In this engaging installment of The FLOT Line, Rick Hughes challenges common misconceptions about spirituality and maturity in the Christian faith. With compelling analogies and scriptural backing, Rick explores the importance of living a spiritual life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, debunking myths and offering practical advice for personal growth. Whether you’re new to these topics or seeking a deeper understanding, this episode provides valuable lessons on how to integrate the Word of God into your daily life and walk in divine light.
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 FLOT line. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. I did say FLOT, F-L-O-T, FLOT line. Excuse me, FLOT stands for the Forward Line of Troops. No, it’s not a military show, but that’s a military analogy to the Christian life. building a main line of resistance in your soul by learning 10 unique problem-solving devices. That’s what this radio show is about, teaching you the Word of God. No games, no gimmicks, no appeals for money, no soliciting membership, just simply information. Hopefully, I can verify and identify the plan of God for your life, and if you’re interested, you have the privilege to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s really up to you. My job is to get it accurate and get it right. No games, no gimmicks, nothing to play around with. I do have a bit of good news. We have re-signed with WOAI out of San Antonio, Texas. I thought we were going to drop the show, but we’ve re-signed with them now. But it is an early morning show in San Antonio. It comes on at 4 a.m. I don’t know who’s up at 4 a.m. A lot of times I am, but hopefully we have an audience in San Antonio that will stay with us. So if you’re out there and you’re listening in San Antonio, let us know. We appreciate you writing to us through rickhughesministries.org. and giving us a thumbs up letting us know that you are listening others we continue to look for new stations to broadcast on and thank you for sticking with us this show is always about truth and teaching truth and hopefully to find those of you that have a great hunger a great desire to grow spiritually and hopefully to direct you to where you can find a well-qualified pastor to feed your soul to teach you the word of god on a long time basis i’m not a pastor I’m an evangelist. My job is to just find you, get you located, point you in the right direction. And I hope the messages that I give to you are encouraging. Today, we’re going to go to Psalm 119, verse 1 and 2. And this is a three-part guideline to those who seek God’s blessing. Would you like to have God’s blessing in your life? Who wouldn’t? We always say, you know, great blessing to you. God bless you. You’ve heard people say that. Well, the Bible says that happiness belongs to the undefiled, those who walk in the way of the Lord. Now, exactly who are the undefiled and who are the ones that walk in the way of the Lord? Well, Let’s go to Psalm 119, verse 6. Then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy mandates. So if you want to have happiness in your life, happiness belongs to the undefiled. An undefiled person is a person who respects God’s word, who respects the mandates of God’s word. And that means you obey them. The greatest virtue you have is obedience. And 1 John 5, 3 says, if you love me, you will obey me. And my mandates are not hard. They’re not grievous. Now, come on. I know no one is perfect. We all have a sin nature. We’ve talked about that many times. And we all fail. We fail repeatedly and we fail miserably. And the Word of God is alive and powerful. The Bible says sharper than a two-edged sword. It cuts us to pieces. It lets us see ourselves as we really are. But if we have respect for the Word of God and we fail, we will use rebound, problem-solving device number one. By the way, I hope you’ll order your bookmark that we had printed up for you with all of those 10 problem-solving devices listed. We have enough for you to get several if you’d like them to pass them around. But that problem-solving device number one, confessing your sin to God, is the key to staying filled with the Holy Spirit. Unless you rebound on a consistent basis, you will not be filled with the Holy Spirit. You will quench the Spirit through sin. You will grieve the Spirit through sin. And the area of strength of your sin nature may be mighty nice and mighty well refined. But it’s not the spiritual life. It’s not the Christian life. And thus you must rebound to solve the problem of your personal sins. So if you have respect to the Lord and all of his mandates, that’s part of the key to happiness in Psalm 119, verse 1 and 2. And 119 verse 11, thy word have I hidden in my heart, so I might not sin against thee. Keeping his word is another way that you have happiness in your life. Have respect for his word, keep his word. And then Psalm 119 verse 15, I will meditate in your precepts. and have respect and confidence in your ways. Meditating, pondering over, understanding. And then Psalm 119 verse 16, I will delight myself in your statues, that’s civil and religious regulations, and I will not forget your word. That is the key to being blessed by God. Read it for yourself. Pick up Psalm 119, verses 1 through 16, read through it, and you will see where it’s clear that you and I, we must learn the word of God, and we must apply the word of God into our life to exist in the devil’s world. The cosmic system is out there. The devil’s in charge. But we have the opportunity to have divine viewpoint, not human viewpoint, divine viewpoint. What is that? That’s the mind of Christ. The Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. And the New Testament is called The mind of Christ, those disciples recorded, wrote down, passed on to us what he thought, what he said, what he did. So if we learn God’s word and we develop divine viewpoint, we think like he thought and we act like he acted. So who wants to learn the word of God? Raise your hand. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody, nobody wants to take the time to learn the Word of God. We want to have a drive-in church. We want to, just like our Internet activities, and we want to do it quick, and we want it fast. You know, people seem to want their church to just be simple and to be safe, their church experience. They want to go to church. They want it simple. They want it safe, and they want to go home and go out to eat. That’s not the spiritual life. That’s not learning God’s Word. that’s religion which is ritual without reality and it’s meaningless if you want to learn the word of god if you’re interested in learning the word of god then the end result is growth you will grow the scariest thing i’ve ever seen is a self-righteous preacher who’s going to scare the heck out of you but he’s not going to teach you anything. You must understand, like Hebrews 5, 11 through 16, where the writer there said, look, you’ve been saved a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others, but you’re not. You’re still acting like a baby. Let me ask you this question. How long have you been a Christian? And how long have you been a serious student of the Bible? Not pick up a morning devotion and read five minutes every morning. That’s not a serious student of the Bible. That’s commendable, yes, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about someone who sits under a pastor, who listens to the teaching of the Word of God, who takes notes, who reviews his notes and applies that information to his soul. One of my dear friends has just started doing that recently, and he said, you know, it’s amazing. I didn’t realize how much I did not know. We will be evaluated in 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 16. We will be evaluated at the judgment seat of Christ. And what we know will be evaluated based on what we produce. So we can produce that wood, hay, and stubble as taught in that passage, or we can produce gold, silver, precious stones. Gold, silver, and precious stones is spiritual production. Production in your life that comes from the filling of the Holy Spirit. It’s the prayers you offer, the money you give, the testimonies you offer while you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, the time that you reflect Jesus Christ in your life. The human good, the wood, hay, and stubble, it’s the things you did under the energy of the flesh, the strong side of the flesh, the strength of the flesh. Oh, you went to church. Oh, you prayed. Oh, you gave money. Oh, you sang in the choir. Oh, you traveled and did this and did that. But you had unconfessed sin in your life. You quenched the Holy Spirit. You grieved the Holy Spirit. And it’s wood, hay, and stubble. You did a right thing in a wrong way. It’s very possible you are doing a right thing in a wrong way right now. You must learn that. It was the hardest thing for me to learn in my own arrogance. Because in our own arrogance, we think we’re something else. You know, we justify why we act the way we do. And we deceive ourselves into thinking that’s not really our fault. And then we become self-absorbed with it. Self-justification is one of the biggest, biggest crimes the believer can commit. We got to move away from that. We got to see ourself as we actually are. You want to talk about spirituality? You know, someone says, that’s a real spiritual person or she’s a real spiritual giant. This is a question I wanted answered after I became a Christian. I wanted to be spiritual. It took me about a year and a half before I found out what it really was because I was hanging around emotional people that were telling me what it was not, and I just couldn’t conjure up the same stuff they were doing. So I wanted that question answered. In 1 Corinthians 2, 14 and 15, the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, For there is foolishness unto him, that’s the lost person. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. The things of the Word of God can only be learned spiritually discerned. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. If you are a Christian, His job is to guide you and lead you. If you’re not a Christian, the Holy Spirit will act as a human spirit and reveal your lost condition to you. He will help you see yourself as you really are. But the Bible goes on to say in 2 Corinthians 2.15, but he that is spiritual evaluates all things, yet he himself is to be judged by no man. In Galatians 6.1, brethren, if a man is overtaken in a fault, you who are spiritual, the spiritual people, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself less also you be tempted. So there will be believers that you know that get into jams and get messed up. I’ve met people like that, people that I’ve befriended and people that befriended me that have even wound up incarcerated. And I had no idea of some of the things they had done You don’t turn your back on them. You pray for them. You try to restore them, get them back in fellowship. I mean, who is a spiritual person? You that are spiritual, restore this man. Are you spiritual? That’s a question I need to ask you today. Are you spiritual? I mean, after I got saved, I met what I thought were spiritual giants. I mean, they sounded spiritual. They said words like brother and sister and hallelujah and God willing and praise the Lord. They look spiritual. They all cleaned up sharp and they acted spiritual, you know, but they weren’t. What is it that makes a person spiritual? I mean, do some people achieve it to a greater degree than others? Is it some stimulating emotional feeling that produces an ecstatic reaction, like an emotional high so that, you know, they come out of the woods with this rosy glow saying, I’ve been with God today. I mean, I remember hearing an idiot that say, I smelt God last night on my back porch. What a stupid thing to say. I smelt God. And yet that’s what people think spirituality is. Here’s some clear and simple answers for you. Do you want to be spiritual? Do you want to be a spiritual Christian? Spirituality is available to any believer, you, me, anybody, just like salvation is available to any person. But to understand what spirituality is, you need to first understand what it’s not. It is not avoiding someone’s taboos. Unfortunately, many well-meaning people try to manipulate folks and their brothers in Christ, laying a guilt trip on them. They’ll tell you that you cannot be spiritual and drink, brother. You cannot be spiritual and smoke, brother. You cannot be spiritual and go to that casino, brother. You cannot be spiritual and watch HBO, brother. I mean, it is ridiculous. The extremists will tell you you cannot be spiritual and go fish in a tournament. I’ve run into that before. They say it’s gambling. You can’t be spiritual and eat in a restaurant where they serve booze. Yada, yada, yada, yada. This is nothing but religious intimidation trying to manipulate you because that’s not what the Bible says. Spirituality is not a system of works. It’s not witnessing every day, carrying around a pocket full of tracks and every time you walk in the bathroom, leaving one on the roll of toilet paper. It’s not reading through the Bible every three months and bragging about how you’ve read through the Bible. It’s not yielding to God 100%. I’m going to yield to God, brother. Most people don’t even know what that means. It’s not rededicating yourself by going on a spiritual retreat and getting an emotional high. And it’s not praying at 5 a.m. every morning. I’ve tried all of that stuff. It’s not looking holy. You know, black clothes, somber attitude, serious demeanor, uttering super spiritual phrases all day long. God willing, God bless you. Have a wonderful, blessed day. So what is spirituality? Spirituality is not doing something, and it’s not avoiding doing something. It’s not spirituality by works, upbeat, super excited personality, in love with Jesus. I mean, I run into those, and you do too. What is spirituality? It is a relationship with God the Holy Spirit. You receive the Holy Spirit at salvation. Ephesians 1.13 tells you that. In whom you also trusted after you heard the word of truth. The gospel of your salvation in whom also after you believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Sealed. What does the Holy Spirit of promise mean? It means that Jesus Christ our Lord promised him to all who believed in him. All who believed in Christ were promised the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 6.19, don’t you know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? He indwells you. He seals you. Don’t you know you are the temple of God? 1 Corinthians 3.16 says that the Spirit of God dwells in you. If you allow unconfessed sin to remain in your life, you set yourself up for discipline, maybe even an early death. Because the Bible says in Romans 8, 13, if you live after the flesh, you’ll die. But if you put to death the deeds of the body by means of the spirit, you will live. You can live under control of your flesh, your sin nature, or you can live under control of God the Holy Spirit. If you live under control of your flesh, you may be doing right things. Your flesh has an area of strength. It can do right things. It can go to church. It can sing in the choir. It can give money. It can go on mission trips. It doesn’t mean it’s doing it in the right way. The only way to live the Christian life is under the filling of the Holy Spirit. That’s why Ephesians 5.18 says, be filled with the Spirit. It’s the imperative mood in the Greek New Testament. That’s why Galatians 5.16 says, walk by means of the Spirit, the imperative mood in the Greek New Testament. That’s why Romans 13.14 says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh. Imperative mood in the Greek New Testament. The imperative mood is a command. It’s an order. It’s the commander’s intent. By saying you’re spiritual, what I’m saying is when you are filled with the Holy Spirit or controlled by the Holy Spirit, you’re spiritual. When you have unconfessed sin in your life, you’re carnal. There’s no in between. It’s either black or white. You’re either in fellowship or you’re out of fellowship. This very moment as you listen to me, you’re either in fellowship or you’re out of fellowship. There’s no in between. If you’re out of fellowship, that means there’s sin in your life you have not confessed. You haven’t dealt with it. If you’re in fellowship, you have no sin in your life you haven’t admitted. It’s possible you may sin a thousand times a day, I know, but as you grow spiritually, you can cut that back to a couple of hundred times a day. But when you sin, you must go to God and admit the sin. That’s what 1 John 1, 9 says. Psalm 32, 4, and 5 says the same thing. You must admit your sin to God because sin quenches the Holy Spirit. Sin grieves the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched, you are carnal. You are not spiritual. Spirituality and carnality are both absolutes. There’s no gray area. It’s not a matter of degrees, you know, that Bill is more spiritual than Bob. I mean, you either have it or you don’t. You’re either 100% spiritual or you’re 100% carnal. You’re either controlled by the Holy Spirit or you’re controlled by your sin nature. There’s no in-between grounds. The Bible uses the analogy of light and darkness. Walk in light or walk in darkness, 1 John 5, 1 through 10. If we walk in the light, if we walk in darkness and say we have fellowship with him, we lie and the truth is not in us. The Bible’s clear about that. So if you’re walking with unconfessed sin in your life, you’re in darkness, you’re carnal, you’re fleshly, and you are not having fellowship with God. You are not controlled by the Holy Spirit. Spirituality occurs when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, and that happens at the point of confessing your known sin. So are you spiritual today? Well, let me ask you a question. I didn’t ask you, had you sinned today? I know the answer to that one. Yes, probably so. I ask you, are you spiritual right now? That means, do you have any sin in your life you haven’t confessed? And listen now, don’t go that route on me and saying, I can’t keep up with them all. I can’t remember them all. How could I remember every sin? I’m going to tell you another time. The Bible says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. All, even the ones you don’t remember. Nobody can remember all of them. You don’t carry around a scratch pad writing them down every time you do them. But when the Holy Spirit convicts you, you must name the sin to God and not hide it. That’s the only way that you can be spiritual. Spiritual believers will grow because they see the need for the Word of God. Carnal believers will never grow because they don’t see any need for the Word of God. So can you tell if you’re a spiritual Christian? Well, it’s not an emotional feeling where you feel closer to God. That’s not what it is. Is it necessary to recognize the filling of the Holy Spirit, to know when it’s happening? No, it’s not necessary. As long as you fulfill the biblical mandates of 1 John 1, 9, you will be filled even if you don’t know it’s happening. But there are characteristics that spiritual Christians manifest. And this is taught in Galatians 5, 22. And it’s called the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Love, that’s the greatest virtue envelope you could live in. If you love me, you will obey me, and my mandates are not grievous, 1 John 5, 3. Joy, Jesus said, happiness belongs to those who hear my Father’s word and keep it. Peace, that inner stability where you don’t worry, you’re not afraid. Long-suffering, the word makrothumia means you have patience and perseverance under pressure. Gentleness means you’re not overbearing, you’re not impetuous, and you demonstrate forgiveness to all who wrong you. Goodness means you have divine good production in your life. Faith means you understand the faithless drill and operate by faith. Meekness has to do with humility in your life. Temperance means self-control or self-discipline. These are the characteristics of a spiritual Christian. All of these are manifested traits of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they will be exposed in the mature believer’s life, the spiritual believer’s life. The Holy Spirit controlled believer will eventually grow in spirituality and in his spiritual life so that he will begin to reflect Christ. So what’s the difference between being spiritual and being mature? It’s possible that you’re a spiritual Christian because you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, but you’re not a mature Christian. Spirituality is related to the filling of the Holy Spirit. It’s absolute. Maturity, on the other hand, spiritual maturity, is related to the content of the Word of God in your soul. And that’s rather relative. Now the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 5, 11 through 14, I went through that earlier with you. The writer of Hebrews who’d been trying to explain how the Lord Jesus Christ is the great high priest, he felt that the recipients would not understand what he was saying. This advanced doctrine that he was teaching, so he backed up and he punted. We have much to say and it’s difficult to explain since you’ve become sluggish in your hearing, he wrote. for though you should in fact be teachers by this time you need to relearn the basics in other words the rate of forgetting had exceeded the rate of learning you’ve gone back to needing milk and not solid food he said the milk drinker is inexperienced in the message of righteousness That means that God’s basic character attributes must be satisfied. And he’s inexperienced in the message of righteousness. He can’t handle solid food. The mature believer can ascertain the difference between good and evil, but the immature believer cannot. he can’t tell the difference between good and evil both are wrong human good is wrong evil is wrong they’re both wrong sometimes people don’t know the difference between evil and human good evil is the genius of satan it’s when he takes the grace of god and replicates it as a counterfeit and puts a half a twitch on it it sounds right looked right but it’s not right So he may say, in order to be saved, you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and give up eating peanuts. Well, half right, the rest of it’s wrong. Well, that’s evil. Evil twists grace. So you have to remember that. You have to know that. And good, that’s human good, you trying to save yourself. The Bible says there are none that are good. No, not even one. Because all of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. So have you ever grown weary of playing that game? Have you ever grown weary of trying to stay pumped up for Jesus, but you’re only playing a little role and you know it? Have you ever really wondered what all this stuff actually means? Do you feel that you’re not as mature as other people in your church? And you’re listening to the right show. You’re getting the right information. I mean, if you learn all these spiritual terms and then you can’t understand it, it doesn’t do you any good. So please, stick it out. Stick with me. You’ve got to know the score. It’s a matter of priorities in your life so that you can reflect Jesus Christ and reproduce him in your life. You can have his mind. You can reflect Christ by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit, which is what his job is to do, to turn you into a Christ-like individual. And that happens by the filling of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the Word of God in your soul. a mature believer and a spiritual believer, two different believers. We’re going to talk about it next week. We’ll give you a little bit more time, but I hope you’re listening. Let me hear from you if you’d like. Always, it’s a privilege to have this time with you. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. We’ll see you next Sunday, same time, same place.
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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.
