In a world filled with uncertainties, faith stands as a steadfast pillar of hope and assurance. Through this enlightening episode, Rick Hughes explores the wonders of God’s creation as evidence of His majesty and omniscience. He sheds light on how faith transcends rational understanding, urging listeners to heed the divine promises of security and peace. With powerful insights into the role of authority within the family and the significance of staying connected to God’s word, this episode is a transformative journey towards spiritual resilience.
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. Stay with me. 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education. And we do this without manipulation. You know that. You hear me say it every Sunday morning there on your local radio station. But the Flotline is designed to teach God’s unique problem-solving devices, something we desperately need in today’s situation. Having a main line of resistance in your soul that stops the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. That’s why we always have said adversity is inevitable, but stress is optional. This show talks about soul renovation, changing the way you think, letting your mind change. Remember, you hear me say God gave you two ends, one to sit with and one to think with, and success in life depends on which one you use. You remember that? Well, the Bible talks about acquiring the mind of Christ in Philippians 2, 5. That means changing the way you think. That means beginning to think in terms of divine viewpoint, not human viewpoint. It also says it in Romans 12, 3, where it says, 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. So my job as a communicator of information is to be squared away, accurate, truthful, not to mislead you, not to use any gimmicks and not any games, but to give you just simple, good, verifiable information that you can take and apply into your life. That’s what I seek to do. And any of the shows that we do, you know, you can always get the transcripts of these shows. All you have to do is go to our website, RickHughesMinistries.org, RickHughesMinistries.org. And you can request any of our books, any of our transcripts, or I think my 800 number is there. If you need to make a call to us, you can do that as well. But we don’t have any way to solicit money on that website. We’re not asking you for money. So just keep your money. The Lord’s in it. He pays for it. That’s always the way it goes. So we don’t have to solicit funds. There’s no PayPal or request for finances there. So let’s get going, okay? If you want to learn some more, stick around. Hang in here with me because this is a critical time in your life. A critical time for you to orient and adjust, and I hope that these messages will give you that insight on how to do that. This message is called The Importance of Faith. The Importance of Faith. The word faith is the word pistis, P-I-S-T-I-S, in the original languages of the Greek New Testament. And the verb is pistouo, pistouo, faith and believe. Same word, faith and believe. The believe is the verb, faith is the noun. So listen to Hebrews 11, six. Here we go, you ready? But without faith, it’s impossible to please God. For he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. So the one thing that God demands from you is faith. We know that faith comes in several stages. There’s saving faith, where we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved, and we’re going to talk about that today. And how it’s for by grace you’re saved through faith and that not of yourselves is a gift of God. But the verse here that we’re looking at, it is without faith it’s impossible to please God. For he that comes to God must believe that he is and he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Diligently. There’s a word I want us to take a look at this morning. Exoteo. Exoteo. The Greek word. Exoteo. and it means to search out or investigate or even crave for. So the question is, do you have a craving? Do you have an insatiable desire to investigate the plan of God for your life? Are you hungry for that? You know, the Bible says when knowledge becomes pleasant to your soul in Proverbs, a lot of people don’t seek out knowledge. They’re not interested in knowledge of the Word of God. It’s either too threatening or too boring or they just don’t believe it. One of the several options there. But what about you? Do you find the Bible relevant for your life? Are you interested in knowing God’s plan for your life? Because if you are, you’re tuned in to the right place. Not that I have all the answers. I’m not a pastor. I’m not representing any denomination. But I’m telling you as it comes from the Word of God through my lips. what the bible says in psalm 19 1 how can i find god well let me give you one way you can do it psalm 19 1 the heavens are telling of the glory of god and their expanse is declaring the work of his hand day and tonight utter speech and night and tonight they show knowledge There is no speech and no language anywhere where their voice has not been heard. All you have to do is look up and realize there’s a God. The heavens tell the story, the sun in the daytime, the moon at night, the universe, the stars, the planets. This didn’t just happen to appear. They were placed there by a magnificent designer. God himself placed them there. And so it can be someone in Africa. It could be someone in America. It could be someone in Egypt. It could be someone in the Arctic. All they got to do is look up and see and realize there is a God. The heavens declare the work of his hand. Day unto day they utter speech. And you want to hear what the speech is? I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. And night and the night, they show knowledge. What’s the knowledge? This is not an accident. This is God’s design, God’s plan. So Isaiah 40, verse 26, lift up your eyes. Look to the heavens. Who created all of this? It’s he who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name because of his great power and mighty strength. Not one of them is missing. Could you imagine if some astronomer Look through his telescope tonight and Saturn was missing. Venus was gone or some universe somewhere was not there anymore. What would he do? God holds it all together. And here is what I really like. he calls one by one calls forth each of them by name by name principle is this if God knows the name of every star in the entire universe and I read it to you he who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each one of them by name if God does that then can he not know who you are as well if Yes, he knows who you are. He knows your name. He knows where you live. He knows what you’re going through. This is the omniscience of God. And it’s demonstrated by this thought that I just read to you. He’s omniscient. So if you’re his child, by faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, that means if you have believed and received Christ as your Savior, What do you have to fear? Not one thing. Because if he can keep this entire universe in order so that not one star is missing, can he not keep his eye on you? Yes, absolutely. You have nothing to worry about. One, under no circumstances are you ever to let fear control your life, never. And two, each of us have a divine promise of security. and the provision of peace in the midst of frightening circumstances. I’m going to read that to you again so you’ll hear it. Each of us have divine promises of security and the provision of peace in the midst of frightening circumstances. We are in some frightening circumstances in the United States of America today. Who knows where we’re going or what’s going to happen? And as I record this, and you’ll hear it three or four weeks later than what I recorded it, but we really don’t know what’s going on with this Corona-19 virus and where we’re going to go financially or financially. physically, emotionally, spiritually, who knows? But anyone who’s a short-time truster, those Christians who never really develop a flat line in their soul, they will never enjoy the benefits of security or happiness in the devil’s world. They’ll never have it. Because there’s always the dread on the horizon, you know, like what’s coming next. If you think this is bad, Coronas 19, you haven’t seen anything yet according to the Bible, what comes down in the tribulation. What can happen in the fifth cycle of discipline is a client nation like America goes under the discipline of God because we turned our back on him or any client nation turned their back on him. We’re not the first client nation in history. But you can say we haven’t exactly kept his name front and foremost. We’ve found every law we can to kick him out of the public venue, kick him out of schools. That is the God, not Lord Jesus Christ. And everything that used to be evil, we now make it good. And everything that used to be nasty and evil and perverse is now okay. I would say we’re in trouble. I would say America is in trouble. And I’ve told you before, the train whistle’s coming, the train wreck’s coming, and you can hear the whistle blowing. So sooner or later. If you haven’t seen anything yet, sooner or later, the storm will hit your life. And here’s the problem. If you’ve neglected God and if you neglected his word, you will have no peace or no comfort in the storm. You’re going to be on your own. You’re going to be struggling, trying to make sense out of it instead of relaxing and using God’s problem-solving devices. Your prayers might not even be answered if you try to do the right thing in the wrong way. Remember the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So if you’re frightened to death, fear is a sin. So if you’re trying to pray and you’re in fear, don’t expect that to be answered. You got to confess the sin first. Remember that because fear quenches and grieves the Holy Spirit and doesn’t let him control your life. Your sin nature thrives on fear. Your sin nature thrives on emotional revolt to the soul, letting your emotions take over. That’s not the way the Holy Spirit operates. The Holy Spirit says if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, you have love and joy and peace and long-suffering and gentleness and goodness and meekness. You remember all that Galatian passage. You’re not being filled with the spirit when you’re running around like a chicken with his head cut off in the yard. So come on. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a storm in your life. And if you’re not doing the right thing in the right way, you’re not going to have any peace. Proverbs 1.7, the respect of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But unfortunately, this verse goes on to say, fools despise wisdom and fools despise instruction. They don’t want it. They don’t want it. They don’t want anything to do with it. And that’s a shame, but that’s what’s going to happen. Because the fool is wise in his own eyes. He thinks he’s smarter than God. He thinks he doesn’t need God until all the stuff hits the fan and then He wants the God in the eight ball, the genie in the eight ball to pop out and make it all go away. There are a lot of words of comfort found in the Bible. And they’re not in the daily advice columns that the cosmic system offers. I mean, in my local newspaper, we got two or three daily advice columns from female women that tell you how to handle social situations. But they’re not what the word of God says. Listen to this. The words of comfort you need are found in the scripture. And what you’ll find in the advice column are empty words, words that carry no weight. Ephesians 5, 6 talks about this. It says, let no one deceive you with empty words. What’s an empty word? That’s a word that doesn’t have a doctrinal application. It doesn’t come out of the Word of God. The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow and is a critic of thoughts and intents of the heart. The word of God lives and abides forever. Empty words are words that someone comes up with and some arrogance, self-righteousness, whatever, and they try to explain what’s going on. Can’t do it. Can’t live with empty words. Empty words are especially religious words. Religion was the enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ and was the empty words of the Pharisees and the Sadducees that were taking people to hell. And the Lord Jesus Christ came to rescue them and deliver them from the empty words of legalism. Legalism. You know what that is? That’s someone tells you, oh, you can’t go to heaven, brother, if you smoke that cigarette. You can’t go to heaven, brother, if you drink that beer. You can’t go to heaven, brother, if you watch that TV show. That’s legalism. There’s always some self-righteous Christian that’d love to run your life for you. The Bible doesn’t say anything like that. As a matter of fact, the Bible says a lot of different things, but not what I just told you. And anyhow, persuasive words is another one. Empty words carry no weight. Persuasive words. Oh, now here we go. Colossians 2.4. I say this so that no one will deceive you with arguments. See, we got deceive again. Deception. Deceive you with arguments that sound reasonable. You know, there are only several ways to perceive truth. Pisticism, rationalism, empiricism. Rationalism is trying to rationally come up with some answer. You know, like we’re really just millions of years old and we came from a monkey and all that sort of stuff. Sounds reasonable, you know. They’re gonna come up with some scientific explanation. Don’t let anybody deceive you with some reasonable sounding hypothesis of rationalism or empiricism where we take scientific data and try to come to some kind of conclusion. It doesn’t make any difference if the data is flawed already. The way you come to truth is pisticism, and that’s the word faith. Live by faith. We operate by faith. We live by faith. We focus on faith. We spread faith around. And that’s the key word for you. Those that come to God, as I started off saying, without faith, it’s impossible to please him. You must have faith. Faith is not empty words. Faith is not persuasive words. And faith is not deceptive words. 2 Peter 2, verse 3. In their greed, Peter said, They will exploit you with deceptive words. Well, that could be the televangelists right now. That could be what’s been going on in this country for a long time, people making money off of God, exploiting people with promises that they can’t fulfill, selling things that are unnecessary, and basically trying the patience of God. That’s exactly what’s going on. So successful living in the devil’s world requires accurate instructions. If you want to live in the devil’s world where you are right now, you’re here, you’ve got to have some accurate instruction for you and for your children. So we start off with Ephesians 6, 1 and 2. Here we go. This is where we say, children, obey your parents. Honor your father and your mother. Those words lead to authority orientation. And unless a child learns authority orientation in the home, then he is going to be maladjusted in life with some sort of flaw in his life, incorrigible person that’s going to be hard to deal with. Honor your father and your mother. Obey your father and your mother. Two different words. Obey, hupotasso is the Greek word. And it’s a military thing like about face, attention, and the soldier snaps to attention and makes a pivot and goes in the opposite direction. That’s what this word hupotasso means. It’s an order of the command. Children, obey your parents. And when they don’t obey, there’s always a source of discipline. Sometimes you can do the Greek word paideia, and sometimes you can do the Greek word nousia. So paideia means to put something on them with a paddle and nousia means to put something in their mind. There are two ways to discipline. You discipline with instruction and you discipline with pain. It’s the same thing God does to you when you discipline him as a believer. So the children have to learn authority orientation at home. You have to encourage positive volition to your children. Explain negative volition, positive volition, and expose them to the word of God. Expose them to the biblical principles and truth of the Bible. And let them see that you believe that and you live by that. If you can expose them to scripture by nightly Bible reading and explaining what it means to them, you’ll be way ahead of anyone else because Satan wants to steal their thoughts and inject fear through their mind through intimidation of death. That’s exactly what he wants to do. And he’ll do it to you too. He will steal your thoughts, especially in this crisis we’re going through. and inject fear through intimidation of death. Where did I get that? Hebrews 2, 14 and 15. For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself, that’s the Lord Jesus Christ, likewise took part of the same, flesh and blood, that through death on the cross, he might destroy the one that had the power of death, that’s Satan, That is the devil, the Bible says, and deliver them who through the fear of death were all their life subject to bondage. Through the fear of death were all their life subject to bondage, Hebrews 2, 14 and 15. This is what Satan uses to manipulate people with. This is what Satan uses to intimidate people with. Are you afraid of dying? Has this virus gotten so out of control that you’re afraid you’re going to catch it and you’re going to die? Are you? Where’s your faith? You must trust God. You must know he’s your heavenly father and he loves you. He’s not going to hang you out to dry. And if he does call you home, you’ll be going to a much better place than a sin-infested world where the real virus is sin and death. That’s the real virus in this country and in the whole world, sin and death. And it started with Adam. For by one man, sin came into the world and death by sin. And now death… passed on all there is an antidote for sin and death and that antidote is faith alone in Christ alone God’s textbook for you is the Bible the Bible why was the Bible written well Proverbs 1 2 says so you can learn wisdom and moral instructions and get some wise counsel You know, since we’re all infected with this sin and death virus, we ought to learn how to avoid letting our sin nature lead us to an early death, right? Romans 8, 2, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made me free from the law of sin and death. There’s the sin and death virus right there. I’m free of that thing because I have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I’ve learned God’s wonderful problem-solving devices, starting with rebound, where I don’t have to let my sin nature control me any longer. I don’t have to live by fear. I don’t have to live with intimidation. I can stand on faith in God’s Word and God’s promises. Exactly what Moses told the Jews as they fled out of Egypt and got to the Red Sea, and it looked like they were all going to die. He said, stand still and watch what God’s about to do. Can you do that? Can you just stand still and watch what God’s about to do for you? Well, listen, you want to learn God’s unique problem-solving devices? You want to learn his unique protocol plan for your life? I hope you do. Not many people really want to. If you look across this country, there are not a lot of people that are really interested in learning anything except what’s on TV tonight or what their favorite sports team are doing or something like that. As Jeremiah faced it in his generation, here’s what he said. For my people are foolish. They have not known me. They’re stupid children and they have no understanding. They are wise to do evil. Oh yeah, they know all about that. But to do good, they have no knowledge. Jeremiah 4.22, the exact same thing we face today. Stupid people that think they’re wise in their own eyes and have ignored God’s word and God’s system of divine institutions and it brings us to places like where we are today. Jeremiah 6.10, Behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach, and they have no delight in it. They don’t like it, don’t want it, not interested in it. This plan that I’m talking about for you starts with God’s loving grace. The grace, John 3, 16, is plain. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That’s as plain as you can be. He loved you in eternity past. Before you were born, he loved you, and he provided for you a way out from the law of sin and death. The virus of sin and death is no longer controlling you. And so it all starts with God’s loving grace. Grace. For by grace are you saved by faith. And you know where it goes from there? It goes from there to mercy. God’s mercy. Not by works of righteousness, Titus 3, 5. Not by works of righteousness which we’ve done, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the spirit which he poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord. Did you know that’s what happens to you when you get saved? God, the Holy Spirit, comes to live inside of you. He sets up residence in your soul, Ephesians 1.13, and he dwells in you. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit until the day that God takes you home. So we have grace and we have mercy, but mercy comes before forgiveness. from grace to mercy to forgiveness. John 3, 36, he that believes on the Son has everlasting life, and he that believes not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. That’s forgiveness. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, your sins were paid for, judged on the cross, and they are forgiven. From forgiveness comes peace. John 14, 27, peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither do not let it be afraid. My peace I leave with you. The Lord Jesus Christ was at peace even on the cross. And you can be at peace even in a scare such as America is facing in these days. And from peace comes contentment. Contentment. Philippians 4, 11 through 13. Not that I speak in respect of want, for I’ve learned whatever state I’m in to be content, whether I have a lot, whether I have a little. He said, I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound. And everywhere and in all things I’m instructed both to be full or to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need, because I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength. That needs to be your verse today. You need to understand that. You can do all things through Christ because of God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness and the peace that comes with it and the contentment that’s a result of it. From contentment comes confident expectations. From contentment comes confident expectations. Philippians 4, 19, but my God shall supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Do you have that peace that comes from trusting Christ? Do you experience contentment in your life? Do you have a relaxed mental attitude based on your confident expectations of what God can do and will do? I mean, you should and you can. Learning God’s plan for your life takes a little bit more time than just reading a short daily devotional. Nothing wrong with that, but consider it’s just an appetizer, not the full meal. The real chef for your soul is a well-qualified pastor who can expound the scriptures and teach them to you. As the Bible says in Ephesians 4, 11 through 16, he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers. That’s one word, pastor and teacher. Why? For the equipping of the saints for the work of the service to the building up of the body of Christ. until we all attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to become mature men to the measure of the statue which belongs to the fullness of Christ, so that we’re no longer children carried to and fro, tossed around by waves and the wind and trickery of men. That’s why you got a pastor. That’s why God gave you somebody with that gift so you can grow. Do you have one? Do you sit under the authority of a qualified pastor? Do you learn on a consistent basis? If not, you’re never going to grow up. You’ve got to do that. If you don’t understand this, contact me. Get a hold of me. I’ll tell you where you can get under a real great, fantastic, qualified pastor, and you can study even in the confinements of your own home. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you now for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
