In this profound discussion, Rick Hughes explores the essence of understanding divine destiny and the pivotal decisions that direct us towards spiritual maturity. Through engaging narratives and insightful teachings, learn how to identify and walk through your personal sense of destiny, serving with selfless dedication and aligning your life goals with God’s vision. This episode is a must-listen for those seeking clarity and purpose in their spiritual walk, filled with practical advice on enhancing your thinking and production skills for a rewarding Christian life.
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 Flotline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, once again bringing you 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education, and you know we do this without any type of manipulation because we don’t try to beg for money, we don’t ask for money, we’re not trying to sell you anything, we’re not trying to get you to join anything. We’re here simply to give you some accurate information. Information that should help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life if you want to learn it, if you want to know it. And that’s up to you. Your job is to orient and adjust to the plan. My job is to get it right, get it straight. No gimmick, no games, no emotional appeal. Just put it out there. You’re intelligent enough to understand it. So I pray you’ll listen, and I pray you learn as listening to this radio show, The Flatline. We’ve been on the air for 12 years now, all across the United States, broadcasting in 25, 26 different cities. And it is a fantastic honor to be able to do this for me. What a tremendous thing to see the Lord provide all the funds necessary, even though we don’t solicit money, the money is always there. And someone once told me, my pastor many years ago said, If God’s in it, God will pay for it. So you don’t have to run around holding your hand out. And that’s a wonderful relief to me. God has been so faithful to prepare these radio shows, give me the privilege to do it, and actually pay for the shows. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your time. Continue to pray for us as we look to expand to new shows, new venues, new cities where we’d like to go in the future. I have been teaching a series called The Door to Doom. The Door to Doom. If you’ve been listening to that series, it’s been interesting to see how we through a series of bad decisions often destroy our lives. There is a door, and when you walk through that door, as God told Cain way back in Genesis 3, it’s the door to sin, and sin wants to control you. And by making some decisions in your life, you can actually destroy yourself. You can walk through the door to doom. We’ve done six or seven shows on this and they are available if you’d like to hear them. They are available. We can provide an MP3 with those shows. All you have to do is contact us and we’ll send it out free of charge. Today I want to talk about a different door. This is not a door to doom. This is the door of opportunity. It’s the one door in your life that’s an amazing journey, an amazing venture. It’s called your personal sense of destiny. It is the door to happiness and fulfillment in your life. And it all begins with the good news that Christ, the anointed son of God, redeemed you out of the slave market of sin. It all begins by understanding your debt to God has been paid. You are free of the penalty of death and the power of sin in your life. And if you will receive Christ as your savior, you in effect will be accepting the offering that he made on your behalf. It is a free gift, compliments of the grace of God. We always quote Titus 3, 5 through 7 that says, “…not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us 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 his grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” justified by His grace. Ephesians 2.89, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast about it. So when you make a decision to receive Christ as your Savior, you walk through a door. That’s the door to happiness. But that’s not your personal sense of destiny. Yes, you’re going to heaven. Yes, you will have eternal life. I’m talking about a destiny in time. I’m talking about a door in time where you leave your agenda behind and and you move into God’s agenda. What a wonderful way to live, to take the monkey off of your back, so you don’t have to worry about what you’re supposed to be doing. You simply follow the orders from your Heavenly Father as He reveals them by means of the Holy Spirit through the pages of Scripture. Our Lord Jesus Christ had a destiny. I will read you what he said about his destiny. In John 4, 34, Jesus said unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 40, verse 8, I delight to do your will, O my God. Your destiny is to finish the work God allowed you to do. God left you here for a reason. Once you believed in Jesus Christ and received him as your savior, he left you here. He supports you with a host of angels. You even have a ministering spirit that ministers to you. We call them guardian angels. You have a pastor teacher. You have the filling of the Holy Spirit. You have the canon of scripture. You have everything you need to glorify Christ to the maximum in this life. It’s all here. So the moment you believe in him, you took off on this fantastic journey, your personal journey. And our Lord Jesus Christ, his journey was from the womb to the tomb. We know that. The tomb did not hold him. He walked out guaranteeing all of us that if he’s alive, we will be alive also. That’s the guarantee of the resurrection. So our spiritual life, living the spiritual life, understanding that our journey does not imply we’ll be successful in our spiritual life. That doesn’t mean we’re gonna be spiritually mature believers. That depends on our attitude towards the word of God. That’s not talking about the faithful provisions of eternal life by God the Father who faithfully provides. But now we’re talking about our part. What’s our attitude? What’s our destiny in time? And what’s our destiny in eternity? Well, our destiny in eternity is face to face with God the Father. No more tears, no more pain. The old things will be passed away. But in time, what is your destiny? What is the door that you are to walk through? Because when you have that sense of destiny, when you walk through the door of your personal sense of destiny, it will remove all boredom in your life. You’re not going to be bored anymore. Now you have a mission. You have a mission objective. You won’t have time for any more self-pity, which can create self-induced misery in your life. How many times have you had a pity party wondering, what am I supposed to do? I know many young people, myself included, when we were young and when I was young, I wondered, what will I do with my life? Where will I go? What will I be? What will I do? And it never dawned on me that God had already picked out a plan for me. God the Father already knew who I should marry, the wonderful lady that I married over 50 years ago. God knew that. And God knew that he provided a destiny for me with a spiritual gift of evangelism and that if I would take his word and learn it and use it, then I could glorify Christ with my gift. So my destiny and your destiny is, will carry both of us through what we call spiritual self-esteem, through spiritual autonomy, and eventually to spiritual maturity. Spiritual self-esteem, you’ll be able to act alone. You’ll be able to understand the plan of God. You won’t need friends to counsel you, friends to tell you what to do. Under spiritual autonomy, you actually understand the plan of God. You don’t have to run to people all the time. You don’t have to always ask people, what do you think I should do? What does the Bible say I should do? You’ll know it. You’ll be so confident and it’ll be so clear as the Holy Spirit will make it plain to you. It’s always amazing to see people that have doubts in their spiritual life about their future, destiny. They don’t understand the Bible. They don’t understand the plan of God. See, God has a viewpoint will for your life. There’s no doubt about that. He has something that he wants you to think, and it’s called divine viewpoint. It’s called the mind of Christ, and we are to let the mind of Christ be in us in Philippians 2.5 because our strength as Christians comes from the word of God. You know, as ourselves, just us, we’re weak. But when we take the word of God and learn it and put it into our soul so that it supports our spiritual life, then we have strength and we can understand the viewpoint well of God That’s why we have to learn his word, store it up in our soul, so at the right time it will guide us in every decision that we make. God has a viewpoint will, something he wants you to think. He also has an operational will, and that means there’s something he wants you to do in time. He left you here. The operational will of God involves everything you should and should not do if you’re going to glorify God to the maximum. the list of do’s and don’ts my pastor wrote one day include many wonderful things found in the word of god and the requirement for doing the will of god are the first and second mandates of all divine guidance submit to god’s will and learn god’s will the operational will of god what does he want me to do where does he want me to be that’s the geographical will of god where does he want me to be and this has to do with location However, you never consider location apart from the operational will of God because if you’re doing what God wants you to do, then eventually you’ll wind up being in the place God wants you to be. Got it? So there is a viewpoint will of God, an operational will of God, the geographical will of God. It’s all available for you if you take time to learn it. That’s the problem. Most people will not take time to learn it. And it’s a shame because that’s the way that it is. Now, your personal sense of destiny is related to learning God’s protocol plan. Now, the protocol plan of God means that the right thing has to be done in the right way. That’s all it means. It’s nothing complicated. A lot of people love God, but they don’t understand how they operate in the Christian life. A right thing has to be done in a right way. You’ve heard me say on this show that prayer is a right thing, but there’s a right way to pray and a wrong way to pray. So if you’re praying the wrong way, that’s not going to be answered. And going to church is the right thing, but you can go the right way or the wrong way. You have to understand how God’s plan operates and then execute it by means of God the Holy Spirit plus the Word of God in your soul. That gives you direction and you have power. Power and direction equals fulfilling the protocol plan of God. If you don’t learn it, how can you? See, this is why the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman at need if not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You don’t want to get to heaven and hear the Lord say, man, did I have a life for you? And you blew it. You missed it. Why? Because you were self-centered. You did not take time to learn God’s word. You didn’t take time to find out what God had for you. And you just went merrily skipping down the my way highway once you enter that door of your personal sense of destiny you’re going to have to leave your agenda behind and move into god’s divine plan and purpose for your time on earth t-o-e your toe not the one that’s on your foot your toe is your time on earth I did a series of messages called Toe in a local church in Houston, Texas. And that’s available. If you’d like to hear that sometime, we can make it available with DVD or MP3. But that’s our time on earth. And if we’re going to operate in our time on earth, we have to have some skills it’s critical that you have these skills because if you don’t have for example thinking skills thinking skills means that you have the ability to metabolize the word of god learn the word of god thinking skills spiritual skills production skills they’re all important so let’s start with spiritual skills Your spiritual skills mean this. Number one, do you know how to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It’s amazing when I talk to people and I ask them, what should I do to be a good Christian? They don’t ever say you should be filled with the Holy Spirit. They say you should tithe, you should go to church, you should not drink, you should not smoke, you should not chew, you should not cuss, you should not, you should not, you should not, you should not. And it’s just a series of works. Very seldom will anyone answer the question. You want to try it yourself? Try it. Go ask your pastor. That’s a good way to figure out this. Go ask your pastor, what should I do to be a good Christian? And the first thing he must tell you is if you are not filled with the Holy Spirit, you cannot be a good Christian because the Christian life is not operated in the energy of the flesh. You must understand how to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And that’s rebound problem-solving device number one on the flotline of your soul. When you sin, you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit. But when you use 1 John 1, 9, your rebound verse, if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all of our wrongdoing. If you use that verse, then you will get back in fellowship with God and back under the filling of the Holy Spirit. Remember the Bible tells you the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit wars against the flesh and they are contrary. You’re not going to do the things you want to do sometimes. Paul said it this way, I don’t understand myself at all because I want to do what’s right and I inevitably do what’s wrong. It’s because you have a sin nature. If you understand the filling of the Holy Spirit, the Bible says if you’ll walk in the Spirit, in Galatians 5, 16, you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh. So there is a way to overcome sin. The sin nature by rebounding when you do sin and by walking in the spirit during the day of your Christian life, spiritual skills. And then if you take the filling of the Holy Spirit and you add to that. The Word of God that you have metabolized, that you’ve metabolized like eating food, you metabolize it, it produces energy and you go. If you feed on the Word of God, metabolize the Word of God, and make it a part of your stream of consciousness so that it becomes part of the 10 problem-solving devices in your life, then you have spiritual skills. Then you know what you’re supposed to do. You don’t have to run and ask the pastor, Pastor, what should I do? I don’t know what to do. That doesn’t glorify God if you have to ask your pastor what to do. If you don’t know what to do on your own, you’re going to be wandering around like a lost sheep away from the shepherd. You must learn the Word of God so you can operate on your own. Our Lord Jesus in John 16 told the disciples the same thing. I am about to leave. I am going to go away. And the Holy Spirit’s going to come and he will lead you and he will guide you into all truth. Listen, there may be a time your pastor leaves. What will you do? The Holy Spirit will lead you. He will guide you like he led you to this radio show. where you are learning and you’re growing. But remember, I’m not your pastor. I’m just a window. I’m just a breath of fresh air. But there are well-qualified pastors, men that have been in the pulpit 20, 30, 40, 50 years that are teaching God’s Word consistently more than a few minutes on Sunday morning and more than a few minutes on Sunday night. Getting those spiritual skills is critical for you understanding your personal sense of destiny. And then having the thinking skills to go along with that, which by that I mean being able to comprehend, being able to retain, being able to problem solve and make decisions, and being aware of what’s going on around you. These are critical thinking skills. comprehension, memory retention, problem solving, decision making, and awareness. This is what it takes to live the Christian life. You gotta comprehend what God’s word says. You gotta put it into your memory so you can recall it later. Thus, when you put it into your memory, you have problem-solving, making skills in your soul. And then when you have a decision that you have to make, how do you make it? Based on emotions? No, not at all. Go back into your soul, you pull up the Word of God, and you say, this is what the Bible says. And there you go. You are aware of your choices. You’re aware of your decision. And if you make the right decision, then you glorify God to the maximum. If you make the wrong decision and allow the flesh to take over, then Satan gets a good chuckle and a good laugh and points his finger at God and says, is that your Christian down there? Look at him making an idiot out of himself. And then there are production skills, spiritual skills, thinking skills, production skills. That’s the result of the first two. Divine good production as opposed to human good production. Divine good production is taught in 1 Corinthians 3 as gold, silver, and precious stones. Human good production is taught in the same passage as wood, hay, and stubble. All that wood, hay, and stubble will be burned up at the judgment seat of Christ and all the gold, silver, and precious stones, that’s divine good production that is rewardable. How do you do it? By being filled with the Holy Spirit and by obeying the protocol plan of God, you produce divine good and it glorifies God to the maximum. Any believer, you or me, who’s distracted either from the inside or from the outside We can enter the door to doom if we operate on arrogant skills such as self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption. So we can’t operate under those skills. We can’t refuse to see what we are and who we are and what our objectives are. you know how you get distracted when you get to doing things and you put the word of god aside you don’t study you don’t learn you don’t apply you don’t rebound now you’re busy raising your kids you’re busy doing your job you’re busy enjoying your leisure time you’re not studying you’re not growing and you have a nice bible you have a nice notebook and you haven’t put anything in it much less retained it in your soul If you’re not studying God’s Word consistently, you’re not growing, I promise you. You may be maintaining, but if you’re maintaining, you’re going to go backwards eventually. You don’t want that. You can’t afford to be distracted through self-justification. You know, somebody says, well, it’s my life. I have to have a life. I have to have some fun. Sometimes when nobody’s telling you that you can’t have any fun, what I’m telling you is that you need to make time for God’s word consistently in your life, maybe even daily in your life. You can do that even on a vacation. You can take a tape with you or a DVD or an MP3, and you can listen, get up and have a cup of coffee, open your Bible, and listen to the Word of God be taught. I’m not talking about reading a five-minute devotion. That’s not going to do it. I’m talking about being fed by a well-qualified pastor. Now listen, these arrogant skills like self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, they will destroy you. Proverbs 1.32 says, for the waywardness of the naive, which is a silly person who’s easily persuaded, the waywardness of the naive will kill them, and the complacency of a fool will destroy him. But he who listens to me shall live securely, and will be at ease from the dread of evil. There you go. That’s about as plain and about as clear as it could be for you. If you have a personal sense of destiny, you can be identified by these things. Number one, selfless service. You will be available to serve your Lord in any way he wants you to do it, be it a communication gift like pastor, teacher, or evangelist, or be it a member of the local church as a board of deacons, or be a missionary, whatever God wants you to do, that will be priority number one in your life. So he will send you as a church age believer, you’ve been given a mission. Paul got an assignment, you’ve got an assignment, And Paul’s objective and your objective is to finish the assignment. Paul said in 2 Timothy, I’ve finished the race. I’ve run my course. I’ve done well. I’ve upheld the standards. Paul made it very clear. And you and I must finish the race too. We must stick with the Word of God. We must uphold the standards of the Word of God. And we cannot afford to get distracted. We must remain steadfast in prayer, Romans 12. 12, remain steadfast in prayer. That doesn’t mean you have to get on your knees and prostrate yourself every day. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but there’s a way to pray driving your car. Just don’t close your eyes. There’s a way to pray sitting on the porch. There’s a way to pray before you have your meals. Prayer is divine communication with your Heavenly Father. And you have to understand that. We must be steadfast in our prayer where we give adoration to God, where we have supplication for others, we intercede for the needs of others. And then we have our own personal requests, last but not least. Without remaining steadfast in prayer, you lose sight of your objective. It’s like being isolated on an island with no way to communicate with anyone. Through prayer, under the filling of the Holy Spirit, with the divine promises of the Word of God, you have direct communication with the throne of God. Now, as you serve the Lord using your spiritual gift, then you press forward. But there’s the warning. The warning comes in Revelation where the Lord Jesus Christ said, I know you have an objective, but you’re not hot and you’re not cold. You’re just lukewarm in Revelation 2. Lukewarm Christians are Christians that are kind of there and not there. Your objective is to be there, to be hungry. to go full bore ahead, not to bully people, not to be obscene. As a Christian, that can happen. but to go full bore ahead in your Christian life to search, seek, learn, apply, and glorify God every minute that you can. And you have to find yourself living in a nation like America. You must be subject to the governing authorities of that nation, Romans 13.1. And the Bible says clearly, there is no authority if God did not allow it. So we can take this to the bank. Whoever the president is, whether you like him or not, or you liked his predecessor, that’s the one God allowed to be there. And that’s the one whose authority you’re under. And if you malign and criticize and backbite and slander that authority, you’re setting yourself up for divine discipline. We’re not allowed to slander anybody. We’re not allowed to malign anybody. As a matter of fact, Matthew 7 says, keep your nose out of other people’s business or you’ll get it chopped off. Because it says with what judgment you judge, it’ll be measured back to you again. Matthew 7, 1 through 7. Read it. It’s called triple compound discipline. And it’s not fun. So that’s your personal sense of destiny. It’s there in front of you. The objective of your spiritual life is to find it, live it, Use it and glorify God to the max through everything that you do, everything you say, every decision you make. Without that personal sense of destiny, you’re just wandering around the neighborhood lost. You don’t even know what your objectives are. So I hope you’ve listened. That door is the door you must go through. That’s a critical door because that’s the door to opportunity. That’s the door to happiness. That’s the door to your destiny and why you’re here in this life. Please listen. Please learn. And please come back. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flat Life.
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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.
