Join Rick Hughes as he navigates through the intricate tapestry of faith and love in this enlightening episode of The Flatline. Hughes emphasizes the core tenets of trusting in God’s plan as laid out in scriptures like Jeremiah and Proverbs, urging listeners to surpass human understanding and lean on divine guidance. This episode is a call to spiritual growth, highlighting the significance of instruction and the wisdom gained through scripture, ultimately strengthening one’s trust and love for God.
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, stick around. It’ll be about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, but no manipulation because we don’t try to con you. We’re not trying to hustle money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We just want to give you information. Hopefully information that will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If you can do that, then you can orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. But what we’re going to study today is very, very, very important. And I think it’s something I haven’t covered before. But before we begin our study this morning, I’d like to thank all of you who called or written encouraging me as we move into the 2025 broadcast year. To be honest with you, I really never thought I’d be around this long, but it’s obvious the Lord has other plans. One of the verses that encourages me is found in Jeremiah 29, 11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. He knows his purpose and his plan for us. But the question is, do we know and understand and trust his plan? So two key words, do we know his plan and do we trust his plan? If you stick with me today, I think we’re going to understand what this means. You and I can take comfort in this divine provision of God has a plan for us to prosper us, not to harm us, to give us hope and a future. We can take comfort in that provision. However, there is one thing we must do before we can take comfort in this passage I just read to you. And that one thing is found in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Here the Bible says, trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not to your own understanding and all of your ways submit to him and he will make your path straight. It’s very obvious that before we can believe Jeremiah 29 and 11, we’re going to trust what God said. So in this passage in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. Let’s take a look at that. This passage says we have to trust him with all of our heart. and submit to him. Listen to the words again. Lean not to your own understanding and in all your ways submit to him. There’s positive volition. There’s faith to trust. And we have to have some insight and understanding. Don’t lean to your own understanding, human viewpoint. So let’s get some principles on these two verses. The fact that God has a plan for us and we have to trust him to learn what that plan is. So here are the principles. Number one, trust is another word for a very strong type of faith. The Hebrew word batak is a verb, and figuratively it means to be confident or to be sure or to be secure. And this particular verb in this Hebrew word means what we call a cal-imperative. meaning the imperative means it’s a divine command, not a request. God is telling you through the writer of Proverbs to trust in him with all your heart. So the second point, make no mistake now, don’t make any mistakes about this. Point two, if you fail to trust God, you’re sinning, if you’re a believer. Failure to trust God is a sin for the believer. And so you can see where you and I are. Obviously, we sin many times when we have things that happen and we wonder why it happened. We’re mad because it happened and we don’t trust God about it. You think God overlooks the small details in your life? Absolutely not. He’s aware of that. And that’s what this verse said in Jeremiah 29, 11. I know the plans I have for you. plans to prosper you, not harm you, he said, not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. So you must trust him, and you must not fall into the sin of mistrust. Point three, the passage makes it clear that we are to trust in God, not our own instincts. 100% trust and be confident in his plan. Point four, the action part of trust is the word submit. Did you hear it when I gave it to you? Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not to your own understanding and all your ways submit to him. The action part of the word trust is the word submit. You can’t trust if you don’t submit. And this indicates the act of submission on our part. But to do that, before we can submit, here’s another word, we’ve got to have confidence in God’s plan and design for our life. So how can you trust God and how can you submit to God and his plan if you don’t have confidence? Well, where do you get that confidence? That confidence, point five, is developed and strengthened by means of spiritual growth. In Psalm 32, verse 8, the Bible says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. So I will instruct you. If we’re going to submit and have confidence, we have to learn something. So point six, spiritual growth requires instruction. Instruction. I just read it. Psalm 32, 8. I will instruct you and teach you. And so spiritual growth, point six, requires instruction. That’s why we have a Bible, and that’s why we have men who have the gift of pastor, teacher, Ephesians 4.11. Because point seven, it’s through the scriptures that God counsels us, or in other words, God guides us through the scriptures. And if you have confidence and you trust him, you’ll understand that. He guides us through the scriptures. And the Bible says in 2 Timothy 2.15, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And so the Lord wants you to have confidence in his guidance, confidence in his plan, and to trust him and not try to do things on your own free will. So that means you’re not stepping outside the plan of God, trying to figure it out for yourself. God has a plan. And what is his plan? Where’d I get that? For I know the plans I have for you. Jeremiah 29, 11. God has a plan for your life. A time to live and a time to die, a time to be happy, a time to be unhappy. He has a plan for you. And he declared that in Jeremiah 29, 11. But it’s not to hurt you. It’s to prosper you and give you confidence in a great future. Do you trust him? Do you have confidence to trust him? Do you know enough of the word of God to trust him? Have you grown spiritually enough to let him counsel you? Because point eight, spiritual growth produces insight and discernment. What are those two words, insight and discernment? They are a byproduct of understanding. When you understand God’s plan, you have insight into the future and discernment about what God’s doing. And this type of thinking is called in the Bible wisdom. Wisdom. It’s found in the scriptures in Proverbs 2, 1 through 6. My son, if you will accept my words, that’s the teaching, and store up my commands, that’s the learning, within your heart, turning your ear to wisdom. and applying your heart to understanding. And indeed, if you will call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, if you look for it as silver and search for it like it was a hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and you will find the knowledge of God for the Lord gives wisdom, there it is, from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.” So how can you trust God if you don’t understand God? And how can you love God if you don’t know God? So wisdom, point nine, is necessary if you wish to be a winner believer, not just some sort of benchwarmer. I mean, we’ve got football season going on. We got a lot of benchwarmers that never get in the game. God cannot put you in the game if you don’t understand his plan and if you don’t trust his decisions. So now let’s get to the matter of trust. What does it mean to trust God? Trust is the strength of your faith, your faith. Faith requires trust. And what does trust require? You have confidence that God’s not going to harm you. Confidence that God has a good plan for you. And that confidence gives you comfort. Listen to what Paul wrote in Philippians 1.6. being confident, there it is, of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. So confidence is your trust in action. You can’t trust God if you don’t have confidence in God, and if you don’t have some knowledge of God’s plan, how can you have confidence in God, and how can you have faith if you don’t understand God? So point 11, confidence requires courage. The young shepherd boy who walked out into the face of the Philistine giant named Goliath was full of confidence. And thus he demonstrated great courage when he faced that giant with a slingshot. when all of Saul’s army was full of cowards running and hiding. Forty days and forty nights, the giant came out to challenge him, and nobody would fight him until finally one teenager with confidence and faith stepped up and did the job. In Matthew 8, 23 through 27, we find the disciples who had no faith due to their lack of confidence in God’s plan. They simply did not trust the Lord’s decision to cross the Sea of Galilee with storm clouds on the horizon. You hear what I’m saying? No confidence, no trust, no faith. Listen as I read to Matthew 8, 23. Then he got in the boat and the disciples followed him. And suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake so that the waves swept over the boat. But the Lord Jesus was sleeping. Matthew 8, 25, the disciples went and woke him up, cried, Lord, save us, we’re going to die. And he replied, oh, you of little faith. There’s a problem. No faith because of no trust and no confidence. Oh, you of little faith, why are you so afraid? Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. And they were amazed, and they said, what kind of man is this, given the winds and the sea obey him? Well, he was the God-man. undiminished deity, true humanity, and one body forever. But the key to that is he never used his deity to sustain his humanity. He did use his deity to calm that sea. Yes, he was God. He just stood up and said, stop, and it was the end of it. It slicked off. But he never, ever used his deity to sustain his humanity because he would have been doing something you and I couldn’t do, but he did not. He left us a perfect example. And the Lord actually called them, point 13 in our principle, men with little faith, that they were short-time trusters. They looked at the circumstances and not their savior. Fear replaced faith. Thus, in fear, they quit thinking and they allowed their emotions to take over because emotions don’t think, they just react. So in any situation in your life when you have adverse circumstances like storms, whatever they may be, you can become afraid and quit thinking and react with emotional sins or you can have faith and have confidence and respond with the scriptures. So point 14, our job when we’re in the storms of life is to respond with faith. not react with fear. And this faith gives us the power to overcome the fear. But listen carefully. Your faith has to be based on something stronger than you just hope. I mean, it has to be based on something that is very important. It is your love for your Heavenly Father who loves you. If your faith is not based on your love for your Heavenly Father, it won’t work. In Jude 20 and 21, chapter 1, verse 20 and 21. But you, dear friend, by building yourself up in your most holy faith, build yourself up in your most holy faith. You hear that? Faith can increase. You can build up your faith. And praying in the Holy Spirit, he wrote, keeping yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. There’s the key in that verse. Building yourself up in faith and keeping yourself in God’s love. This verse says that building yourself up in the most holy faith and keeping yourself in God’s love. Here’s a question I want to ask you now. How do you build up your faith and what motivates you to do that? In 1 John 4, 18, the Bible says there’s no fear in love because perfect love drives out fear. Remember I said faith defeats fear and personal love for God is your faith. So when you have personal love for the Father, then your faith builds up as you learn the scriptures and you have confidence and trust in God’s plan for your life. We go back to that verse in Jeremiah. I have a plan for you. I know what the plan is. Do you trust him? Do you have confidence in him? Do you have the courage to let God take control and you quit trying to run the show? Here is the secret to the power of faith. Listen again. Here is the secret to the power of faith. It’s your personal love for God. It’s your personal love for God. Not just some word spoken as a token recognition like, oh, I love God. but it’s a genuine trust that you have in His plan and in His provision. God loves you and God wants you to love Him, I promise you. So much so that you trust Him. God loves you and wants you to love Him. So much so that you trust Him. In 1 John 4, 19, we love Him. Why? Because He first loved us. But how can you love somebody you don’t trust? That’s the problem. How can you love someone you don’t trust? And how can you love someone you don’t see? How can you love someone you don’t even know? Listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 14, 21. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. There’s the proof. Obedience is the proof that you love him. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them, and I will show myself to them. Remember, I just asked you, how can you love someone you can’t see? Listen, I will show myself to them. You will see the Lord Jesus Christ manifested through the Word and in your life. Christ in you, the Bible says, is the hope of glory. So when you have this personal love for God the Father, That’s what it says, whoever has my command and keeps them to is the one who loves me. When you have that kind of trust and confidence in his plan, then he reveals himself to you. So the motivation, For us to obey God’s word is one thing. It’s our personal love for him more than what the world offers, more than what our family offers, more than what money offers or circumstances offer. Do you really love God so much so that you trust him and have confidence in him and have courage under intense situations in your life? Because that personal love for God is the door to spiritual greatness. Personal love for God is the power behind your faith. That personal love for God is the confidence you have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. As the psalmist said in Psalm 23, 4, I will fear no evil for you are with me. The invisible presence of God in your life is manifested by your faith. So we need to get a couple of more principles about that. The invisible presence of God is manifested by your faith. When you have personal love for God, point one, then you have extreme confidence in God’s plan for your life. What a wonderful way to live. What are you talking about taking the monkey off your back and put the monkey on the Lord’s back? Let him handle the details. Let him handle the circumstances. When you don’t get what you want in your promotion, when you don’t get what you want in your salary, when you don’t get what you want in whatever you want, do you have confidence that God’s in control, that he’s got a plan for you? I can remember one time my wife and I had to move suddenly from a house we were renting. We didn’t have a choice. It was a fearful thing because we were told we had two weeks to get out and find another place to live. And at first I had no confidence in God’s plan. At first I had no courage. But you know what? It turned out that the Lord had a better place for us to be. A cheaper place and a better location. And I failed the test because I didn’t have confidence in his plan. Oh, his plan was manifested. And we took advantage of it, but I had to learn the hard way to trust him. Not look at the details, not look at the circumstances, but in faith, love my Lord and know he’s not trying to harm me. He’s trying to do good, promote me, bless me. So two, confidence from love-motivated faith. Did you hear that? Love-motivated faith. Key three words there. Confidence from love-motivated faith gives you a great peace and that passes all understanding. Philippians 4, 7. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus. What a wonderful thing to have, that peace of God. It’s beyond the understanding of your neighbors. It’s beyond the understanding of your family. When you have that sort of peace in God’s plan, you love him that much that you trust him enough And you’ll find as you get older, you’re going to have to come to this conclusion. Do you really trust him to handle your sicknesses and your problems you’re going through? Do you have confidence that God’s in control? Or do you want to panic? Do you want to scream and get afraid and let fear take over? No. You want to let faith take over because you are motivated by your love for your heavenly father that promised he loved you, that he had a plan for you, that he would not abandon you. The Lord Jesus Christ said it. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I give unto them eternal life and they will never perish. Neither shall any man ever pluck them out of my father’s hand. So in Galatians 2.20, one more time, I have been crucified with Christ and I am no longer living. It’s not me, but it’s Christ living in me. The life that I now live in this flesh, I live by faith, by faith, by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Satan’s number one objective, as I said, in regards to your spiritual life is to stop you from replicating the life of Christ. He doesn’t want you to replicate the Lord Jesus Christ, to represent him to your family, to your friends. And that’s what I just read to you in Galatians 2.20. Christ lives in me. Paul replicated Christ. He represented Christ. He said, the life I now live in this body, I live by faith, trust, confidence, courage in the plan of God. Christ lives in me. It was no longer Paul’s life. It was the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that’s supposed to be that way with you and I. We’re not living for ourself. We’re living for him. It’s no longer about you or about me. It’s about Christ. Christ. Do you love God enough to understand that? Christ lives in you. It’s no longer your life. It’s his life. As you replicate his life to your friends, He said, the life I now live in this body, I live by faith. That’s what he said. I live by faith, motivated by his love for me. I live by faith, by the Son of God. I’m quoting it now. The life I now live in this body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me. This faith is motivated by his love for me. And this is called reciprocal love motivation. We love him because he first loves us. So here’s another principle. God requires you to love him. and to trust him and thus the proof of your faith. Hebrews 11 verse six, without faith it’s impossible to please God because anyone, any person, anybody who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. So if you will take a moment, and if you will read Hebrews 11, you will see the recorded testimony of faith warriors in the scripture. Listen to their testimony. I’ll read a few verses from Hebrews 11. Who through faith, that’s love-motivated faith, conquered kingdoms, administered justice, Gain what was promised. who shut the mouth of lions, quenched the fury of flames, escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned into strength and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign enemies. How’d they do that? By love-motivated faith. What a wonderful way to live. What a wonderful strength you have. Your faith is directly related to your love for your Lord. So let me closing, let me ask you this question. It’s a fair question. How’s your faith today? Do you worry? Are you afraid? Do you understand the God you claim that you love? For many individuals, the adverse circumstances overcome their thinking and rob them of their trust and their confidence in the plan of God for their lives because they don’t really love him. They’re looking at the situation. Again, I want to repeat that. Many individuals, adverse circumstances overcome their thinking and rob them of their trust and confidence means short circuits their faith. The time is coming when you and I We’re going to be called to the witness stand and we’re going to be cross-examined by Satan. And our faith will be tested. And only our personal love for the Father will sustain us at that time. So I’m asking you, do you love God? Do you trust him? Listen to what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 4, 8 through 10. We are hard-pressed on every side, but we are not crushed. We’re perplexed, but we’re not in despair. We’re persecuted, but we’re not abandoned. We’re struck down, but we’re not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed by means of our body. That’s how we represent Christ our generation. Revealing Christ through our own trials, through our own tests, through the own circumstances that we face in our life. So, what was this lesson about? Faith. Do you love God? Do you trust God? Do you have confidence in God’s plan? Do you have courage letting that love motivate you? That’s the power of your faith. The power of your faith is your personal love for God. If you don’t have personal love for God, you’re going to be a weak believer. And personal love for God is one of those problem-solving devices that we talk about on the flight line of your soul. It’s one half of the virtue love package. The other half is impersonal love for all mankind. So we have personal love for God the Father. It’s our motivational virtue. And our functional virtue is impersonal love for all mankind. So I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re learning. I hope you’re figuring this out. The power of your faith is in your personal love for God. I don’t know if anybody’s ever told you that before, but I hope you learned it today.
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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.
