Rick Hughes confronts the commercial side of modern Christianity in this thought-provoking episode. Addressing prevalent trends in Christian media and sales, he offers a perspective on maintaining the purity of one’s spiritual journey without succumbing to the distractions of marketed religious experiences. Hughes provides a roadmap for developing a robust spiritual life through disciplined study, encouraging listeners to cultivate a deeply informed faith that stands unshaken by life’s challenges.
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 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, hang around, stick with me, listen. This is 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and we always do it without any type of manipulation. That means we are not going to try to sell you something. We’re not going to ask you to join up, fess it up, give it up, nothing like that. This show is simply designed to remind you of biblical truths and introduce you to a wonderful way of studying and learning God’s Word. And if you can do that, if you can listen, if you can learn, then you have the choice. You can orient and adjust to the plan of God, or you can go on down the my way highway like you may have been doing already. It’s up to you. But for the next few minutes, I’ll try to explain how the Christian life works, what it’s about. And this is for those of you that have made a decision to believe in Jesus Christ. Have you not? Have you not made that decision? If you do not know whether or not you’re going to heaven, you should know it because the Bible says, These things are written so that you may know that you have eternal life. You can know it. You can know it confidently for sure because the Bible says he that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God has not life. And you may say, well, I had Jesus at one time, but he left me. Well, that’s not what the Bible says. He said, I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you. So, excuse me. So there you have it. If you haven’t believed in Jesus Christ, if you haven’t received him as your savior, that is the single most important decision you’ll ever make in your life because that is your guarantee that you will spend eternity with God the Father in heaven. Apart from that, you have no guarantees because the Bible says whoever’s name was not found written in the Lamb’s book of life was cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Don’t be that way. Don’t put this off. Don’t say, well, I’m not sure. Well, you know, I’ve thought about it, and there’s been a lot of smart people told me Jesus wasn’t really who he said he was. Oh, really? He’s either a lunatic or a liar or something, or he’s really who he said he was. Because nobody could say the things he did and get away with it over a period of time. He is the anointed son of God. He is alive today. He’s at the right hand of the Father. And mark my words, he is going to come back. I don’t know when. No one knows when. But he’s coming back. I hope it’s before this country falls apart because if you have half a brain, you can see we’re falling apart. We’re fracturing and splintering from the inside. And if there’s ever been a time for the Christian to stand on solid ground and understand what’s going on, it’s now. Because you must know how to survive in these tough times ahead. You know, the Bible says, God said in Jeremiah 9, let the one who glories glory in this life. that He understands me and knows me. My question to you today, if you’re going to have a flat line of your soul, if you’re going to have a forward line of troops, a main line of resistance, meaning you’re going to have the rebound technique down, you’re going to have the filling of the Holy Spirit down, you’re going to have the faith thrust drill down, you’re oriented to grace, you’re oriented to doctrine, you have a personal sense of destiny, you have personal love for God, you have impersonal love for others, You share the happiness of God and you’re occupied with Jesus Christ. There are those 10 problem-solving devices. And by the way, I have a bookmark with all those on it. If you’d like to have it for your Bible, just write to us. Don’t send money. We’re not asking you for money. Don’t send money. But if you want the bookmark, just go to the website, rickhughesministries.org. Send me your name and address. We’ll ship you a few of them out so you can look at those problem-solving devices. But what’s the difference in understanding God and knowing God? Understanding and knowing. The difference is this, two Greek words, gnosis and epinosis. Gnosis is knowledge understood and retained. Epinosis is full knowledge or the knowledge that’s understood, retained, and applied. So the mature believer understands applies what he knows one gets to know god through jesus christ our lord and savior he said i am the way the truth and the life no man comes to the father but by me but one gets to understand god through the bible and the ministry of the holy spirit so if you know god and you have accepted christ as your savior then it’s time to understand the gods you know for example when you first get saved you often think that your point of contact with god is his love he loves me but after you know learn some doctrine once you learn the word of god You, like me, come to realize the point of contact with God is his justice. God’s justice is the guardian of his righteousness. And what the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God will judge. So it was the love of God that provided your redemption. but it was the justice of God that demanded you be redeemed. There was no other way for you to get to God other than through the sacrificial death of Christ who was judged for us on the cross. So the spiritually mature believer, spiritual autonomy, spiritual self-esteem, spiritual maturity, we talked about that last week, the spiritually mature believer does not get emotional about God. He doesn’t think that way. I mean, if you think God loves you more today than he loved you yesterday, and because you were good today and you were bad yesterday, that’s ridiculous. God loves you as much today as he loved you yesterday. If you sinned, you got out of fellowship with God, you quenched the Holy Spirit, you grieved the Holy Spirit, God’s love for you didn’t change. And so you rebound, you confess your sin, and you get back filled with the Holy Spirit. And, you know, you go to some church service and they get all emotional and they say, God was here tonight. We felt him. We felt his presence. Well, the Holy Spirit indwells all believers. And God the Father is omnipresent, so he can be in your church and my church and the church next door at the same time. So we don’t conjure up God appearing because we had a great worship service and everybody sang and got sad and cried. And that doesn’t mean God showed up. God was there before you got there. He’s imminent. He’s transcendent. He’ll be there even after you leave. So don’t think that works that way. So no one can be spiritually mature until they understand the plan of God. We call it the protocol plan of God. Protocol simply means the right thing has to be done in the right way. Until you do that, you’re never going to understand the God you know. See, once you pick up and maintain some momentum, Then you will, number one, begin to have your thinking renovated. You’ll change the way you think. You’ll stop thinking in terms of arrogance and think in terms of humility as Romans 12, 1, 2, and 3 demands you think. And then you’ll become spiritually independent. You won’t be depending on other people to tell you what to do, how to live your life. Pray for me, brother. I don’t know what to do. You can stand on your own two feet. And if you begin to be spiritually mature, you can develop some self-confidence from the Word of God. That means you won’t be second-guessing every decision that you make. You know how to determine what the will of God is, and you’re confident that it’s the will of God that you do this. And then, obviously, you’ll meet and face adversity with maximum confidence, maximum perseverance. You’ll live independently of human encouragement. You don’t need somebody to pat you on the back and say, now, now, brother, it’ll be okay. My uncle died with it, but you’ll make it. Just hang in there. Ridiculous. You don’t need that. You have the Word of God. You have Jesus Christ living in you. You have the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Word of God. So you don’t need human encouragement. Nothing wrong with people praying for you. Nothing wrong with… people encouraging you, but if that’s what it takes for you to get through adversity, you haven’t reached spiritual maturity yet. In spiritual maturity, you have maximum use of all 10 of those problem-solving devices, and you will avoid the subject of being arrogant, and here’s one of the ways you know it because you’ll have maximum contentment in your life maximum contentment in your life that’s an amazing thing contentment paul said i’ve learned to be content in whatever shape i’m in it doesn’t make any difference so the spiritually mature believer if that’s you or me we’re going to live our life as unto the lord rather than unto any man colossians 3 23 whatever you do You do it from your soul as unto the Lord and not unto man. So the spiritually mature believer, the one who understands the God he knows, he may sin, he may get carnal, but he or she, in your case, will recover and recover very quickly. Paul even talked about it in Romans 7.15. He said, The things I do I allow not, for what I would that do I not, but what I hate that I do. He had a battle with the flesh just like you and I have a battle with the flesh. And just like you and I can rebound, problem-solving device number one, we can recover from our sin, Paul did the same thing. The spiritually mature believer, if that’s you, has an invisible impact on his nation, this nation, the United States of America. We must have that invisible impact. We must be historically the individuals that bring God’s grace on this country because in the final analysis, it’s going to be the believers in this nation who are responsible for the rise or the fall of America. As goes the spiritual life of the Christian, so goes the future of this country. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of weird stuff in our nation today. And it’s funny, it’s in the name of Christianity. You know, books, you know, national bestsellers. Dream your dreams, brother. Believe in yourself, brother, and God will empower you. Do you not realize that it’s a money-making racket? People are making money off of the Lord Jesus Christ. The number one selling book in the world is the Bible. And there are about 9,000 different translations, different versions. Well, they didn’t make those to help you. They made those to sell them to you. I mean, good night alive. You can spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars buying Christian books and people telling you how you ought to live your Christian life. And if you just go to one, and let me ask you this question, go to one that you like. and find where it tells me you must be filled with the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life. More than likely, you won’t find it. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life. More than likely, you won’t find it. They’ll say a lot of other things, but they don’t say that. So, I mean, it’s pitiful. Books, they come out, tapes, music. Music is a multi-million dollar Christian industry. Christian rock bands, Christian country music, Christian this, Christian that. And we Christians, we go run out and buy all this stuff. They’re not making that stuff because they love you and love Jesus. They’re making that stuff because they’re making money. They’re in it to make the money. Most of them, I can’t… I can’t impugn all of them, but hey, if they love the Lord, give it away. Don’t sell it. Give it away. Don’t hold a concert and sell tickets to your concert. Hold a concert and give it free. Then you can witness and evangelize the people, but that’s not the way it works. Well, we got to, you know, brother, we got to pay our expenses. Well, the way I operate is if God’s in it, he’ll pay for it. If he doesn’t pay for it, go shine shoes, do something else. But if you gotta run around and try to hustle the money up and beat people out of a buck, you’re doing the wrong thing, I assure you. Videos, dramas, movies, Wonderful movies, Christian movies, we all want to see them. They’re all designed to make some money. They wouldn’t make them if they didn’t make money. Listen to Jeremiah 23, 25. I didn’t send these prophets, yet they ran. I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel and had caused my people to hear my word, then they should have turned them from their sin. That’s what we need, men that will teach the word of God freely, without charge, without obligation. Teach the word of God. Warn people about what’s coming. Warn people about what God expects. Then maybe we might have a chance. I’m afraid the only thing that’s going to wake this nation up is a national disaster. After World War II and the invasion of Pearl Harbor, a lot of people woke up. A lot of people suddenly got patriotic. A lot of people turned to their God. After the 9-11 attacks in New York City on the World Trade Center, people woke up for about two weeks, and then they went back to being patriotic. their own self-centered selves, and they love the gifts and they forget the giver. What is it going to take in the future of this nation to wake up our young people and wake up those middle-aged people that have all the blessings, all the security, all the prosperity, and don’t give God the time of day? Not interested in learning anything about God’s Word? Not interested in worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, God needs to deliver us, and I pray this often, that he would deliver us from glad-handing religious entertainers who pass themselves off as a pastor. These types are doing more to change the face of modern Christianity from a word-based faith to an eye-candy emotional religion in which one learns nothing about They go to church, they go away feeling good, their emotions fired up. But at least when Monday morning comes up and they hit the traffic, they’re in trouble. They hit the traffic at their local restaurant, they hit the traffic on the interstate, and they’re in trouble. They’re right back where they were. Where’s the hunger for truth? Where’s the people that want to learn something? And why do we sit there glazed and dazed on Sunday morning? while the big Hollywood productions entertain us, and while the pastor gives his 20-minute message, and then he wants to sell you a set of his messages for 20 bucks. If you’ll give him some money, he’ll give you a set of his messages. Don’t do that. Don’t push your material for money. At the very best, that’s shallow. At the worst, it’s pure false blasphemy. Why is it so hard to find even one person who’s seeking truth and is willing to get it the old-fashioned way? Show up, shut up, and learn. Learn. Take your Bible, take your notebook, and learn. Where are the pastors that are willing to teach the old-fashioned way? Study and teach, study and teach, study and teach. Well, there’s no such thing as a shortcut to being a spiritually mature person. The person God wants you to be is going to require a daily sacrifice in your life. You must have a pattern of growth under the filling of the Holy Spirit, listening to the teaching of the Word of God by a well-qualified pastor, because there is no one-shot rededication that will shape your life up. Will you have problems? Sure you will. But will you recover? Yep. Will you rebound? Yep. Will you resume your spiritual life when you fail? Yep. So what about it? When are you going to get serious about your spiritual life? When will you start a consistent routine, a regiment of Bible studies so that you can advance and become a spiritually mature believer and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ to the maximum in your life? Spiritual maturity is the objective of me and you. It’s for keeping us after salvation. That’s why God keeps us around. And then we get saved, we know we’re going to heaven, why didn’t he just pull us out now? Boink, and we’re gone. Why leave us here? So we can replicate the life of Christ. So we can reintroduce Jesus Christ to our friends, our family, our community. We can live Christ-like lives. That’s why God left us here, to witness for his son. It’s hard to understand? No, it’s not hard to understand. You have an objective. And in spiritual maturity, you must use those 10 problem-solving devices. Do you even know them? Can you tell me what they are? Can you tell me? It’s rebound, filling of the Holy Spirit, faith-rest drill, grace orientation, biblical orientation, personal sense of destiny, personal love for God, impersonal love for others, sharing the happiness of God, and lastly, occupation with Christ. Do you even know those? Do you even know what they mean? Because without knowing that, you’re never going to make it into Christian life as far as maximum glorification of God. These are simple doctrines. You must be… independent of any form of advice, counseling, encouragement. Stay away from counselors that want to tell you how to live your Christian life, and worst of all, charge you for it. Christian counselors that you pay to tell you how to get along with your husband or how to get along with your wife or how to get… Listen, get a good pastor. Let him teach you what the Bible says, and he won’t charge you by the hour. People like this are mentally stable. People like this are able to think in terms of metabolized doctrine and apply it to every circumstance in their life. Mental strength, that’s what the Word of God gives you. It’s you putting God’s Word in front of anything. In front of your experience, it’ll give you maximum courage under testing when you go through it because you will. As a believer, you’re going to go through evidence testing. It will give you an objective reality about who and what you are. You won’t have an unrealistic self-image. And you will avoid self-righteous arrogance or moralistic orgies of crusader arrogance that we get into. In other words, you’ll realize God didn’t send you down here to boycott the bookstore. God didn’t send you down here to tell everybody quit sinning. That’s not going to happen. The devil’s world is full of sin. Every man, woman, and child that lives here has a sin nature, and you can’t eradicate it. You just tell them what the word of God said and give them a choice. Give them a choice. So what happens to these Christian casualties or The spiritual wipeouts, I call them. The ones that go for the phony stuff. The ones that never grow up spiritually. Believers who go down the my way highway and fail to learn or execute or apply the protocol plan of God. They allow their sin natures to control them and lead them and dictate to them what they should and shouldn’t do. What happens to these sort of people? Well, they’re carnal. The Bible says they’re carnal. when they are captured by their own arrogance, when they get into carnality. What is carnality? It can be in three stages, temporary, perpetual, or permanent. This is called continual post-salvation sinning. So if you or I, if we fail to follow orders, And we don’t refrain from our oaths and natural control, letting our oaths and nature control us. If we don’t stop that, which is the commander’s intent, then we’re setting ourself up for discipline. What are some of our orders in the Bible? You want to hear them? You might not like them. Here they are. 1 Peter 5.8, be sober, be vigilant. Satan seeks to neutralize and destroy you. 2 Corinthians 2.11, do not let Satan get an advantage over you. Ephesians 4.27, do not give place to the devil. Well, in regards to Satan, there’s your orders right there, those three verses. 1 Peter 5.8, 2 Corinthians 2.11, Ephesians 4.27. What about in regards to the lure of the world? You know, the good times is out there spinning, saying, come on, come on, come on. 1 Corinthians 1.20, the wisdom of this world is foolishness. Romans 12.2, don’t be conformed to this world. 1 John 2.15, do not love this world. What about your flesh? You know, the sin nature inside of you. Well, Galatians 5.17 says the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit wars against the flesh. Romans 13.14 says don’t make any provision for the flesh. Don’t give it the opportunity to take control of your life, in other words. Mark 7.20, that which comes out of the heart of man defiles him. 2 Timothy 2.22, stay away from youthful lust, flee it. And 1 Peter 2.11, abstain from fleshly lust. There are some orders for you right there, several of them. You want to understand God’s will? You want to replicate the life of Christ? Then this is where you start. Post-salvation sins. Once a believer like you or me, if we sin and move into perpetual carnality, we begin a perilous slide down the slope, a slippery slope, I call it, of reversionism. Perpetual carnality, it means we don’t confess our sin. We get out of fellowship and we don’t confess our sin. And, you know, frankly, this could explain what happened to your children, your son or your daughter. This could explain what happened to one of your loved ones who at one time had a close relationship with the Lord, but now, nah, they completely moved away from anything spiritual. It’s when we turn the other way and cannot be distinguished even from the unbeliever. This post-salvation sinning carnality is the act of reverting to the former state, the former habit, the former beliefs, or putting on post-salvation sins and going back to them, like a dog goes back to its own vomit. This person is the believer who reverses his priorities, reverses his attitude, reverses his affections, and begins to love the world instead of loving God. And oftentimes, a person like this is fueled by a change in status in life, maybe through a divorce, maybe through a death, maybe something such as Maybe falling in love, getting married, chasing your partner. And, you know, you want to appease the person that you love and they’re not interested in the Bible. And you want to win them away so you don’t quit studying the Bible. You don’t invite them to church. Nothing could ever distract a growing believer any faster than a hot love affair. God’s not forgotten. Amen. The object of your affection becomes the newfound lover in your life and not God. This now new person doesn’t believe like you do, doesn’t believe in God. You, your ocean nature, so fired up, you’re so hot to trot that you fail to neutralize its activities. You fail to rebound. You fail to confess your sin. You get into a frantic search for happiness and your spiritual life crashes and burns. Yes, you’re still saved. Yes, you’re going to heaven. You may even still go to church, but it’s just ritual without reality and it’s meaningless. This sort of Christian life is a reversionist. He is a series of related failures in his life, and it results in failure to execute the protocol plan of God. He may even get into Christian degeneracy, which can be moral or immoral. Moral degeneracy is a self-righteous person killing someone in the name of God. Immoral degeneracy, well, you know what that is. You don’t need me to explain it. So you must rebound. You must confess your sins quickly. You must stay in the Word of God if you’re going to understand God’s protocol plan. If you don’t, you will be suckered into the world. You will be neutralized by Satan. You’ll regret for the rest of your life. And I get letters every day from people like this. I do. Got one today from someone who said, for years I walked away from the plan of God, and now I realize what an idiot I was. What about you? What are you? What sort of person are you? When did you leave the plan of God, and when will you have enough humility to say, Father, what a rotten goof-off I’ve been? When will you confess your sin? and get in fellowship, start growing, and start to understand the God you know, because I want to tell you this. Listen carefully. You keep playing games with God like you’re doing, you’re going to shorten your life. You’re not going to live a full life. You’re going to shorten it, because you’re going to be under divine discipline, and you’re going to get called home way too soon. So don’t forget that next time you decide to go around the Word of God. Next time you decide to ignore everything you know and go ahead and do what you’ve been doing, just listen for the whistle because a train may be coming for you. I hope you paid attention. I hope you’re listening. And I hope you’ll be back with me next week. Until then, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and I’d like to say thank you so very much for listening to The Floodline.
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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.
