In this week’s episode, Rick Hughes tackles the concept of negative volition and its impact on spiritual life. Through an exploration of faith, sin, and divine justice, Rick illustrates how failing to align your choices with God’s Word leads to unnecessary suffering. Discover practical steps to embrace positivity in decision-making, understand the significance of spiritual armor, and avoid the pitfalls of worldly distractions. Rick offers insights and encouragement for those seeking a transformative relationship with God, fostering wisdom, and divine viewpoint thinking alongside faith-driven actions.
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, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. This is, I guess, I don’t know how many years now, but 719 Sundays that we have been broadcasting. The Flatline. If you figure that up, 52 Sundays a year, then you figure out how many years we’ve been on the air. And what an amazing opportunity and wonderful privilege it’s been for me to come into your home, into your car, into wherever you are, and to be able to present the Word of God to you in a way that would challenge you and encourage you to grow in His grace and knowledge. Remember, this show is about soul renovation. That has to take place before you can ever renovate your actions. You have to renovate what you think before you ever change what you do. That’s why we talk about building a flotline in your soul. Flotline. That’s the name of the radio show, The Flotline. The Flotline refers to the invisible main line of resistance in your soul. Those 10 unique problem-solving devices. that stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. That’s why we always say adversity, of course, is inevitable, but stress is optional. And that’s because adversity is what circumstances do to you and stress, well, that’s what you do to yourself. But when you learn God’s wonderful problem-solving devices and renovate the way that you think, then you can renovate the way that you live. That’s why you’ll hear me tell you God gave you two ends. One end you think with, the other end you sit on. And success in your life will depend on which one of those you use. It’s heads, and you’ll win, and tails, well, you’re going to lose. 2 Peter 3.18 says, Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And grow is a verb. It means to increase, to increase in your knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And that’s what we want to talk about a little bit today today. And you can’t increase if you don’t hear. And if you do increase, then you can gain some wisdom. We’ll get into all of that. But it’s a great honor to be back with you. Thank you for listening all across the country. I think we are broadcasting now on 27 radio stations from coast to coast. And as we trust the Lord to provide our needs, he always does that. He’s always faithful. He’s never let us down. and I pray that we’ve always been faithful to never let you down. Sometimes those radio stations don’t play the show, and it’s not my fault. We pay them promptly, but they have technical difficulties or difficulties with staff, and some stations have missed more than one show, and we warn these stations, if you miss us three times, we’ll just shut it down and go to another station. So please, If they’re not playing it in your area consistently, you let me know and we’ll be in touch with them right off the bat. If you ever want additional information, I can always provide you any of these shows on MP3 disc that you can play in your car, play in your computer, and you can listen to them at home. You don’t have to wait until they come on the radio if you want to hear them. We can provide hundreds of them at a time on one disc. So keep that in mind. Now we want to talk today about the power of negative volition. V-O-L-I-T-I-O-N, volition. And volition is defined as a refusal, negative volition, let me say it that way, negative volition. Volition is the chooser. It’s the decider in your soul. You know, you got up this morning, you used your volition. You said, I think I’ll brush my teeth. I think I’ll comb my hair. I think I’ll put on that shirt or that dress or those shoes or those sandals. And your volition was at work. You chose. And positive volition is what we’re looking for, people that are positive to the Word of God. Negative volition is what we often find. So negative volition is defined as a refusal to believe the Word of God or refusing to assemble for the teaching of the Word of God. It’s very interesting that the disciples immediately after the resurrection demonstrated some negative volition when Mary came back and said, I’ve been to the tomb and he’s not there and I saw an angel and And people, no, that’s not possible. The disciples thought, no, it’s not possible. And even on the road to Emmaus, two men who were going home from Jerusalem back to Emmaus spoke with him, didn’t recognize him, but did not believe the resurrection had taken place. And the Lord had to school them on the Old Testament prophecies. So many did not believe it. But it was real. It is real. Jesus Christ is alive today. He is not dead. He walked out of that tomb alive, and that guarantees you something. I guarantee you on the basis of the Word of God that when you leave this body, as you will inevitably someday, if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be face to face with God the Father, and you will get a new body, a resurrection body, And that’s the body that you will live in and serve him in for all eternity. So keep that in mind. Our Lord got a resurrection body and there’s one awaiting you. But you know, negative volition, negative volition, nasty negative volition. refusal to believe the Word of God, or refusing to assemble for the hearing of the Word of God. Now the first one, refusing to believe the Word of God, that’s pretty prevalent in our society today because the Word of God comments on a lot of social issues, and yet certain individuals refuse to believe it, or at best they want to change and say it doesn’t really mean that, when yes, it does mean that. It’s pretty obvious in the laws of marriage and the divine establishment concepts of the family what the Bible teaches. But in today’s society, there is a challenge to that. and a lack of belief in what the Bible teaches as a man and a woman, being a husband and a wife, and raising a family. So a Christian can refuse to believe what the Word of God says, even a non-Christian. Christians are non-Christians. And sometimes Christians refuse to assemble for the teaching of the Word of God. They get upset, they get angry, they get mad, they get disillusioned with the local pastor, with the local church, and they say, I’m just not going back. You might have been there yourself. I gave them my money, and this is what they did to me. There’s a way to grow. If you’re not in a local church, there is a way to grow. You can get consistently information by means of MP3 or DVD, and you can grow until the Lord shows you where to go. But Eventually, you must get under a good pastor that’ll teach you God’s Word. We’ll talk about that. So that’s one way of having negative volition, not going to church, not being in Bible class, not learning God’s Word. And a believer like you or me can also exhibit negative volition when we refuse to rebound a known sin. If we sin, remember sin comes in three categories, something we think, something we say, or something that we do. You know, sin can be a thought. And the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord won’t hear me, which is a guarantee your prayers will not be answered if you have unconfessed sin in your life. Even mental attitude sins such as jealousy, bitterness, worry, fear, these are all sins. The Bible comments on all of those things, and you’re not allowed to live under the control of those things. And so when you fail to rebound your sin, which is problem-solving device number one, that verse says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and to purify us from all wrongdoing. None of us here listening to my voice can live without confessing our sin to God. We have a sin nature. We got it from Adam. And the flesh wars against the spirit. The spirit wars against the flesh. The Bible tells us that in Galatians. And it is a never-ending battle. That’s why Paul said, I don’t understand myself at all in Romans 7.15. Because he said, sometimes I want to do the right thing, but it’s inevitable I do the wrong thing. And it’s sin in me that causes it. You and I have a sin nature. We got it from Adam. We are not perfect, and our Father knows this, and he gave us a way to get cleansed by using Rebound, the first problem-solving device we all have to learn. Because if the Holy Spirit is quenched in your life by unconfessed sin, then there can be no faith perception anymore. And you shut off the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. And you actually grieve him. You must live by faith. Now the disciples, when the Lord Jesus Christ walked among this earth, I remember my pastor teaching this recently. They had empirical data. They watched him. They saw him. They talked to him. They touched him. But then he left and he said, I’m going to go away and I’m going to send the Holy Spirit. He’ll help you understand and he’ll guide you. And then they no longer had empirical data. They had to live by faith. And that’s the way you and I live. We don’t have empirical data. We have a Bible. And we accept what’s in that Bible as faith. So if we quench the Holy Spirit, and the Bible gives us clear instructions on that, then we can’t use the faith perception. We can’t do it. It can’t take place because we shut off the spigot. The spigot is the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit, and we have grieved him by that. unconfessed sin in our life, and the Bible clearly warns us in Ephesians 4.30, do not grieve the Spirit of God by whom you are sealed. until the day of redemption. And that’s the day of the exit resurrection in 1 Thessalonians 4, when the dead in Christ shall rise first and we who are alive and remain together shall be caught up with them in the clouds and thus shall we evermore be with the Lord. So that’s the exit resurrection, the day of redemption. To grieve is the present active imperative of the Greek word grieve. I’m giving you this Greek word so you’ll understand it. Grieve is the English word. It’s translated grieve, but the original Greek word is lupeo. The reason I told you it’s a present active imperative, that’s the morphology of the verb, and I want you to see that it’s very important. The present tense is the durative, which means there never is a time in the believer’s life when he is to grieve the Holy Spirit by not confessing his sin. The active voice, as the believer produces the action of that verb in the imperative mood, is the command from God through the Apostle Paul. So lupeo in the active voice means we cause the Holy Spirit to be in distress or to have pain or to have grief, to be sorrowful, or technically we offend him when we sin. Remember he lives inside of you. Remember 1 Corinthians 3 says, don’t you know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? God the Holy Spirit lives in you. And when you sin, you offend the Holy Spirit. The Bible also says in 1 Thessalonians 5, 19, quench not the Spirit of God. Quench is another present active imperative like the last one we just looked at called grieve. And this word quench is, the Greek word is actually kind of a compound word, sebonomi, sebonomi. And it means to extinguish or suppress the divine influence he provides in your life. To extinguish or suppress the divine influence. The Holy Spirit provides in your life. When you quench him, it’s like a garden hose and you bend it in half so the water won’t come out. You’re holding it in your hand and you’ve been spurting it on the flowers. Then you want to stop and you want to bend it and fold it over. And there’s still water in there, but it won’t come out. Well, that’s what we do when we quench the Spirit of God. We stop the flow of God’s divine power in our life. Many believers, many fall into negative volition by being distracted in their personal life and becoming vulnerable to satanic ploys. It’s very easy to get distracted. The lure of the world is real. The Bible tells us that the world is out there, and the Bible tells us we have three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. So when we get distracted by the world, we become vulnerable to satanic ploy. That’s why we’re told in Ephesians 6, put on the armor of God so that you can stand against the strategy of the devil. Put on the helmet of salvation. breastplate of righteousness all the way down pick up the shield of faith the first thing is to control what you think put on the helmet control what you think this is where satan will attack you in your mind he will attack you there he will try to influence the way you think and if he can cause you to have doubt that you’re even saved or doubt that you’re still going to heaven then you’re pretty ineffective as a witnessing Christian, that’s for sure. So any born-again believer, you or me, who becomes negative to God’s Word is usually influenced by the satanic ploy and operating under some type of emotional revolt. Yep, emotions, we’ve got them. I mean, I have them really big at football. When football gets on the air, I get emotional. When I’m fishing, bass fishing, I get emotional. If I catch a big fish, yippee-doo, all right, way to go. But emotions are not designed to guide us through life. That’s not what our emotions were given to us for. Our emotions are an appreciator, but the word of God, our Bible doctrine guides us through life with divine viewpoint thinking. And the only way we get it is by faith perception, by listening to the teaching of the word of God. And when Jesus walked on this earth, it’s pretty obvious they didn’t listen to him. He proclaimed his presence. Many, many would not believe who he said he was, and he commented on that. In John 8, 43, why do you not understand my speech? Even because you cannot hear my words. This is what arrogant, self-righteous, legalistic people are like. They don’t listen to the message. And the reason that these self-righteous, legalistic, arrogant Sadducees, Pharisees, members of the Sanhedrin, the reason they wouldn’t listen to him is he was a threat to their power and their control. They didn’t like it. They wanted him dead. They wanted him out of the way. He showed them up. And religion and politics are always about control. Always. A divine viewpoint government, which is a wonderful government, is about serving the people, not controlling the people. The government we have today seems to want to offer security in exchange for your freedom. And the simple gospel, the good news, Jesus Christ died for all, offers freedom, not enslavement, to ritual without reality. That’s what religion does. It enslaves you to going through ritual, and there’s no reality to it. John 8.32 says, if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. And how did I get to know it? Jesus said in Matthew 8, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest. He said, take my yoke and learn of me. Learn of me. Listen again. Study to show thyself approved. Learn of me. Grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Learn of me. Three verses there. Study, grow, learn. You can’t grow and learn if you don’t study. And we’ll talk about that here in just a minute. So this arrogant, self-righteous, legalistic crowd, they wouldn’t listen to his message because it threatened their power. And that’s what religion and politics are all about, power, control. And that’s why the gospel offers freedom And that’s why a government that operates under the divine institutions, freedom, marriage, family, and nationalism, a government that operates under those four divine institutions, freedom, family, marriage, nationalism, then that’s a wonderful government. And you can live free and you can advance and you can have a wonderful life. But when we begin to do away with freedom, begin to take away the rights of individuals, it could be any number of rights that the government would like to take away, saying you’re a threat or that’s a threat. Or if you take away the institution of marriage and you take away the institution of the family, then the nation slowly begins to erode from the inside. I think a lot of that has been done, is being done, and that’s why you’ve heard me say there’s a train wreck coming and I can hear the whistle blowing down the track right now. I think America is headed for a big disaster, mainly because we have ignored the truth of the Word of God. We failed to operate on divine establishment principles, and it’s going to pay bad, bad dividends in the future. Now, John 8, 32, again, you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Free from what? We’re free from the enslavement of the sin nature to start with. When you accept Christ as Savior, you no longer have to be controlled by your sin nature. Now you have a choice. Now you can let the Holy Spirit control your life. You’re free from the punishment of hell. You no longer are going to the lake of fire, compliments of the grace of God. You’re free of that, and you’re free to choose to live in God’s power system, God’s wonderful plan, and you don’t have to live in the cosmic system of the devil’s world. You can live here and think a different way and function in God’s plan, thinking divine viewpoint, not being a slave to human viewpoint and not being a slave to the cosmic system. So how does negative volition actually start? How does it start? How does a person get negative? Well, they fall in love with the wrong thing. Here’s what the Bible says in 1 John 2. Don’t love the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, then the love of the Father is not in him. For all that’s in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, that’s not of the Father, but is of the world. But the world will pass away, and the lust of it as well. But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Okay, then I want to do the will of God. What is the will of God? Well, John 6, 40 says it in plain English. This is the will of the one who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes on him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day. The will of God is for you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. By doing that, you receive him as your Savior, and you are guaranteed an exit resurrection on the last day. You will not be in the lake of fire. You will not be sentenced to hell. You’ll be face to face with the Lord. Now, if you don’t choose to do that, you can live in the cosmic system. That’s the devil’s world. It’s here. It’s floating around. The cosmic influence is everywhere. And it’s a tactical trap for the enslavement of the human race. It’s a factory for the production of losers in life. If that’s all you have going for you, if the only thing you have going is the cosmic system, You are a loser in life. You’re losing out on opportunity. You’re losing out on rewards. You’re losing out on the future. You’re having to go it alone in the devil’s world. Thus, because you have rejected God’s word, you’ve rejected any opportunity to learn it, know it, and apply it in your life. You’re living under the law of volitional responsibility, which means you’re causing your own suffering and your own misery. You’re causing it. That’s why you have to take responsibility for your decisions. Not your husbands, not your children. You take responsibility for your decision. You cannot change anybody but yourself. That’s a big shocker. You can control you. That’s the only person you can control. Because the Bible says, don’t be deceived, God will not be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he’s going to reap. And this is about you and the decisions that you make because you have the ability to manufacture your own problems. Here’s a wonderful thing. Don’t forget this, man manufactures problems. God manufactures solutions to those problems. Divine solutions are the only solutions. And the way that God has prepared for us to live in the devil’s world, thinking divine viewpoint, not being trapped in the cosmic system, Having the most phenomenal life, the Christian life with no worry, no fear, being able to live without bitterness, without contempt for other people, being able to use impersonal love. All of those 10 problem-solving devices that he gives us, faith, rest, and drill, the filling of the Holy Spirit, grace orientation, biblical orientation, having a personal sense of destiny, and having personal love for God, as well as impersonal love for others, and having a system of happiness in your life, my joy, Jesus said, I give to you. Listen, this, and even occupation with Christ, this is a phenomenal lifestyle. And it has to be learned. Most people never learn it. Most people don’t even know it’s there. Most people just go to church out of a commitment, and it’s a good commitment. And we’ll go to church on Sunday morning and sing hallelujah, praise the Lord, and go home and go eat some chicken. That’s about the extent of it. They don’t consider that there is a whole plan to learn, that there is a system of operation that we live in the devil’s world. They never take the time to learn it. So they get trapped in the cosmic system and become enslaved. Under the laws of volitional responsibility, they create their own misery, their own suffering, and they have to take responsibility for those decisions. Galatians 6, 7, Be not deceived. God will not be mocked. Whatever man sows, he will reap. And there’s another verse that goes along with it, Colossians 3.25. He who does wrong will receive the consequences of that wrong which he hath done, and there is no partiality in God. Not going to show you any favors, not going to let you off the hook and make John pay more. You’re going to have to do the same punishment that John does. Discipline is not fun. Those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. Hebrews 12 talks about that. And sometimes he has to take us behind the woodshed to get our attention. So how can you guarantee a good, wonderful, full life? Well, Proverbs 2.10 says, when wisdom enters your heart and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, then discretion or foresight will protect you and understanding will guard you. Guard you and protect you from what? Well, your biggest enemy is yourself. And so Proverbs 9, 10 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. In verse 11, 9-11 of Proverbs, you will live longer because of me and years will be added to your life. Verse 12, if you’re wise and your wisdom will help you. But if you mock it, then you alone will be held responsible. Ecclesiastes says wisdom is much better than strength. In Ecclesiastes 9-16, wisdom is what we’re after. Wisdom is what we need. Wisdom is the source of divine viewpoint. It’s the source of biblical thinking. There has to be knowledge before there’s wisdom. You can’t have wisdom without learning at first. And then once you get the wisdom, then you have foresight and discretion. Sometimes you have to learn things the hard way, but you study God’s Word, get under a well-qualified pastor, accept and apply what you hear and learn, and grow in grace and knowledge. There’s a lot more to say, and my time is running out already. But thank you for listening. I’ll come back next Sunday, same time, same place. Until then, thank you for listening to The Flotline.
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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.
