Rick Hughes returns to The Flatline with a powerful message on learning to navigate life’s challenges through faith. Focusing on the metaphorical use of ‘walk’ in the New Testament, he invites listeners to examine their spiritual lifestyle. Through Paul’s works, particularly in his letters to the Colossians, Rick unveils the power of understanding and embracing Christ’s teachings against false doctrines like Gnosticism. Throughout the episode, Rick emphasizes the need for believers to become rooted and built up in their faith. This journey involves taking up teachings from knowledgeable spiritual leaders and embracing the mechanics of the Christian life. Rick
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 Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long, just 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, but all of it will be done without any type of manipulation because we’re not gonna con you, we’re not going to ask you for money, we’re not going to ask you to join up, fess up, give up, nothing like that. But we will ask you to listen up. Listen to me as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if it’s possible, if I can do that, then you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan if you want to do so. It’s really up to you. But within the last few months, we’ve added many new radio stations to our broadcast coverage. Many, like yourself, are hearing the flotline for the first time. FLOT, F-L-O-T, is the name of the radio show, and some people may just change the station due to the content, and others, hopefully, you will be intrigued and stick around. Let me be honest with you up front. I have two simple objectives. My first objective is to give you the truth of the gospel message. So many people, so many individuals believe in God, but they do not know if they’re actually going to heaven when their time on earth comes to an end. There’s tremendous confusion and doubt brought about by failure to teach the scriptures accurately in regards to this message of eternal salvation. Let me tell you, there’s no reason for you to doubt your salvation according to the scriptures. Listen to what John wrote in his first epistle. In 1 John 5.13, this is 1 John 5.13, not the book of John, but 1 John. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. Notice he did not say you may hope you have eternal life. He said you may know that you have eternal life. And what did he say are the conditions in order to know you have eternal life? Answer that question. Well, in 1 John 5, 11 and 12, this is the testimony that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. There it is, in his Son. He who has not the Son has not life, and he who has the Son of God has eternal life. could not be any more simple than that. The question that you have to ask yourself is how do I acquire Jesus Christ? In John 1, 12, but as many as received him, those are the ones that he gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in his name. Believe in his name. Didn’t say join up, fess up, give up. It said believe in his name. The Lord Jesus Christ made it plain in those words that he recorded in John 6, 40, And this is the will of the one that sent me, that everyone who sees the son and believes in him, there it is again, may have everlasting life and I will raise him up the last day. After the resurrection, our Lord ascended into heaven. So rest assured you won’t see him again until his return for the church, which is you and me, the bride of Christ. But the fact still remains. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God? Do you believe he’s the savior of the world by his death, burial, and resurrection on that cross? Here’s what he said in John 6, 47. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life. Could it be any more simple than that? You can spend the rest of your days on earth trying to earn forgiveness for your sins, but it simply will not work. The Apostle Paul said this in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, where he wrote, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast about it. So please consider what I’ve said and believe in Christ’s finished work on that cross and his glorious resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15, three through four, Paul wrote, for I delivered to you, first of all, that which I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Nowhere will you find any requirement to walk down an aisle, to raise your hand, to join up, fess up, or any other religious demand in order to be saved. So I encourage you, I encourage you to tell God in your own words that you believe in Jesus Christ, you believe in his anointed son, you believe he died as your substitute and you would like to receive him as your savior. Why do I encourage you to do that? Because Romans 10, 13 says, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And you can do that right now, my friend. You can do that listening to my voice over this radio show. You can bow your head right now and simply pray a small prayer. Father, I believe Christ died for me and I want to accept him as my savior. That’s all it takes. Your faith, God said it, you believe it. my second objective is to find those of you listening who are hungry to learn from the scripture just what god expects out of you now that you become a member of god’s royal family many years ago i can’t tell you how many years ago probably about 1975 that’s many years ago 50 years ago i was speaking in schools across south georgia I ran into an individual who had received Christ as his Savior but was having a difficult time understanding the Bible. So let me tell you how it all happened because it is rather humorous. It’s the story of meeting my precious friend, Harold Allen. I was in town speaking in schools and I had my bow and arrow with me because at that time I was an archery person. I did a lot of tournament archery. And I saw a sign that said indoor archery range. So I drove over to where the indoor archery range, and it was a sawdust floor, and it had just some old hay bales down at the end of a shooting lane. and I could pay $2 and go down there and shoot all I wanted to at targets and practice. So he watched me shoot for a little while, and he said, well, you’re pretty good. I said, what are you doing in town? You got a tournament? I did not know at the time that he himself was an archer and an extremely great hunter. Well, I didn’t want to tell him that I was there teaching Bible studies. I thought maybe that would turn him off. But I did. I said, well, to tell you the truth, I’m here teaching some Bible studies. He looked at me with a strange look on his face and he said, Bible studies? And I said, yes, sir. He said, just a minute. And Mr. Allen, Mr. Harold Allen, who’s with the Lord today, he walked in the back of that shop, came back up front to the little counter, laid out a wrinkled up piece of paper and said, can you answer any of these questions? And I looked at it and they were all questions about the Bible. And I said, well, which one do you want me to answer? He said, start with the first one. So I did and answered the first, then the second, then the third. And then finally he said, that’s enough. He got on the phone and he called a guy named Woody. He said, Woody, get over here. I think I found him. Come to find out, Harold and Woody had believed in Christ on their own, reading the Bible. But Harold, having a bait shop and selling worms and crickets and minnows and fishing lures and stuff like that, whenever someone would come in that he thought might be a preacher, he would ask him, what does this mean? What does this mean? What does this mean? And nobody could give him a straight answer. The end result was I gave him straight answers just like I’m giving to you today. He called his wife and he said, I’m not gonna be home tonight. I’m going to a Bible study. She was shocked. Carolyn said, what kind of Bible study? He said, I don’t know. The guy answered the questions. That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between me and Harold Allen and his precious wife, Carolyn. And that happened, like I said, about 1975. I call this type of hunger for insight to the Word of God positive volition. This is what I’m searching for as I broadcast my show, The Floodline, across the many radio stations that we air on. Simply put it this way, unless you learn how to live the spiritual life, by the way, I have a new book that’s just coming out and you can get it free of charge by ordering it from our website. It’s called The Christian Spiritual Life. So unless you learn how to live the Christian spiritual life, you will just wind up producing what the Bible calls wood, hay, and stubble as per 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 15. The reason for that is many believers just simply do not understand the God they know. They know him, they know God, but they don’t understand the God they know. They faithfully attend church every Sunday, but they never really get taught the mechanics to the Christian life. That’s what we do on this radio show. We explain the mechanics to the Christian life. So let’s focus on the word walk, W-A-L-K. This word is used extensively in the New Testament as a metaphor for the believer’s lifestyle. So let’s take one passage in Colossians and break it down. Colossians 2, 6 through 7. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Paul the Apostle wrote these words to the church in Colossae during his imprisonment while he was in Rome. See, they had been confronted by some false teachers who came into town trying to recruit them, and these teachers were known to be teachers of a philosophy known as Gnosticism, Gnosticism. This type of teaching assigned to Christ a place subordinate to the true Godhead and undervalued his completeness of his redemptive work. It was an outright attack on the gospel, which Satan’s strategy tried to stop the spread of Christianity. Without Paul’s defense of the gospel in this letter, many would have been led astray. But there’s no doubt believers in Colossae had been saved. Listen to the first words. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. I read that to you. Now listen to the next verse. Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Wow, all right. What did he say? As you have been taught. We received Christ by faith and now we’re established by faith. Rooted and built up in him, established in the faith. There it is again. In other words, we trusted the written word of the scriptures and conformed to what it said in order to be saved, which you did, I trust. And so now the next thing you gotta trust or have faith in is what the Lord Jesus said concerning their future lives. I produced a book last year entitled These Things, These Things. Funny name for a book, I know, but it listed all the major concepts or all the major doctrines that he gave the disciples the very last night he spent with them. It covers John chapter 13 to John 15, 11. Perhaps you should order it and learn what it means to walk in him. Don’t forget the word walk refers to your lifestyle, which is referring to your spiritual life. The new book we got coming out, The Christian Spiritual Life. So there’s two books you can order free of charge, The Christian Spiritual Life and These Things, all from our website, rickhughesministries.org. Go to the website and order them. They’re free, you’ll see, and you can order them right there. Now Paul went on to say in verse seven of this passage in Colossians, they have been rooted and built up in him. Rooted in him is the salvation experience and built up in him is the spiritual growth process. He said you’ve been established in the faith and that refers to the solid sound teaching they have received from Epaphras, their pastor. As you were taught, he said. Notice Paul said they were abounding and overflowing with appreciation. So here’s some principles we can extrapolate out of this short verse. Number one, Epaphras probably had been led to Christ by Paul while he was in the town of Ephesus. And we assume he went back to Colossae and started a local church, teaching what he learned from Paul. In Colossians 4.12, Paul mentions Epaphras again. He said, Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayer so that you may stand perfect and complete in the will of God. So one, Epaphras was probably led to Christ by Paul. Two, Paul’s challenge to them was that they not be recruited by the Gnostics into their false teaching. He had to be very careful about that. And three, every Christian, every believer must be rooted and grounded in the basic essentials of the Christian faith. It’s necessary. Every Christian must be rooted and grounded in the basic essentials of the Christian faith if they hope to glorify Jesus Christ at all with their spiritual lifestyle. Number four, Most important thing for you to grasp is eternal security because that gives you confidence in God’s plan for your life. The second is how to maintain fellowship with God by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit. It’s surprising how many believers don’t understand the difference between their relationship with God and their fellowship with God. Next, the Bible talks about keep walking in Christ. And that requires momentum, spiritually speaking. taking in the word of God on a daily basis, consistently learning and applying what you’ve heard. If you’re in a local church that’s not feeding you spiritual food, you’ll be malnourished and you will never grow to be a spiritually mature believer who represents Jesus Christ in his daily life. You know, the believer must first learn how to stand then how to walk, and eventually how to run in Christ Jesus. There are verses about all of this in the Bible. Would you like to hear them? Here’s one. Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave and be strong. You can’t walk if you can’t stand, can you? And then in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 7, for we walk not by faith, not by sight, but by faith. We walk by faith and not by sight, 2 Corinthians 5, 7. There’s walking. And then we come to running in Galatians 5, 7. You were running so well, who hindered you from obeying the truth? That’s what you have to do. You have to learn how to walk, stand, and run. That’s the objective of my radio show. Hopefully, as we are able to bring these shows to you in the future, you’ll be intrigued and encouraged to learn God’s word and apply it into your life and come to understand what the FLOT line means. FLOT stands for Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T. That refers to 10 unique problem-solving devices found in the scripture, which were originally taught to me by my own pastor many years ago. When you learn these 10 unique problem-solving devices, they will form a main line of resistance in your soul, and they will stop the outside sources of adversity before they’re able to build up momentum and become the inside source of stress. That being said, adversity is inevitable, as you know, but stress is optional, which you may not know. You do not have to have stress in your life. It’s not necessary for you to have stress in your life. You may not realize this, but stress or worry or fear, these things are sin. And the Bible’s clear about that. You cannot operate and glorify God and reproduce the Lord Jesus Christ in your life if you’re full of worry and fear, self-pity. These are all stress indicators. That’s why we teach those 10 unique problem-solving devices. And the very first one we teach, and you’ll hear us refer to it over and over and over again, is the word rebound, R-E-B-O-U-N-D, rebound. That’s a word for confessing your known sins to God. It’s a metaphor which means if you bounce out, you bounce back. You bounce out of fellowship with God when you sin. You bounce back in fellowship with God when you rebound. And rebound is taught in 1 John 1, 9, among many other verses. It says, if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to purify us from all wrongdoing. If is a third-class condition that means maybe you will and maybe you won’t. If we what? If we confess. If we confess our sins. Well, what does it mean to confess your sins? It means to get on your knees and pray and wail and cry and ask God to forgive you? The word confess is a compound verb called homo legeo, actually meaning the same to say. Homo legeo, the same to say. The word confess means to say the same. So if you confess a sin, you admit the sin. God, I just lied. God, I just lusted. God, I just got mad. God, I just lost my temper. God, I just cheated. Whatever the sin is, if you will name it on the spot, God is faithful and just to forgive you. If you don’t name it, you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit and you’re out of fellowship with God. You’re still in the relationship, you’re still God’s child and that hasn’t gone anywhere, but you definitely are not in fellowship because you have quenched the Holy Spirit, you have grieved the Holy Spirit, And you will not be able to live the Christian life successfully until you rebound and get back in fellowship. This is something most Christians have to do every day of their life. If you drive in major cities like Atlanta or Houston or San Antonio or California, you learn how to rebound in traffic because people will do terrible things to you in traffic. I promise you. At least where I live, I’m in the country, so… On the way over to my office today, I did not pass not even one single course. I didn’t have to rebound that. But you’ll have to rebound constantly throughout the day when you find you committed a sin. Hopefully, as you grow spiritually, you’ll get out of committing sin and you’ll grow to maturity. and the sins that now so easily beset you will be gone and you’ll forget about them and you’ll learn how to live the Christian life getting victory over sin because Paul tells you that your sin nature is dead. You don’t have to let it control you anymore. You have a choice and that choice is you can live by the means of the Holy Spirit or you can just go back and let the old sin nature control your life. But if you rebound when you sin, you stop the old sin nature from having any control. If you rebound when you sin, you’ll put the Holy Spirit back in control. And that’s problem-solving device number one, rebound. Tells you how to be spiritual. Not mature, but spiritual. If you’re in fellowship, you’re spiritual. but you’re not necessarily mature. I’ve said it before, Billy Graham cannot be any more spiritual than you. If he was filled with the Spirit and you’re filled with the Spirit, you’re both spiritual. But he may be more mature than you if he’s got the content of the Word of God in his soul that you don’t have. So maturity is based on the content of the Word of God in your soul And spirituality is based on the filling of the Holy Spirit. I hope you understand that. I hope you’ll hang with me because the second problem-solving device is the filling of the Holy Spirit. That solves the problem of our genetically formed sin nature. Because the Bible tells us, for by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and now death is passed on all, for all have sinned, and all have come short of the glory of God. You do not have to let your sin nature control your life, as I said. You can allow the Holy Spirit to control your life. That’s why Galatians says, the flesh wars against the spirit, the spirit wars against the flesh. These are contrary one to the other so that we don’t do the things we should. And then it goes on to say, if we’ll walk in fellowship, we won’t have to be allowing the old sin nature to control our life. So don’t forget, you’re gonna have this battle every day of your life. There’s never a day gonna go by that the sin nature’s not gonna raise its ugly head and try to take control of your thoughts, try to get you to worry, try to get you to be afraid, try to get you to be angry, try to get you to lust, try to get you to whatever. That’s up to you. But when you find that you’ve failed, when you find you’ve committed a sin, don’t hide it. And don’t wait until you go to bed at night. That’s silly. Don’t say, well, okay, I’m at 10 o’clock at night. Now let me look back and, oh yeah, I sinned at eight o’clock this morning or nine o’clock this morning. All that means is you’ve been out of fellowship with God all day long, under control of your sin nature all day long. And now before you go to bed, you want to get back in fellowship, sleep in fellowship. That’s ridiculous. When you sin, confess the sin on the spot immediately. And 1 John 1.9 says he’ll be faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. You’re going to say, I can’t remember every sin. No, neither can I. But even the ones we don’t remember, when we name the ones we’re aware of, he cleanses us from the others as well. That’s what that verse says, cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God doesn’t have to worry about that. He knows what you did. He loves you. He cares for you. He gave you his Holy Spirit. He gives you the Bible, the Word. He gives you the instruction on how to live the Christian life. So it’s really up to you. That’s what this radio show is about. It’s about plugging you in to what the Christian life is all about and hopefully helping you find a well-qualified pastor in your town. Some of the cities that this show plays in, I know there are great pastors in those towns. And if you don’t know where a good pastor is, if you’ll contact me through our website, rickhughesministries.org, you can email us from there. And if you want to order the books, you can go there and order the books as well, rickhughesministries.org. If you have a question about where there’s a good pastor, we’ll try to help you find a great qualified pastor. especially if it’s one that I know about close to you. Okay? And there’s so many things that we’re going to talk about on this radio show. Hopefully, this is just the beginning. Hopefully, you’ll come back next week at the same time, same station, same place, and listen, because next week we’re going to talk about something entirely different. We’re going to talk about why words matter. Why words matter. I love being with you on the radio show. We’ve just completed 20 years of the Flatline. 20 years of doing this. Maybe God will give us a few more years, I hope. And I hope that for your sake, not for my sake, but for your sake, so that this will be like a window or a door open to you that gives you some information and some answers that you need. I hope to inspire you. I hope to challenge you. And I hope to see you respond and glorify God to the maximum in your life. What a great privilege I have to be able to do this. It’s all by grace. Some people ask me, how do you afford this? We just trust God to pay for it. That’s how we afford it. They don’t give us the time free. We have to purchase the time. And so my associates and I just believe that God’s in it. God will pay for it. So we launch out by faith. Right now, by faith, we’re broadcasting in 126 stations. across this country.
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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.
