorifying God. 1 Peter 4.11, whoever speaks is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God, and whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified. through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Then Romans 16, 27, another verse that speaks to the glorifying of God. It says, to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ be glory forever. So my job And your job is to give maximum glorification to God by means of our spiritual life. That’s what we’re supposed to do. And the fact that we believe the word of God and we trusted Jesus Christ to be our savior and redeem us out of the slave market of sin, that’s part of glorifying God. Now, maximum glorification of God, maximum glorification of God occurs when we, you and me, when we reach spiritual maturity. And at that point, we begin to represent the mind of Christ. And this is how we go through evidence testing in our life. And this is how we give maximum glorification to God by learning his word, applying his word, using his word through the evidence testing that we face in our life. So in order to bring God maximum glory, Jesus Christ, our Lord, the anointed son of God provided a tutor for us. or what we call a mentor, and it’s in the form of the Holy Spirit. And so the number one divine resource for you and me is the Holy Spirit. And the number two divine resource for you and me is a completed canon of Scripture. We call it a Bible, and it is the thinking of Christ in written form. 1 Corinthians 2.16 says we have the mind of Christ. So in regards to the Lord Jesus Christ giving us this divine resource of the Holy Spirit, this is what he said in John 14, 16. I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or does it know him, but you will know him because he abides with you and he will be in you. Abiding with you, he was speaking to the disciples now when he said that. And the disciples had the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit with the endowment ministry, but come the church age, come Pentecost he would be in them and he is in you and I today we are sealed with the Holy Spirit Ephesians 1 13 and we are mandated to be filled with the Holy Spirit Ephesians 5 18 so the Lord Jesus Christ went on to say I have a lot more things to say to you but you cannot bear them right now verse 13 of John 16 but when he that’s the spirit of truth comes He will guide you into all truth. There’s the tutor. There’s the mentorship. He will guide you into all truth because he will not speak of his own initiative. but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will disclose to you what is to come. And listen to verse 14, he will glorify me, for he will take of mine and disclose it to you. So God is glorified by means of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life as he tutors us and mentors us. And without the filling of the Holy Spirit, then that’s problem-solving device number two in the flat line of your soul, the filling of the Holy Spirit. Without the filling of the Holy Spirit, the believer, that’s you and I, we would not be able to metabolize the divine resources that we have available. In other words, these resources are taught in the Bible, taught in the Scripture, and they have to be learned if they’re going to be utilized. I mean, if you don’t know them, you cannot use them. If you want to get to Albuquerque and you don’t have a map, how are you going to get there? Well, the Word of God is a map. It’s a divine resource. It’s a tool. It’s not a good luck thing. It’s not something you leave in the windshield of your car during the week and take it out on Sunday morning. It is a textbook designed by God to be taught to you by a well-qualified pastor who is prepared to who knows the languages and who’s able to communicate line by line, word by word, verse by verse. And so we are to learn God’s word. And these divine resources, if we don’t learn them, how can we use them? The mystery doctrine of the church is a great resource. It’s Christ in you, the hope of glory. And that’s Colossians 1.27. That’s a resource. Jesus Christ lives in you. This is the same Christ that indwelt the tabernacle of the Old Testament where the Jews called him the Shekinah glory. The glory of God resided in the tabernacle and 1 Corinthians 3 says he now resides in you, that your body is the temple of Jesus Christ. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. He bridges a tent so Christ can camp out in your body. And then the whole concept of growing and learning has to come from, for example, like 2 Timothy 2.15. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman at need, if not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. That means not getting it wrong, not getting crooked, not getting twisted up. And then 2 Peter 3.18, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory. There it is again, maximum glorification of God. both now and forever. As you grow, you bring glory to God through Christ. There is no growth without studying and growing. You must study to grow. And this is not a daily devotional, 10 minutes a day. This is not once a week listening to a 30-minute sermon by your pastor. If you ever intend to grow spiritually, you must take in the Word of God on a consistent basis. As for me, I do it on a daily basis. I listen to my pastor teach the Word of God to me by means of a DVD or an MP3 on a daily basis. You say, how could I do that? Well, my particular pastor has over 1,000 hours already taught on the life of Christ, and you can access those. They’re free. They’re available online. So there’s 1,000 hours worth of catching up you got to do, and every 1,000 hours you catch up, you’ll be 1,000 hours behind, unless you did two a day. But I try to listen every day, take in the Word of God every day. It’s oftentimes where I get motivated to bring the message to you by listening what he teaches to me. I’m not a pastor. I’m under the authority of a well-qualified pastor. And just like you, I have to study, I have to grow, I have to learn, I have to apply. But they only can do this by renovating my thinking. We are mandated to renovate our thinking, and that is if we’re going to utilize these resources God has for us. We must change the way we think. We must be able to reflect the mind of Jesus Christ, which is called divine viewpoint. if we ever want to use our divine resources. So where does it say that in the Bible? It says it in Philippians 2.5. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. And then in Romans 12, one through three, here’s where Paul wrote, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice that’s dedicated to the Lord, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That means you must move out of the way the cosmic system thinks. You must move away from human viewpoint thinking to divine viewpoint thinking, and that is learning the mind of Christ in the New Testament. So being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Again, Philippians 2.5, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Why? So that we may prove what is good, what is acceptable, what is the perfect will of God. And then he goes on in verse three of Romans 12. For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that’s among you, do not think more highly of yourself than you ought. And this is a warning to stay out of the arrogance complex of the soul. but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. Soberly is humility. God wants you to think in terms of humility, not arrogance. So as you take his word, as you learn his word, as you reflect divine viewpoint through your life under the concept of humility, then you begin to bring maximum glorification to God. In 1 John 5, 11 through 13, we have another divine resource, a wonderful resource called eternal security. 1 John 5, 11 through 13, this is the record. God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that has the Son has life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things I wrote unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may have confidence in the name of the Son of God. You can know it. You don’t have to hope it. You don’t have to try. You don’t have to want. You can know it. In John 10, 28, I will give them eternal life and they will never perish. Neither will any man be able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand because my Father who gave them to me is greater than all. And no man can pluck them out of my Father’s hand. And in Hebrews 13, 5, Christ said, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Let’s get some principles on this. A, eternal security is a doctrine that cements the believer’s eternal future. You don’t have to worry about your future. It’s locked in. It’s done. It’s taken care of. B, God will not cancel your eternal life. What he gives, he does not take back. He’s not an Indian giver. And C, he’s given us plus R. That’s his righteousness. We have minus R, our righteousness. He’s given us his righteousness through Jesus Christ, 2 Corinthians 5, 17. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we may be made the righteousness of God through him. So he gave us this righteousness through Christ, and he is not going to cancel that gift and then condemn you to hell because you committed some sin that’s grievous to you or to others. It’s not going to happen. You didn’t earn your salvation and you can’t earn to keep your salvation. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works. Why would he give it to you as a gift and then require you to earn it to keep it? And D, our relationship with God does not depend on our integrity. It does not depend on our morality. It does not depend on our virtue, but rather it depends on his very holiness and his integrity. And we know that he’s omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immutable, immutable, Immutability, he does not change. He’s not going to change his mind. He knew about you in eternity past. He knows about you today. He knows your weaknesses. He knows your strengths. He’s not going to kick you out of the family because you fail. And E, you cannot lose your salvation because it’s strictly the work of God. You did nothing to gain it. You do nothing to maintain it. It’s the work of God, and he will not cast you off or say you can’t have it, even if you fail in the Christian life. You still are going to go to heaven. You may be minus some rewards, but you’re going to be there. ABCDEF, the enemy, that’s aka the devil, loves to threaten you with the idea that you will lose your salvation. This is how he often manipulates guilt and shame on people. He’s able to get them to do crazy things to try to make it up to God or try to promise God they won’t ever do that sort of thing again. And then when they do, well, then they feel like that’s it. There’s no hope for me, and they have no joy of their salvation. So Satan is a master at manipulating you with this guilt and shame in your life. And it’s for this reason that we are warned by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6, When he speaks of putting on the armor of God, he talks about putting on the helmet of salvation. That helmet protects your brain. It protects your mind. It protects what you think, because this is where Satan attacks you. He attacks your thinking. This is what he does. He attacks the way you think. And if he can get you to doubt God, as he got Eve to doubt what God said, If he can get you to be angry with God, as he himself is in fact, if he can get you to mistrust God, if he can get you to doubt God, well, then he is going to vindicate his argument with God. He doesn’t want to go to the lake of fire. He constantly says God is unfair for condemning him to the lake of fire. and yet he himself chose to assume the throne of God. So, gee, this does not imply that you or I will succeed as winner believers by executing the Christian life. Winner believer, what do I mean by that? I mean a person who goes from spiritual autonomy to spiritual maturity, starting with spiritual self-esteem. When you reach spiritual maturity, when you go through evidence testing, you give maximum glorification to God. You will be a winner believer. Evidence testing is When you’re called to the witness stand and you have to get up there and defend yourself in front of Satan. And this happens. I mean, this is what happens to believers in evidence testing. We go through the valley of the shadow of death. We go through it alone. It’s an evidence testing to see whether or not we believe what God said. And if you’re ever going to be a winner in the plan of God, you must have the right attitude towards the word of God or towards Bible doctrine. If you don’t learn it, if you don’t use it, if you don’t grow, you’re going to go to heaven, but you’re going to be minus rewards. You’re not going to hear that, well done, my good and my faithful servant. And that’s what we’re all looking for. What I’m looking for are some of you today, some of you wherever you may be in California, Wyoming, Denver, maybe across into Texas or Mississippi or all the way through Maryland or New York, anywhere. The show was played over 25 stations this morning in Tennessee, for example. If you are that winner, you are the person that will deliver this nation with an invisible impact. You are the person that will have a historical impact. You will be a member of the pivot. Just like Gideon chose 300 simple men to defeat the Midianite army, you can be one of the chosen ones. God will use you. but he only uses prepared people. Remember what he said? I’m looking for a man to stand in the gap between me and the people to make up the hedge. But he said in Ezekiel, I could not even find one. Can he count on you? Can you be that invisible hero? Can you have that historical impact in your life by being a mature believer, a person who consistently studies God’s word on a daily basis, a person who stays filled with the Holy Spirit on a daily basis, a person who uses the faith thrust drill, which we’re about to talk about? That’s what God’s looking for, and me too. now another divine resource is obviously prayer instantaneous communication with our heavenly father but we don’t use prayer in order to hire god to do something we want done that’s not possible prayer is not designed to get us out of trouble it is strictly designed to express our helplessness in time of need and our appreciation and adoration in time of blessing. So if we fail in prayer, my pastor once said, failing in prayer is like sleepwalking through life. You never even know what happens. So as a believer priest, which you are and which I am, we have a priestly function, and it’s called prayer. We can pray for others. We can pray expressing gratitude and appreciation to God. It’s called adoration. And we can pray for others in intercessory prayer, and we can pray for ourself as we express our needs to God. That’s called a petition. It’s a wonderful thing, the divine resource of prayer, instantaneous communication with God himself, right straight to the throne room of God. But failing to be filled with the Holy Spirit when you pray means you will not get an answer to your prayer. And your prayer will be an ineffective prayer. The Bible is clear in Psalm 66, 18. If I regard sin in my heart, iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer. He will not hear me. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is quenched. Because the Holy Spirit is grieved. Because he cannot intercede for you as he would. And Romans 8 talks about he intercedes with groanings that sometimes cannot even be uttered or understood. It’s the ministry of the Holy Spirit to take your prayer before the throne of God. And it’s the ministry of Jesus Christ, our great high priest, to intercede for us before God. We have to be filled with the Holy Spirit if we want our prayer life to be effective. And there’s only one way to do that. And that is that we must use rebound, which is problem-solving device number one, On the flat line of our soul, if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us. That’s the secret to being filled with the Holy Spirit. Anytime you sin, you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit. But when you rebound, when you confess your sin to God, then you resume your spiritual journey and you are filled with the Holy Spirit or controlled by the Holy Spirit once again. And remember that all prayer, must be addressed to the Father in the name of the Son through the filling of the Holy Spirit. A well-meaning prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit or a well-meaning prayer addressed to Jesus Christ the Son is not going to be answered. The prayers go to the Father in the name of the Son in the power of the Spirit. Another divine resource that we have as believers as the advantage ones of God is the faith rest drill, or using faith as a problem-solving device. Using faith means we stand on the promises of God as a spiritual resource. And it’s one of those 10 problem-solving devices that I talk about. Problem-solving device number three found in the scripture. It begins like this, with you believing God when he makes a promise to you. For example, Proverbs 3, 5, trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path. And then in 1 Peter 5, 7. Cast all your anxieties on him for he cares for you. These are promises. And you can utilize these promises in time of adversity or affliction in your life. There are three stages to using the faithless drill. And the first, obviously, is the faith mechanics of mixing the promises of God with your own faith. So you take one of those 7,000 promises found in the Bible and you mix it with your faith. And then the second thing you do is that you go to a biblical rationale. You say, what’s a rationale? It’s a set of reasons or logical basis for a course of action or particular belief. You have a logical course of action. You reverse your concentration. You think about the faithfulness of God. You think about the justice of God. You think about the omniscience and omnipotence of God, and you come to a conclusion. That’s the third step. You arrive at a biblical conclusion, and you relax in your circumstances. That’s what it means to pick up the shield of faith, stand behind the promises of God, not to worry, not to sweat, not to be upset, but to trust in him completely because he has provided all the divine resources you need. And then obviously I want to close with the divine resource of rebound. Rebound handles our problem with sin. I mentioned it already. I’ll mention it again. You will sin. You have a genetically formed old sin nature that you got from Adam. And you will sin. God knows this. whether it’s a mental attitude sin or sin of the tongue or even an overt sin, but there is a way to be cleansed from that sin, and that is by using 1 John 1, 9, the rebound technique. When we confess our sin to God, then the Holy Spirit is free to control us and fill us once again. But if we ignore our sin and hide our sin, then we grieve the Spirit and we quench the Spirit, and we can never utilize our resources or advance in the Christian life. I hope this is making sense. I hope you’re learning something and understanding what those resources are for you. And I hope you’ll stick with me and come back next week. Same time, same station, same place. So until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.
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.
