Rick Hughes invites you to explore the spiritual tools vital for living a true Christian life. This episode focuses on the ten problem-solving devices, the personal sense of destiny, and the concept of impersonal love. Understand how to identify and utilize your spiritual gift, and learn why sharing the happiness of God transforms you into a mature believer. Whether you are seeking God’s plan for your life or aiming for spiritual maturity, this episode provides the guidance needed.
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 Flood Line. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stick around with me, just to be a short time, about 30 minutes. Some motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and no, no manipulation. No con games, not asking for money, we’re not trying to sell you anything. We just want you to listen as I teach the Word of God, hopefully, so I can verify and identify God’s plan for your life. And if you’re interested, as always, you can orient and adjust to the plan. Before I get started today, let me announce something. We’ve done a significant revision of our book, Christian Problem Solving, a tremendous revision. We’ve gone through hard work. Our staff has done this. I think you’ll find it a great resource. There’s a detailed chapter for every problem-solving device along with a supporting scripture. And this new book should be available in early June, so please contact us if you want it. We’ll be sure to put your name on the list and send it to you when it’s ready. We’re also printing a revision of our book, A Divine Pardon, which was written for those who are incarcerated and their loved ones. So let us know if you want this book. We’ll send it to you in June. Several more books in the works, so stay tuned. Thank you for listening. If you need to contact us, you can always go through the website, rickhughesministries.org, or call us at 831-0718, 800-831-0718. Last week, now buckle your seatbelt here because I want to get serious for a minute. Last week on this show, I insisted, I insisted that you value those 10 problem-solving devices that we teach on the Flatline as priority number one in your life. And the reason is because these 10 problem-solving devices refer to the main line of resistance in your soul’s mentality. And the mentality of your soul is where the battle for control of your life takes place. I emphasized last week that the spiritual life and the physical life are separated. The physical life is what other people may see, but the spiritual life is what God observes. And I emphasize the importance of these 10 problem-solving devices we call the Flatline because they encapsulate the Christian life in whole. It’s exactly what the Christian life is, these 10 unique problem-solving devices. Our Heavenly Father provided everything you need to have a wonderful life on this earth once you come into his family, of course, by faith in his Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that means that if you learn and execute his provisions, you can be free of mental anxiety such as worry, fear, bitterness, jealousy, and other self-induced sins by changing the way you think, of course, by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit and using the faith rest drill. Romans 12, 2 through 3 talks about changing how you think. Listen. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Changing the way you think. So that in order that you may prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. For I say through the grace given to me to everyone who’s among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. That’s arrogance. but to think soberly, that’s humility, as God has dealt to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. So changing the way you think is you renovating your thoughts to divine viewpoint, no longer being under the influence of human viewpoint, and this is called having the mindset of our Lord, who actually maneuvered through the devil’s world as a human, overcoming whatever Satan threw at him by using Scripture as the source of his strength and his encouragement. Do you remember Matthew 4, where Jesus was tempted by the devil? Matthew 4, 1 through 11, I won’t read it all, but let me remind you, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterwards he was hungry and the tempter came and said look if you’re the son of god why don’t you command these stones become bread and you could feed yourself well he answered these words it is written it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of god two other times satan tempted him and twice against the lord jesus christ said It is written. It is written. So once Jesus said that word, Satan left him alone and moved away from him for a while. This passage in Matthew 4, 1 through 11, read it in your Bible, and you’ll see where he says, it is written, it is written, it is written. This is a perfect example of our Lord using what you can use called the faith rest drill. It’s also recognition on his part that he had a personal sense of destiny. And the personal sense of destiny is what we call problem-solving device number six. You must have this. You must recognize this in your life. The same recognition is critical for you to understand if you ever hope to fulfill God’s plan for your life. I mean, come on now, you’re here for a reason. And the sooner you understand why you’re here, The sooner you understand that, the better equipped you will be to fulfill your destiny. So that’s what you have to understand. The protocol plan of God for the church is the greatest demonstration in all the history of the function of the volition of the believer in relationship to God’s power. You have a personal sense of destiny. And one of the great principles of having a personal sense of destiny is that you finally, finally learn to take responsibility for your own decisions, the good ones, and obviously the bad ones. There are some key thoughts in regards to your personal sense of destiny. Listen, these are some of the key thoughts to problem-solving device number six. One, for the believer, a personal sense of destiny is related to recognition of the plan and the power of God in his life. Two, a personal sense of destiny requires understanding the biblical pertinent information to the protocol plan of God for the church. That means you have to understand how to be filled with the Spirit. You have to understand rebound. You have to understand faith rest drill. If you’re ever going to understand your personal sense of destiny, you must know those basic doctrines. Why? Because, three, the life beyond expectations that we want you to have is the awareness of the power and the grace of God combined along with the spiritual skills to form that personal sense of destiny. So once you begin to leave your agenda behind, once you walk through the door of confident expectation, let me say that word again, confident expectation, you will then find a new world of opportunity and a new world of reward, and that’s finding your personal sense of destiny. One key to understanding your own personal sense of destiny is recognizing your very own spiritual gift. God gave you a spiritual gift. It was imparted to you the moment you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Like me, God may have given you a communication gift. The Bible says some communicators are pastor teachers and some are evangelists. Others have the gift of helps and some have the gift of administration. Some have the gift of giving, and that actually is the way we live sometimes because people give to our ministry and support us. Whatever your spiritual gift is, it will function. Actually, even if you don’t know it, but it will function. But the sooner you learn what it is, the sooner you can prepare to use it. So for the gift that you have to be effective, you must understand what it is and how it operates strictly by means of the power of the Holy Spirit. Understanding your spiritual gift, think about it, what is your spiritual gift? Do you even know it? You should. Understanding your gift, understanding how to use your gift is the first great objective of any spiritual life. Understanding your gift and using it effectively is the door to being a spiritually mature adult Christian. God’s grace provisions are provided every day for you and me so that we can obtain that objective, grow up. When I first started in the ministry, I had a friend that served with me and we had our gifts backwards. We were confused. We didn’t have enough information to know the difference. But we could see what God was doing and one of us was speaking here and the other was doing here and I got up to speak and I’d see this, he got up to speak and he’d see that and eventually we realized we were seeing different things and being used in different ways and we realized we had our gifts backwards. I had the gift of evangelism and he had the gift of pastor-teacher. We didn’t recognize it for about a year. It took us a while to grow up and to understand it. God keeps us alive. God protects us with a wall of fire so we may have equal privilege and equal opportunity to attain that personal sense of destiny he has for you. He has it for you. He has something he wants you to do. He left you here for a reason. You’re not supposed to just float around town. God left you for a reason, and that is to fulfill your spiritual gift, to grow up to spiritual maturity, and to glorify him to the maximum. Now, number seven in the problem-solving devices is what we call personal love for God. You cannot live the Christian life without understanding this. Personal love for God. 1 John 5, 3, I know you’re telling me, I love God. I hear people tell me that all the time. I love God. Do you really? Oh, yes, I love God. If I stood up in a church and I said, all you people that are in the congregation, if you love God, raise your hand up in the air, and they’d all put their hand up. 1 John 5, 3 tells you whether or not you love God. You want to hear it? Here it is. If you love me, if you love me, you will obey me. This is called motivational virtue. In other words, what motivates you to be obedient to the Christian way of life? It’s your love for God. In 1 John 4 20, if someone says I love God and he hates his brother, he’s a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how could he possibly love God whom he has not seen? So here’s the first problem. You say you love God. Yep, I love God. You do? Yeah, I love God. Do you hate your brother? Is there anyone in church you hate? Is there anyone in your family you hate? Is there any race you hate? Any politician you hate? If you hate, you don’t love God. Again, if someone says I love God and hates his brother, he’s a liar. You cannot love a God you don’t understand. That’s the problem. Listen to Jeremiah 9, 24. Let him who glorifies glory in this, that he understands and knows me. God wants you to know him, and the only way you can know him is to understand him. What do you understand about God? The God you say you love. Do you understand the essence of God? You want to grow up to be a mature believer. This is stuff you have to know. Do you know the essence of God or do you think it just sits on a throne? He’s got a white beard and a crown and he sits on a throne. Is that what you think about God? If you don’t understand the essence of God, you can’t love God. Here’s something you have to understand. Write it down. Our Father is love. He is love. He doesn’t fall in love. He is love. And he is righteousness. We don’t have that kind of righteousness. We have self-righteousness. And God is perfect righteousness. God is perfect justice. And the justice of God is what we call the guardian of his righteousness. So whatever the righteousness of God rejects, then the justice of God would judge. So if someone says, I’m not supposed to go to heaven because I’m a good person, and the Bible says there are none that are good, no, not one, if the righteousness of God rejects that person, the justice of God judges him in the lake of fire forever. God is perfectly righteous. God is eternal life. God is veracity. He means he doesn’t lie. He’s omniscient. He’s all-knowing. God is omnipotent. He’s all-powerful. God is omnipresent. He’s always with us, wherever you may be. And he is absolute sovereignty. He’s the only king of kings, the only Lord of lords. Is it possible you claim to love God, but you don’t really know the God you love? Perhaps you love what you think God is, but only as long as it fits your agenda. Write it down again. Now, you may need to get a text of this to see this. God is love. He doesn’t fall in love. He is love. He’s righteousness. He’s justice. He’s what? He’s righteousness and justice. He’s eternal life. He’s veracity. He’s omniscience. He’s omnipotent. He’s omnipresent. He’s sovereign. And I think probably just as a side note, he has a sense of humor. You don’t think so? Look in the mirror. Made you, didn’t he? Yeah, that’s right. God must have a sense of humor. So God’s love is amazing. It’s unfailing. And by you ignoring his plan for your life, you demonstrate you don’t love God. You demonstrate you love your plan more than his plan. So you’ve heard it. You’ve heard it from me. You’ve heard it from your own pastor. and yet you go on down the road doing what you wanna do, you don’t spend any time trying to go closer to God, you go maybe once a year you’ll go far and rededicate your life, save your breath. Once a year you promise you’re gonna be a good boy, save your breath. Unless you can find time in your life to study and grow on a daily basis, you don’t love God. You wanna go get God to give you favors, sure. But if you love God, you would seek to know God and serve God. Another problem-solving device is impersonal love, impersonal love. That’s a wonderful problem-solving device you must use and must understand if you’re going to live the Christian life. Understanding this divine provision and using it will stop you from ever getting mad at anybody. Just think no more road rage on your part, no more bitterness on your part, no more revenge motivation on your part, no more jealousy, no more feeling disrespected. I mean, is it possible to actually be around family members at family functions and no longer get mad when they seek to put you down or they try to manipulate you so others can gain control of the finances of the property? Yes, you can. You can tolerate others and hold no grudges. When you’re insulted, when you’re treated unfairly, when you’re ridiculed, you have the tremendous problem-solving devices of the Word of God. And you have to have the spiritual strength to use these problem-solving devices and leave the matters in God’s hand. As an ambassador of God, which you are, 2 Corinthians 5.20 says, Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God as an ambassador for Christ. Impersonal love for man is the function of that ambassadorship. You are not left here to straighten people out. You are not left here to get even with those whom you dislike. You are left here to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. That means you must learn how to use impersonal love. The virtue love provision is exactly what God used with you. In John 3.16, the Bible says God so loved the world. Perfectly righteous God loved you and me on the basis of his character, not ours. He did not require us to love him in order to be saved. He loved us first. In 1 John 4, 19, we now love him because he first loved us. So this impersonal love I’m talking about requires a subject. That’s you. And it requires an object, and that’s them. And impersonal love allows you to love that object regardless of their integrity or lack of it. You love them based on your virtue, not theirs. And when you use this problem-solving device of impersonal love, that’s when you are actually replicating the life of Christ. Do you remember what he said in Luke 23, 34? Hanging on the cross? Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. Does that sound like he loved them? Yes. You cannot use impersonal love if you have unconfessed sin in your life. Let’s get that straight. It won’t work. Anger, bitterness, jealousy, and hatred, these are all mental attitude sins that quench and grieve the Holy Spirit. And when the Bible says in Galatians 5.22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, the fruit of the Spirit is love, it’s referring to the virtue love assets of personal love for God and impersonal love for mankind. So examine yourself and quit lying to yourself If you lack the ability to use impersonal love, you are not living the spiritual life. You are carnal. You’re out of fellowship. So stop trying to justify your attitude and confess that sin now. Spiritual growth is critical for you if you ever hope to become a mature believer and if you ever hope to replicate the life of Christ. And that means you must make an effort to find a well-qualified pastor and start studying under his ministry every day and quit wasting precious time God gave you. Because playing church is not growing up. 2 Timothy 2.15 said it plainly. Study, study. I’ll say it again. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Be ashamed. Is there time when you’re going to be ashamed? Absolutely. The judgment seat of Christ, when all of your good works are burned up, you will be ashamed that you blew a great opportunity to glorify God. You want to be able to rightly divide the word of truth. You want to understand that. That’s why we stress getting under the ministry of a great pastor that can help you understand it. Plus H is another problem-solving device. I call it sharing the happiness of God. Listen to me while I read Hebrews 12, 2. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy, there’s the word joy, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Did you notice joy was set before him? Does that imply that the horrors of the cross was fun? No, absolutely not. But what it does shed light on is this. It’s the victory that our Lord Jesus Christ went on that cross. See, it was there that Satan was defeated once and for all. And the greatest joy you can ever experience in your life is to share in that victory by means of your salvation and your eventual resurrection. There’s no greater joy for the believer than to know confidently that you are doing exactly what your Father wants you to do. That’s what our Lord did. He didn’t want to go to the cross and die like that. He even prayed, Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. When you’re doing exactly what God wants you to do, there is no greater joy in this life. This leads you to ask the question, how do I discover what he wants me to do? And the clue is what Jesus said in Luke 11, 28. Happiness belongs to those who hear the word of God and keep it. Happiness belongs to those who hear the word of God and keep it, plus H. sharing the happiness of God. Where does it come from? Hearing the word of God and keeping it. You will never experience the joy that our Lord spoke about unless you have an opportunity to listen to the teaching of the word of God and obey what it tells you. Again, Luke 11, 28, happiness belongs to those who hear the word of God and keep it. The sad truth is this, that unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. Actually, they buy things that they can’t afford to try and impress people they don’t even like because they think money is a narcotic that’ll deaden the pain to an empty life. Our Lord Jesus Christ told the disciples in John 15, 11 these words. I told you these things so that my joy may be in you. God’s happiness, plus H, sharing the happiness of Christ can handle any disaster. Plus H never seeks a better environment as a solution to your problems. Plus H, sharing the happiness of God is true and permanent happiness in which the mature believer, the one who studied, the one who grew up, the mature believer executed the protocol plan of God and is now a winner and an invisible hero. Happiness is a system of thought. in your soul, and that system being the word of God, not the pleasure of stimulation, but the word of God. The person with plus H can enjoy pleasure. He can enjoy stimulation, a good game, a good movie, a good whatever, but still remain in a state of humility. The indication of plus H in your life is simply one word. How can you tell if you have this type of happiness? It’s called contentment. Hebrews 13.5, let your lifestyle be free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Contentment. 1 Timothy 6.6, but godliness is a means of great profit when accompanied by contentment. Contentment. That’s how you know you’re happy, you’re content. Whatever state I’m in, I’ve learned to be content. Doesn’t make any difference if I have a lot or I have a little. Paul said, I am content. Are you content? Yes. Are you? Are you upset because you don’t have certain things? Are you upset because something happened that you didn’t agree with? Do you not have contentment? The last problem solving device that I want to mention to you, which is critical, is occupation with the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a manifestation of those 10 problem solving devices forming the flat line in your soul. Occupation with Christ is simply you being occupied with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is you having personal love for him. How is that? Because you have an intimate awareness of who he is, what he’s done for you, and what he will do for you. This awareness is an appreciation based on understanding of what he offers in time and in eternity, It’s not just some emotional feeling that you get you all teary eyed when you mentioned his name. It’s not an emotional experience at church singing. Oh, I love Jesus. It’s a different appreciation because it’s based on what you understand. It’s a personal love for God. Listen to first Peter one eight and whom having not seen you love Occupation with Christ. You love. In whom though now you have not seen him, yet you believe in him and you rejoice with joy. There it is. Unspeakable and full of glory. Those who love the Lord Jesus Christ. Occupation with Christ. Have made a role model out of our Lord and they are the believers who have true happiness and they are the believers who are spiritually self-sustaining. This happiness from occupation with Christ and the problem-solving devices on the flat line of your soul is the inexpressible happiness you cannot communicate to other people. They won’t understand it. But when you reach the point of occupation with Christ, then you will have the mental attitude and the thinking of our Lord. There are two mandates in regards to being occupied with Christ. Hebrews 12.2, be concentrating on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith. And 1 Peter 3.15, but sanctify, which means to set apart is more important than anything else. Sanctify the Lord Jesus Christ in your hearts. So God makes a direct positive demand on your will and your volition to be occupied with Christ, which is a mandate to be consistent in the metabolization process. of the word of God in your soul. That’s why the flat line is essentially critical for you. If you don’t understand the flat line, you are not living the Christian life. If you don’t apply these principles into your life, you are not living the Christian life. I don’t know what you’re doing, maybe playing church, getting the good, good, good feeling or something, but it’s not the Christian life, and it’ll show up. Sooner or later. Oh, I hope you’re listening. I hope you’ll pay attention. I pray this rings a bell with you so that you would be the person God intended for you to be. Again, if you want to get that book, Christian Problem Solving, where we go over these things, contact us and we’ll put your name on the list and send it to you as soon as it’s ready. Thank you for listening today. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. We’ll be back next week, same time, same place. So until then, may God bless you richly.
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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.
