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551-Three-Enemies-of-the-Christian-transcript.pdf
Three Enemies of the Christian
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 551 aired on March 13, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
moments, please stay with me. As always, it’s going to be a time of motivation, inspiration,
education, and will be done with no manipulation because we don’t have hidden agendas. We are
not trying to recruit you. We are not trying to hustle you. All we are trying to do is give you some
accurate information that hopefully will allow you to verify as well as identify the plan of God
for your life. In doing so you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan,
it’s up to you. It’s your life, you live it every day. You make decisions every day and hopefully
you’ll make good decisions because bad decisions limit future options. We have a bumper sticker
that says this, Bad Decisions Limit Future Options. If you’d like to have one, we’ll send it to you
absolutely free, no charge ever for anything from this ministry. Just write to us and don’t include
any money. I’m not trying to hustle you for money. If you want one of these stickers and you’re
willing to stick it on your truck or your car, drop us a note or come to the website and send us an
email. Give us your address and we’ll get it out immediately. It’s a great little decal to have and
we’ve given away thousands of them. I love it when I’m driving down the road and I see one of
these stickers on someone’s car. I have made a lot of bad decisions and I’m sure that you have as
well. I’m so very thankful for the grace of God that covers my bad decisions. I’m so very thankful
that our Lord Jesus Christ always goes and looks for that one sheep that has left the fold. When
He finds him as my pastor taught recently, He puts him on His shoulders and brings him back.
Our God never deserts us. He never forgets about us. He loves us in spite of our weaknesses
and in spite of our failures and I want you to remember this today. God loves you.
The
wonderful thing about it is, once you have believed in Jesus Christ you have the capability to
become a brand-new person. Not only are you a new person in Christ when you are born again,
when your human spirit that was dead and dormant because of Adam’s original sin is made alive
spiritually, but you also have the opportunity to live a new life called the spiritual life. The
spiritual life is in fact the most unique life in the history of the world. No one’s ever been able to
replicate it because it’s only lived by means of the power of God the Holy Spirit and by means of
“The Word of God that is alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword”
(Hebrews
4:12). When we have these dynamics and we put them together we begin to grow spiritually. We
begin to understand the concepts and the principles and the procedures that God laid forth in His
Word. Then we begin to give Him maximum glorification because as we grow spiritually, then
we re-present Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.
This is our objective, why we are here, to
be Christlike. This is why Paul said,
“It is no longer I but Christ in me”
(Galatians 2:20).
We
want our friends to see Christ in us. We don’t want them to see us because we know that we are
just not too good for people to look at. Many of us have made bad decisions, I know. Many of us
are just goofy sometimes but it is not about us. It is about the Lord Jesus Christ and we want to
lift Him up and replicate Him so that people will be drawn to Him through us. Along the way we
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have enemies. There are enemies to you living your spiritual life and this is what I want to talk
about today. I want to be able to identify your enemies for you because this is in fact a war. The
Bible uses a lot of military metaphors and this show is predicated on a military metaphor, The
FLOT Line. That’s a military term for the forward line of troops. What we are teaching is using
this metaphor to show you how you can learn 10 unique problem-solving devices and they can
form a front line barrier to stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the
inside sources of stress. Adversity is always inevitable but stress is optional.
If we know our
options, if we know the advantages that we have in Christ, then we can overcome these enemies
that come against us every day.
The Bible identifies three enemies and they are there to keep
you from growing up spiritually
. You accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, so what’s next?
Why doesn’t God just take you right on to heaven once you believe in Jesus Christ? Why does
He leave you here? It’s so that you can grow and replicate Christ’s life. This is what it’s about,
for you to grow spiritually, for you to acquire the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).
In
Philippians 2:5, having the humility of Jesus Christ in your life, this is why you’re here. You
can be a light to a lost and dying world just as our Savior was when He walked into this
world.
He’s no longer here. He’s in heaven seated at the right hand of the Father awaiting the
shouted order to return and what a day that will be when it happens. We are here as His personal
representatives. We are royal ambassadors the Bible says. We are believer-priests. We have the
ability to come to Him under our own power. We can pray directly to Him. We don’t have to go
through any mediator because we have the filling of the Holy Spirit. As we learn His mind and
replicate His life, then we glorify Him to the max. These three enemies who are going to try to
stop you from achieving this are always there.
The first enemy is known as the world and it is
always out there luring you.
It can distract you from ever finishing the race, from ever growing
up spiritually. I have seen many people that accepted Christ as their Savior and they began the
spiritual journey of becoming mature believers but as the world entered into the picture and as
they gained some popularity, they gained some prosperity, their spiritual life became second-
place, third-place, fourth-place, no place. It’s sad to see this because they are believers in Jesus
Christ and they have tremendous potential. Due to the promotion of the world, due to the
distractions of the world, Christ has been relegated to no place in their life. They’ve left the race
track, they’ve stepped off the course as 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 says. They failed to finish the race.
Paul warns about this. He said, “Look, I myself don’t want to wind up being a castaway.” It’s so
easy to be distracted. The world is there. Romans 12:2 tells us,
“And do not be conformed to this
world but
[this is a strong conjunction of contrast]
be transformed by the renewing of your mind
so that you may prove what is the will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect”
to
God.
The first mandate we have is
“Do not be conformed to this world.”
This is what the
world will try to do to you. It will try to conform you, it will try to get you to play by its rules, to
do what everybody else does. Let me ask you this question. Where do you base your happiness?
Is your happiness based on people and circumstances? If it is, then you are looking to the world
to make you happy. You are not a member of this world. You are a sojourner passing through this
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world. You don’t live here, you live in heaven, your home is in heaven. Paul talks about you just
being a stranger coming through, going toward
ouranos
or your heavenly home in the Greek
New Testament (Philippians 3:20). We are warned by the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans
not to be conformed to the world. The world is always out to get you into their mold. They’re out
there to suck you into their game. They’re out to get you to play by their rules and you don’t have
to. You have a completely different, magnificent life that has nothing to do with what the world
has to offer. We are in the world but we are not of the world. Yes, we work. Yes, we have kids.
Yes, we have homes. Yes, we have everything that goes with it. These are not the source of our
happiness and the source of our blessings. This verse says,
“Do not be conformed to the world
but be transformed.”
Okay, this is change, now how do I do it? Listen to the next part,
“By the
renewing of your mind.”
Wow, do you know what Romans 12:3 says?
“Stop thinking of yourself
in terms of arrogance but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a
standard of thinking from His Word.”
You are what you think.
Proverbs 23:7 clearly says,
“As
a man thinks in his heart, so he is.”
The real you is not your image and your style. The real you
is what you’re thinking right now and if you’re bitter, this is the real you. If you’re lonely, that’s
the real you. If you’re worried, that’s the real you. These are not part of the Christian life.
If you
are wallowing in any self-pity or guilt, that’s not part of the Christian life and the world is
pulling you down.
What does it say? Change your mind, change the way you think.
“Let this
mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus”
(Philippians 2:5). How are you going to change
your mind? Our Lord said in Matthew 11:28-29,
“Come unto Me all you that labor and who are
heavy laden and I will give you rest
[here’s the key].
Take My yoke and learn of Me, My yoke is
easy and My burden is light.”
You will never replicate the life of Christ until you learn what He
was like, until you learn how He handled temptation, until you learn how He handled
disappointment, until you learn how He handled the attacks of the deceiver, Satan. You’ve got to
learn what He was like. This is your pattern. 1 Peter 2:21 talks about a pattern, a
hupogramos,
a
pattern that we have in Jesus Christ. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, He cuts us into the
same image as Christ. He replicates Christ in us and it starts by what we think. If we change the
way we think, then Romans 12:2 goes on to say,
“We can prove what the will of God is, that
which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
God has a will for your life, a perfect will for your
life, a good will for your life and it’s acceptable to Him. If something can be acceptable, then
obviously something can be unacceptable. I’ll tell you what unacceptable is. It’s living the
Christian life in the energy of the flesh. It’s using emotions and manipulation to try to get people
to do something. This is not the way God works. You must understand the Scripture. This is why
it says,
“Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth”
(2 Timothy 2:15).
You must learn what is the right way and
what is the wrong way. This is why we have the protocol plan of God. It requires that a
right thing be done in a right way, the acceptable will of God.
You’ve heard me say it before,
for example prayer. Prayer is legitimate. You should pray but there’s a wrong way to pray. If
you’re praying the wrong way in spite of how many prayers you have offered, they are not going
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to be answered because you did it in the energy of the flesh, with unconfessed sin in your life.
You failed to rebound. You failed to get back in fellowship. When I sit here to do this radio show,
I must rebound first. I must look into my soul and ask the Father if there’s any unconfessed sin in
my life because I don’t want to sit here in front of this microphone and try to give you the
thoughts of God from the Scripture and have sin in my life that quenches the Holy Spirit. I’ve
got to be able to think, recall, and remember the things that I’ve learned and I can’t do it in the
energy of the flesh.
You cannot serve God in the energy of the flesh. This is not acceptable.
It
winds up being wood, hay, and stubble in 1 Corinthians 3:12-13 and it’s all burned up at the
Judgment Seat of Christ. James 4:4 goes on and says,
“You adulteresses, do you not know that
friendship with the world is hostility to God. Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the
world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Jesus Christ our Lord told us, “You must forsake the
world,
pick up your cross and follow Me”
(Matthew 16:24-26). He told us that He’s a divider,
that He would set father against son and mother against daughter and that anybody that followed
Him was going to have conflict (Matthew 10:35), and you must understand this. If you are
looking to the world to make you happy, if you’re looking to the world to make you prosperous,
if you are buddy buddy with the world, you cannot be buddy buddy with God because of your
motivation. You are living to please the world and not living to please God. That’s the problem.
Who are you living for? Are you living for the world and what the world offers? Satan will throw
this at you. I have seen Satan give prosperity to men that could have been great men in the
ministry. I have seen Satan do a lot of things, not personally. I have never seen the devil, don’t
misunderstand me but I’ve seen things happen that obviously were satanically inspired that
destroyed the spiritual lives of certain individuals. Men and women that could have had a great
testimony for Jesus Christ were wiped out because of the world and the hostility of the world
toward God.
The world does not like God, it doesn’t care for God.
Already in America it’s
illegal to have the 10 Commandments in the public square, right? That’s what they tell us. You
can’t even pray to God in a public school without the teacher being fired. It’s gotten so ridiculous
in America today that we are in sad shape spiritually. You know what’s going to happen is when
the bottom falls out, when our nation faces certain death and destruction, everybody is going to
be calling on God then but there’s not going to be answers to their prayers I promise you. He’s
not going to answer the prayers because they rejected Him.
“My people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge
.
Since you rejected knowledge, I will reject you and reject your children”
(Hosea 4:6).
You can read in Proverbs 2 about those people who call on God and He won’t answer when the
time comes because they went after the wind and the whirlwind in their life.
The world is full of
illusion. The world is full of lies. You can’t be friends with the world and friends with God,
it just doesn’t work.
1 John 2:15 goes on to say, a strong mandate.
“Do not love the world or
the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
There’s only one thing that motivates you to be a believer and grow in grace. 1 John 5:3 says if
we love Him, we will obey Him.
Personal love for God is the most wonderful motivational
virtue we have.
“If you love Me, you will obey Me”
(John 14:15).
If you love the world, if you
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love the accoutrements of the world, if you love what the world offers you, then you can never
ever have love for the Father. It’s misplaced love. You are going to assign to God second place
love. Do you love God because you’re not going to hell? Do you love God because He’s given
you a nice family, a nice home, and a nice car? What if all that is taken away like in the book of
Job? Where’s your love for God then? I’m telling you, you don’t love God. You love the world
and the things of the world that God allowed you to have. That’s what you love and that doesn’t
cut it with God. This love for the world, this preoccupation with the world and the things that are
in the world, as 1 John 2:15 says,
“If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you.”
You are chasing the wrong thing. You’re barking up the wrong tree.
The world is definitely the
enemy of grace. The world is out to defeat and distract you.
There is another enemy
described in the Bible. Not only is the world our enemy but there’s another one, the flesh. Go
ahead, pinch yourself on the arm. That’s the flesh.
Romans 8:8 says,
“And those that are in the
flesh cannot please God.”
Here’s the trick to this thing. You have three parts if you are a
Christian. You have a body, you have a soul, and you have a spirit. When we are talking about
the flesh or the
sarx,
you can’t serve God in the flesh.
If you’re in the flesh it means you’re not
filled with the Holy Spirit.
If you are a believer, you have been born again and you have a body,
a soul, and a spirit. You have been mandated to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. If you have
quenched the Holy Spirit by sin in your life and you have grieved the Holy Spirit because you
have not confessed that sin, then you’re operating in your Christian life as a member of God’s
kingdom but out of fellowship. You’re still going to church, you’re still singing in the choir,
you’re still doing all that other stuff, and giving your money, but this is wrong. This is violating
the protocol of God. This is building up wood, hay, and stubble and you cannot please God in the
flesh. Just like an unbeliever cannot please God with his gifts, the believer out of fellowship
cannot please God with his gifts. If you want to please God, you must first of all be under the
filling of the Holy Spirit and you should know how to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We know
what rebound does. Rebound cleanses us from sin and rebound takes us to the place of the filling
of the Holy Spirit. This is why when we take communion, we must rebound first. When we give
money, we rebound. When we go to church, we rebound. When we get up in the morning or we
go to bed at night, we rebound. I may rebound 10 or 15 times a day depending on traffic. I have a
sin nature, you have a sin nature, we all do. Don’t act like you do not. Don’t act like you’re some
holy, self-righteous Christian and you never sin. Those kind of people make me sick. “Bless God
brother, I have not sinned in six months.” You are full of it. What about mental attitude sins?
What about sins of the tongue? Yeah, you might not have gotten drunk and you might not have
fornicated and you might not have whatever but you sinned because you have a sin nature. You
have to remember these things.
You can’t please God operating in the flesh, operating under
the control of your sin nature.
This is why we are told in Romans 13:14 to
“Put on the Lord
Jesus Christ and do not make any provisions for the flesh in regard to the lust of the flesh,”
don’t
do it. Here’s the bottom line. The Christian life is a life of choices. It’s a life of decisions that you
must make. There’s no conference you can go to and no stick you can throw on a fire, nothing
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you can do that’s going to say, “From now on for the rest of my life, I’m going to be a perfect
Christian.” It’s decisions you make every day and unless you have a personal love affair with
God, you’re not going to stick with it. You’re not going to grow spiritually. You’re not going to
replicate the life of Christ because you love the world and the things of the world and you’re
distracted. The flesh is always there and you cannot make provisions for the flesh. This means
you must decide every day when the temptation comes up, knocking on the door, will you or will
you not? You must say no, it’s just this simple. You must say, “No, I’m not, I’m not going to do
that.” You may have done it many times in the past and this will frustrate you. You’ll get angry at
yourself because you do it again and you think, “God could not love me. Look, I went and did
that again.” Listen, He loves you. If He didn’t love you, you would already be in heaven. He’s
not through with you. That’s why you’re listening to this show. Hopefully you can recover.
Hopefully you can make something out of your life from here on out, but not until you learn
something first. You cannot make provisions for your flesh and in regard to the lusts of the flesh.
Why? Because Galatians 5:17 tells us,
“The flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against
the flesh and they are opposite to one another
so that you do not do the things that you want to
do.”
There’s a war that goes on in your mind every day. There’s always the flesh tempting you
and there’s always the Holy Spirit telling you, No. The real deciding factor is your volition. Your
volition can override the Holy Spirit at any time and your volition can override the desires of the
flesh at any time. You are the person who controls your own destiny. It relates to what decision
you make, will you or will you not?
If you stay filled with the Holy Spirit, if you’re growing
in grace, saying no to the temptations of the flesh it gets easier.
I hope you learn this because
you are a product of your volition. Bad decisions limit future options. You can actually make
enough bad decisions so that you don’t even have any options left. You can wind up in the place
that is not a very happy place called jail or prison or whatever because you made bad decisions in
regard to the flesh. The flesh is very wicked, very evil, full of lust, full of hatred. Nobody taught
you these things, they are inherited from Adam’s original sin. You must be careful.
There is one
final enemy called the devil.
In Galatians 5:17, “
The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, the
Spirit against the flesh.”
We’ve seen this and now we see in John 8:44,
“You are of your father
the devil. You want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and he
does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him
[he is the deceiver].
Whenever he
speaks, he speaks a lie. He is a liar and the father of all lies.”
Satan will deceive you. He will
appeal to your arrogance.
He will appeal to your intellect. He’s not what you think he is. He’s
not running around in a red epidermis with a pitchfork. He’s a fallen angel, one of the greatest,
brightest, most beautiful angels that God ever created. 1 Thessalonians 2:18 warns us that Satan
can hinder you. Paul said,
“I wanted to come to you. I wanted more than once but Satan hindered
me.”
In 2 Corinthians 4:4,
“In whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelievers so they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of
God.”
Satan is in the business of blinding the minds of the unbeliever. How does he do this?
He gets you to distort the gospel, that’s one way.
He can distract them and deceive them. He’s
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the deceiver.
He counterfeits the gospel.
It sounds real, looks real, but it’s not real. Salvation is
not you going up, it’s not you going down, it’s not you going forward, it’s not you going
backward. Salvation is exactly what Acts 16:31 says,
“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
shalt be saved.”
“Whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”
(John
3:16).
“He who believes not, the wrath of God abides on him already”
(John 3:18). What did
Jesus say?
“This is the will of the One that sent Me, that you believe on Me whom He has
sent”
(John 6:39). Do you believe He is the anointed Son of God who died for your sin, who
paid the penalty for your sin? Then you are a Christian. You are in fact a member of God’s royal
family and this message today is for you. I hope you listened. I hope you paid attention because
we’ll be back next Sunday, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host Rick Hughes
saying thank you for being with me on The FLOT Line.
