Rick draws a parallel between Adam’s job in the Garden of Eden and the responsibilities we have in our own spiritual gardens. He urges listeners to cultivate not just their physical lives but also their spiritual existence with diligence and commitment. By understanding the role of humility and cultivating a lifestyle of service, we utilize our spiritual gifts effectively. The episode closes by urging us to focus not just on worldly successes but on nurturing a flourishing spiritual life to reflect the light of God to others.
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.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, I’d like to give you a cordial invitation to stick around 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education, and all without any type of manipulation. No con games here. We’re not soliciting money. We’re not trying to sell you a membership. We’re just offering you something free, information, information that if you will take it and listen to me, it will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If you can do that, you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. That’s up to you. But you have the freedom, you have the privilege and the privacy to live your life as you want to. God gave you a volition, a decider, a chooser. You decided to get up on what side of the bed this morning. You decided on what type of clothes you want to wear today, and you decide how you want to live your life. And it’s my privilege to give you this information. We’ve expanded our radio show well over 100 stations now across America every Sunday morning. And I’m so grateful for the privilege and the opportunity of doing this by faith, trusting the Lord to provide our needs, and thanking God for those of you that are listening this morning. You know the drill. We don’t intend to mislead you in any way, but you’ve got to concentrate. You’ve got to think. You can’t just kind of go through life fumbling around not thinking. God gave you two ends. You’ve heard me tell you that. One of those ends you sit on and one you think with. And success in your life is going to depend on which one you use. Heads you’ll win, tails you’ll lose. So no one ever grows up by not thinking. You have to think. If you’re just a child, you have to learn to think vocabulary. You have to learn to think food, feed me, potty, whatever. And words are important. And you have to learn to think in terms of God’s word and what God has to say, how you can use it and apply it into your life. So I’ve got some information today I want to give you that may be interesting to you. I want to use this as a personal challenge to you because in the day in which we live, there’s a lot of this that is not going on. I call it spiritual sleepers, spiritual sleepers. My own pastor has been teaching a series on the doctrine of work, and I thought it was very interesting how God created man and told him to go to work. And we’re going to make a little play on those words with you here today, so listen carefully. Matthew 24, 42. Therefore, the writer said, stay awake, Jesus said, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. I want to remind you of those words, stay awake. Listen to 1 Thessalonians 5, 6. So then let us not sleep as others sleep, but let us keep awake and be sober, Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5, 6. Again, in 1 Corinthians 16, 13, be watchful, stand firm in the faith and act like men, be strong in the faith. So we see the mandate, stay awake, don’t sleep, be watchful. These few verses emphasize the need for those of us who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to not to fall asleep on the job, J-O-B, job. I bet you’ve never thought of your Christian life in terms of having a job, but that’s what I want to make an analogy with today. Because as a Christian, you were left here for a mission. If it were not so, God would have taken you to heaven the moment you were saved, would he not? But he didn’t do that. I mean, you remember when you accepted Christ? I hope you do, and you’re still here. Why? I mean, why did God leave you around? There’s a mission for you to do. You have a job to do. I know you would not sleep on the job at your place of employment, at least I hope you wouldn’t, but that’s exactly what happens to many Christians. They get lulled to sleep in their spiritual journey and they never become impactful in the devil’s world. So stay awake. Don’t go to sleep. Be watchful. Stand firm. Is that you? Have you ever thought about it in these terms? Let’s take a little look at this. Maybe it’d be better if I said it this way. How can your life glorify God to the maximum? Do you even wish you had an impact in the devil’s world? Or would you rather just sit back and let somebody else do it for you? Because you’re too sleepy and you’re too tired and your schedule’s too busy and you just don’t have time. I mean, you found time for God last Sunday to go to church. Yay, whoop, yay, hooray. And you put a little money in the offering plate. All right for you. And the rest of the week, you’re sleeping through your spiritual life. Doesn’t work that way. You have a job to do. We’re going to talk about that. A job to do spiritually and probably a job to do physically. I don’t know what you do. You may be a first responder. You may be a housewife. You may be a teacher. You may be a contractor. You may be whatever. It’s your job. And just like you have a job to do and you must be punctual and you must be good at it, God expects you to do good at your job he gave you. Now let’s back up for a minute. God gave Adam a job. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, remember them? God gave Adam a job. He told him to cultivate the garden and keep it. In Genesis 2.15, then the Lord God took the man, put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. So you can imagine Adam with a big zero-turn lawnmower, right, running around cutting the grass in the garden? No, not hardly. But he had a job to do to cultivate the garden and keep it, and that wasn’t it. He had other things to do, like Genesis 2, 19. Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky, and he brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was his name. So not only did Adam have to cultivate the garden and keep the garden, whatever he did, I’ll talk to you about that in a minute, but he had to name all the animals. This was a full-time job. It was quite a job to do. And God expected him to be punctual with it. He was even given a helper for his job in Genesis 2, 10 through 22. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals, but for Adam there was no suitable helper found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a sleep. While he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with the flesh. And the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. And what did she do? She was his helper. She was his soulmate. Principle, God would never ask you to do something that you cannot handle. And apparently the Lord thought maybe Adam needed some help. Not only that, but Adam could see that all the animals had mates and he didn’t have one. And so the Lord provided Isha, Ish and Isha, the man and the woman, Hebrew words. I use these verses to emphasize that your life is like a garden. Think about that. Your life is like that garden. It has to be cultivated. It has to be watched over and you have to remove the weeds and loosen the soil and optimize the retention of the land and penetration of water and air. There’s a lot to be done in your life to keep it going. That’s your job. God gave you a job. Cultivate your own garden. In other words, you have a job to do and that’s to nurture your life both physically and spiritually. Nurture your life both physically and spiritually. If you ignore the weeds in your life, we call that sin. How’s that? And distractions. If you ignore the weeds in your life, it’s a sure way to shorten your existence. In other words, God intends for you to live a long, wonderful, healthy life. But like a child, for example, Ephesians 6, 1 through 3, 4, children, obey your parents, honor your father and your mother. This is the secret to having a long life, that passage says. What does that mean? When children are rebellious towards the authority of their parents, they can shorten their life because authority orientation is what gives you a long life. And when you rebel against authority, you become a criminal, you violate the laws of the land, the rules of law, then you can shorten your life. So you have to be paying attention to what God has to say here. So God would never ask you to do something you could not handle. Your life must be cultivated, must be watched, take care of your job, nurture your life physically and spiritually. Orient to authority and do what the Lord asks you to do, but don’t ignore the weeds in your life. It’s a sure way to shorten your existence, as I said. So anti-authority can shorten your life. Negative volition can shorten your life. If you’re a believer and you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior, you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, maybe you remember when you did it, and you became saved, and you entered into a relationship with God, He gave you a job. Take care of your garden. Take care of your life. How’s that going? Oh, I know you’ve been raising kids and you’ve been working at your physical job and you’ve been trying to keep the lawn cut and the house straight. You’ve been trying to go hunting and fishing and shopping and buying groceries and this, that, and the other. But have you set aside time for your spiritual life? Do you even think about your spiritual life? Because your spiritual life is not the same as your physical life. They are two different things. I mean, you have to be born once to get into this world, but you have to be born twice to get into heaven. You know that, don’t you? The Lord Jesus Christ told Nicodemus, you have to be born again, meaning that you’re born with a dead human spirit because of Adam’s original sin. When you believe in Christ and God the Holy Spirit indwells your dead human spirit, you’re born again, you’re made active again, spiritually speaking. That’s the only way you can worship God. Those that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth, the Bible says. So here you are. Have you been ignoring the weeds in your life? Have you been not focusing on your spiritual life, focusing on your physical life, focusing on your job, focusing on your kids, focusing on school, focusing on whatever, but not nurturing your spiritual life? not producing the beautiful, beautiful garden in your soul that God intended you to do. See, that’s what glorifies God to the max, and that’s your job, to bring God maximum glory through your life, spiritually speaking. Maybe you never really thought about it that way, huh? Never really thought about your spiritual life actually demanding that there’s some responsibility that goes with it? Let me make a statement to you. God did not leave you here to waste his time nor to waste your time. That’s not why God left you here. If you’re ignoring your spiritual life, all wrapped up in the details of life and the physical life, then you’re not falling through on taking care of the responsibility that God gave you. Just like he gave Adam, he gave him a job. God gave you a job to tend to your souls. In Ephesians 5, 15, the Bible says, see that you walk circumspectly, not as a fool, but as a wise person, redeeming the time because the days are evil. What does that mean? Well, evil is the genius of Satan. We know God’s genius is called grace, and we know that Satan’s genius is called evil. And what evil is, it’s not just sin. Anything that God has done, if Satan can twist it and distort it, it becomes evil. And the most evil thing in the world, I’m going to shock you when I tell you this, but the most evil thing in the world is organized religion. Because people will get involved in organized religion thinking they’re going to heaven and they’ll find out, he’ll tell them one day, I never knew you, depart from me. That’s evil, that’s the genius of Satan. So you must walk circumspectly, the Bible says. Akribos, the Greek word, akribos. meaning you must follow precisely correct procedure. That’s what akribos means. And then the Bible goes on to say in Ephesians 5, 16, you are to redeem the time because the days are evil. Redeeming is ex agarazo, ex agarazo in the Greek, and it means to buy or purchase time. So one, God has a precisely correct procedure for you. for your spiritual life, and you have to learn it to execute it. It doesn’t just happen, and that’s what always bugged me once I began to learn something about the Word of God. Nobody told me this when I got saved. Nobody told me that I had a spiritual life as well as a physical life. They kind of morphed the two together, and I didn’t know the difference. Nobody told me that I was supposed to grow up spiritually and become a mature believer. Nobody told me that until I got under the authority of my well-qualified pastor that helped me. Precisely correct procedure for your spiritual life. Do you know what that is? oh, well, let’s just go to church and sing in the choir and tithe and don’t do bad things, don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t smoke, don’t go to anything but G-rated movies. No, those may be things Christians do, but that’s not the spiritual life. Spiritual life is much more than that. So number two, if you follow the procedure that you are buying time on the job, which is then used to glorify God through the time of testing as well as prosperity. If you will follow this correctly procedure, precisely correct procedure, if you’ll do what I’m gonna tell you this morning, you will buy time on the job And then you can use that time to glorify God through all the tests you’ll face as well as the prosperity you face. And a lot of people fail prosperity testing. They don’t consider that a test. You’re thinking, if I could just win the lottery, I’d be happy. If I could just win that $10 million lottery, I’d be happy. I’ve seen that TV show where people win lotteries and a guy helps them buy a house, and that’s what I need. Listen, unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. Winning the lottery’s not gonna make you happy, I assure you that. You can keep trying, that’s not gonna make you happy. What could make you happy? Well, Jesus told you that. Happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s word and keep it. That’s the secret to happiness. So point three, God does not expect you to work for free. He didn’t expect you to work for free. And here’s something that might surprise you. God has an excellent retirement system for you. That might surprise you too. First of all, there’s all sorts of blessing in time and blessing in eternity. And you cannot even imagine the great blessing of ruling and reigning with Christ throughout the millennial reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a fabulous retirement system. These are called blessing in time, point four, and eternal rewards in the future. Blessing in time and eternal rewards in the future. That’s what I’m saying. God doesn’t expect you to work for free. He will bless you in time, and the excellent retirement system is the eternal rewards in the future. So your spiritual life requires several things. It requires, number one, and it’s all I’m asking of you, is a commitment. A commitment from you to grow up and become Christ-like, which is simply you reflecting Jesus Christ in your thinking and in your lifestyle. That’s all it is. What kind of lifestyle is that? It’s a lifestyle of humility and service. Two things that are key here. It’s a lifestyle of humility and service. So, In order for your garden and your soul to be beautiful as God designed it to be, you must have a mindset of humility. In Philippians 2, 5, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who humbled himself and made himself of no reputation. Humility is the opposite of arrogance. Arrogance is always manifested in three ways, self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, and eventually self-destruction. So if you have a son or a daughter or a grandchild or granddaughter, and this person is arrogant, they are eventually gonna destroy themselves because why? They cannot handle authority. Where’s the first place of authority come from? The Bible, God’s Word. And what’s the first thing they reject? The Bible, God’s Word. So if you’ve got a child that’s fighting with their parents over getting to school on time, if you’ve got a child that can’t handle the authority of the mother and father and curses mother or father, and they’re a Christian, they’re believers in Jesus Christ, that’s a sin. That’s not humility, that’s arrogance. And that rejection of parental authority will eventually lead to an early death in their life and loss of any rewards forever and ever and ever. There must be a lifestyle of humility. So Philippians 2, 14 says, do everything without murmuring and without disputing. That’s what we call gritching, gritching. Figure it out, it’s two words put together, gritching. Do all things without murmuring and disputing so that for this reason you can be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom you should shine as lights in the world. The Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 5 told the disciples, the ones that followed him, you are the light of the world. Illuminate the world with my message. You can’t illuminate anyone until you grow spiritually and you understand that this is a spiritual life. You’re not illuminating people just because you’re a member of the local church. You’re not illuminating people because you tithe. You’re only illuminating people when your life reflects Jesus Christ. In 1 Peter 4.10, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s various grace. As good stewards of God’s various grace. So you have a spiritual gift if you’re a Christian. Now my gift is the gift of evangelism. I’m not a pastor, never claimed to be a pastor. I’m an evangelist. You may have the gift of pastor teacher. You may have the gift of evangelism. You may have the gift of giving. Thank goodness for those that do. I couldn’t do these radio shows unless people supported us and gave to our show and our ministry. It’s a gift of giving. And then you may have the gift of mercy. That’s a phenomenal gift. It’s the gift of encouragement around people that are suffering. You have an administrative gift. You could have a lot of different gifts the Bible talks about. But each one of these gifts… is used to serve, and that’s what God expects you to do. A lifestyle of humility and a lifestyle of service. So your job as a Christian, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, Your job description, I’m gonna tell you what it is. I’m gonna give you your job description, okay? It’s to grow in grace. Peter said it this way, grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, grow. That doesn’t happen overnight. No one grows to be a mature believer overnight. And I can assure you, you’re not growing very quickly if all you’re getting is about an hour a week of a sermon from a local pastor. Until you’re willing to make a commitment to grow, until you’re willing to make a commitment to sacrifice some time to study, learn, and apply the word of God, you are never going to really grow very fast. Now, I love to bass fish, and I love to go fast on the water. I have a bass boat that will go about maybe 70 miles an hour when I get to use it. I hadn’t used it much lately, but it’ll go. And then there’s people that have little slow ones, you know, like a little five horsepower motors and They go across the lake and they go putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt. And I can go across the lake and zoom across the lake. How’s your spiritual life? Are you just putt, putt, putt, puttin’ along or are you zooming along? Because I can assure you God doesn’t want you to putt, putt, putt all your life. It’s time to get with it. It’s time to grow in grace. It’s time to follow the job description God gave you. It’s time to use your spiritual gift, and that takes diligence. That takes discipline. It does, it doesn’t happen overnight. Proverbs 12, 24, the hand of the diligent will rule, but the slack hand will be put to forced labor. A believer that wants to grow, a believer that wants to take his job seriously in reflecting Christ, he must be diligent and disciplined. Proverbs 21.5, the plans of the diligent lead to an advantage. This diligence that I’m talking about, this discipline that I’m talking about, it’s an attitude. It’s an attitude of humility and obedience for your job description during your time on this planet. Did you hear me? It’s an attitude of humility and obedience for your job description during your time on this planet. So it boils down to your volition. You know, in your soul, you have mentality. You have a volition. You have a consciousness. You have a self-consciousness. Your volition is your chooser. And it boils down to what you want to do. Are you willing to be obedient? Are you willing to invest the time that’s necessary to Cultivate the garden in your soul. Are you willing to do what is expected? Are you so self-centered, so arrogant that you prefer to enjoy all the gifts God gave you and ignore the giver? That’s the way most people are. They’re so, oh, I love my wife. I love my home. I love my children. I love my job. I love my car. I love my boat. Well, what about the person that gave all this to you? You know, you better take a look around because we live in the most wonderful country in the world and it’s about to be taken away from us. And what are you going to love then? There’s only one thing that’s going to deliver you when that happens, and that’s the grace of God. You better get ready because it boils down to your volition. Are you willing to be obedient and be the man and the woman that God requires of you? Are you willing to be diligent, disciplined, and be the person you’re supposed to be? You say, oh, yes, I am. Yes, I do. I want to do that. 1 John 5, 3 says, if you love him, you will obey him, and his demands are not hard. We’re not talking about something hard here. What are we talking about? Well, number one, stay filled with the Holy Spirit. You can’t live the spiritual life if you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit. So rebound, number one, on the problem-solving device of your soul. When you sin, you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit, and you must rebound. You can’t live the spiritual life out of fellowship with God with unconfessed sin in your life. So use rebound when you sin and use it quickly and use it often. Secondly, if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, now you’re set up to grow in grace as commanded. That’s why you have to study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, that’s what God expects out of you, and you’re growing in grace, that’s what God expects out of you, then you can reveal Jesus Christ through your lifestyle and through your thinking. That’s what God expects out of you. So that you are like a light that attracts people. They identify with the way you think, and they identify with the way you live, and it’s appealing to them. And they’re seeing Christ in you. So then you become an invisible hero. That’s right. An invisible hero. You’re not going to get a medal. Nobody’s going to name it street after you. You’re not going to have some Boulevard with your name on it, but you’re going to be an invisible hero that will deliver a dying client nation like the United States of America. Cause whether you like it or not, we’re dying. We’re going down unless you get with it. And then you can show up at the judgment seat of Christ and hear that, well done, my good and faithful servant, well done. That’s your job, spiritually. No ifs, no ands, no buts about it. That’s your job. No skipping days at work spiritually. No sleeping on the job spiritually. Keep your eyes on the enemy. Keep your eyes open. Satan’s movement, he’s very deceptive, very deviant. and can easily distract the believer who’s not paying attention. You have a job to do. Pay attention. Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Cultivate the garden in your soul so that it reflects the light of God. That’s what I’m telling you. I’m challenging you today to do this job God called you to do. He left you here for this reason, for this purpose, to glorify him, and you’re not doing it. You’re so preoccupied with yourself, you’re not even thinking about your spiritual life. Everything revolves around your physical life. Stop. That’s not the answer. You get your spiritual life right, and the rest of it will fall in line, I promise you. Now, thank you for listening. I encourage you to contact us if we can help you with any printed material, transcripts, new books like Christian Problem Solving or any of these things. They’re all free. They’re all available for you. That’s why we print them. That’s why we provide them. Now, thank you for listening, and I hope you’ll come back next week, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Floodline.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
