Join Rick Hughes as he takes listeners on a journey of spiritual enlightenment, touching upon profound biblical truths about faith and righteousness. The discussion centers around how true spirituality is achieved not by works, but through the grace and work of the Holy Spirit. Whether a seasoned believer or new to faith, this episode offers deep insights into maintaining a spiritual life centered on God’s teachings.
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 Flotline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, please stay with me. It’ll be a time of motivation, some inspiration, some education. And of course, we do it without any manipulation because we’re not trying to con anybody. No games, no gimmicks, no request for money, no solicitation to join anything. Just asking you to listen for a few minutes as we discuss the plan of God for your life. Hopefully we can verify and identify that plan, and then you, if you would like to, you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan of God in your own life. You have to make your own decisions. You’ve given two ends, one to sit with, one to think with, and success in life depends on which one of them you use. Heads you win, tails you lose. So you are a product of your own decisions, and bad decisions always limit future options. the worst decision anyone could ever make is the decision to reject god’s solution to sin that is to reject jesus christ as their savior the bible clearly says he that believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life and he that believeth not the wrath of god abides on him already So God the Father provided a solution for my sin in the person of His own Son, Jesus Christ my Lord. And by believing in Him and receiving Him as my Savior, then the Father and I now are on the same page and we have fellowship together. And that’s why the Bible says, he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him, by means of him. That’s how we come to the Father, not by our works, because the Bible again says, for by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift from God, not of works, lest anyone should brag about it. So with that in mind, we want to move on in our weekly Flatline series. 730 Sundays we’ve been on the air doing this show. You can add up 52 Sundays in a year and figure out how many years we’ve been doing this. And I’m honored that you’re listening. Thank you for being there. I always love to hear from you. Don’t hesitate to write. Rick at rickhughesministries.org is our email address, rick at rickhughesministries.org. Or simply go to the website, rickhughesministries.org. And you can find us there. You can order books from the website, books that we’ve printed and we supply free of charge. Never do we solicit money. Never do we ask for money on this radio show. So go to the website, look around. You can also listen to previous radio shows. All 730 of them are listed there, and they will play just by clicking on it, or you can Bluetooth them through your car. We also have started a new podcast, and you can find that on Spotify, The Flotline, and eventually it will be available on Apple iPod, but it takes a while to get that going. All right, are you with me? We want to study today the ministry of God, the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit. Listen to what Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus in Ephesians 3.16. He said, I pray that God would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be made strong by means of his spirit in the inner man. That’s where the spiritual strength comes from to live the Christian life. by means of the holy spirit in the inner man when the lord announced to the disciples that he was going to leave them in john 14 2-3 he told these guys the disciples these words quoting now from john in my father’s house are many mansions and if it were not so i would have told you 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 unto myself so that where I am, you may be also.” Now that was a shock to them. They didn’t fully comprehend the death and the burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, not yet. And they certainly didn’t comprehend the exit resurrection and the return of Christ, not yet. But he did tell them that in his absence, he was going to send another teacher, one like himself, which he called the Spirit of Truth. In John 14, 16, I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter so that he may abide with you forever. Forever is forever, even in our eternal life, I would assume. In John 14, 26, but when the comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, when he comes he shall teach you all things.” and bring them to your remembrance, whatever I said to you.” Prior to this time, the disciples had been getting face-to-face teaching. In these verses, we see our Lord telling the disciples that they would now have a new way of learning the Father’s plan. Since our Lord Jesus Christ was going to leave them, they had been with him face-to-face for several years, and they’ve had face-to-face teaching, watching him, listening to him, but now he’s going away. And in the future, they’re going to be required to operate by faith perception since there was no more empirical evidence since Christ was leaving. So they were going to have to have faith to perceive what the plan was. And how’s that going to happen? Jesus told them, he, the Holy Spirit, will bring all things to your remembrance. This is mentioned in Peter’s writings where he stated that the Holy Spirit gave them the recall and the direction as they wrote the letters which we now call the New Testament. And they did not know they were writing what is considered our Bible. They did not know that. They didn’t know when the Lord called them or when the Lord departed from them that they would be the most famous writers in the history of the world, that they would write what we know to be the canon of Scripture or the Bible, the inspired Word of God. They had no idea that that was gonna take place. But they did it, and the Holy Spirit prepared them for what they wrote. Peter mentioned this in 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21, where he said, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So he is letting you know that this is not some conceived plan. This was not their desire to publish a book and sell it. The Bible is the number one selling book in the world today, and if you want a Bible about God, the Bible for babies, the Bible for divorced women, the Bible for divorced men, the Bible for hunters, the Bible for fishermen, the Bible for Christians, I mean, Holy cow, there’s a lot of Bibles out there, and everybody wants to sell you a Bible. I personally like to go into the New Testament and read the New Testament from the original manuscripts, and I’m not a Greek scholar, not by any means, but there’s enough literary help that I can use the Greek vocabulary and go into the New Testament and look at words, like the word love, for example, love, L-O-V-E. There are four different Greek words for love, and yet they’re all translated L-O-V-E. But in the original languages, it could be agapao or phileo, or even a couple of words that aren’t used in the scripture like stokeo and erao. And so these are four different Greek words all translate into the English as love. So we have to understand what love the Bible is speaking about. In John 21, the Lord kept asking Peter, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And he kept using one word and the Lord was looking for another word. And so it’s important when you study the Bible, especially if you’re under a well-qualified pastor, that you, number one, are under the control of the Holy Spirit, and number two, that that pastor is under control of the Holy Spirit, and he’s teaching you from the original languages. a lot of things lose their meaning in the translation. So we always go to the isagogics of the word, and we always try to exegete the passage so that we go line by line, word by words, like that, okay? So here we go, let’s keep on with this. The same Holy Spirit was given to you, the one, the Holy Spirit that Peter spoke about, how it led them to write what they wrote, excuse me, how he led them to write what they wrote. That same Holy Spirit is given to you the moment you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. I know this from Ephesians 1.13, in whom you also trusted God. After you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after you believed, that’s getting saved, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession under the praise of his glory. So God the Father. At the moment that you made a decision to receive Christ as your Savior, sealed you with the Holy Spirit and guarantees your inheritance. Now, that’s like someone making homemade jelly and putting a sealing on it, a paraffin wax. They used to do that. Or sometimes they’ll vacuum seal homemade vegetables and it seals the flavor in. The Holy Spirit seals your redemption. He will never leave you. He won’t forsake you. He’s always there until the time that God calls you home. So the objective of that indwelling of the Holy Spirit is to enable you and me to overcome the demands of our sin nature or what we call the flesh. The flesh is always there. All personal sins that we commit come from the desires of the flesh, and they’re a product of our volition. We choose to sin. Paul again wrote about this in Romans 7, 15 through 20, where he said, I don’t understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do. But what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, then I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it’s sin living in me. That’s our sin nature. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me. That’s the ability to do good. That is my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Verse 18, for I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it’s no longer I who do it, but it’s sin living in me that does it. do is mentioned a lot in that verse there’s three different words for do all three different greek words but they all translate out do do do and so what paul is saying is he has a sin nature he wants to do the right thing but sometimes the sin nature exhibits itself and causes us to fail It could be a mental attitude sin, like worry or fear of anxiety or anger or jealousy or bitterness. Or it could be a sin of the tongue, like slandering or lying or gossiping or maligning. It could even maybe be an overt sin, such as adultery or fornication or stealing. But all sins originate from the lust of the flesh. and your volitional decision, my volitional decision, to obey what the flesh desires. That’s why we’re given the filling ministry of the Holy Spirit. He can sustain us in this daily battle, and he uses the word of God as our comfort and our encouragement. And so we find in Galatians 5, 16. This I say then, walk by means of the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit. And the spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh. And they are in conflict with each other so that you’re not to do whatever you want to do. This tells you that there is a battle going on in your mind 24 seven. A battle to control your thoughts because your spiritual life is lived in your thoughts. And those thoughts translate out of motives, intentions, and desires. And so if you’re going to live the spiritual life, you have to learn to control what you think. That’s why the Bible tells us, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who humbled himself and made himself of no reputation. That’s why the Bible says in Romans 12, three, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. But think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. This is where you live your spiritual life and your thoughts. And this is where the Holy Spirit can sustain you and teach you and encourage you. But if you quench the Holy Spirit, if you grieve the Holy Spirit, then he’s not able to do his job. And so we have two negative mandates in the Bible. The first one is in 1 Thessalonians 5.19, which says, do not quench the spirit. And the second one is in Ephesians 4.30, do not grieve the spirit of God. Quenching the spirit is you shutting off the power. It’s like you’re trying to water the lawn and you take the water hose and you bend it in half and it stops the water from coming out. When you sin and you do not rebound the sin, then you quench the Holy Spirit. He no longer has the power to guide you, assist you, encourage you, because you have surrendered control of your life, of your thoughts to your flesh. And now the flesh takes over. And this is the battle Paul talks about, the flesh warring against the spirit, the spirit warring against the flesh. They both want to control what you think. That’s why, again, the spiritual life is lived in your thoughts, in your soul, in the mentality of your soul. And it reflects itself in your actions and what you do. So we have a term for when you’re out of fellowship with God. If you’re out of fellowship with God, you’re carnal, the Bible says. This means you have unconfessed sin in your life. In 1 Corinthians 3.3 and 2 Corinthians 10.4 and Romans 7.14, these all talk about being carnal or sinful. It is possible for a Christian to sin, and it is possible for a Christian to wallow or stay in that sin. And if you do, you’re carnal, you’re in reversionism, you’re going backwards. But there’s also a term for a Christian that’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and that’s the term spiritual. In Galatians 6.1 and 1 Corinthians 3.1, Paul talks about us being spiritual. Now, this doesn’t mean that if we take a famous celebrity like Billy Graham, a world-famous evangelist, he could not be any more spiritual than you because if he’s filled with the Spirit and you’re filled with the Spirit, it’s the same Holy Spirit. So when you’re filled with the Spirit, you’re spiritual, but that doesn’t mean that you are a mature believer. Maturity is based on the content of the word of God in your soul. Spirituality is based on whether or not you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. So you can be filled with the Holy Spirit and still be a baby Christian. That’s the plan because the Holy Spirit wants you to grow up. He wants you to move from being an infant Christian to being a mature believer, to understanding a complete plan of God for your life. so the word of god can protect you if you learn it if you if you learn the word of god and apply the word of god then you can stay out of sin therefore the holy spirit helps you in this matter psalm 119 verse 11 your word have i hid in my heart so that i might not sin against you And in Philippians 2.13, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure. That’s the Holy Spirit working in you. So this is what the Holy Spirit’s job is to do, to keep you out of sin. to alert you when your sin nature is tempting you, to let you know you have failed the plan of God, you’ve committed a sin. And then when that comes up, not only does he sustain your spiritual life, but he also helps you comprehend the scripture. if it’s taught to you by what I call a well-qualified pastor, somebody that knows what they’re talking about. But without the filling of the Holy Spirit, we could never, ever, ever fulfill the protocol plan of God. It’s impossible because that requires the right thing to be done in the right way. So do you know the key to being filled with the Holy Spirit? Do you understand that? In other words, if I ask you right now, are you filled with the Spirit right now? I don’t mean are you foaming at the mouth and beating on a tambourine, that’s not what I’m talking about. Are you spiritual or are you carnal? Is there unconfessed sin in your life, then you’re carnal. Is there no unconfessed sin in your life, then you’re spiritual. And I can hear you already, wait a minute. How can I keep up with all of my sins? Well, you can’t, obviously. That’s why the Bible says if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, all unrighteousness. even the ones you don’t remember. So the key to being filled with the Holy Spirit is problem-solving device number one on the flotline of your soul. Remember the flotline, 10 unique problem-solving devices given by God through His Word to sustain us in this devil’s world. When we learn and use these 10 problem-solving devices, we stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. And the first thing every believer must learn is how to stay in fellowship with God using the rebound technique. Therefore, the Bible says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin. and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If is a third-class condition in the Greek New Testament. It’s a subjunctive mood. Confess, if we confess, the verb confess is subjunctive, means maybe you will, and maybe you won’t. But if we confess, what does the word confess mean? Well, that verb is a compound verb called homo legeo. Homo legeo. Homo being the word the same, and legeo meaning to say. So the word confess means to say the same. We use homo in our American language. vocabulary is the word homosexual the same sexually well this is not the same sexually it’s the same to say so when we sin what does god expect out of us does he expect you to cry and mourn and oh god i messed up oh god help me not he expects you to name your sin tell him what you did i lied i lusted i cheated i lost my temper whatever you did tell him and when you admit your sin then what it does is it allows the holy spirit to cleanse you of the sin and to reinstate the filling of the holy spirit when you fail to rebound even though you are a christian you’re out of fellowship and you’re operating in the energy of the flesh. And it’s very possible you can go to church. It’s very possible you can sing in the choir. It’s very possible you can attend Sunday school. It’s very possible you can give money in the energy of the flesh because you had unconfessed sin in your life when you did it. The danger of that is it’s called human good. It’s non-rewardable. Anything you do for God outside of his protocol plan is all human good. The protocol plan of God demands you be filled with the Holy Spirit. So if I take those same items, going to church, going to Sunday school, singing in the choir, giving money, and I am filled with the Holy Spirit, which means I have no unconfessed sin in my life, Then I’m manufacturing divine good, and that’s rewardable. And again, how can I keep up with my sins? Well, first of all, it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to let you know when you sin, called your conscience. And he will convict you of sin. He will let you know you’ve sinned. But if you fail to rebound, you may continue to sin and add sin upon sin upon sin upon sin. And even though you may try to get back to God by going to church, and even though you may try to get back to God by praying, unless you go to God and confess the sin, you cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit. But you say, I can’t remember every sin I did that got me out of fellowship. I know that, I’ve been there. We just name the ones we’re aware of, and he cleanses us from the ones we don’t remember. The idea is, as David said in the 32nd Psalm, when I kept my mouth shut, I almost died. Remember, he committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then in order to cover up her pregnancy, he had Uriah murdered. This is David, and he didn’t tell anybody about it until Nathan showed up and nailed him with it and said, God is aware of what you did. and you’re not hiding it from God. And the same is true for you and me. There’s not one sin we commit that God is not aware of because he’s watching us 24 seven. The omniscience of God is aware of everything you and I do. And so we can’t play games with God. Either today, this moment, right now, you are in fellowship with God or you are not. If you are not, you have sin in your life and you haven’t confessed it to God. If you are, then you have dealt with your sin, you’re trying to stay current, and you’re trying to not let sin take root. Anytime you sin, name it immediately, not when you go to bed at night, immediately. Therefore, you’re guaranteed that immediately you’ll be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now remember, spirituality and maturity are two different things. You can be spiritual but not mature. Maturity is related to the content of the Word of God in your soul. Spirituality is related to the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you are spiritual and wish to be mature, then that’s why the Holy Spirit’s there to guide you, encourage you, comfort you, help you grow, learn, and produce Christ-like characteristics in your life. Thus, you need a pastor, a well-qualified pastor to teach you the Bible. As you maintain the filling of the Holy Spirit, as you listen to the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, Then you grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s Peter’s word, 2 Peter 3.18. Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. Rightly dividing the word of truth is what Paul told Timothy. We must study. We must grow. And that’s only possible through the ministry of the filling of the Holy Spirit. So I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re getting this. I hope you’re learning this. Because I’m going to ask you one final time. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit right now? If not, go to God the Father. Lay it out before him, admit your sin, and he will be faithful and just to forgive you. God doesn’t hold grudges. He still loves you. He hasn’t thrown you under the bus. He hasn’t forsaken you. But he’s waiting on you to come back and admit your sin. Stay on top of it. Don’t let sin take root in your life and grow. That’s how you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’ll come back next Sunday. Same time, same place, same channel. It is my honor to give you this information. So 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.
