Spiritual Maturity Review
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 631 aired on October 1, 2017
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes how about sticking with me? It’s going to be a time of motivation, some inspiration,
education and we do this without any type of manipulation. We’re not trying to con you. We’re
not trying to hustle you. We are not asking you for anything except a few minutes of your time so
that we can give you some information that I pray will help you verify as well as identify God’s
plan for your life and if I can do this, you have the freedom to orient and adjust to the plan. The
FLOT Line heard every Sunday on this radio station is going on 12 years now being on the air
across this country. It is designed with one thing in mind, to teach you the principles and the
procedures found in the Word of God that relate to the basic concept of what it means to be a
Christian, how to live the Christian life. We’re not here trying to dazzle you with any words.
We’re not trying to promote any book. We’re not trying to sell anything. We’re just trying to
offer you some accurate information. Many people that listen to this show are born-again
believers. They’ve accepted Christ as their Savior and I’m very grateful for this. Our show is
heard from California to New York and I always love to hear from you. If you’re listening would
you just let
in me know that we are being heard? If you could let us know, just drop us a note on
the email from our website. It always helps me when contract time is up and I decide whether we
need to go to a different station or keep on going where we are because nobody knows how
many folks listen to the radio show. We can’t count the heads or anything and so we are just
trusting that God is using this show to help you. This is my prayer because my objective is to see
you become a mature believer where you glorify God to the maximum in your life. I’m not a
pastor. I don’t intend to be your pastor. I can direct you to where you can find one if you’d like
some information about how to get under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor. My job is to
open the window, let a breath of fresh air come in to use that analogy and let you see the
potential for what you can learn, what you can understand. On our last radio show we dealt with
the word spiritual, being a spiritual Christian. I talked quite a bit about spirituality, carnality, and
the difference between the two. We talked about what is a spiritual Christian, what is not a
spiritual Christian, and what’s a carnal Christian. A spiritual Christian is a man or woman who is
filled with the Holy Spirit. He’s spiritual but this is not the same as being mature. Maturity is a
different thing.
Spirituality has to do with the filling of the Holy Spirit and spiritual
maturity has to do with the filling of the Holy Spirit and the content of the Word of God in
your soul.
We’re going to pick up with this thought today here on The FLOT Line. Remember,
the FLOT line is made up of wonderful problem-solving devices that you learn and store in your
soul so you can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside sources
of stress. The information that I’m giving you is called divine viewpoint and this would fit right
into the FLOT line under doctrinal orientation, Biblical orientation. This is a problem-solving
device, learning to acquire the mind of Christ, and this is what we are doing here. We are
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learning the Word of God. We are learning some doctrine. I left off last Sunday talking about
maturity in the Christian life. It’s related to the content of the doctrine you have in your soul and
it’s relative to each individual. As an analogy, some people may have 50cc’s of doctrine and
some people may have 100cc’s. In other words maturity is different and it depends on how much
of the Word of God you know. Without being filled with the Holy Spirit the content of the Word
of God in your soul is not going to be very effective for you because the Holy Spirit can’t do His
job. A mature believer is a believer that is filled with the Holy Spirit on a consistent basis and
takes in the Word of God on a consistent basis. In Hebrews 5:11-14, whoever wrote the book of
Hebrews recognized a problem,
“We have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have
become dull of hearing.”
This means you can’t pay attention, can’t keep your eyes open. I just
had lunch with some Christian friends and they were talking about people in their church who
wouldn’t shut up while the preacher was teaching or wouldn’t shut up while the Sunday school
teacher was teaching because they wanted to talk.
Whenever the Word of God is taught it
demands concentration.
If you can’t shut up and listen, how can you learn anything? This is a
problem. If you want to go to church and learn something and the guy or the gal in front of you is
yakking away and distracting you, you’re not going to learn much of anything. These people that
are dull of hearing are the people that can’t pay attention. Their minds drift, their minds wander,
they think about where they’re going for lunch or what they’re going to have for dinner. They’re
going through everything in their head except what they should be going through. This sort of
person is the person who goes to church and fulfills the ritual of churchgoing but there’s no
reality to it. Ritual without reality is totally meaningless. It’s a sad state of affairs that we have in
churches across America today. A lot of people don’t hear what the pastor is saying. Oh, they’re
there and they’re sitting in the pew and they’re grinning from ear to ear, but they’re not listening
and they’re not applying the information. The writer of Hebrews recognized this when he said,
“You are dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again
for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to
need milk and not solid food.”
Here’s what he is saying. “You have been saved long enough to be
a teacher but you are not. You are not able to teach because you do not even know the basic
principles of the Word of God. You do not even know the basics so I can’t give you meat, I can’t
give you a steak because you would choke to death.” I have seen some people when you try to
feed them a steak in church, if you get into some deeper things of God with them, you just can’t
keep their attention. They choke on it, they just can’t handle it, they need the bottle. They need
the basics. They need little short sermons, little short messages with a few points, a poem, and
they’re happy. If you want to learn God’s Word, if you want to grow up, then you’re going to
have to learn to chew on some steak. You’re going to have to learn to get under a pastor that
knows how to cook a steak. When he teaches you the Bible, he’s not there just to give you
pudding and dessert. He’s there to give you meat. This writer goes on to say in Hebrews 5:13-14,
“For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he
is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to
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discern good and evil.”
Baby Christians, we’ve all been there. I was there as a young Christian. I
accepted Christ as my Savior when I was 22 years old. I knew nothing about the Bible. I never
read a Bible. I had to get a Bible and start reading and start learning. Thank goodness I went to
Bible college but it wasn’t there that I got the information. It was really from my pastor who
taught me the nuances to the Christian life, how to live the Christian life. I learned a lot about the
Bible in Bible college but I didn’t learn a lot about how to live the Christian life, the mechanics.
This is what a baby believer is, say someone who has been saved six months. The tragedy is if
he’s been saved six years and he is still a baby and has to have a bottle. He still can’t concentrate.
You still can’t give him meat because he can’t understand it. The writer of Hebrews has been
trying to explain in this passage how the Lord Jesus Christ is our Great High Priest and he was
sensing that the recipients would not understand this advanced doctrine. He sort of backed up
and punted. For every believer I think it is a matter of priorities.
If you’re going to learn God’s
Word it requires some academic discipline and concentration, this is the key.
Babies don’t
normally concentrate very long and concentration is necessary if you’re going to grow spiritually.
This means you going to have to put other things out of your mind and you’re going to have to
concentrate on the teaching of the Word of God. You may only be able to concentrate for 10 or
15 minutes. Sometimes this is true with me too. I sit down to study, put in a DVD of my pastor
teaching me the Bible and sometimes my mind will wander. Sometimes I’ll pick up the cell
phone and look at an email message and I lose my concentration. This is not a good thing. We
must concentrate if we are going to learn and often the pastor has to use repetition. This is one of
the good things my pastor does. When he’s teaching me it’s like a bombing run of an airplane.
He’ll fly over and drop a few bombs, principles, points that I need to learn and then he’ll come
around, circle, fly over again, and drop some more bombs. He’s saying the same thing but he’s
saying it in a different way. Repetition is essential to learning God’s Word. You look at the guys
that were in the Army, “forward march, about face,” they can do it in their sleep because they did
it so many times.
To learn God’s Word you must concentrate and there must be some
repetition because without this there can be no recall and no application in your life.
You
have to be able to recall what you’ve learned. The rate of forgetting is greater than the rate of
learning and then you’re in trouble.
You must be able to recall what you’ve learned and you
must be able to apply what you recall.
This is where we say the rubber meets the road. If you
can’t handle it, if you just fall asleep, you can’t concentrate, can’t keep your eyes open, you can’t
keep your mind on the subject, you’re drifting, you’re daydreaming and thinking, “When is this
guy going to shut up? When am I going to get out of here?” you’re certainly a baby. You need a
little bottle that you can suck on because if your pastor gave you a steak, you would choke to
death.
If you’re going to develop your spiritual life and grow spiritually, you have to
advance in your life through spiritual self-esteem, to spiritual autonomy and eventually on
to spiritual maturity.
Under spiritual self-esteem you get the confidence to live your life and not
have to depend on everyone else to live it for you. You don’t have to run and ask questions of
everybody. Then spiritual autonomy is when you’re able to glorify God on your own, stand on
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your own two feet. Then under spiritual maturity, you’re able to face up to the warfare that you’re
in, Ephesians 6:11,
“Put on the armor of God so you will be able to stand against the strategy of
the devil.”
You’re able to glorify God to the maximum under spiritual maturity.
This is the
process the growing believer goes through: spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and
spiritual maturity. You go from being a baby believer to being a student believer to being a
mature believer.
The filling of the Holy Spirit plus the rest of these 10 unique problem-
solving devices that we talk about are provided by God so you don’t have to be dependent
on other people, you are dependent only on the Word of God.
Once you depend on the Word
of God, then you get everybody else out of the picture who is offering their advice or counseling.
If you pay to go to Christian counseling I pity you. If your pastor teaches you the Word of God
you don’t have to pay to go to Christian counseling but people do. I’m sure there’s some good
Christian counselors, I guess so, but all they’re going to do is tell you what the Bible says if
they’re good Christian counselors and how to apply what the Bible says. This is the job of your
pastor. Get into the Word of God, learn the Word of God, apply the Word of God and move to
spiritual maturity in your life, this is what God wants you to do. He wants you to advance to
spiritual maturity, not be dependent on someone else. This is why you have church. Go, take
your Bible, take your notebook, sit down, not in the back row get up front where you belong, and
listen to what the pastor teaches you. Hopefully he will teach you God’s Word so you can apply it
into your life.
You have to develop this spiritual self-esteem even as a new Christian so you
can have confidence in your life based on the Word of God. God has a plan for you.
What is
God’s plan for your life? How do you fulfill this plan for your life? Once the Word of God starts
taking root, once your pastor starts teaching and starts watering the Word of God in your soul,
then things won’t be so fuzzy. Things will come into focus. You’ll start seeing a very sharp
image about what you should do as a believer.
It’s awesome when you develop contentment in
your life.
Contentment, where you know that even if you’re treated unfairly that you’re going to
be just fine. The Lord will handle it. The Supreme Court of Heaven is open 24 hours a day. When
you have this humility mindset, then you’re well on your way to glorifying God to the maximum.
As a Christian professional you have to understand the mechanics of the Christian life. A
Christian professional, this sounds like a complicated term, but this should be you. If you are a
Christian professional, this means you understand the mechanics of the Christian life and that
you also exercise integrity in your life. What is the motivation for integrity? It’s your personal
love for God. John 14:15 says,
“If you love Me you will obey Me”
and 1 John 5:3,
“My mandates
are not hard.”
There’s your integrity. It is motivated by personal love for God. How can you love
a God you don’t know and how can you know a God you don’t learn about? Come on, you’ve got
to understand He is sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, eternal life, immutability, veracity,
omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. You’re thinking, “He rattled that off kind of
quickly.” Yes I did because I’ve heard it 1,000 times from my pastor, repetition, repetition,
repetition. As I heard it, I learned it. As I learned it, I came to know more of what my God is like.
I know He is immanent and transcendent. I know that He thought about me in eternity past. He
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provided a plan for me in eternity past. You should know these things. This gives you great
confidence in God’s plan for your life. That after you accepted Christ as your Savior, He didn’t
leave you alone on an island to try to figure it out for yourself. He provides a spiritual mentor
called the Holy Spirit. He’s provides a playbook called the Bible. He’s provides a coach called
the pastor. You must learn what’s in the playbook. Spiritual autonomy is awesome. Once you get
this autonomy, you have the strength to faithfully execute the mechanics that you learn from the
Word of God. You begin to have courage and poise. If you have this courage and poise, this is
composure that you have from the Word of God in your soul. Let’s talk about spiritual autonomy,
being independent.
Listen to 1 Timothy 6:6,
“Godliness is a means of great gain when
accompanied by contentment.”
There’s the keyword, contentment, being content. Paul said,
“I
have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am in. I know how to get along with
humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity”
(Philippians 4:11-12).
“Godliness is a
means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the
world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we
shall be content”
(1 Timothy 6:6-8). Again Philippians 4:11,
“Not that I speak in regard to need,
for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am in.”
This autonomy, the ability
to be independent and to be content with what God is giving you is what keeps you out of
trouble. If you have this contentment, then you have the wonderful capacity for God to pour into
your cup all kinds of blessings. If you’re not content, regardless of what God gives you, you will
never be satisfied. You have to wait, God waits until you are content before He gives you
something you can’t handle that would destroy you. You want something that would destroy you
and you ask God to give you this or that. Maybe you prayed that God would let you win the
lottery or something like this. It would destroy your life. It would distract you from where you
need to be spiritually.
Mental contentment, having contentment, being satisfied with where
God has you and what He has you doing, is stability in your life.
This is the key to
advancing to spiritual maturity.
You cannot ever advance until you are content and you can’t
be content without having stability in your life. This is where the opportunity to advance comes
from because you’ll know your limits. You won’t be threatened by superficial nonsense that
comes down the pipe. You’ll be in control of your own life. You will have the ability to think for
yourself. You will have the ability to reason with divine viewpoint in your life and you will have
maximum stability. What do I mean by this? I mean you’re not psychotic. You’re not neurotic.
You are able to orient your life to the Word of God, to be stable in the Word of God, to be
anchored in the Word of God, and then God can pour things into your life and use you like a
beacon on a hill.
Your objective is to become a spiritually mature believer.
Your goal is to be
a winner believer, to have a maximum impact on human history. It may be an invisible impact.
Even though no one may know who you are, as a mature believer you are well known to the
Father and you are well observed by angels. As a mature believer being observed by angels,
known by the Father, you stabilize the sinking nation that you live in. You have an impact on
human history. You are blessing by association to your nation because you are part of the pivot
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that sustains it. You’re part of the core group of mature believers that sustains the freedom of the
nation. You’re independent of counseling. You don’t need human encouragement. You’re a
mature believer and you’re able to glorify God to the maximum by means of all the blessings that
He pours into your life. God uses you as a vessel, as a channel of blessing. This is what it’s about.
Everything you need to advance to maturity has already been provided for you, it’s been
given to you by God.
You have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. You have the complete canon
of Scripture. You have a local church where you can learn in privacy sitting in your pew and you
have a well-qualified pastor I hope. What God will not do is He will not manipulate your
volition. He will not infringe on your choices. He will let you make your choices and bad
decisions limit future options. Everything you need in your life is there. God is willing to pour it
out on you but to tell you the truth most people don’t want it. Someone said to me this week they
want drive through Christianity. There was a drive up church at one time in California where you
just parked in the parking lot, you didn’t have to come in. I don’t think it worked out too good.
This is what they want, drive up Christianity. “I don’t want to get dressed. I don’t want to go to
church. I want to get it to go. I want you to feed me a big special meal deal and let me go on my
way and I’ll be okay.” There is no such thing. If you want to be a mature believer, if you want to
glorify God to the maximum, it’s going take time. You’re not going to get it overnight. You must
grow up. I’ve been a Christian over 40 years and I find more every day that I did not know.
Ephesians 4:15 says,
“Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him
who is the head, even Christ.”
In 2 Thessalonians 1:3,
“We ought always to give thanks to God
for you, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you
toward one another grows ever greater.”
1 Peter 2:2,
“As newborn babies long for the pure
milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.”
In 1 Peter 3:18,
“Grow in
the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Note you keep hearing
grow, learn and apply – do you see the pattern?
It’s interesting, some believers think they don’t
really need a pastor to help them grow. They think they can just read and study it for themselves
and they think that they’ll be just fine. All they’ve got to do is just get their Bible and go out and
sit under the oak tree and smell the swamp smells, listen to the crickets, and they’ll be good.
There is nothing wrong with reading your Bible, it’s a wonderful thing to do, but it’s much better
as you sit in a church where a qualified pastor teaches you the Bible and teaches you what you’re
reading. If I gave you an algebra book and I said go learn algebra, you couldn’t do it without an
instructor and yet you seem to have the idea that you can take your Bible and you don’t need a
pastor. “All I have to do is just take my Bible and I’ll figure it out myself.” You’re kidding
yourself. You will never do this because the Word of God has technical vocabulary. The Word of
God has principles and procedures in it that must be taught. Spiritual failure comes to those
people that ignore this.
God doesn’t want you to be a spiritual failure.
If you get defeated in
your spiritual advance, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a terrible person, that’s not what I’m
saying. What I’m saying is you will never glorify God to the maximum because you got
distracted or sidetracked or defeated. Not that you went into some sort of immoral sin but you
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just walked away from God’s Word. You walked away from a consistent way of learning. You
quit going to church. You quit listening to your pastor-teacher teach you the Bible. You got so
busy in your business, in your life, in your family, in your hobby that you didn’t have time for it
anymore. The next thing you know you don’t even miss it. I pity you. Not missing feeding on the
Word of God, I pity you, because you are missing the best meals ever. People always want to tell
me in my travels, “Oh, go eat here. Go eat there. It’s a great place to eat.”
Let me tell you – the
best place to get the best meals is sitting at the feet of your pastor.
If he’s a well-qualified
pastor, if he knows the languages and he’s teaching it to you line by line, verse by verse, that is
the best meal in the world.
He’s making you rich.
He’s giving you a word treasure in your soul
that will give you the ability to have the most fabulous life in the world. You don’t see it, you
don’t understand it because you think it is more important to go down to the restaurant and eat.
You think it is more important to go to the golf course or go fishing or go hunting or go
somewhere than to listen to the teaching of the Word of God. In the long run you’re robbing your
own soul. I pity you for that. I hope you’re paying attention. I need you to take a stand and get
with this program God has for your life. This is my prayer. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying
thank you for listening.