Rick Hughes delves into the perilous journey on the road to destruction, highlighting how destructive paths often stem from personal choices rooted in emotional turmoil and self-centeredness. Through vivid illustrations and biblical references, he warns against the dangers of self-justification, emotional decision-making, and the consequent spiral into depression and guilt. The episode concludes with a call to embrace the empowering solutions that faith in Christ offers, highlighting how the joy and strength found in Jesus can transform lives regardless of circumstances.
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 am Rick Hughes, your host, thanking you for tuning in this morning. It’ll be a short show, 30 minutes of motivation, some information, education, but no manipulation because we don’t con people. We’re not seeking money. We’re not trying to solicit any funds, not trying to sell you a membership, not going to ask you for anything except one thing. Please listen. Please pay attention. as I try to verify and identify God’s wonderful plan for your life. And if you can orient and adjust to the plan, you’ll have a much better life, I assure you that. The Flotline comes to you every Sunday morning on this radio station, compliments of God’s wonderful grace. We trust the Lord to supply our needs. That’s why we don’t hustle people for money. And the Lord is always doing that. Right now, we’re currently broadcasting on 110 stations across this great nation. FLOT, F-L-O-T, is the name of the show. It stands for the Forward Line of Troops. It is a military acronym. What we’re trying to do is show that there are 10 unique problem-solving devices found in the Bible. If you learn them and you use them, they will act like a main line of resistance. That is the military concept, the main line of resistance. And these 10 problem-solving devices can stop the outside sources of adversity before you ever turn it into the inside source of stress. Because adversity, as you know, is inevitable, but stress, you know, is optional. Stress is what you do to yourself. Adversity is what circumstances do to you. So there is a way to live without having stress. And by that, I mean there is a way to live without living in fear. There is a way to live without living in bitterness, antagonism, hostility. It’s called the Christian life. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the life that the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated to us while he was here. And we have the same assets available to us that he utilized. We have the Holy Spirit. We have the Word of God. And we have the indwelling of Christ in our life. So we have the opportunity to live a life like this called the Christian life. And that’s what this show is about. My main objective would be to get you to find a good local church where there is a well-qualified pastor teaching you the Bible. I’m not a pastor. I’m able to teach. I’m an evangelist is what I am technically, but I’m certainly able to teach you some basic Bible doctrine, some introductory concepts. But eventually, I would like to get you to find a good local pastor where he can teach you the Word of God on a consistent basis week after week, day after day, and you can make that application into your life. So if you don’t know where there’s a great pastor, contact me through our website, rickhughesministries.org. And we’ll try to help you find one in your city. And if not, I’ll tell you where you can go on the Internet and hook up with some great friends of mine that are wonderful pastors that have a great teaching ministry. And you can actually watch it online or you can order DVDs or MP3s. And our particular radio show as well, we always have MP3s available to you if you have any questions about something we’ve said. I also want to make sure that you understand we have a daily podcast every day. Every day we podcast a different show from our archives. And the transcription of the show is always linked in the notes section. I hope you’ll check out the podcast on Spotify or Apple iPod podcast, any of your podcast menus. If you’ll just search for The Flotline, F-L-O-T, and then you’ll find it. They’re all free. They don’t charge you to join the podcast like Spotify. There’s no charge. And you can listen to The Flatline anytime, anywhere, any day. You don’t have to wait until Sunday morning. So I hope you’ll take advantage of the podcast where we podcast The Flatline. Can I jump into my subject today, what I want to talk to you about? I want to talk about the road to destruction. The road to destruction, the road you do not want to be on, the road we sometimes call the my way highway. You know, destruction can come in many forms. I mean, we do live a physical life, so it’s kind of fragile. Destruction could be an accident. I’ve had friends killed in automobile accidents. It could be by means of a crime-related incident. It could be by means of an incurable disease. Or the worst yet, it could be totally self-destruction of yourself. You could take your own self out, sometimes by being stupid and sometimes by just being angry and bitter and committing suicide. People do it every day. Whatever it is, death for the unbeliever, the person that hasn’t believed in Christ, the disadvantaged person, It is the most horrible thing since they face an eternity in the lake of fire. In Revelation 20, 15, the Bible said, and whosoever was not found in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. And in Matthew 10, 28, and do not be afraid of those who kill the body, the Lord Jesus Christ said, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. So remember that the greatest decision you could ever make is a decision to receive Christ as your savior. And it’s the simplest decision you’ll ever make. There won’t be a check of your credit score. You won’t have to fill out any paperwork. All you have to do is simply do what the Bible says. Whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And a simple act of faith and prayer, demonstrating your faith to God the Father, telling him that you’re willing to receive Christ as your Savior is really all that it takes. Why? Because the Bible says by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift from God, not of works, lest any man should brag about it. But remember this. What’s between your ears is what you really are. You are what you think, and you will be a product of your own decisions in your life. You have a volition, V-O-L-I-T-I-O-N, volition. And that means you have the decision, a choice maker. You can decide, like if you’re watching TV and you want to change a channel, your volition says go to the next channel. Go to this channel, go to that channel. That’s a volitional decision. And you make volitional decisions every day. Spiritually, volitional decisions have tremendous consequences. So remember that. The Bible says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. And if God wants to look at you, he’s going to look at what you’re thinking. He’s not going to be looking at your style and your image and your dress. He’s looking at your thoughts today. your intents, your motives, your desires. Because the greatest enemy you have, the greatest enemy you have is yourself. And often it’s from boredom, from a life with a rigid routine that you don’t particularly like. Same thing, you know, nine to five every day, up and at them, up and at them, going to work, going to work, wishing you had a different job. I’ve learned this, that unhappy people seem to take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. It doesn’t really depend on what they have or don’t have. So if you can’t control your emotions, then you’re going to live a life of misery and depression, always blaming other people for your own unhappiness. And you can’t do that. When you make a bad decision from a position of weakness, that means you used your volition to do something stupid. You didn’t have the proper divine perspective in your life. You didn’t understand what the Word of God said, so you ignored the Word of God and you made a decision on your own based on what your friends told you or based on what some writer told you. That’s a position of weakness. And you’re thinking in terms of human solutions, and they are actually no solutions. As a matter of fact, let me say it again. Human solutions are no solutions. Divine solutions are the only solutions. If you get in this state of thinking, you’re gonna blame other people for your problems. instead of taking responsibility for your own bad choices. You know, you may often feel compelled to justify your decisions. You know, the reason I did it is this and the reason I did it is this. Self-justification is a horrible sin. It’s the first stage of arrogance. It leads from self-justification to self-deception to self-absorption and eventually self-destruction. So eventually you feel compelled to justify your actions when somebody calls you on it and said, why did you do that for? That was really dumb. And then you get judgmental of other people. This type of thinking can cause you to start frantically searching for happiness in your life, where you try to save yourself from loneliness and despair and that you created your own self. Once your emotions take over, let’s remember this, you can make a decision based on what you think or make a decision based on what you feel. If you let your emotions take over, you’re gonna make decisions based on what you feel. And if the emotions take over the control of your life, you slowly, slowly will spiral into a void of self-pity and eventual depression. That’s a perfect example of what I call satanic brainwashing. Focus on yourself. Look for excuses. Always complain about the way you’re being treated. Get into the frantic search for happiness, and you’ll lose sight of every value you ever had, and you will eventually even wind up reversing your values until you eventually exchange wrong for right and what you should have loved for what you should despise. I’m going to say that again. Eventually, if you keep focusing on yourself in a frantic search for happiness, you will lose sight of all your values, and you will eventually reverse your values until you exchange wrong for right and what you should love for what you should despise. That’s dead-end living, and that’s the road to destruction. The road to destruction is littered with depressed and hopeless people whose mind turns even to suicidal thoughts. They think life is now not worth the effort or sometimes they actually seek to hurt other people by forfeiting their own life in an attempt to lay a guilt trip on someone. But whatever it is, desperate people do desperate things. And there is a solution to your despair and loneliness if you’re interested. Our Lord faced tremendous challenges when he walked this earth. He was despised by the religious community of scribes and Pharisees and even betrayed by one of his trusted disciples. And he had no place even to call home. In Matthew 8, 20, Jesus said to the young man that wanted to follow him, the foxes have holes. The birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. And you know, the Lord Jesus Christ was put to death, even though the judge of the court found him not guilty. In John 18, 37, therefore Pilate said to him, so are you a king? And Jesus answered, you say correctly that I am a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this I have come into the world to testify to that truth. And everyone who is of the truth will listen to my voice. And Pilate said to him, well, what is truth? And after saying this, he came out to the Jews and said, I find no grounds at all for the charges you placed against this man. In spite of these unfair circumstances, our Lord never complained. He was never lonely. He was never feeling hopeless. In fact, he told the disciples that what he was teaching them, if they would listen to what he was teaching them, if they would learn what he was teaching them, then they could experience the same joy in adverse circumstances that he enjoyed. Listen to John 15, 11. These things I spoke to you so my joy could be in you and your joy could be made full. So he knew what the disciples would face when he was crucified and resurrected. He knew they would be on their own and they were going to be attacked just the same way he was attacked. And he knew that it’s possible to have a life of joy in spite of the circumstances, and that’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know what your circumstances are, but I know this. The same thing the disciples had to learn, if you will learn it, you can have the joy of Jesus Christ in your life. I know life is tough, and the Christian life is even tougher, because this is the devil’s world, not our world. We don’t belong here. In 2 Corinthians 4, 4, The Bible says, in whose case the God of this world, the God of this world, has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who’s the image of God. Blinded the minds of the unbelieving. That’s spiritual brainwashing. It’s exactly what Satan’s been doing for a long time, trying to get the gospel kicked out of the public venue, There’s even a group that would sue anybody that would attempt to give the gospel on public grounds. Took the gospel out of the schools so that we can’t talk to young people anymore about the Lord Jesus Christ and explain the plan of God. And Satan’s been very good at brainwashing, blinding the minds of the unbeliever. In 1 John 5, 19, the Bible says, we know that we are of God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one or Satan. So the Christian life is tough. We’re living behind enemy lines. We’re living in the devil’s world. And if you’re a Christian, this world is not your home. You are just a traveler going through this world. In 1 Peter 2.11, Beloved, I urge you as foreigners and as strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war in the soul. In 1 Peter 1, 17, and if you address as father, the one who impartially judges according to each one’s work, then live out the time of your temporary residence here in reverence. So Peter makes it clear, we are sojourners, we’re passing through, this is not our final destiny. You know, you’ve taken a trip and you’ve driven from one town to another town going to your destiny. This is not our destiny. Our destiny is ouranos, the Greek word for heaven. That’s where we’re headed. So the Christian has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to sustain him in times of testing while he’s in the devil’s world. In times of adversity, you have the scripture to support you. And the job of the Christian is to have a stable mindset that to have a stable mindset and get rid of the depression, get rid of the fear, get rid of the doubt, get rid of the loneliness. How do you do that? Well, first of all, you have to rebound the sin, the sin of self-centered self-pity. And then you begin to take God’s word, learn it and use it and apply it into your life. Like Paul said, I’ve learned whatever state I’m in to be happy. Doesn’t make any difference, he said in Philippians, if I have a lot or if I have a little. It’s not the situation. The situation is I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength. So if the Holy Spirit, the Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. I mean, this is what the Holy Spirit produces in you if you use rebound. If you stay filled with the Holy Spirit, problem-solving device number two. and subdue that sin nature. Don’t let it control your life. Don’t let it take control and make decisions based on what you feel rather than what you think. Why am I saying you should make decisions based on what you think? Because the Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. God wants you to think his word. God wants you to do what Romans 12 three says, 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. You can think human viewpoint or you can think divine viewpoint. You can be led into the lure of the cosmic system or you can be led under the power of the Holy Spirit. And you can enjoy the love and the peace and the joy and the patience and the kindness and the goodness and the gentleness and self-control. All of this is provided by means of the Holy Spirit as he uses the word of God in your mind, in your thoughts, in your stream of consciousness, where you take control. So if you find yourself minus some of these kind of assets that I just quoted here in Galatians 5, 22 and 23, it could be because you’ve committed mental attitude sins. You know, maybe you have, like what? Worry, bitterness, fear, self-pity, other things like that. You don’t like your situation. You’re alone. Nobody cares about you. Nobody loves you. You got a raw deal at work. This happened, that happened. These are pure satanic propaganda that calls you to let your emotions begin to rule your thinking. You can’t do that. Did you think you’re going to get a good deal from the devil in the devil’s world when you accepted Christ as your Savior? Don’t you remember where Paul said, We’re in a war, put on the armor of God so you can stand against the strategy of Satan. Well, what is his strategy? It’s to defeat you, to discourage you, to get you to turn against God because of your self-pity, to get you to think that even God’s against you. And that’s not true. That’s Satan. That’s Satan. The first step if you want to recover from that sort of thinking is for you to rebound your sin. Use your volition to come clean with God and quit blaming your circumstances and your misery on other people. You are a victim of your own decisions. in fact god may have allowed some things to go against you as a form of divine discipline maybe god put those in your life to kind of humble you a little bit hebrews 12 6 endure your suffering as discipline god is treating you as sons for what son is there that a father does not discipline so sometimes god will lower the hammer on you and you will feel it. It’s called warning discipline, intense discipline, and there’s even dying discipline. So when you fail to confess your sin to God or rebound your sin to God, it only guarantees there’s gonna be more discipline. Going to be more frustration as you look for a way out of a miserable existence and you turn to the world, you turn to yourself, you get into some bad habit or you get hooked on something you don’t need to be hooked on. And next thing you know, your life is being controlled by outside sources and you’ve lost control and you become a slave to your emotions, a slave to your lust. That’s what can happen. The frustrated, self-centered individual loses all hope of any sort of happiness. Why? Because they don’t see any way out of their misery. They see no way out of their circumstances. I mean, some will go into psychotic depression, even mental illness. Others could choose to end their desperation with suicide. And that’s a shame. What a waste. Because God didn’t design you to live that way or to do something like that. You know, in the Bible, we see some who chose to end their lives rather than live and face their failures. In Judges 16, 27 through 30, you see where Samson chose to end his life after his failure. Samson had a problem. He could be filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit and do some amazing things. But his volition kept getting him in trouble with the ladies. And the last one he got in trouble with was a woman named Delilah who tricked him into getting his hair cut and losing his power. And he was captured by the Philistines and he was being made fun of. And listen to this. Here he is, handcuffed, being made fun of, laughed at. Judges 16, 27, Now the temple was filled with men and women, and all the rulers of the Philistines were there. There were 3,000 men and women on the roof watching Samson entertain them. He’s been blinded. His eyes have been put out. His hair has been cut. And Samson, verse 28, called to the Lord and said, Please remember me. Strengthen me just one more time, O God, so I can get some revenge against these Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars that supported the temple. And he leaned against them with his right hand and other one in his left hand. And he said, let me die with these Philistines. And he pushed hard. And the Bible says the temple collapsed and all the rulers and all the people in it were killed. As a matter of fact, he killed many more people in his death than he killed in his entire life fighting the Philistines. But he took his life. He couldn’t live like that. One bad decision after another got him blinded, and it was only God’s grace that gave him that last little bit of strength at the end. In 1 Samuel 31, 3 through 6, King Saul kills himself. He was in the thick of a battle, and archers spotted him and wounded him severely. And he turned to his armor bearer, and he said, draw your sword and stab me with it. Otherwise, these uncircumcised people will come and stab me and torture me. but his armor bearer refused to do it because he was very afraid. So Saul took out his sword and fell on it. And when his armor bearer saw Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died with him. And so Saul, his three sons and his armor bearer and all of his men died together that day. So rather than give up to the enemy, he took his own life. In Matthew 27, three through eight, when Jesus found out who had betrayed him, Now when Judas, who betrayed Jesus, saw that Jesus had been condemned to death, he regretted what he had done and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. And he said, I sinned, I made a mistake by betraying innocent blood. And they said, what is that to us? You take care of it yourself. And so Judas threw that money into the temple and he left and he went out and he hung himself. Suicide. This is the power of guilt. an emotional attack on your spiritual life. You cannot live under the power of guilt. I don’t care what you’ve done in the past. Don’t look back. If you’ve rebounded the sin and confess the sin once is enough. You don’t have to keep confessing it and you don’t have to keep confessing it over and over and over again. If you made mistakes, go to the Lord, tell him if you’re still alive, when the dust clears, God still has a plan for your life. He’s not through with you. Guilt can become morbid self-reproach. It’s some sort of emotional feelings out of control, feeling culpable for something you did, and it brings out a sense of inadequacy. And guilt’s very dangerous. It’s definitely a sin because it leads into preoccupation with self and this person trying to correct his own behavior from some sort of self-righteous arrogance. Just confess your sin to God. growing the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, and you can overcome the guilt and the shame guilt causes repression, you know, pushing it back down as a primary defense mechanism against your anxiety. against your fear and worries. Instead of using God’s problem-solving devices that I’ve taught you on this show, those 10 unique problem-solving devices, that main line of resistance that will stop the outside source of adversity from becoming the inside source of stress. It’s available. If you learn it and you use it, Repression is simply a means of denial, and that’s part of the problem because it denies the reality of the problem in the first place because it’s too painful or unpleasant to look at, and the arrogant person refuses to look at it. So guilt and repression are horrible sins. Guilt results from being manipulated by some dominating personality sometime or even a weak person that has self-righteousness. But it’s a sin caused by repression, denial, projection, manipulation, and thus guilt motivates many failures in the spiritual life. Many people feel guilty because they don’t think they’ve lived up to God’s plan, and it’s probably so. But God didn’t design you to feel guilty. He designed you to get grace. So guilt becomes a sin when you fail to rebound and fail to forget those things that are behind and fail to look forward towards the things that are ahead. Philippians 3, 13, and 14 talks about this, and you have to remember that. Don’t let guilt be the motivator in your life rather than the word of God that’s supposed to circulate in your stream of consciousness because it’s the wrong kind of motivation and it’ll cause you to do the wrong things. It’ll let you be manipulated by legalism and circumstances. and entered into the most awful system of slavery when you’re manipulated by your own guilt. You don’t have to live like that. You’re just letting someone else reach the garbage in your soul and manipulate you to suit them. Don’t live like that. Live in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Get rid of the guilt. Confess your sin. Don’t look back. Move forward. Move on down the road. Stay filled with the Holy Spirit. Learn those 10 problem-solving devices, and you can stay off the road to destruction. You don’t have to be captured by Satan’s propaganda. You don’t have to be misled by Satan’s lies. There’s a better way to live, and I tell you about it every Sunday on this radio show. If you got more questions, you’d like some more information, be in touch. Contact me through our website, rickhughesministries.org. We’ll be glad to write back and respond and do anything we can to help you. So until next week. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and I’m saying thank you now for listening on The Flotline. And don’t forget, check out our podcast on any of those podcast venues that I mentioned. So until next week, may God bless you. This is Rick Hughes saying 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.
