SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

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 02 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, please stick around. 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education and And no, no, no manipulation, no con games. We’re not starting to solicit money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re just offering free biblical information, information that pertains to the plan of God for your life, if you’re interested. If I can verify and identify that plan, then you can orient and adjust to it. It’s up to you. My job is to give you accurate information and to help you to develop a way of thinking that’s different than the world thinks. The world thinks in terms of human viewpoint. And believers in the Lord Jesus Christ think in terms of divine viewpoint. That’s thinking in terms of what the scripture says. And we do everything we can to verify everything we tell you with scriptural documentation. But you have to remember that God gave you two ends, one you sit with, one you think with, and success in your life is going to depend on which one of those ends you use. Heads, you’ll win, and tails, you’ll lose. So God’s given you the ability to have some phenomenal insight. It’s called discernment. It comes from wisdom, which comes from the Bible. And wisdom’s built on the knowledge that you learn and you understand. So if you’re interested, please keep listening because we have a lot to say. Let me remind you of one other thing. We have all of our radio shows now transcribed. And so we have a complete list of every show we did during the year 2019 transcribed. And you can order that free of charge at three different volumes. And, you know, each show is 30 minutes long, so it may be five or six pages in the volume that you can read. But it’s 52 different shows transcribed for you there. Also, all of our shows are now podcasted. on the different podcast venues such as Apple iPod. There’s a free app called Spotify. There’s a free app called Anchor. These are venues where you can podcast and you can hear the show if you just simply search for the FLOT line, the FLOT line, F-L-O-T, which stands for the Forward Line of Troops, okay? So what we’re trying to do here on this show is teach you 10 unique problem-solving devices so that when you learn them and use them, then you can stop the outside source of adversity before it becomes the inside source of stress. That’s why we say adversity is inevitable, but stress is optional. Because adversity is what the circumstances will do to you, but the stress is what you do to yourself. Now today we’d like to talk about the rally cry for believers, the rally cry for believers. As our nation moves through these days of crisis, I’m recording this actually in March, but it’ll play later on in April. Actually, I’m recording it in April. It’ll probably play in May. But as our nation moves through these days of crisis, it’s good to call Christians to rally, to rally together. Dictionary.com describes rally as an effort to bring into order again or inspire anew when used with an object such as what we’re doing. And if you use it as a verb without an object, it means to come together for a common action or an effort. And if you use it as a noun, it means to recover from disorder or to recover strength, like someone in the hospital rallied and is getting better. You’ve heard it used in such ways as Christian students who rally around the flagpole at their school, before school, to pray for their school. You’ve heard it used in organized political rallies, such as the president or some presidential candidate may have a rally. And sometimes it’s used to describe a person who was near death, as I said, and rallied to get better. But what I’d like to say today is it’s time for believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, those of you that listen to this show, to rally, to recover, to regain your spiritual health. If we use the word rally, R-A-L-L-Y, it’s an acrostic. And by the way, this was given to me by a close associate and we discussed this message. So the acrostic rally would go like this. The R, R stands for a time of reflection. As we pull through the other side of this pandemic we’ve been facing, it becomes a time of reflection, both personal and national, which means we have to think deeply about what we’ve been going through. A believer, like you and me, has a sin nature, and thus often our individual sins bring discipline upon us. Hebrews 12, 6-10 tells us, “…those the Lord loves He chastens, and He scourges every son whom He receives.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with a son. For what son is he whom the Father does not chasten? But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then you’re not a son at all, but a bastard. Furthermore, we’ve had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? So we know that God disciplines believers who get out of line. And we know that that discipline comes in three stages. We know it comes in a warning stage. It comes in an intense stage, and it can come in a dying stage. All right? So if you be without chastisement, you’re not a son. Those whom the Lord loves, he chastens. That’s the warning stage. And he scourges. That’s the intense stage. And then the last verse says, shall we not much more be reverence to him and live? That’s the dying stage. So discipline is tough. As we go through this national crisis that we have been going through, the question I have to ask, has God used it to discipline you? Has God used it to discipline you? Has your heavenly father gotten your attention and forced you to look to him and only him for your deliverance? If so, then it was motivated by his divine love for you and me intended to rescue us from ourselves. Since sometimes we have a tendency to drift off course and we have a tendency to discount the importance of God’s word in our life, don’t we? See, there are two ways that we can learn. Learn how to live and live the life God gave us. The first one is It’s what we call the school of hard knocks where you learn the hard way because you’re stupid and you’re arrogant and you won’t listen. And the second is through the grace provisions that God gave you. Now, you can learn either way you want to go. You can learn the hard way or you can learn the easy way. The easy way is God, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, our Lord said, when I leave, I’ll send the Holy Spirit and he’ll be your tutor. He’ll be your mentor. He’ll teach you. And then you have a Bible, a canon of Scripture. The Word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. And you have a well-qualified pastor. So you have three things there for you. The Holy Spirit, the canon of Scripture, and a pastor. All of these are linked to your positive volition, if in fact you even have any. That’s why the Bible says in 2 Peter 3.18, study, study, that doesn’t mean read the Bible once a day. Study is more than that. It means to show yourself approved unto God, the verse says. Study to show thyself approved unto God, 2 Timothy 2.15. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. If you can rightly divide it, you obviously can wrongly divide it. And then in 2 Peter 3, 18, grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So two mandates, study and grow. These two mandates were for our own benefit so that when disaster hits, at least we know what to do and we know who to look to. Now, personal discipline is tough. If you’ve been going through personal discipline, I pray that God has gotten your attention. He hasn’t thrown you under the bus. He hasn’t forsaken you. But he may have brought you low to the place of where you have nowhere else to look but to him. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. Because he said in 2 Corinthians 12, my grace is sufficient. But there’s another form of discipline called national discipline. I read an article by J.C. Ryle, an English evangelist back in the 1800s, who said this. He said, we know that believers are judged in the future, according to Romans 14, 12, because there is a judgment day yet to come. But for nations, like our nation, there is no future day of judgment. Thus, the sins of nations are judged in time. And so the question that we have to ask is, has God allowed a judgment in time? on this client nation that we call America, the USA. Have we become so liberal and so covetous that we’ve lost our virtue and our self-evaluation? I wish you’d think about that. Have we surrendered to the Lord of luxury rather than to the Lord Jesus Christ? I mean, has your lake house become more important than the church house? Because 2 Timothy 3, 4 says, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, that’s a bad thing. The Reverend Billy Graham said as far back as 1949 these words, Now today in America, we find that people are more concerned with things than they are with the things of God. They’re more concerned with pleasure, more concerned with money, more concerned with the things of life rather than they are the things of Almighty God. Have we, you, me, our friends, have we lost our moral direction and converted what is evil into what we doubt describe as good? I mean, is anything immoral anymore? Or do we now justify all sin as not really a choice, but rather something that God made me do because he made me that way? As a nation, have we become wise in our own eyes? Proverbs 3, 7 warns about that. Don’t be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and avoid evil. You know, wise in your own eyes is an arrogant concept. It’s figuring that you’re smarter than God, that you really don’t need any information from the Bible, from the Scripture. You got it all figured out. And When you have a nation with that sort of attitude, then you have a nation ready to be destroyed. Hosea 4, 6 through 11 was a verse that I like to refer to. I know who it was written to, but I think there’s an application for us today. He said, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you rejected knowledge, I will reject you from being my priest. Since you forgot the laws of your God, I will forget your children. The more they multiplied, the more they sinned against me, and I will change their glory into shame, the Lord says. They feed on the sin of my people and direct their desires toward their iniquity. And it will be like people, like priests, and so I’ll punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. They will eat but not have enough, and they will play the harlot but not increase because they stopped giving heed to the Lord. Wise in their own eyes. Has knowledge become pleasant to your soul? That’s the Proverbs, that’s the important thing. See, without knowledge, spiritual information, there’s no discernment and there’s no insight. When you hear the Word of God taught and believe it and transfer it into your soul, it becomes wisdom, and that wisdom gives you discernment and insight. But without biblical doctrinal information, without that wisdom, there’s no divine viewpoint. You have wrong priorities and wrong way of thinking. And that’s what’s happening in this country today. I’m afraid to say we’ve ignored God’s word as a whole. Not everybody, but… As a whole, it’s hard to find somebody who really believes what the Bible says, especially in the educational field. So have we become so rich and so powerful that we think we can buy our way out of some sort of national disaster? And do we actually think no one can defeat our military might? I mean, there was a time in this country when we used to call on God. In World War II, in June 6, 1944, as American troops headed towards Omaha Beach, the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, read a prayer to all Americans from the diplomatic reception room at the White House at 9.57 p.m., and that text was released well in advance so all Americans could pray it with him. And it was displayed throughout the remainder of the war. We need men of leadership that will pray for our country and encourage us to pray for one another if that prayer is offered in the right way. We’ve talked about that before. A right thing done in the wrong way is still wrong, and you can pray till you’re blue in the face. But if you’re not a child of God, that prayer is not going to be answered until you pray the one important prayer, Father, save me. And secondly, if you are a child of God and you have unconfessed sin in your life, that prayer cannot be answered because the Bible says, if I acknowledge sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So we have to deal with our sin first. But if we deal with our sin, we have a legitimate opportunity to go before our Heavenly Father and plead for deliverance. If these questions that I propose are true, then what can we do to rally? What can we do to recover and reorient as a nation or just as an individual Christian? So R, the rally cry that we started with, the big R word, is what we’ve been dealing with. And now we’re going to move into the A word. R and then A, time of reflection. And now A stands for a time of affection. From reflection to affection. All right, you ready? Affection means to get back to a divine appreciation of who and what God is. It’s my opinion and mine alone, I guess, but I believe America as a whole no longer has a personal love for God. I think we fell in love with all the gifts that he bestowed on us more than the giver himself. And I offer as proof this verse in 1 John 5, 3. For this is the love of God that we keep his mandates and his mandates are not a burden. Christians come in all shapes and sizes, male, female, boy, girl, et cetera. They’re different levels in spiritual maturity. It’s kind of like football teams, you know. I mean, there’s a lot of universities that play football, but they don’t all have the same coach and they don’t all have the same record and they have different schemes and different defenses and different offenses. And there’s a lot of Christians that are on the team, but they play by a different playbook. But God said in Jeremiah 9, 24, he’s looking for those who know him and understand him. He wants them to know what? That he exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth. God is looking for those who know him and understand him. So the question that I’ve asked before is how can you love the God you don’t understand? For example, do you know the essence of God? If I gave you a blank piece of paper and I said write down the essence of God, What would you put? Well, I don’t know. Could you say God is sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, eternal life, immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence? He even has a sense of humor. He made us, didn’t he? So how can you love God when you don’t even know him? Do you understand what the righteousness of God rejects and the justice of God must judge? This is why the Bible says he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God through him. The only way you can have any relationship with God the Father is to come through God the Son because that’s where your righteousness comes from, not on your own. That’s why the Bible says not by works have we been saved but by grace. It’s the grace of God, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. Can you explain the difference to me between spirituality and maturity in the Christian life? Do you understand the difference in those two things, spirituality and maturity? Because any believer who’s filled with the Holy Spirit is spiritual. Billy Graham cannot be any more spiritual than you. Your pastor cannot be any more spiritual than you. But any Christian who is not filled with the Spirit is carnal, the Bible says. He’s fleshly. So without the use of rebound, you are carnal, you’re out of fellowship with God, and you’re not spiritual. But if you confess your sin to God and allow the Holy Spirit to regain control of your life, you’re spiritual, but that doesn’t mean you’re mature. Maturity is a concept based upon the content of doctrine in your soul, how much of the word of God you’ve learned, applied, and used in your life. So do you understand the difference between these things? Do you understand the difference between sin and evil? do you do you know that all sin is evil but all evil might not be sin evil is a system it’s a plan satan’s game see god’s plan is based on grace grace for by grace are you saved through faith satan’s plan is based on evil and it’s taking grace and twisting it a little bit so it’s satan saying well if you’re just a good boy and you don’t fornicate and you don’t cheat on your taxes then when God judges you, he’ll cut your break and you’ll be allowed to come to heaven. That’s evil. That’s the organized religion. Organized religion will tell you if you’re nice and sweet and give money to your church and don’t do anything really bad, you’ll go to heaven. And that’s not true. Have we substituted emotion for knowledge in our worship? That’s a good question. I mean, is that going on in America today? Have we become so emotional that we don’t wanna be taught anymore? We just wanna do praise and worship and sing and raise our hands and sway back and forth and have a little message from some celebrity that might motivate us a little bit? Have we made God’s name and his son the object of financial profit, like selling books, selling records, selling movies, selling Christian blogs, all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, all designed to do one thing, don’t be mistaken about it, all designed to make money. If they don’t make money, they wouldn’t sell them. So do you hunger and thirst after righteousness? Matthew 5, 6 says you should. Listen, our Heavenly Father loves us. We know that. But the bigger question for you to answer is this. Do you love him? If you say, yes, I love God, do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? do you hunger for truth do you have a insatiable desire to get knowledge has knowledge become pleasant to your soul as proverbs 1 talks about has it because without knowledge there’s no wisdom and without wisdom there’s no insight and discernment proverbs 1 7 says the fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge But a fool despises wisdom and instruction. Which one are you? Do you have a hunger for God’s word? Do you pray that God would send someone that would teach you? Are you listening to this show because you’re learning something and you’re not getting it locally where you live? Is that going on? Fools despise wisdom. Fools despise instruction. It’s awful bad when you see it in your family or when you see it in your friends that have no interest in God’s word or they think they’re smarter than God and they’ve justified why they can sin and get away with it and they don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing. Loving God means you obey God and loving God means you grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Loving God means you’re occupied with his Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So unless we begin to focus on the giver and we quit focusing on the gifts that he gave us, then we’re never gonna be truthful in our relationship with our Father because loving him means that we turn from the lure of the cosmic system and put our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ. Occupation with Christ, problem-solving device number 10, Loving him means we turn from the lure of the cosmic system and put our eyes on Christ, who is our hope, who is our confidence, who is our security in this devil’s world. That’s the truth. So R-A and the L, R-A-L-L-Y, L stands for leaving the world behind and returning to our first love. When you demonstrate your love to God, the Father, by trusting him in all situations, that’s using what we call problem solving device number three, the faith thrust drill, then your Father will reciprocate that back to you. He’s guaranteed you eternal life. He’s guaranteed you provision and protections in the storm of life. Read Matthew 8 about the disciples in the boat. The Lord Jesus Christ called them short-time trusters because they thought they were going to die in the storm. They freaked out. Our love for him, that’s the Lord Jesus Christ, is reflected in our confidence and in the peace that we have in our souls in spite of whatever may be going on in the land. In spite of any crisis or any adversity or any difficulty, we’re relaxed. We have great confidence in the Father. We know he’s in control. In Psalm 5611, in God I put my trust, I shall not be afraid of what man can do to me. So faith does not feed on emotions. Faith feeds on facts. But if you don’t have any facts, then you’re not going to have any basis for a strong faith. Because Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Which do you hear the most, local and national news, or do you hear a well-qualified pastor teaching you God’s Word? There’s got to be room in your daily life for being fed Scripture, and not just the human viewpoint of the cosmic system that’s on television 24-7. So another L stands for learn, apply, and glorify. Learn, apply, and glorify. When you apply God’s word to your circumstances, then you will wind up reflecting Jesus Christ through your life. Because what you’ve done is you’ve assimilated the mind of Christ. You quit letting fear control you and you arrive at what we call spiritual autonomy. means you can stand on your own two feet in the devil’s world alone based on your spiritual growth. And spiritual growth is mandated in the scripture, you know. This is not me making something up. Hebrews 5, 11 through 14, we have a lot of things to say, but they’re hard to explain since you become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teaching, you need someone to come back and teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and you’ve come to need milk, not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. He’s a baby. Solid food belongs to those who are full of age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised and can discern the difference between good and evil. There’s a big difference between church attendance and spiritual growth. It’s the difference between getting gnosis, or knowledge, and converting that knowledge to epinosis, or full knowledge, and then making that become wisdom in your soul. So when your pastor teaches you, if he does, then you learn something, and if you learn something, you have to do something with it, and you can put it in a notebook and forget about it, or you can apply it into your life on a daily basis. If you make the application, learn, apply, you will glorify. Learn, apply, and glorify. So in this worldwide crisis we’re having right now, if it’s shown you anything, did it show you the need for you to develop patience, trust, confidence in God’s timing and in his appointed leadership? Has it shown you that? In Romans 13, 1 through 7, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. Did you hear that? There is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. There it is in plain black and white. You might not like the president. You might not care for him at this point in time, but he’s there because God allowed it. So what are you gonna do about it? Spew hatred and venom? Or can you handle authority and do what they tell you to do? The Y stands for yielding yourself to God’s plan, R-A-L-L-Y, yielding yourself to God’s plan. Having a personal sense of destiny, knowing the difference between his directive will And his permissive will, that’s very important for you to understand that and know that because there are about seven things in the Bible declared to be the general will of God. And I’ll try to come back maybe next week and we’ll pick this up and go on through these things. But in the meantime, you have to remember this. God allows authority to be in a place for a certain time for a certain reason. Where we are in history, it didn’t catch God by surprise. He knows what’s going on. Not only does he know what’s going on nationally, he knows what’s going on personally in your life. So how are you handling it? What has it taught you? Where are you now? What do you intend to do when this thing is over, if it is indeed ever over, if we ever do return to normal? Is it going to affect your life? Is it going to affect your momentum spiritually? I pray it will. I pray this has been a challenge, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:21

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.