Stinkin’ Thinkin’ – Part 2
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 562 aired on June 2, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes I’d like to ask you to stay with me. It will be a time of motivation, some inspiration,
some education, and we always do it without any manipulation because we don’t have hidden
agendas. We’re not trying to recruit you. We’re not trying to solicit anything from you. This
show is simply about giving you accurate information. The information is from the Bible, from
the Word of God. Yes, it’s a show about the Bible but a little different from what you’ve heard
before. What we’re going to do is we’re going to show you how it’s possible that you can live a
life free of stress, not free of adversity. As a matter of fact adversity is inevitable but stress is
always optional. The reason is because adversity is what circumstances do to you, whether it’s
self-induced or not, but stress is what you do to yourself. This is what’s so unique about the life
God promises for the Christian in time. There’s a way to live a supernatural life that’s related to
the filling of God the Holy Spirit and the promises found in the Word of God. When you put
these two together they create a balance in your life that gives you phenomenal staying power,
phenomenal ability to face the most adverse situations and not freak out, not worry, not be afraid,
not get bitter, not get angry, not look back and be full of guilt. It’s the Christian life. It’s a simple
life. It’s an amazing life and it’s ours, it’s free, it’s for us. As we teach you the FLOT line we show
you these wonderful promises that are found in the Bible, accurate information, not any
speculation. It’s all designed to help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. As we say
every Sunday, if you would like to orient and adjust, have at it. All you have to do is apply what
you hear. I thank you for listening. I get letters from people all the time. I encourage this. I love
to hear what you’re learning, when you’re growing, and I love to hear where you are and what
station you’re listening to. I have no idea who’s listening where. I’m just so grateful for the
privilege to broadcast this show in the many cities that we do and we are always praying for
other venues, other cities that would open up. We’re constantly contacting other radio stations
and asking, “Do you have a slot? Do you have a time where we can buy in and purchase 30
minutes to do our show?” Pray for us as we continue on this mission of reaching out across this
great country with the message of The FLOT Line. Some man wrote to me recently, he’s a retired
Air Force gentleman, and he said, “I thought you were talking about the flight line.” No, it’s
FLOT and this stands for the forward line of troops, the main line of resistance. This was taught
by my pastor many years ago in his church. He was retired Air Force and what he taught was
this. You can establish in your soul 10 unique problem-solving devices found in the Word of
God. This is not some new discovery. You can take these 10 problem-solving devices and use
them as a main line of resistance to stop the outside sources of adversity from ever becoming the
inside sources of stress. This is what we do on this radio show. We cover this information, we
examine this information, and we look at many other subjects as well. Last week if you listened,
we started a series called stinkin’ thinkin’. I don’t know who came up with this term first. I’ve
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heard several of my friends use it.
Stinkin’ thinkin’ has to do with thinking human viewpoint.
It has to do with bad attitudes and negative volition.
We took as our text Philippians 4:8
where Paul wrote to the church in Philippi and said these words as he closed out his letter.
“Finally brethren
[the believers in Philippi, men and women],
whatever is true, whatever is
honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute
[there are six different things he mentioned here],
if there is any excellence and if anything
worthy of praise, think on these things.”
The verb
“think on these things,”
logizomai,
means to
concentrate on or to take account of and it is an imperative mood verb in the Greek New
Testament. The unique thing about this is it’s the verb of command. It’s a mandate. This is not
something Paul is asking them to do. He’s telling them, “Look, if you want to advance in the plan
of God you’ve got to learn to control your thoughts. You’ve got to learn to take advantage of the
difference between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint.” I would like to challenge you with
this today. Whenever you go through your day or next week as you face the week, when you
catch yourself thinking human viewpoint, remember, human solutions are no solutions.
Divine
solutions are the only solutions. When you catch yourself thinking human viewpoint, stop
and reorient your thoughts.
We’ll cover this today because Proverbs 23:7 says,
“As a man
thinks in his heart, so he is.”
In other words what it’s telling us is the real you, the invisible you
is your thoughts, your motives, your intentions, your desires. This is the real you. Why did you
do what you did? What did you hope to get out of it? What are your motives, your intentions, and
your desires? This is an interesting thing, God knows your motives, your intentions, and your
desires. You cannot play games with God. You may play games with your wife or your husband
or your pastor or your parents but you’re not going to play any games with God because He
knows exactly what’s going on in that head between your ears. He knows what you’re thinking.
The real you is what you think.
Paul tells us in Romans 12:2,
“Do not be conformed to this
world
[in other words don’t think like they think],
but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind in order that you may prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.”
The
only way you can renovate your thinking is by being filled with the Holy Spirit, using problem-
solving devices #1 and #2, and by learning Biblical information, doctrinal orientation another
problem-solving device. As you orient to the Word of God and you store it in the memory center
of your soul, it begins to cycle through your thoughts and you have Biblical wisdom. You have to
understand this, the believer’s mindset, it’s very simple. There are four things I want to remind
you of, that we talked about last week, and then we’ll move on.
First, you must assemble to
hear God’s Word. Second, when you assemble, you must concentrate.
If you assemble and
don’t concentrate, you’ll daydream and your mind will wander, that’s why taking notes is a great
thing because it helps you to concentrate.
Third, you recall
. Recall means you go home that
night and you think about what he said or you look over your notes and read what you wrote
down.
Fourth, the last step, is you apply Biblical wisdom.
Assemble, concentrate, remember,
and apply but listen carefully.
You cannot apply what you do not know.
“Whatsoever things
are true,”
alethes,
we saw this. We looked at this word “true” meaning information that is
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truthful. Let’s move on today to the second mandate. The second thing we’re suppose to think
about,
“Whatever is honorable.”
The Greek word
semnos
actually means what is dignified, what
is worthy of respect. The word is translated reverent in other passages meaning respect and
appreciation. Let’s get some points on this.
The believer in Jesus Christ must respect the
Word of God since the Word of God is alive and powerful.
Hebrews 4:12 says it so
eloquently,
“The Word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and is a
critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
You must respect the Word of God. It is alive and
powerful. It is one half of your operating system. The other half is the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Your spiritual life will never even get to first base if you do not understand two essential
doctrines, if you do not understand how an individual is filled with the Holy Spirit and if you do
not understand operation Z. Maybe you haven’t heard me talk about operation Z. I just gave you
the process of operation Z when we started the show: assemble, concentrate, recall, and apply.
This is what it means. When you assemble in your local church under the authority of your
pastor, he will teach you God’s Word. Then if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, He will take the
Word that the pastor teaches you and convert it into
gnosis
knowledge. This is the knowledge
that you comprehended, you understood it. Then you have to use your volition to apply this
knowledge. If you form the letter Z in your mind, the pastor teaches it. The Holy Spirit picks it
up, it comes down the slide to the mind where you now understand it. Then it goes across to the
end of the Z where you apply it. Operation Z is critical.
Unless you’re filled with the Holy
Spirit and unless you’re taking in God’s Word on a consistent basis, you’re simply going to
go through ritual and there will be no reality to it and you’ll never grow up spiritually.
You
will never be able to actually glorify God in your Christian life because you will never grow up
as 2 Peter 3:18 tells you to do,
“Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.” “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be
ashamed”
(2 Timothy 2:15). These two verses describe
“whatever is honorable.”
Honorable is
your respect for the Word of God.
Within the Word of God we must respect the laws of
establishment.
These laws of establishment guarantee our freedom and they guarantee the
prosperity of this nation, a client nation, the United States of America. There is no doubt that for
this time God has ordained this nation to disseminate His Word across the world. We send out
missionaries. We are a haven for the Jew. We guard the doctrine in this nation. But all of this is
slowly changing. You can see seeping into the history of America a progressive agenda and the
first thing that has happened is we have shut down the Word of God in the public agenda. We’ve
stopped the Word of God from being displayed, from being talked about and this is what’s been
going on in this country for the last 50 years beginning with Madeline Murray O’Hare and the
Supreme Court decision in the 60s to take prayer out of the schools. If there’s anything our
schools need it is prayer. I have been speaking in schools for over 40 years. I have spoken in
hundreds of schools. Now most of the schools I visit, 99.9% of them, are in fact private
academies, not necessarily Christian but private. There is still the opportunity in the private
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schools to be able to tell the young men and young women that attend these schools about the
plan of God for their life but not in the public arena.
The public arena is the main area of
contention used by Satan today to weaken and dissolve the United States of America.
What
Satan attempts to do is minimize the impact of the gospel in this country, to neutralize the
communicators of the Word of God and demonize them to the general public. Quite frankly some
Christians have done a good job of demonizing themselves by getting into the public arena. God
didn’t call us to change the devil’s world. God called us to lift up Jesus Christ His anointed Son.
When the minds of people are changed, the world changes. We’re focusing on the wrong thing.
We must focus on what our job is, re-presenting Jesus Christ. What could happen? Client nation
USA could be put aside. Would God raise up another client nation? Absolutely He would. We in
the the United States are headed for a train wreck. I’ve often said, “The wreck is coming and I
can hear the whistle blowing. Look down the track and see the light.” It’s coming because of
decisions that we have made across this country, the people that are in political power, the
agendas they possess, we are going down fast. Most of the young people that I meet don’t have a
clue. They don’t know what it was like 20 or 30 years ago. They only know what it’s like today.
They only know the music of today. They don’t even know what a rotary telephone is, maybe
you still remember, but they’ve never heard of it. They’ve grown up with cell phones. They’ve
grown up with computers. They don’t even know what a set of encyclopedias are. Things are
changing.
There are four divine institutions that require appreciation and loyalty from the
believer in client nation USA.
The first divine institution ordained by God is the individual with
volition. God gives every person free will. This is why Revelation 22:17 says,
“Whosoever will
hear may come.”
Any nation that desires to follow God’s plan must provide freedom of choice
for their people. This is critical. God did not make robots out of any of us. He gives us all the
ability to choose. He gave you volition as part of the format of your soul. You can choose to
believe in Jesus Christ or you can choose to reject Jesus Christ. You can choose to learn God’s
plan or you can choose to reject the time that it takes to learn God’s plan because it does take
time. There’s no one-shot decision you can make that says automatically, “Okay, I’m going to be
a mature believer from this day forward.” This doesn’t happen. Either you grow as the Bible says
and you study as the Bible says or you stay a baby Christian most of your life. You will go to
heaven. You will have eternal life. But you will not hear,
“Well done My good and My faithful
servant”
(Matthew 25:23).
The four divine institutions that must be appreciated and
maintained are the individual with volition, marriage, family and nationalism.
God ordained
marriage for all members of the human race. It was established by God Himself when He took
the rib of Adam and brought to him his wife whose name was Eve,
Ish
and
Isha
in the Hebrew.
God brought her and gave her to him as a helpmate. Marriage is an honorable institution. One of
the things that is under attack in our country today is the institution of marriage. You can see it in
the high rate of divorces and the amount of people that simply don’t get married, they just live
together. God ordained marriage as the basis for stability in society. The third divine institution is
called family. God ordained family for the raising and the training of the children.
The family is
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the instrument ordained by God for children to be trained. What are we training our children to
do? To respect authority. To inculcate a vocabulary that’s worthy of speaking. It requires that we
teach them respect for authority and that we do not do it in an unfair manner. Ephesians 6:4 says,
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture and in the
admonition of the Lord.”
Nurture is the word
nouthesia
and admonition is the word
paideia.
There are times when we put something in their minds and there are times when we put
something on their behinds. Yes I know, you don’t believe in spanking your children according to
that famous Dr. Spock but discipline is instructed by the Word of God. It even says,
“If you spare
the rod you’ll spoil the child”
(Proverbs 13:24). Discipline is good. I got my behind busted many
times and you know what I’m talking about. When we have a whole generation that doesn’t
understand discipline then we have a generation that doesn’t understand respect for authority. The
family is where we start training our children. Lastly is nationalism, the fourth divine institution.
Nationalism is ordained by God from the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). God dispersed man
across the face of the earth. He confused their language because He did not accept the concept of
internationalism.
It is never God’s plan for any nation to be involved in internationalism.
Internationalism gives Satan the opportunity to control the whole world with one decision but
when we have various nations, when we have autonomy like the United States of America,
Canada, Mexico and Great Britain, we have independent nations with independent thinking.
Satan may succeed in getting the agenda of one of these nations to go his way but maybe not all.
If all nations were under internationalism it would be much easier for him to control this world.
These four divine institutions must be respected.
“Whatever is honorable,” semnos,
dignified,
worthy of respect, the four divine institutions of the individual with volition, marriage,
family, and nationalism require this.
Romans 13:1-2 tells us the laws of the land are always
worthy of respect. Lastly, freedom through military victory is worthy of respect.
Any time you
see a soldier, a sailor, an airmen, any time you see someone serving our country in a military
uniform, this is worthy of respect. In times past such as during the Vietnam War, the respect for
the military was lost and Satan did a masterful job in undermining that in our history. Today, we
have wounded warriors, both men and women, and they deserve our assistance and respect as
they reorient to society. We must respect these men and women and the service they give to our
country because without the military there is no freedom. Every time you see a soldier wearing a
uniform, it’s freedom through military victory. This is worthy of respect and a thank you. The
uniform in this country means you’re free.
“Whatever is semnos, honorable,”
worthy of respect,
“think on these things.”
Whatever is honorable, think on these things. Then we have the third
principle given by the Apostle Paul here in this passage,
“Whatever is right,” dikaios
is the
Greek word. It means whatever things conform to the law of morality, right conduct as
prescribed in God’s Word.
It starts with right thinking.
Here’s one way to think. Maybe you’ve
never tried thinking this way, Ephesians 4:32,
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another even as Christ forgave you.”
Now let’s assume that you have a relative or you have
a friend or an acquaintance that you cannot stand. They are what you call a WOJ, a weird
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obnoxious jerk, and you hate them because of what they said about you or because of what they
did to you. Can I ask you a question? Did Christ die for that person just like He died for you?
The answer is yes. Does God love that person just like He loves you? The answer is yes. You say,
“Well that doesn’t mean that I have to love them.” Oh yes you do. You are mandated to love your
enemies. You are not allowed to judge them, to be critical of them, to malign them, to slander
them. This is not the Christian way of life.
“Whatever is right,”
the Christian life consists of a
protocol plan which means a right thing must be done in a right way.
A right thing done in a
wrong way is always wrong. A right thing done in a right way is always right. For example, the
communion table. I’m sure you’ve taken communion before but did you take communion the
right way or did you take communion the wrong way? If you took communion the wrong way
then you may be in for a little bit of discipline. You may be in for a little bit of pain because you
did not do what God told you to do. Let’s go back for a moment to Moses at
Meribah
when God
said,
“Speak to the rock before their eyes that it may yield water” (
Numbers 20:8). What did
Moses do? He struck the rock, he didn’t speak to it. He struck the rock in anger and said,
“Listen
now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?”
The end result of this act,
was that the most humble man that ever lived did not go into the Promised Land. Change of
command came, Joshua took the tribes of Israel and took them into the Promised Land beginning
at the battle of Jericho. Moses did not go and there’s a reason for this. It’s not that he wasn’t a
Christian. Yes, he was a believer and knew who the Redeemer is. He had met Him in the burning
bush. Yes, he knew, but he did not follow God’s plan and the end result is he did not go into the
Promised Land.
Listen, God has a plan for your life. If you don’t follow the plan, if you don’t
adhere to the plan, if you don’t learn the plan, you’re not going to have the happiness of the
Promised Land offered either.
It’s there, it’s for you, it’s free, you must follow the plan.
The
protocol plan of God is where it starts.
Next week I’ll come back and continue this study on
thinking
“Whatever is right.”
I’ll try to pull this together for you. Until then, thank you for
listening. This is your host Rick Hughes.