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’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It’ll be 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, but absolutely no manipulation. No con games. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not trying to hustle any money out of you. We just want to give you some accurate information. We’ll help you identify God’s plan for your life if you’d like to do that. And if you can do that, you’re free to orient and adjust to that plan. You know, you may ask yourself, how could this show benefit me? That’s a fair question because we’re not an infomercial. But as I expand and add additional shows across the country, people ask me, how can this help me? Well, the Bible says we have this treasure in our earthly vessel so that the suppressing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. The key word in that passage in 2 Corinthians 4-7, we have this treasure in our earthly vessels. Treasure is a word called in the English language thesaurus. You’ve heard of a thesaurus, a word treasure. And the Bible says that the scriptures are a word treasure for us. They make us rich. In Colossians 2, 2-3, that their hearts may be encouraged. Paul wrote, having been knitted together in love and attaining to all the wealth, it comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Learning God’s word will make you rich spiritually. It will give you a rich and wonderful life. It will give you understanding, insight, and discernment, that wisdom that comes from the scripture. That’s why Proverbs 3.13 says, How blessed is the man that finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. For her profit, that’s the profit of wisdom, is better than the profit of silver, and her gain better than fine gold. She, that’s wisdom, is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. That’s the importance of learning and understanding and applying the Word of God in your life. When I became a Christian many years ago, I had no idea what the Christian life was about. I thought after I was around certain people, you just acted a certain way and demonstrated you’re a Christian. You went around and said, hello, brother. Hello, sister. Praise the Lord. Praise God. You tied, put your offering in there and went to church and went to Sunday school. And that was a good Christian. I didn’t understand much about the Christian life. Now I do. Now I understand a whole lot more about the Christian life. And the only reason is because I got under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor that taught it to me. He wasn’t a cruise ship director. He was a pastor. And he wasn’t concerned with my social life. He was concerned with my spiritual life. He was an extraordinary person, an extraordinary individual, based on his knowledge of the Scriptures. In the Bible, we talk about extraordinary people, and I’d like to talk to you about that this morning. I would like to show you how you can go from being ordinary to extraordinary. And the definition of an extraordinary person is someone who goes beyond the ordinary, an exceptional person, a remarkable person. I mean, have you ever heard someone say, there’s nothing really special about me? Some kind of phony baloney type stuff. I have a friend, one of my close friends, who often describes himself as a pothole in the road to progress. Well, we often seek to minimize our impact in our surroundings, and I can assure you he’s not a pothole in the road to progress. He’s a tremendous individual. But we’re so used to seeing celebrities that we often idolize them as someone special. Sports celebrities, movie celebrities, but that’s not the type of people I’m talking about. Just because they can act or just because they can perform on an athletic arena does not mean they are extraordinary individuals. When studying the life and the ministry of the Apostle Paul in the Bible, one must realize that he was a most extraordinary person. The last recorded written words of Paul was this, grace be with you. It was this grace that he taught that made him such an extraordinary individual. And the epistle that he wrote to 2 Timothy while he was under house arrest in a Roman prison in Rome for sedition explains, grace be with you. The emperor Nero was using Christians as a scapegoat. He was gaslighting the Christians for his mishandling of the great fire of Rome that burned half the city. And he was blaming it on Christians. And Paul was a target of Nero’s vindictive behavior. And that gives us some principles we need to understand about Christians and politics. One, extraordinary Christian individuals are a convenient target for the forces of Satan. Extraordinary Christian individuals are a convenient target for the forces of Satan. So here’s a warning to you. If you’re interested in getting serious about your spiritual life, if you’re interested in becoming an extraordinary Christian where you can replicate the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and glorify God to the max, then you better be ready to be in the middle of the angelic conflict because Satan will come after you. Two, here’s a second principle. Extraordinary mature believers have the ability to motivate and the responsibility to encourage other people in the faith. That’s your job. If you’re going to be the representative of Christ, if you’re going to represent his life, you have to motivate and you have to encourage others in their faith. And three, even though the Apostle Paul was facing death, he was not preoccupied with his own circumstances. That’s a clear trait of an extraordinary individual. And here’s the fourth principle. The extraordinary believer does not think like ordinary believers think. He thinks in a different realm. He thinks in biblical wisdom. He thinks in the realm of divine viewpoint, not human viewpoint. And that comes from his knowledge of the scriptures. So it’s all about what you think first. What’s the motivation? What’s the inspiration that sets you apart from other individuals? It has to be, as the Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, Philippians 2.5. It has to be like Paul wrote in Romans 12.3, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. but think in terms of humility as God has given to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. That’s critical. So what you think? Are you just ordinary? Do you think like ordinary people think? Or do you think in the realms of the extraordinary? What does the Bible say? You know, our Lord took a group of ordinary individuals, fishermen, people like this that were disciples, and he changed the world with them. They went from being ordinary to being extraordinary. And how did he do it? What did the Lord do to change these individuals that gave them such an impact in life that we still today study their writings and still today are encouraged and motivated by looking at their lives? Well, if we look at the book of John, beginning in chapter 13, going to 15 and into 16, we can identify the first steps to the transformation from being ordinary to extraordinary. Here’s the verses I want to give you. In John 15, 11, Jesus Christ our Lord said these words, these things have I spoken unto you. These things, that’s the key right there. That’s an antecedent to what comes before all of that, the things he talked about. These things I’ve spoken to you so that my joy might remain in you and your joy may be full. That’s an extraordinary person. who has joy in the face of adversity and persecution. In John 16, one, these things have I spoken unto you so that you be not offended. And then again, in John 13, 17, if you know these things, You’ll be happy doing them. Three times he talks about these things, these things, these things. And these are things you need to understand if you’re ever going to be an extraordinary Christian. What does that mean, these things? Well, it means this. Every disciple had potential. Every disciple had the opportunity if they listened and applied what they heard. When the Lord Jesus Christ spoke these words, He spoke them to his disciples after that last supper in the upper room. And the words, these things, refers to everything he taught them after the last supper. It was a massive amount of information. It was given in a short time. And I assume, and I wasn’t there, neither were you, but we can assume nobody was taking notes because of the promise found in John 14, 26. Here it is. But the comforter, that’s the Holy Spirit, the comforter who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance whatever I’ve said unto you. That’s called recall. The Holy Spirit was going to help them recall these things that Christ was teaching them. So these words indicate there is a distinct recall ministry of God the Holy Spirit that he does for us when we take in God’s word and we learn it. He helps us to recall that information when we need it. When we learn it and put it into our stream of consciousness where it cycles into our memory center, when we hit a situation in our life where we don’t have the answers, God the Holy Spirit can pull that up, and that’s called biblical wisdom. Then you still have to act upon it. So that’s important to understand it. When you absorb, when you metabolize, when you utilize the Word of God, which is our mission today, if you ever hope to move from ordinary to extraordinary, that’s when you can be used by God. But first there has to be the absorption, the metabolization, and the utilization of the Word of God. for you to fulfill your mission. You have a mission. God’s given you a mission. I challenge you with that mission today. You must become an extraordinary individual, a Christ-like person. Principle, here it is. One, the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching the disciples essential doctrines that they’re going to need to maintain their efforts once he leaves them. Beginning in John 13 and going into John 16, he’s going to teach all these critical, essential, massive amount of doctrines that they will need. And again, no one’s writing them down, no one’s taking notes, but the Holy Spirit’s going to help them remember it. That’s how it wound up in the book of John. God, the Holy Spirit, so moved John to write these things. Two, without objective optimism. We say, what is that? Well, that’s an outlook of expectancy in your life. Without objective optimism, which is an outlook of expectancy, any believer under maximum pressure can fold up into a nice little pity party. Have you done that since the election? Have you folded up into a little pity party? Have you thought that maybe God forgot about what’s going on in this country? Well, he hasn’t. I assure you, the Supreme Court of Heaven is in function 24 hours a day. And so you have to learn to think in those terms of wisdom, biblical wisdom. So three, having the mindset of Christ. guarantees internal focus on God’s plan and not on the external focus of the circumstances. You see, you have to look at the solution, not the problem. If you’re looking at the solution, if you know that God’s in control, Jesus Christ controls history, if you understand the Supreme Court of Heaven is open 24 hours a day, then you have nothing to worry about, nothing to fear. So, four, what the Lord is teaching them, are the very doctrines that will sustain them when he’s gone and the very doctrines that sustained him during his earthly trials. He’s teaching them how he endured what he endured and it’s for them to learn. Remember what I said? So that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full, that’s what he’s saying. He’s not sad. He’s not upset that he’s being persecuted and he’s going to the cross because he knew it was a father’s plan. So he’s passing on his objective outlook and his confidence in his father’s plan to the disciples. And these are a few of the character traits of an extraordinary individual, an extraordinary Christian individual. Listen to them. One, here it is, they understand essential doctrines. And that’s what the Lord Jesus Christ was doing. He was passing on to them essential doctrines. Principle number one, he’s teaching them essential doctrines that they will need to maintain their efforts once he leaves them. So the extraordinary believer understands essential doctrines. What are they? Well, number one in the 10 problem-solving devices is rebound. If you don’t understand rebound, if you don’t understand how to stay filled with the Holy Spirit, if you don’t understand what 1 John 1, 9 is teaching you, then you’re always gonna be operating in energy of the flesh. And you’re gonna do all the right things, but you’re going to do them in the wrong way. And the right thing in the wrong way is gonna wind up being wood, hay, and stubble at the judgment seat of Christ. So the extraordinary Christian is a Christian who understands essential doctrines like rebound and like the filling of the Holy Spirit. how to stay out of the sin nature trend and sin nature pattern, how to not get into carnality, but to remain into spirituality, stay filled with the Holy Spirit. And that’s where 1 John 1, 9 comes in. And he must understand faith rest drill. That’s an essential doctrine. The faith rest drill, standing on the promises of God. 7,000 promises in the Bible. Those first three, rebound, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and the faith rest drill, are essential doctrines that you should understand and you must understand. This is not something I’m making up. This is in the Bible. I didn’t come up with some great new theory. Here it is. It’s in the scripture. Moses told the Jews when they came out of Egypt, stand still and watch what God’s about to do. That’s the faith rest drill. So two, if you’re going to be an extraordinary believer, you must have objective optimism. What does that mean? No self-pity, no feeling sorry for yourself since your favorite person didn’t get elected and no feeling sorry for yourself since circumstances are going bad against you. No self-pity. Jesus Christ controls history in your life, in your nation, in your family. Remember that. You have to have an objective optimism, not subjective, not looking at everything as if it was all pointed at you. It doesn’t depend on you. If you and I are taken out today, the world will go on. So we keep an objective optimism. And three. That extraordinary believer must have an outlook of expectancy. That’s a personal sense of destiny. That’s one problem-solving device. Number one, two, three, four, five, personal sense of destiny. Number six, personal sense of destiny. So if, by the way, if you don’t know what these are, we have a book about it called Christian Problem Solving. We’ll be more than happy to send you the book free of charge. Go to the website, rickhughesministries.org and contact us and order that book and we’ll get it right out to you free of charge so you will know what all of these 10 problem-solving devices are. We also have a 10 problem-solving devices bookmark you can stick in your Bible so you can refer to them. But an outlook of expectancy is a personal sense of destiny. God has you here for a reason, for a purpose in the middle of this angelic conflict. And he is looking for a few extraordinary individuals. And number four, another essential trait of an extraordinary individual is he has the mind of Christ. That’s called divine viewpoint thinking. Divine viewpoint thinking. And lastly, he has confidence in the Father’s plan, which means essentially that he has personal love for the Father. If you love me, keep my mandates, and my mandates are not grievous, 1 John 5, 3. So that means you have confidence in God’s plan. You don’t second-guess God’s plan. Even though things don’t go your way like you want it to go, you think God forgot about you, you think God’s not in charge, It’s wrong. If you’re out of fellowship, if you’re under sin, if you’re hiding it and covering it up and things are going wrong, maybe it’s divine discipline. But if you’re staying in fellowship, confessing your sin, growing daily in the word of God, then it’s an opportunity to grow. Every crisis is an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to apply God’s word in your life. So this amount of doctrine that the Lord Jesus Christ gave the disciples between John 13 and John 16 is staggering, staggering. I wish you’d take your Bible and read along sometime. Maybe when you get home, wherever you are, start with John 13 and read up through John 16, and you’ll see what he taught the disciples. The first thing he taught them was after dinner that night, he got up and started washing their feet. Peter was offended by that. He said, the son of God’s not going to wash my feet. Well, it wasn’t about foot washing. It was about teaching forgiveness for sin because the Lord said, you don’t need a bath. You don’t need to be saved again. You just need to have your feet washed. John 13, two through 17. If you read John 13, two through 17, you’ll understand that the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching forgiveness The rebound technique. When your feet get dirty, come to him, he’ll wash them. He’ll cleanse you from your sin. And then in John 13, 21, the Lord Jesus Christ identified a mole in the ranks. A mole. Someone that was going to sell him out. He said, one of you will betray me, John 13, 21. And that should have gotten the attention of the disciples. It should have made them perk their ears up. I mean, they were laying around fat and happy like we all are after a big meal. I’m not sure how many of them were actually even paying attention because he emphasized the need for them to pay attention. That was the third thing. Listen to John 13, 29. He said, some thought because Judas had the money bag that Jesus was telling him to go buy merchandise for the feast or that he should give something to the poor. That’s not what he said. You could see him sitting at the far end of the table. You could see him saying, what did he say? What did he say? And maybe one of the others looked and said, oh, he just wants Judas to go buy some more food or Judas to go give something to the poor. That’s not what the Lord said. One of you is going to betray me. There’s a betrayer in our midst. And the Lord Jesus Christ also taught forgiveness. Right behind this passage in John 13, 14, if I, your Lord and master, have washed your feet, then you ought also to wash one another’s feet. In other words, if I can forgive you for your sin, then you have to learn to forgive each other for their sin. He taught impersonal love to these disciples. one of our problem solving devices, impersonal love, impersonal love for all in John 13, 34 through 35. He said, a new mandate I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this shall all men know that you’re my disciples if you love one another. That’s impersonal love. That’s the ability to love someone that’s not lovable sometimes. That’s you loving them based on your character, your integrity, your virtue, not theirs. I mean, after all, isn’t this exactly what God did for you through Christ? When it says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, was he giving you the Lord Jesus Christ because you were a wonderful person? No, you were lost in sin. And he loved you, but he loved you with his character, not because of your character. And this is what impersonal love is. It’s the ability to love others based on who you are, not based on who they are. And then the Lord Jesus Christ taught the need to have genuine humility. In John 13, 36, Peter said unto him, Lord, where are you going? And Jesus answered, where I go, you can’t follow me now, but you will follow me later. And then Peter said to him, Lord, why can’t I follow you right now? I would give my life for you. And Jesus answered and said, you will give your life for me? I’m telling you, before the rooster even crows in the morning, you will deny me three times. That was a shock to Peter. He thought Jesus thought very highly of him. He thought he was the leader of the whole bunch of disciples. And here he finds out that Jesus thinks he’s going to betray him when he just said, I’d die for you, Lord. This is a need for genuine humility to be learned. He had to learn genuine humility. He would have never learned that humility had he not failed like he did because he thought he was invincible. And have you failed? I mean, are you a responsible Christian person in your church or in your family and you failed? and it drives you nuts that you failed. All of us fail. All of us are human. All of us have a sin-infected sin nature. All you need to do is go to the Lord and confess your sin and get up and move on and quit feeling sorry for yourself because you did something stupid. There are not very many people in the Bible that didn’t do stupid things, including Moses who murdered an Egyptian, including David who took another man’s wife and killed him to cover it up. A lot of great people did a lot of stupid things, just like you and I. We’ve done stupid things. We have to learn humility. God was in business before we got here. God will be in business long after we’re gone. That’s the plain truth about it. So we had to understand that humility, genuine humility, and there’s a lot to be said about that, and I don’t have time in this one lesson to go into all of that. But he taught belief in God is not salvation. This is critical. Listen, listen. The Lord Jesus Christ taught them that believing in God is not being saved. In John 14, one, let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. Now, a lot of people believe in God, but they don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God. Jesus said, this is the will of the one that sent me that you believe in me whom he has sent. You don’t get to God unless you go through the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll see that here in a minute. So just believing in God is not being saved. It’s believing in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. It’s receiving him as your savior. You might not understand all of it when it takes place. You just might understand I’m a sinner. I’m going to hell. I don’t want to go to hell. I want to be saved. I want Christ to save me. Lord, please save me. I admit my sin. You don’t understand all the realm of Bible doctrine when you do that, but you will if you grow and understand and come to learn God’s word. So he taught them that believing in God is not enough. That’s not salvation. He taught them eternal security. You don’t have to worry about it. Listen to what he said in John 14, two through three. In my father’s house are many dwelling places. And if it were not so, I would have told you. For I’m going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself so that where I am, you may be also. And then he taught them that the only path to God once more was through him when he said in John 14, 6, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, and no man cometh to the Father but by me. That’s amazing. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re understanding this. There’s a lot more of this to go. I want you to take your Bible and read John 13 to John 16. Read those three chapters, 13, 14, 15, and up to about half of chapter 16 and see what the Lord was teaching these men because if you’re going to be an extraordinary Christian, if you’re going to be that kind of person that has an impact in your periphery, an impact in your family, an impact in your nation, then you’re going to have to think like this. This is critical for you to understand. I know you’re listening because you want to learn. I hear from you all the time. I’m so grateful for those of you that have been contacting me repeatedly over the last week saying, I’m listening, I’m learning. I’m so grateful for you. I’m grateful for the opportunity to give you this information. I pray that God would direct you to a well-qualified pastor where you can learn his word and apply it into your life every day and thus give maximum glorification to God because of who and what you are in representing Jesus Christ to your family, to your community, and to your nation. We need that. It’s critical time right now for you to do that. I hope you’ll come back next week, same time, same place. If you have a question, don’t hesitate to contact us through the website, rickhughesministries.org. You can always go there. Don’t hesitate to look for our podcast on Spotify or on Apple iPod at The Flotline. You can listen anytime. Until then, it’s your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:19

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.