In this thought-provoking episode, Rick Hughes addresses the importance of growing in spiritual wisdom and integrity. Learn about God’s divine policy for a righteous lifestyle through the comprehensive lessons of the Bible, and arm yourself with the full Armor of God to stand firm against spiritual adversities. Discovering these insights may transform the way you practice your faith.
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 wherever you might be today out of the 67 cities we’re broadcasting in from Hawaii to Alaska to Puerto Rico all across the U.S. Thank you for being here. It’s a great honor for me The host of the Flatline, Rick Hughes, to bring you this information. Today, I want to remind you of several things before we jump into the subject I’ve chosen to speak to you about. Let me remind you that these radio broadcasts are heard every Sunday morning, same time, same place, and we’re renewing contracts now. And hopefully we’ll be able to add some additional cities in the very near future. We’d like to be broadcasting in eventually 100 cities across this great nation if possible. We also have all of these shows available on our podcast venue through Spotify or Apple iPod or any of your podcast venues that you listen to. You can go there and type in The Flotline, F-L-O-T. Search for that and then you can listen to The Flotline shows wherever you might be on podcasts. And you can also get the transcriptions with the radio shows as well. And we do offer those transcripts of the radio shows. So if you hear something you’d like to study further, let us know and we’ll send you the transcription of the show. We have books that we printed that are available, always free of charge. Everything we do is free of charge. You’ll never hear us asking for any money. because we know if God’s in it, he’ll pay for it so we don’t have to run around trying to peddle up money. So these books are available from Life’s Toughest Years about being a teenager, A Divine Pardon for Those That Are Incarcerated, Understanding Your Soul, Practicing Your Christianity, Christian Problem-Solving Workbook that deals with the 10 problem-solving devices. So you can order all of these things online freely through rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. So please come check us out. Go to the website and drop us a note. Let us hear from you. If the show means something to you, if you enjoy listening and you’d like for us to stay on in your area, drop us a note so we’ll know when we time to come to renew the contracts that at least somebody’s listening today. in your city because we don’t have any magical way of understanding who’s listening we depend on you and for you to let us know if its show means something to you alright it’s the FLOT line F L O T forward line of troops dealing with a military analogy about learning God’s ten problem-solving devices and using them in your soul so that you can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress We cannot prevent stress, I mean adversity, but we can prevent stress because adversity is what those circumstances do to you and stress is what you will do to yourself. So it’s inevitable we’re going to have adversity, but not stress. using those 10 problem solving devices that’s why the christian life is such a unique life because you don’t ever have to worry you don’t ever have to be afraid you don’t ever have to hold any bitterness and animosity or grudge towards anyone you can live the most wonderful stress-free guilt-free life in the world and that’s the christian life today i’d like to talk to you about a message that i call the divine Desideratum, the divine desideratum. That’s a Latin word, D-E-S-I-D-E-R-A-T-U-M, desideratum. That’s a Latin noun, which means the divine design or what is essential or what is necessary. This deals with the Christian life, the divine desideratum. Listen as I read to you Hosea 14, verse nine. Very interesting verse, right towards the end of the book of Hosea. Whoever is wise, let him understand these things. Two key words. Whoever is wise, let him understand. There’s a key word, these things. And whoever is discerning, key word, discerning, let him know these things. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but wrongdoers will stumble in them. Three things the wise and the discerning will learn from this passage. The ways of the Lord are always right or correct, and the righteous, whatever those are, the righteous will walk in them. And the rebellious, those with negative volition, will stumble over them, which means to self-destruct. So whoever’s wise, let him understand these things I’m about to bring to you. Whoever’s discerning, let him know them. That means to have insight, to have capability of seeing through the fog. And the righteous will walk in them. Who are the righteous? We’re going to talk about that. What does it mean to be a righteous person? And what does it refer to when it says whoever is wise? And you might remember the believer’s wisdom. If you have wisdom in your soul, if we have enough believers in this country that have some wisdom that can avoid judgment in this nation, that’s what it takes to precede a national restoration to bring us back to where we need to be. which is a client nation glorifying God, exalting and lifting up the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Proverbs 13, 10, talking about whoever is wise, listen carefully, he that walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of a fool will be destroyed. I would be very careful who I identified myself with, especially if I was a politician. If you identify with a stupid, foolish politician, then this verse says you’ll be destroyed. And this is always something that you can see happening in history, looking at people that identified with foolish politicians and how it destroyed their lives. But it doesn’t have to be a politician. It can be a friend, a foolish friend, a fool. What is a fool? Well, Proverbs 3, 7, don’t be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and depart from evil. And in Proverbs 3.35, the wise will inherit glory, but shame will be the promotion of a fool. The fool is the one with negative volition who thinks he’s wiser than God, who thinks he’s smarter than God, who thinks he knows what’s best for everybody. And that’s what politicians have a tendency to do. They think they’re right and the rest of the world is wrong, and they can tell you how you should live your life. So what are the things he’s trying to tell us here in Hosea 14, 9? Whoever’s wise, let him understand these things. What’s that mean? And what does it mean whoever’s discerning? And what does it mean when it says we are commanded to learn these things and we are commanded to walk in these things? What’s all that referring to? And that is obviously, as I’m calling you, the divine desideratum. This is what God would have for you to understand. And what does it actually mean when it says wrongdoers will stumble in them? It means they can’t handle them. So these things refers to God’s policy and God’s procedure. See, we live in what’s called the time continuum. And we take our orders from the eternal side of the continuum. It’s going on. You can’t see it. You will eventually one day when you die, you’ll switch sides. You’ll move from the time continuum into the eternal continuum. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, it’s quite a move, I can assure you. No more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears. The old things will be passed away. But if you’re an unbeliever, It’s not a very good thing because you’ll be condemned to the lake of fire. So we live in the time continuum. We’re alive. We’re here on this earth. We’re taking our orders from the eternal continuum, which means it coming straight from God through his word written by the apostles, the prophets, and various people that helped put together the scriptures. So to make this clear, there is a difference between the time continuum and and the eternal continuum. Let me show you the difference in 2 Corinthians 4, 18. While we look not at the things which are seen, that’s the time continuum, but at the things which are not seen, that’s the eternal continuum. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Did you get the difference? You see it there? Things that are seen, things that are not seen. As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you and I currently operate in the time continuum. And in this continuum, there is a divine desiratum for us. We have to understand what God’s protocol plan boils down to. We have to understand what it means by following his policy and understanding his procedures. It’s critical that you and I understand the God we worship, or else we wind up doing right things, but essentially we do them in the wrong way. So according again to Hosea 14, 9, whoever’s wise, let him understand these things. Two key words, whoever’s wise, whoever is wise, and whoever will understand. Both are Hebrew words. And here are the meanings and the translations. The word wise is the Hebrew word kakam, kakam. And it’s a descriptive adjective meaning whoever’s skillful, whoever’s prudent, whoever’s intelligent, whoever’s capable of determining. And then we have the word understand, the Hebrew word bean, and it means to comprehend or discern or to have discernment. So here’s what Hosea wrote. Whoever’s intelligent, let him comprehend the ways of the Lord. And then it’s repeated, whoever is discerning, let him know them. This is the individual solution to the corporate problem of a nation such as the United States of America. Hosea, the prophet, identified Assyria as the coming judgment on the rebellious Jews of the northern kingdom of Israel. They had become involved with worshiping Canaanite deities. And much like America today, Israel turned her back on God. She had turned to Baal worship and sacrificed to pagan gods as well as associating with the sacred prostitutes at the sanctuaries and began to worship calf images at Samaria. In spite of those sins, as the book of Hosea illustrated, God still had compassion on them and God still loved them. And in spite of our direction towards the evil of humanism, the evil of socialism, and the sacrifice of freedom for some sort of security, God still loves this client nation called the United States of America. In spite of our immorality, in spite of our criminality, God still loves us. But who is wise and who is discerning in this land? If you’ll listen closely to what God expects from you, you’ll come to understand this. Because, as Hosea 14, 9 said, the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them. The ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them. There’s a commentary called Benson, and Benson makes a comment on these things. He says this, Let me see if I can fold this piece of paper over so it doesn’t get stuck. There you go. The ways of the Lord are both the ways which he himself takes, that’s God, in his moral government of the world, and the ways of godliness which he prescribes to man to follow. So these two things taken together, the ways of God, how he governs, and the ways of man, what he’s expected to follow, they are to be right or straight so the truly righteous person will conform to the will of god both in his precepts according to benson and in his providences and shall have the comfort of so doing and they shall well understand the mind of god both in his word and in his works and they shall be reconciled to both and shall accommodate themselves to god’s intention in both So the righteous shall walk in those ways towards their great end and shall not come short of it, end of quote from Vincent Commentary. So what’s he talking about, the precepts and the providences of God? Well, precepts means a general rule intended to regulate the behavior and thought of an individual, and the providences are the meaning of the protective care of God. So these two concepts, when you put them together, It means this is what God expects from you. He expects you to understand his divine policy, and he expects you to follow precisely correct procedure. So let’s start with his divine policy. Let’s start there. It starts in your soul, inside of you. Remember, you have a soul, the invisible, immortal part of you, and that soul has mentality, it has volition, It has consciousness, it has self-consciousness. That’s your soul. And when your body gives up and goes away and dies, your soul and your spirit, if you’re born again, you have an alive human spirit, it’s gonna go to heaven. and your body’s gonna go to the grave and you’re gonna get a new body, a resurrection body. So the soul is the battlefield inside of you. It’s the battlefield of rational thought versus irrational emotions. As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, You must live by what you think, not by what you feel, because the body is a temporary home of the immortal soul, and it’s only the soul that is saved for eternal life, not the body. The body has to be destroyed because it’s got a sin-infused body. You have the Adam’s original sin infecting your human body, and it’s not going to operate in eternity. So we have to get rid of that and get a new body, a body like Christ, the body of corruption. The body we live in now is contaminated. That’s got to be destroyed and the new body issued. Why? To house your soul throughout eternity. Do you know what this means to you? Think about this now. You’re going to carry your thoughts with you into eternity. Those things that you learn now that are stored in the consciousness of your soul, you will take into eternity with you. And you will learn so much more once you get there, I assure you of that. Mark has something to say about the soul in Mark 8, 36. What shall there profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? It’s talking about being saved. I mean, what good does it do you if you’re a multi-zillion billionaire and you die and go to the lake of fire? And what would you give in exchange to keep from going there? Everything. The Apostle Paul expressed God’s divine policy about these things, about you. how you’re to live your life in the body of corruption and how you should do it. What’s the divine policy of God for you and for me today? Listen to Philippians 1, 27 and 28. Here it is. Only conduct yourself, that’s our lifestyle, in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Paul said, so that whether I come and see you or if I remain absent, at least I’ll hear about you, that you are standing firm. That means you’re not retreating. You’re in one spirit. That means you’re empowered by the same goal with one mind. That’s the mind of Christ, not human viewpoint thinking, but divine viewpoint thinking. striving together that’s unit integrity shoulder to shoulder shield to shield believers standing together why for the faith of the gospel and in no way being alarmed by your opponents and that’s our enemy aka the devil so again i read it listen this is god’s express policy For us, this is his divine policy and how we’re to live our life. Conduct our lifestyle in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come to see you or I remain absent, I will hear about you and that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel and in no way alarmed by your opponent. If you’re listening to me today, this is the same viewpoint you should have and I should have. We should stand shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield with unit integrity. You and I should be on the same page, not retreating, not being afraid, and being empowered by the same goal, which is to glorify Jesus Christ and to represent him to those in our community. So God’s policy demands that we live a certain lifestyle. That’s his divine policy. And that comes from this passage that we’re studying in Hosea 14. There’s a divine policy that we’re to live by. Billy Graham, the famous evangelist, once said this, the Bible teaches that the Christian life is one of constant growth. When you were born again, you were born into God’s family. And it is God’s purpose that you grow into a full stature and become mature in Christ. It would be against the laws of God and against nature if you were to remain a baby and thus become stunted in your growth. So in 2 Peter 3.18, Billy Graham quotes, the Bible says we’re to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That implies steady development, constant enlargement, increasing wisdom, That’s what this show is about, to open a door so you can see this, to give you a breath of fresh air as opposed to traditional Christianity that’s a lot of ritual with no reality to it. God’s policy is for you and me to grow up. We do that in a local church under the authority of a well-qualified pastor. And I can’t tell you how many people write to me and say, I wish I knew where one of those was. Well, it may be true there’s not a well-qualified pastor in your community, but they are available. I have a lot of friends that are great, wonderful men of God that have been in their pulpit for years teaching the Bible, and everything they teach is offered free of charge. And you can access it in this instant age of communication through the Internet or through books, DVDs, MP3s. If you want it, you can take a cup of coffee and your Bible and a notebook and sit at your kitchen table and study God’s Word every day until God reveals to you where there is that sort of church in your community. Or sometimes, I have actually known people that picked up and moved to where there is good, qualified, face-to-face Bible teaching. And they’ve been well worth it. They’ve made that move on purpose so that their children and their spouse can get good, solid, sound Bible teaching. So this growth that Dr. Graham talked about The growth that’s being expressed in Hosea 14, being wise, is going to require some effort, not just ritual without reality. And that means the local church is a classroom for spiritual growth. But listen to a simple question. How can you worship God if you don’t understand him? Can I ask you that again? Listen, listen. How can you worship God if you don’t understand him? See, that’s what he said. I’m looking for those who know me and understand me in Jeremiah 9. It’s there. For example, let me just give you a little small test just for a minute about understanding God. If I told you that God was outside your front door right now that he’s standing outside your front door, would you rush out to meet him? If I said, you might not believe this, but God is out on your porch, he’s out on your front doorstep, would you throw everything down and go run to meet God? Listen to what the Bible says, Exodus 33, 20. And God said to Moses, you cannot see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. What? No man can see me and live. Let me shut the door. You might not be in such a hurry to meet God face to face if you understood that verse because the true glory and the brilliance and the holiness of God would be so much that we would not be able to survive it in this human body. So that may show you right there you might not quite understand the God you know. So God’s policy is for us, those of us that are in the time compendium, to grow spiritually by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit and for us to assume the mind of Christ so that we can represent him to those that we encounter along the way. Thus, what we do is we become divinely appointed influencers within the angelic conflict. And that mission is not going to be easy. and I challenge you about that. It will not be easy due to satanic opposition because of this. Listen, we have a divine mandate in the scripture to arm ourselves with the uniform of grace, the grace assets found in 2 Corinthians 10, verse 4. It says, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. And our uniform is described in detail in Ephesians 6, 11 through 17. It starts off with the word put on, the aorist middle imperative, and that is a commandment from God. The aorist tense is a constant of aorist, and there is a time you’re not to put it on. Put on the full armor of God. You’re required to do this. You’re mandated to do this. Why? So that you will be able to stand firm against the strategy of the devil. For our struggle, Ephesians 6, 12, is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and the powers and against the forces of darkness and against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. therefore or because of this take up the full armor of god so that or for this purpose you’ll be able to resist him on the evil day and having done everything keep standing firm stand firm therefore having belted your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace, and 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, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Wow. Wow. Wow. Philippians 1.9, not having my own righteousness, but the righteousness of God. wow we need instructions in righteousness and we’re going to see that here shortly but go back to this ephesians passage again before we wrap it up today put on the full armor of god god has made it available to you these are your invisible divine assets known as god’s problem-solving devices this is the plot line in your soul so you can stand against the strategy of the devil satan has a strategy against you He has a dossier on you. He knows what you’re like. He knows your weaknesses and your strengths and don’t expect him to attack you at your area of strength. He will attack you at your area of weakness. For we don’t struggle against flesh and blood, Paul wrote, but we struggle against rulers and powers, spiritual forces of darkness. These are all angelic demons. Because of this, take up the full armor of God, every piece of it. Don’t leave anything off. and so you can resist him on the day that you’re attacked. Put on the belt of truth, that’s the Bible doctrine in your soul, learning the word of God. Having on the breastplate of righteousness, that’s the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ given to you at salvation, as well as the righteousness that you manufacture as a mature believer. Having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace, that means you have to know the gospel and understand it. In addition to all this, standing behind the shield of faith, faith rests drill, and take the helmet of salvation, that’s eternal security. And the sword of the spirit, the word of God is alive and powerful. There you are. I mean, I could teach you this for a long time. I won’t. There are a lot of pastors that have done it, and you can get those studies. But this is how we resist. This is how we stand against him. This is God’s policy for us in the devil’s world. Please listen to what I’m telling you. Be wise. Be discerning. Understand these things. Because there’s a lot going on that you may not understand what’s happening today. and we are counting on you to be a well-qualified believer. We’re counting on you to grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We’re counting on you to be an invisible hero in the angelic conflict. So I thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. And my prayer is you’ll come back next week, same time, same station. Pray for us as we continue to present this study, and hopefully if you need more information, let us know. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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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.
