Join Rick Hughes on ‘The Flatline’ as he delves into the mechanics of living a fulfilling Christian life. This episode highlights the importance of transitioning from human to divine viewpoint, embracing impersonal love, and the virtues that underpin a godly life. Through relatable analogies and scripture, discover how personal and impersonal love work together to enrich your day-to-day interactions and ensure you stand firm against life’s inevitable stressors.
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 moments, please stay with me. It’ll be a time of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and we always do that without any type of manipulation. If this is your first time to tune in, please stick around. It’s just 30 minutes of learning something. We’re not asking you for money. We’re not trying to solicit membership. We are not trying to sell anything. We’re just giving you information. Hopefully, the information will verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if you would like to orient and adjust to the plan, that’s up to you. My job is to be accurate, to get it right, not to make an emotional appeal, but just to tell you like it is. So please stay with me. The flat line is always about renovating your soul, soul renovation, changing the way that you think. A flat line is an invisible barrier or defense, a main line of resistance that you put in your soul. How do you do that? By learning God’s Word, particularly 10 unique problem-solving devices that we teach. When you learn these 10 problem-solving devices, and this is not something that I invented, this is not something I discovered, This is age-old biblical doctrines that have always been there put in a way maybe you’ve never heard it put before. But when you learn these problem-solving devices, you have the potential to stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. We know we all face stress, and we know that stress is inevitable. Stress is optional. We all face adversities. What I’m trying to say, adversity is inevitable, but stress is, in fact, optional. And the reason is adversity is what circumstances do to you, and stress is what you do to yourself. So if you’re interested in learning the problem-solving devices, If you’re interested in what this unique Christian life is about, nothing weird, nothing charismatic, nothing holy ghosty, just the mechanics of how it works. If you’re interested in how the Christian life works, then you’re listening to the right show. because we’re going to talk about that in detail and mechanically how you must learn the plan of God. You know, a football team has a process they have to go through, and all the players have to buy into the process. If they in fact do, then they can have a winning team. Well, you know, most Christians are all on the same team, but we don’t all have the same process. Some football teams are better than others. They got better coaches. They got better players. But as far as Christ goes, we’re all on the same team. But we don’t all understand the same process. So this show is about teaching you the mechanics of how to live the Christian life so that when you do arrive in heaven, you will hear your lord say well done my good and my faithful servant you don’t want to get there having wasted a lot of time and him saying have a seat i’ll get to you in a few years so we want to learn the process and if we renovate our thinking as the bible mandates we must do in romans 12 1-3 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. There it is. Change the way you think. Most of us have a tendency to think in terms of human viewpoint. And the critical process is to begin to think in terms of divine viewpoint, not human viewpoint, divine viewpoint. You know, as we approach the Thanksgiving season, there’s a lot of things to be thankful for. And I’m sure that you have around your home, you have been very thankful as you had dinner with your family. You probably said, what are we thankful for today? A lot of people are thankful for material possessions. A lot of people are thankful for peace and happiness and things like this. However, the real thankfulness is the wonderful gift, the greatest gift in the world that God gave us, which is His Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior. That was a free gift of God. The Bible clearly says, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God, and not of works, lest any man should brag about it. The greatest thing that we have to be thankful for is that he who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God by means of him. He went to the cross. He died in our place. He was judged for our sin. He paid the penalty. Your sins will not send you to hell. I want you to hear this. Your sins will not send you to hell. Your sins were paid for. Well, what sends me to hell? He that believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. And he that believeth not, the wrath of God abides on him already. What sends a person to hell is rejecting Jesus Christ as Savior, rejecting the forgiveness that God offered him, and trying to appease God with your own righteousness, your own goodness. You know, yeah, well, God, I tithed. Well, God, I went to church. Well, God, I didn’t cuss, and I didn’t drink, and I didn’t smoke, and I was faithful to my spouse. Of course, the Bible says that all of our good works are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. There are none that are righteous, not even one. The only righteousness that God can recognize is His own righteousness. And the Bible says, He who knew no sin was made sin for us so we could be made the righteousness of God by means of Him. When we come to the cross and believe in Jesus Christ and receive Him as our Savior, His righteousness is given to us. And God the Father looks down on you, and what he sees is not your righteousness. He sees the righteousness of Christ imputed to you. That opens up the floodgate, the floodgate of divine blessings, and immediately eternal life is imputed to you along with 39 other wonderful things, and they’re all taught in the Bible. We have all of that listed in our books, so If you’re interested, let me know. We’ll send you the book. It lists all of the 40 assets that God gives you the moment you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank you for listening. Some stations we’re beginning to weed out. We’re going to add new stations. We will often play in an area two or three years to see if we build a following or if anyone’s listening. I have no idea who’s listening, who’s not listening. I love to hear from people. It would be an honor to me if you’d just drop a note on our email or letter. Don’t send money, but just say, I’m listening. I like the show. I’m growing. I’m learning. And that lets us know where our dollars are best spent on the radio. airwaves so keep us in mind we don’t these are not free we purchased the time we buy the time god always pays for it that’s not a problem but i do like to spend money where it’s best spent and if we have an audience that’s where i want to be let me know if you’re listening please please let us know now today in seoul renovation we want to move on in reviewing the flotline the the flotline the forward line of troops, the flat line in your soul, the main line of resistance. We left off last week talking about personal love for God. Today we want to move into impersonal love. The two greatest virtues in your life are personal love for God and impersonal love for others. Love is a tremendous virtue. Personal love for God is your motivational virtue. And impersonal love for others is your functional virtue. Functional virtue, motivational virtue. We love God, the Bible says in 1 John, because he first loved us. And then we know from the royal law of James 1.8, we’re to love our neighbor as we love ourself. We’re never to judge, never to malign, never to criticize, and never to backbite. That’s not supposed to be done. And if you’re a Christian taking your daily walk with your dog, like my family does, and You’re talking to your neighbor down the street. Don’t criticize. Don’t malign the neighbor that lives behind you because he doesn’t cut his grass or because you don’t like his dog or because you don’t like something about that person. That’s judging. That’s maligning. That is a sin, and most people don’t even think about it that way. They’re just too busy talking about other people. Talking about other people is a sin when you malign them, when you judge them, when you criticize them. So you have to learn to use impersonal love. It’s a wonderful problem-solving device. And it’s unconditional towards all mankind, everybody in the human race. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ and you are filled with God’s Holy Spirit, that comes by means of rebound, using the rebound technique, 1 John 1.9. If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us. Whenever you name a sin to God, you are automatically filled with the Holy Spirit. Whenever you sin, you automatically quench the Holy Spirit and grieve the Holy Spirit. So using rebound consistently in your life, moment by moment, day by day, sometimes maybe 20 times a day if you’re driving on the interstate very much like me, and you rebound when you get out of fellowship, when you get angry, when you get mad, when you get ticked off, your mental attitude sins can quench the Holy Spirit. And so here we have this concept of rebound. The concept of staying in fellowship with God. Impersonal love is a virtue. And the emphasis is on the virtue of the subject, not the object. Your virtue, not theirs. And so this is what you have to remember. Impersonal love is an expression of that virtue. as well as a type of humility in your life. In the book of Philemon, there’s a story about Onesimus, the runaway slave who faced the death penalty for what he stole. And Paul wrote back to Philemon and said, consider him, in Philemon 1, 16 and 17, consider him no longer a slave. but a beloved brother, especially to me, but much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. Verse 17, if you count me as a partner, receive him as you would receive me. So here is Paul encouraging Philemon to use impersonal love with Onesimus. Personal love for people is never commanded in the Bible. Personal love. Personal love is commanded to love God. Yes, that’s your motivational virtue. But never are we commanded in the Bible to have personal love for one another. It’s always impersonal love. And it’s always required by God as part of his operational plan for our life. In Ephesians 5.25, husbands, love your wives. There’s a present active imperative of the Greek word agapao or agape. And it’s a command. You must love your spouse. But sometimes your spouse is not loving, especially if he or she gripes and complains or maligns or does something you don’t like, spends money you don’t think you have. And then you get all mad and all ticked off and get torqued up and bent out of fellowship. That’s not loving. That’s being revenge motivated. And so loving someone that you’re married to requires impersonal love because there are going to be times that the person you’re married to cannot be very lovable because of some decision they made, but you still must love them. So you just simply switch virtue. You love them based on who you are. not based on who they are. In Titus 2.4, older women should teach the younger women how to love their husbands. Girls must learn how to love obnoxious, self-centered men who don’t think about anything but themselves most of the time. I know I’m one of those guys. And so our wives have to learn to love us with impersonal love, a love that’s based on their character, not our character, because our character is lousy sometimes. So women have to learn how to use impersonal love with their husbands and with their children, the Bible says. Older women should teach younger women, Titus 2.4 says, How do they love their husbands and how to love their children? If you’ve got children like me, there are times that you don’t love them. You get angry at them. You get mad at them because they’re obnoxious and don’t obey. So you have to learn to use impersonal love. And in Hebrews 13, one, let brotherly love continue. Present active imperative again. A mood of command from God. So you are commanded by God to use impersonal love every day of your life, not only with your spouse, not only with your children, but even with your neighbor. You are to love all people. And this is exactly what God did for you. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Did he love you with personal love? No, he couldn’t because you had no virtue. You had no integrity. He loved you with impersonal love. His love was based on his character, not your character. But once you accepted Christ as Savior and entered into the royal family of God, now God can express personal love to you because now you’re his child. You’re in his family. So impersonal love does not work until motivated by personal love for God. So if you have personal love for God, the greatest virtue of all, then you will obey when the Bible says love your neighbor as you love yourself. That’s impersonal love. You can’t use impersonal love until you’re willing to be obedient with personal love. Impersonal is an adjective and it means connection or reference and it’s more of a professional attitude that you have towards those people. A professional attitude. Not don’t take it personal, don’t get mad, don’t get angry, don’t get upset. That neighbor you don’t like probably treats everybody the same way they treat you. So you have to have a professional attitude As a Christian, you must be one of those silent professionals that is functioning under the plan of God without going around to everybody in town running your mouth of how much you dislike somebody because of something they did. so uh without impersonal love like we’re talking about you’re never going to have any good human relationships never because you’ll always be changing friends you’ll always change your partners in romance you’ll divorce one marry another you keep looking for the right one and it’s not When are you going to find the right one is when are you going to be the right one? Because you have no basis to hold them together. That’s the deal. You can’t hold your friends together. You can’t hold your family together because you don’t understand God’s plan for your life. You need a soul renovation. You need to change the way you think. Stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. Your emotions are designed by God to be an appreciative factor in your life, but never to make decisions. You can appreciate your relationship, but emotions aren’t there to establish a relationship. you know if you meet someone and your emotions get fired up you may think this is the one i want to spend the rest of my life with until you hear them talk and hear what comes out of their mouth or what comes out of their brain then you know boy this is a weirdo i don’t need to spend the rest of my life with them i need to love them impersonally not personally so virtue in the christian life is is uh totally void of your emotions kicking in. I am not talking about emotional appreciation for your spouse. I’m not talking about feeling emotional for your neighbor. I’m talking about a mental attitude of virtue that spawns out of your personal love for God and It’s the same attitude that Christ had on the cross when he said, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. He had impersonal love. When he went to the cross, he died for you and me. Even though we’re the biggest jerks in town, he died for us. You know that. So it’s not about his emotions. It’s about what he did. And it has to be the same way for us. Emotions really don’t think very much. They rationalize to try to solve problems. We have problem-solving devices found in the Bible. This is why arrogant people always want to be loved unconditionally. They want unconditional love for others, but all they offer in return is sort of conditional love. I love you if you treat me this way. The greater the arrogance, the greater the condition of love. Most men do this to the women that they love. You know that. But go back, listen again. Arrogant people always seek unconditional love from others. You don’t do that. That’s not the way you live. You don’t have to have people love you in order to love them. If you learn God’s problem-solving devices, if you stay filled with the Holy Spirit, If you learn the process, if you renovate your thinking, you can love the biggest jerk in town the same way God loved him, the same way Christ loved him when he went to the cross, the same virtuous love. It’s called impersonal love. Personal love without impersonal love As a virtue is the weakest and most unstable status quo in life. Listen again. Personal love without impersonal love as a virtue is the weakest and the most unstable status quo in life because why? It’s vulnerable to the entire realm of arrogance and emotions. You can’t use it. You can’t have personal love without impersonal love first. Jesus said in John 15, 12, to the disciples, this is my mandate that you love one another as I have loved you. They were bitter and jealous of one another. If you don’t believe that, read the New Testament and see how they competed for his attention. Who wanted to be first and who wanted to sit on the right hand and the left hand and who wanted to prove he was the toughest? in first john 4 20 21 if someone says i love god but he hates his fellow believer he’s a liar and the truth is not in him so impersonal love and a brief survey that we did there i mean it’s it is the greatest virtue for you to have it is your functional virtue in life if you have impersonal love and you can develop impersonal love by renovating your thinking then you will never get mad at a person. You will never have bitterness and hostility. You’ll never have that sort of emotion controlling your life because you hate somebody or you hate what they did to you or you hate the way they treated your family or you hate the way they kicked at your dog. You have to learn to use impersonal love. Christ died for that person just like he died for you. You have your flaws. They have their flaws. But you judge them because they did something that you didn’t like. And you don’t have impersonal love. Thus, without impersonal love, you’re never going to have any happiness in your life either. Happiness is a wonderful problem-solving device. We call it problem-solving device number nine, sharing the happiness of God. And it’s taught in the Bible quite plainly. We call it plus H. Plus H is sharing the happiness of God. Minus H is no happiness, and neutral H is the happiness the world offers. So if you want to be happy, You have to do what Jesus said in Luke 11, 27 and 28. Here he’s speaking and a woman comes up and interrupts his message and she blurts out, blessed is the womb that bore you and blessed is the breast that you nursed on. And the Lord politely, maybe impolitely, I don’t know, he didn’t sin, but he said, you are wrong, lady. He said, happiness belongs to those who hear my father’s word and keep it. That’s the source of happiness, hearing God’s word and keeping it. In this passage, the Lord had been dealing with demon possession, and here comes a woman coming up to interrupt him, to take the tension away, to distract people and start talking about love. She was having some kind of emotional experience and felt like what she had to say was more important than what Jesus had to say, so she interrupted his message. And he was talking about those Pharisees and how they blasphemed the Holy Spirit by attributing his miracles to the working of Satan. So it was a good ploy by the devil, but it didn’t work. We don’t know if she was a believer or not, but we do know she was definitely demon influenced to interrupt what Jesus was saying, trying to divert Christ’s message away from the subject that he was talking about. You know, our Lord had fantastic eye stasis. He had the ability to see the issue. I mean, he had just finished admonishing Martha for her griping about having to do all the food preparation by herself, fix the food by herself. And he had to go on dealing with this subject. And, you know, Mary chose the one good thing, he said, that’s necessary. That’s the Word of God. nothing would stop Mary from getting face to face with her Savior. That does not mean that you study the Word of God when it’s convenient. Basically, what that situation is saying to us is the most important thing in my life and your life is to get face to face with our Lord. through the Bible and through the filling of the Holy Spirit on a daily basis, daily, every day. So this woman made happiness out of the womb. Happiness is not related to the womb. When she broke in and said, happiness relates to those, to the mother that bore you, the womb that bore you and the breast that you nursed on. Happiness is never related to the womb. Bearing children will not fulfill anyone’s life. So mothers can have pride in their children, but it’s not the plus H that we’re talking about. It’s not the happiness of God. And this whole situation was to trap him, to lure him into a road that he did not need to go down. So he corrected her and he said, you’re wrong. That’s not true. Happiness belongs to those people who hear my father’s word and keep it. Our Lord Jesus Christ was a great teacher and his treasure that he taught us is to be guarded. And James 1.22 says, don’t just be a hearer of the word, but be a doer. Because hearers deceive their own self. You just must understand there must be application in your life when you hear it. Because sooner or later, you’ll be tested on what you’ve learned. And when you’re tested, then you have to be able to make the application. The woman said happiness was related to motherhood. Jesus said happiness was related to the word of God in your soul, hearing it and keeping it. I mean, our Lord talked about happiness a lot to the disciples and to you. And the Bible says in Proverbs 3, happy is the one who finds wisdom and the one who obtains understanding. True happiness comes from wisdom and understanding. I need to explain a little bit more about that for you. The fantastic four, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and discernment is something that’s critical for all of us to have. So maybe we’ll get around to that here in the next episode as we come back to our radio show next time. But you must know your options so you don’t walk around in a fog all the time. You’ve got to understand Satan’s myth. That myth is that people or circumstances in life can make you happy. That’s not true. So if you’re dependent on any one person or any one set of circumstances for happiness, then you are going to be disillusioned and weak all of your life. Are you listening? Are you paying attention? I sure hope so. I don’t want to be talking to myself. I trust that you’re listening. I trust you’re learning. I trust you’ll let me know as I requested. If you’re listening, drop us a note. Tell us we’re listening in this station or in this city. And that’ll be an encouragement to us as we make our decisions about where we go in the future. So thank you for being with us. Thank you for being here and giving me a few minutes. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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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.
