SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I am your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, I’d like to invite you to stick around. It’s a short show, just about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and no manipulation. No con games, no asking for money, no soliciting support, no asking you to join anything. Only thing I would like to ask you to do is to concentrate and listen to the things that I have to say. because if I can verify and identify the plan of God for you, you’ll have the opportunity to orient and adjust to the plan, and that’s all up to you. But that’s all this show is about, giving you accurate information, not some sort of human speculation, because we take our information from the Word of God, the Bible. where it said, it’s alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword. And it does indeed cut into our souls when we hear it and read it and understand it. But concentration is always the key to learning anything. And I’d like to speak about that just for a minute before we get started because we’re in a rather lengthy subject. This is the third Sunday we’ve covered the armor of God in Ephesians chapter six, and it requires some concentration. It’s apparent people cannot understand the Word of God unless they concentrate, and they should be capable of concentrating. When I became a Christian, my concentration span was not very long, maybe 15 minutes at the most. But after getting under the ministry of a great pastor and beginning to study and learn and take notes, I got to where I could pay attention and concentrate for an hour without my mind wondering. If you can’t concentrate, you can’t learn. And you can’t understand the word of God. And that’s the critical issue. God said, I’m looking for people that know me and understand me. How can you understand God if you can’t concentrate long enough to learn about him? Any child that has an attention deficit disorder has a hard time concentrating. on a single subject. Now they give medicine for that, I guess, something called Ritalin, but they didn’t used to do that. When I was in school, the teacher would just say, you’re my favorite student, come sit up here by me. Right, so she could get you to concentrate. Many believers, Lord Jesus Christ believers, have the same inability to focus, the same inability to not be able to concentrate for long periods of time. But it is possible for you to do that. It is possible for you to train your mind to concentrate. The best way to do it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit because it’s his job to help you recall information. And so problem-solving device number one is rebound. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us. That’s how it takes place. And then not to have any scar tissue. When you’ve got scar tissue, as Ephesians 4 talks about, you black out your soul. You have the inability to see what you really are. If you have the inability to see what you really are, you have the inability to concentrate on truth. And so if you’re free of scar tissue and you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, then your mind can concentrate and lock in on a subject. However, most minds prefer to be entertained. Thus, we have movies, electronic games, where we don’t have to think. The actors or the images do all the thinking for us. But unfortunately, if you’re going to learn God’s word, you must concentrate, which means you must get rid of all distractions. You can’t be sitting in a room where there’s a lot of people talking, doing something else, and you trying to learn something. It wouldn’t work that way. And listening on the radio as you’re doing now is great if you’re not driving down the road paying attention to something else because you won’t retain very much of it at all. And that’s the key to retain what you hear. If you can’t concentrate, you can’t comprehend. If you can’t comprehend, you can’t retain what you hear. So concentration and comprehension go hand in hand together. So are you with me on that? Let’s try to concentrate, try to comprehend this information. The armor of God is listed in Ephesians 6, 14 through 17. The reason we have the armor of God is Paul said we’re at war and there’s an unseen army that battles you. It has rank and file and members that Satan has gotten with him. They are fallen angels, came out of heaven with him. The Bible tells us a third of the host of the angels fell from heaven along with Satan, believing that he could replace God, and that didn’t work too good. And so Paul said with this unseen angelic conflict going on, you must prepare yourself and you must put on your armor. This means that he expects you possess it already, but you’re not wearing it. So pick it up and put it on and stand shoulder to shoulder with other mature believers. Shoulder to shoulder, we call that, and shield to shield. That was an old Spartan tactic. Shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield. So listen as Paul says in Ephesians 6, 14 through 17 about the armor. Stand, therefore, having belted, stand, not lay on your back, not be a Christian casualty, not be wounded on the battlefield. Stand, stand, stand your ground, hold your place. Having belted your waist with truth and then having put on the breastplate of righteousness, Verse 15, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace. Verse 16, in addition to all of this, taking up the shield of faith with which you shall be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Verse 17, and take the heaven of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. What you have here in this picture, in this passage is a military analogy of a Roman soldier and his battle array. And Paul is using this to liken believers doing battle with satanic forces. And I want you to notice that each piece of that armor that he talks about is actually something you think, something that you comprehend in your mind, and this means you concentrated and learned it, because you can’t comprehend if you can’t concentrate. So if you have learned the Word of God under a well-qualified pastor by sitting and taking notes and concentrating and then comprehending what’s being taught and by faith believing it and applying it into your life, you have a uniform. It’s time to put it on. It’s time to put on the uniform of God. This is where you live the Christian life. It’s in your soul, and it’s in the mentality of your soul. And it’s the mentality of your soul that must learn and use the Word of God if you hope to succeed in the Christian life. And that’s you simply having an impact in the devil’s world, not being some sort of battlefield casualty, some believer that’s wounded, scarred up, defeated, completely ineffective as a witness for God. That’s not what God wants. God wants you to stand firm and be a faithful follower and faithful witness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ said he wanted you to be the salt of the earth and the light to the world in Matthew. So this verse starts off with a mandate in the verb stand, stand. This verb is an aorist active imperative in the morphology of the Greek language. And the word is histome, histome. Now we use an English word, anhystomy, anti-hystomy, to stand against the runny noses and the allergies, but this is stand, hystomy. The imperative mood means this is a command. This is not Paul saying, come on boys, now let’s behave and let’s do the right thing. Y’all get together now and everybody do it right. No, this is like a military drill sergeant saying, tension, stand up, face me, forward march, stand. That’s what he’s telling you. Stand, you’ve got to understand that. Stand means to hold your place, to be immovable, to have a steadfast mind. This is where you win the battle in what you think. Because if you don’t know what to think, you don’t know how to operate. And if you don’t know how to operate, you’re going to be a victim of circumstances. You’ll be maligned and tricked, and next thing you know, you’ll be a casualty. There’s only one way you can accomplish this. and that is to have a solid spiritual foundation based on the scripture you’ve learned and metabolized in your soul. You cannot stand if you haven’t learned and metabolized the word of God. And the only way Satan and his forces can knock you off your feet cause you to stumble with doubt or fear, or simply lure you into arrogance, causing you to buy some sort of false narrative like organized religion offers. You know, spirituality by works. You’d be a good Christian if you don’t smoke. You’d be a good Christian if you don’t drink. You’d be a good Christian if you don’t say bad words. There may be some things good Christians certainly do, but that’s not what makes you a good Christian. What makes you a good Christian is you grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You stay filled with the Holy Spirit. You’re consistently faithful to God’s Word. And if you follow Paul’s instruction, you must put on the belt of truth around your waist. The first article is truth. We must learn what Jesus said in John 14, 6. I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. And no man can come to the Father but by me. Everything that Jesus Christ spoke when he was on this earth was truth. He was undiminished deity and true humanity in one body forever. He’s in heaven now in a resurrection body. And he is the essence of truth. Jesus Christ is the essence of truth. And what we have in the Word of God recorded in the New Testament is called the mind of Christ. He thought truth. He lived truth. Why is that important to you? Because John 8, 32 said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Truth breaks the chains of addiction. Truth breaks the chains of bondage in your life. Truth breaks the chains of arrogance that cause you to not see yourself as you really are because truth from the word of God as spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ is a reflective mirror into the components of your soul. That’s why the Bible says 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 thoughts and intents of the heart. That’s what truth does. This Greek word truth, aletheia, aletheia is a word direct reference to the authenticity of God’s word. Satan’s objective always is to exchange the truth of God’s word for a lie and thus deceive the world into thinking that what he is projecting is truth, not what God is projecting. Listen to Romans 1.25. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and they worshiped and served the creature rather than a creator who was blessed forever. Amen. This was a horrible practice of the phallic cult, a horrible practice of worship of Baal, where men loved men and women loved women. And they exchanged the truth of God where it said not to be right. And they said, oh, it’s really okay. And that’s kind of what we’ve done today. Everything that used to be evil is now okay. And everything that used to be okay is now evil, called judgmental. You better believe, God, it’s going to be judgmental. You better believe the Supreme Court of Heaven is open 24 hours a day. Nobody gets away with anything. So Satan’s lie, and we see it today in a progressive society such as ours, is called evil. And it is the perversion of any truth. And that lie called evil is destroying America today and causing many people to reject the truth, which is the gospel message. And by rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ, they’re putting themselves in danger of eternal damnation. You must listen and must be careful about this. We must strap the truth of God’s word around our waist. And the reason is the belt, all these other articles attached to the belt. That’s what the belt was worn for, it was an anchor for the other articles. The other articles of protection can be securely attached to the truth. You must know the truth and the truth will set you free, John 8 32. So let me ask you some questions. What is the truth about salvation? Salvation. Yes, that’s right. Are you saved? Do you know for a fact that you’re going to heaven? Some people say there’s no way you can know that for a fact. However, the Bible says these things are written that you might know that you have eternal life. He that has life, he that has a son has life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. Yes, you can know it. The truth is Jesus said you can know it. He that believeth in me shall not perish but have everlasting life. That’s the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan would cause you to doubt that. The evil would cause you to say, if I try my best to do good and I don’t do bad things, maybe God will let me come into heaven. And that’s not true. No one gets into heaven. God’s righteousness can never be compromised. And your righteousness is not enough. where the Bible says, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did I not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out devils and in your name do many wonderful things? He said, I will tell them I never knew you. If you don’t live by the truth, you will not be recognized by the truth. So remember that. Excuse me. Satan’s lie is called evil, and it’s the perversion of truth, and it’s destroying America today and causing many people to reject the gospel message. We must strap on the truth of the Word of God in our soul. How do we do this? What are the mechanics? Study, grow, learn, or you’re going to be a casualty on the battlefield of life. It’s just that simple. Study, grow, learn. Well, where do I get that? Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman if needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. That’s a Bible verse. Grow in the grace and the knowledge and the wisdom of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s a Bible verse. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. That’s a Bible verse from the Lord Jesus Christ. How do we do it? Study, grow, learn. Or we’re going to be a casualty on the battlefield of life. The way that you stand firm, your spiritual strength is in the mentality of your soul, in your mind. And if it’s in your mind, the only way it gets there is through understanding. And the only way you can understand is to comprehend. And the only way you can comprehend is to concentrate. So if you’ve concentrated and if you’ve comprehended the Word of God as taught to you by a well-qualified pastor, and you have by faith applied it into your life, it’s called wisdom, biblical wisdom. And this is what must be acquired if you hope to have any insight or any discernment into Satan’s scheme towards you. Wisdom gives you insight and discernment. Do you have that? Are you able to pick out the phony and the false narrative from the truth? Because the false narrative is floating around America a lot today. What is the false narrative and what is the truth? Now, I’m not talking political. I can talk about that, but I’m not a politician. I’m not running for office. I’m an evangelist and I’m talking to you about your salvation and your relationship with God through Jesus Christ. You must hear the truth, and the truth is what Jesus told Nicodemus. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. You need to be born again, Nicodemus. And Nicodemus was shocked. How is that possible? How could a person go back into his mother’s womb and be born again? And the Lord Jesus Christ explained, it’s not a physical birth. It’s a spiritual birth. Without a spiritual birth, you will not go to heaven. You’re either going to be born twice or die twice. It’s that simple. The first birth is your physical birth when you were born into this world, and the second birth is your spiritual birth when your dead human spirit is born again by faith alone in Christ alone. Your first death, it’s pointed at a man who wants to die, and after that, the judgment. And the second death is found in Revelation 20. 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, the Bible says. So you’re either gonna be born twice or you’re gonna die twice. That’s the truth. Now you attach to the belt of truth the breastplate of righteousness covering your vital organs, your breastplate of righteousness. This is a reference to two things. Number one, the imputed righteousness of Christ given to you and I. The Bible says he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God through him. The only way you can acquire equal righteousness with God is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ because the Bible clearly says there are none that are righteous, no, not one. All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. So the best thing you could do the most noble thing you could do, it’s still like a cow patty in front of God’s eyes. The only righteousness God can accept is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. When you come and believe in Christ, he gives you his righteousness. He took your sin on the cross. He paid for your sin. Your sin’s not an issue now. The issue now is, will you believe that? Will you accept that fact? And if you do, then you’re on the same page with God. You have equal righteousness, not because you earned it, not because you generated it on your own, but because Christ gave you his righteousness. So 1 Corinthians 5, 21, he made him who knew no sin to be sent on our behalf. so that we might become the righteousness of God by means of him. That’s imputed righteousness, and that gives us equal standing with Jesus Christ in our position. Maybe not in our experience, but I mean our position and our experience are two different things. In my position, I’m eternally saved. In my position, I have the righteousness of Christ. But in my experience, I still have a sin nature. That’s why Paul said in Romans 7, I don’t understand myself at all because I want to do what’s right and I keep doing what’s wrong. It’s sin in me. Yes, we have sin-indwelled nature. Nobody set you down and taught you how to lie. Nobody set you down and taught you how to be jealous. You didn’t learn these things. It’s inherent in you. And so even though you’re a Christian, you still have a sin nature. That’s why the Bible tells you the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit wars against the flesh. They’re both contrary to each other. They both want to control your thoughts. God, the Holy Spirit, wants to direct your thoughts towards the mind of Christ. And the old man or the sin nature wants to direct your thoughts towards the world, the flesh, or the devil, thinking that those are where happiness is. So this imputed righteousness is your equal standing, equal standing with Christ in your position, but maybe not in your experience. Wearing this protective piece of armor stops Satan from causing you to doubt your salvation. Remember, you can’t earn God’s forgiveness. It’s a free gift, as Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 says, given because, John 3, 16, God loves you. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. God loves you. I don’t care what kind of jerk you are. God loves you. He loves you in eternity past, and he loves you now. Question is, do you love him? Some people say, yeah, I love God. Yes, I do. 1 John 5, 3 says, if you love me, you will obey me, and my mandates are not hard. That’s salvation. God the Holy Spirit enters us in a union with Christ, and we now share his righteousness, and that’s our wall of fire. That’s our protection. That’s the lesser blessing and divine protection carrying us during lag time between the time we get saved and the time we start to learn God’s Word and apply it into our life. So if we’re going to be blessed with greater blessing in our post-salvation experience, we have to have a righteousness which comes from the spiritual life. And this righteousness is your capacity righteousness. It’s attained by the filling of the Holy Spirit plus the application of the word of God into your soul. And when you do that, you receive the greater blessings of spiritual maturity. That’s what God’s waiting to do. He’s waiting to pour out his blessing on you, but he’s looking for you to have the capacity of righteousness to receive it. He wants you to have the capacity to appreciate and enjoy the blessings that he’s giving to you. 1 Peter 2.24, and he himself bore our sins on his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. There it is. For by his wounds we’re healed. Live to righteousness. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. Next comes the footwear, and I’m not talking about Nike. I’m talking about something else. Ephesians 6.15, having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace. True peace comes through Christ, since it’s actually peace with God. Therefore, the Bible clearly says, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, Romans 5.1. After I received Christ as my Savior, I went back to my apartment that night and laid in my bed. And in my mind, in my thoughts, the spotlight of sin was out. The spotlight wasn’t going around anymore, showing me the horrible, wretched things I had done. There was no spotlight. I had peace with God. And I slept great that night, knowing that I had been saved and my sins had been forgiven. It’s a wonderful thought. Peace with God. And the footwear that I’m talking about, strap on your feet to preparation of the gospel of peace. True peace comes through Jesus Christ since it’s his peace we’re talking about. Listen to Romans 5, 1 again. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the Bible says in Isaiah 48, 22, there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord. Those who are caught up in the schemes of Satan cannot have peace. They’re looking for something that’s not true, like a mirage in a desert. It’s not really there, but this is what Satan’s good at, putting up an illusion, getting you to chase the illusion, thinking that people or circumstances will make you happy, and it will not. Our mission is to reveal the finished work of Christ on the cross and how that brought peace between God and man. Listen to Colossians 1.20, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether things on earth, things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of the cross. Explaining the way of salvation requires us to know the scripture and how to accurately present the plan of God. So once again, This is something we must have learned, something that we must have in our mentality, something you must concentrate on and comprehend till you can make the application. It has to be learned. If you don’t learn it, you can’t know it. The next is the piece of the armor is called the shield of faith. And this is a direct reference to problem solving device number three, the faith rest drill. That’s a problem solving device, faith rest drill, standing on the promises of God. And this goes back to the promises you’ve learned or you can access quickly. It’s simply a matter of how you think, that you’re not doubting, you’re not afraid, that you have confidence and you have courage based on God’s promises found throughout the Scripture. So how many of them do you know? How many of them can you quote? We have a book of promises we’ll be glad to send you free. It’s about like a little phone book. And it’s yours if you want it. Just write to us. But there’s hundreds of promises in there. and they’re all for different situations. You can compare them, promises when you’re suffering, promises when you’re in adversity. It’s free, order it if you want to. Learn some of these promises, believe them, apply them into your life, claim them, live by them, and you won’t be controlled with fear and doubt. You will have confidence and courage based on God’s promises found in the scripture because these promises shield your thoughts from being captured by Satan’s illusion and you being deceived by his attacks. Those attacks come like fiery missiles, a continuous barrage, all designed to distract you and get you preoccupied with self, causing you to have self-pity. The last two armaments mentioned are the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. We’re going to have to come back and cover that next week. Are you listening and are you learning? Are you concentrating? Remember, this message is available with transcription if you need it. All you have to do is shoot us a note on our website, rickhughesministries.org. We’ll get you the transliteration so you can read it if you’d like. And you can listen to it on our website as well. The Flotline is always played through the Rick Hughes Evangelistic Ministries website and on our podcast on Spotify, Apple iPod, simply The Flotline. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you so much for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:19

Thank you for listening to The Flatline 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.