SPEAKER 02 : 0:06

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 01 : 0:21

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long. Just about 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education, and, of course, all without any type of manipulation. That’s right. The Flatline Radio Show, we don’t try to ask for money. We’re not going to offer you, sell you anything. We just want to give you something, actually give you something free. Advice from the Word of God. That’s right, spiritual information, not human speculation. If you’re interested, if you want to stick around, I hope you will. I hope you’ll listen, and I hope you’ll be challenged by what you’re going to hear this morning on the Flatline Radio Show. It may be new in your area since we’ve added many, many new stations to our broadcast list. I made a mistake a couple of weeks ago and said we’re broadcasting over 100 radio shows. Actually, it’s 200. 200 radio stations across America this morning are playing this show. And I would like to say thank you for any individual in any city who spends a few minutes of your day listening to the things that we teach on this radio show. We’re not trying to build a national audience. We’re not trying to build a denomination. We’re not trying to build an organization. We’re just trying to dispense truth, hopefully, that we’ll find people that are interested in learning the Word of God. The truth is that we have many resources we would actually like to give to you free of charge. If you’d like to check us out, simply go to rickhughesministries.org. on the World Wide Web, rickhughesministries.org. And there you can see the different books that we supply, as well as DVDs and audio messages. And by the way, this is not a self-help program. I’m not a counselor. This is a Bible-based program designed to give you accurate information, not some sort of human speculation. If the name FLOTLINE intrigues you, it’s a military term that stands for the Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T. The name came from my very own pastor who taught me this concept of establishing a main line of resistance inside my own soul, inside the thinking of my brain, and I base it on those 10 Bible problem-solving devices taught in the Scripture. These 10 principles act as a Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T, FLOTLINE. and stand ready to repel any attack that we might face in our daily life. Because we all know that adversity is, of course, inevitable. But we might not all understand that stress is optional. In other words, if you stick with me and learn how God’s plan works, you will find the peace and the happiness that you’re looking for, maybe like you’ve never found it before. What you may be aware of since social media has grown so fast is that there are hundreds of preachers Hundreds of broadcasters broadcasting their sermons daily on the Internet through things like Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. All of these are free platforms that users take advantage of in hopes of spreading their message and, of course, their impact. Sometimes it’s so confusing you might not know who to trust. They all talk about the same sort of stuff, about your eternal destination and what God expects out of you. And so sometimes their message can be downright harmful. So the first question, if you’re listening this morning to me speak, is can I trust this weirdo to give me the truth? Can I trust Rick Hughes to tell me the truth? This is where God the Holy Spirit will have to give you some insight. If you are a Christian, it’s his job to enlighten you and to direct you to where truth is. Listen to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning matters like this. In John 16, 13, he said, However, when he, the Spirit of truth, that’s the Holy Spirit. I’m reading from John 16, 13. When he, the Holy Spirit, has come, he will guide you into all truth. Did you hear that? He will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatever he shall hear, he shall speak, and he will show you the things to come. So it’s the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to guide you if you are guideable. That’s the big question. Are you guideable? Sometimes gullible is mixed up with that. Are you open to be guided into truth? The scriptures tell us that the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us the moment we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior. That’s the wonderful thing. In Ephesians 1.13, in whom you also trusted, after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that you believed, there’s your salvation, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. A lot of people want to tell you, what do you got to do to be saved? And here’s the answer. After that you believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Now, this is when the Holy Spirit comes to seal you, to indwell you, to seal you forever. It is God’s intention that your new life in Christ be empowered by the Holy Spirit and, of course, guided by the Holy Scriptures. When those two things come together, the Christian can begin to reflect the person of Jesus Christ in his daily life. In Galatians 2.20, the Bible says, I’m crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet it’s not I, but it’s Christ living in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. What an amazing statement that is. No longer I, but it’s Christ living in me. This is what the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures do. They produce the character of Christ in your life. So maybe you have discovered, much like I have, that in spite of my best intentions, You know, when I don’t want to, I still do saying things I don’t want to do. I still have that sinful nature that can come out from time to time, depending on circumstances. When I used to travel a whole lot years ago, it would come out of me driving on the interstate or driving in traffic. We all get frustrated, and sometimes we just get to sinning, thinking about that other driver that’s a nincompoot over there. But, you know, the Bible calls this the sin nature that we’re talking about, the flesh. We all have it. It lives inside of us. In Galatians 5.17, the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit lusts against the flesh. And these are contrary one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. Some morning you feel like a nut and some morning you don’t. So you have a battle. This verse tells you that you have a battle going on. Lusteth is the word wars. The war. There’s a war. The flesh wars against the spirit. But what are they worrying about? They both want to control you. They both want to direct your thoughts, the flesh, and direct your thoughts into the lust of the flesh. The Holy Spirit wants to direct your thoughts into the Holy Scriptures. So you’re going to live by what you think, because the Bible says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. The daily battle that you face can be a source of frustration. You know, many Christians don’t understand why they can’t stop repeated sinning. The Apostle Paul wrestled with the same frustration in his life, and he mentioned it in his letter to the Roman Church. He wrote these words in Romans 7, 15. For that which I do, I allow not. For what I would, that do I not. In other words, what I want to do, I don’t do it. But what I hate, there it is, what I hate doing, that I do. Then again in verse 18 of Romans 7, For I know that in me, that’s in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. Does that sound like you? Do you find yourself committing sins that you don’t want to do? Do you find yourself being hateful when you don’t want to be hateful? Do you find yourself getting angry when you don’t want to get angry? Do you find yourself getting jealous when you don’t want to be jealous? How about lust? Do you find yourself trapped in lust when you don’t want to do that? That’s the sin nature. It’s very powerful. It’s very strong. And you have it and I have it because the Bible says we got it from Adam’s original sin imputed to us. We have a sin nature. Now, here’s the good news about that before I go too much further. Once you leave this earth, this body, once you get out of this nutshell that we live in, you’re going to get a new body with no sin nature. You won’t have that in heaven. You won’t have that lust anymore in heaven. It’ll be gone. So that’s one thing we look forward to is our new resurrection body with no sinful nature. But the solution to the control of that sin nature flesh is found in Ephesians 5.18. And here’s what it says. And do not be drunk with wine where there is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. Sometimes people talk to you about drinking. If you’re a Christian, you shouldn’t drink. The Bible does not say that. The Bible says don’t get drunk with wine. But the Bible does not say that drinking a glass of wine is a sin. Drinking a beer is a sin. The Bible doesn’t say that. Of course, many Christians say, well, you don’t want to influence those that you’re around, so you don’t want to be going in there buying it or drinking around people that are weaker. And that is often very true. But I’m just telling you, the Bible does not say don’t drink with wine. It says don’t get drunk with wine. So in reality, the Christian, you and I, we’re either under control of our sinful nature, the flesh, or we’re under control of the Holy Spirit. We’re filled with the Holy Spirit. Again, don’t be drunk with wine where there is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. So there’s a commandment for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. There’s no in-between. Either you are in fellowship with God, filled with His Holy Spirit, Or you’re out of fellowship with God, quenching the Holy Spirit, letting your sinful nature control you. We’re told in Ephesians 4.30, and we’re warned, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, because you’re sealed with him until the day of redemption. Now, what exactly does it mean, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God? What’s that talking about? The original word for grieve is pronounced lupio, L-U-P-E-O, and it’s a verb. And as such, it’s what we call a present tense verb, active voice, imperative mood. Present tense means there never is a time that you are to grieve the Holy Spirit. The active voice means you do the grieving, not someone else. And the imperative mood is a command from God through the Apostle Paul. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. How does that happen? When you sin, when you willfully sin, when you reject the Scripture, when you reject the feeling of the Holy Spirit, when you allow your sinful nature to take over, that’s when you get in trouble. The intended use of that word grieve means to cause pain or to cause sorrow. And it’s obvious that the Holy Spirit is very disappointed with us when we elect to let our sinful nature take control, when you let your flesh take over. And this is something you and I choose to do When we use our own volition to say no to God, I want to do this. I don’t care what the Bible says. I don’t care if the Bible says it’s wrong. I’m going to do it anyhow. And you’re noticed, you’re commanded not to do it, not to allow it to happen if you are a Christian. The plain truth is if you’re not a Christian, none of this even applies to your life because you are not indwelled by the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t even apply to you, and that will never happen in your life until you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive him as your personal Savior. But let me go back to the plain truth about this passage. The plain truth is at this very moment, right now as you’re listening to me, whatever city or these 200 cities that you’re in when I’m playing this show, you are either, if you’re a Christian, you are either controlled by your sinful nature or you’re being controlled by the Holy Spirit. So which one is it? That’s a legitimate question. Who is in control of your life this very moment? The answer is, is there any unconfessed sin in your life? Have you committed mental attitude sin, worry, anger, bitterness, jealousy? Have you committed sins of the tongue, lying, Gossip, aligning, criticizing? Have you committed sins of the flesh, drunkenness? Well, what about it? Who’s controlled of your life at this very moment? Think back for a few minutes. Think back for a few hours. Have you committed any sin recently? Remember, sin can be a mental attitude sin, as I said, like jealousy, anger, fear. Or it could be a son of the tongue, like gossips lying and lying again. And if you did commit sin, have you been cleansed from that sin? Or, on the other side of the coin, are you still out of fellowship with God, out of fellowship with your Heavenly Father, due to your disobedience, due to the fact that you sinned and haven’t dealt with that issue, you haven’t admitted it yet? So let’s take a moment and look at the recovery process for people that sinned. Those who grieve the Holy Spirit can recover. The antidote, I said the word antidote, to personal sin is found in 1 John 1.9. It’s the very first problem-solving device that should be on the flatline of your soul. And that is how to recover from that sin. My pastor used a key word called rebound. Rebound, like the basketball term, bounce out, bounce back. And this is the very first problem-solving device you and I should have on the flatline in our soul. 1 John 1.9 The Bible says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive our sin and to purify us from all wrongdoing. This is critical that you stick to this and understand this. When you sin, you must go to God and admit to sin. If you don’t do that, you will not be forgiven for the sin in time. You’re already forgiven in eternity. You’re already made righteous because of the righteousness of Christ that was imputed to you at salvation. But in time, you can break fellowship with God by committing sin, and if you don’t recover from that sin, then the Holy Spirit is quenched. Your sin nature controls your life, and that may be what’s going on with you right now, So the very first problem-solving device is to learn how to rebound, how to recover from your sin, how to confess your sin. You say, well, God doesn’t know what I’m doing. How would God even know what I did? Well, Hebrews 4.13, Neither is there any creature that is not manifested in his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. So certainly God is aware of anything you’ve done. He’s aware of who you are, what you are, what you’re doing. He knows that. From Psalm 33, 13, the Lord looketh down from heaven, and he beholds all the sons of men. Verse 14, Psalm 33, from the place of his habitation, he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth. This is crazy to think about this, but God can look at every human being on the earth at the same time? That’s why he’s God, because he has omnipresence. God can be in India. God can be in Africa. God can be in America. God can be in Europe at the same time. That’s because he is omnipresent, and he is omnipotent. He’s all-powerful. He’s omniscient. He’s all-knowing. So he is always looking at you and every decision you make and every decision I make. He’s aware of that. He knows when we commit sin. Someone asked me, what’s the greatest sin you could ever do? Well, that’s called the sin of unbelief, because there is no remedy for the individual who rejects Jesus Christ as Savior. John 3 tells us about that. In John 3, 17, For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. And listen to verse 18. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. So when the Christian sins, what we essentially do is break fellowship with God by allowing our sinful nature to seize control of our thoughts and our actions. And to recover fellowship with God, we must use rebound technique given in 1 John 1, 9, as I quoted it to you earlier. I’ll quote it one more time. You may have to do this 20 times a day like I do sometimes. 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I hope you notice the verse as the third-class condition in the Greek New Testament using the word if. If means maybe you will and maybe you won’t. But just like you made that decision to sin, you must also make the same decision to be cleansed from that sin and recover fellowship with God through the filling of the Holy Spirit. And the recovery process requires me and you, us’s, to admit what we did wrong. That word confess is the key word in that passage. That’s the key to recovery. In the original language of the New Testament Greek, it is the word homo legeo. Homo legeo, H-O-M-O, L-O-G-E-O. I think you know what that word is, homo. We use that today. And legeo means to say. And it means, there’s a compound verb, actually, made up of two words. It means to say the same. Homo is the same, and legeo means to say. By the way, this is the same recovery process, the same antidote that the Old Testament saints used as well. In Psalm 32, verses 3 and 5, listen to what David said using rebound. When I kept silent, in other words, when I did not confess my sin to God, my bones waxed old through my roaring all day long. For day and night thy hand, your hand was heavy on me. That’s discipline. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. But I acknowledge my sin unto you, there’s rebound. And my iniquity I did not hide, there’s confessing the sin. I said, quote, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Could not be any plainer. Exactly the same thing David had to do, you and I have to do. We have to admit our personal sin to God. When we fail to admit personal sin, that brings divine discipline, which is designed to break our arrogance. And this is taught in Hebrews 12, 5 and 6. Listen as I read it. And have you forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children? My son, despise not you when the chasing of the Lord, when it hits you, don’t faint when you’re rebuked of him. For the people that God loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son he receives. If you’re a child of God, when you sin, you’re going to get disciplined if you don’t recover from that sin. Just the same way you would discipline your very own children if they lied to you, if they stole from you and they failed to admit it. So God expects us to be honest with him because he’s honest with us. Divine discipline is administered to the believer when he fails to acknowledge his sin. And it’s usually personal and private, but can be painful. It’s not administered because God’s mad at us, but because he loves us. And it’s designed to stop us before we ruin our life and maybe even ruin the life of someone else because of our stupidity. So the power of the Holy Spirit combined with the power of the Word of God, I call that the dynamic duo, it gives us the opportunity to glorify God to the max. That’s what we want to do. We want to glorify God to the max. We want people to see God through us. In 1 Corinthians 10, 31, whether therefore you eat or whether you drink or whatever you do, here it is, listen now, Do all to the glory of God. In Psalm 86, 12, I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify your name forevermore. I’ve told you these things so that you might understand the importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Many Christians don’t understand this. Many people don’t understand that Christian life cannot, will not, ever be executed without the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you try to operate the Christian life in the energy of the flesh, then nothing of eternal value is committed. The energy of the flesh is your morality, your good deeds. That doesn’t glorify God at all. Morality is not spirituality. You hear me? Morality is not spirituality. The spiritually mature believer is a reflection of Jesus Christ, God’s anointed Son. So if you desire to glorify God in your life, then you must follow His plan, which simply means that the right thing must be done in the right way. This is taught in 1 Corinthians 3, verses 11-15. For other foundation can no man lay, and that which is laid is Jesus Christ. That’s your salvation. If any man build upon this foundation, this is a builder’s metaphor now, like a house builder. If anyone build on this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble, there’s two different categories. Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it as the day of judgment seat of Christ, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will try every man’s production of what sort it is. And if any man’s production abide, which he has built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. And if any man’s work shall be burned up, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so is by fire. If you’re a Christian, you may not have any crowns in heaven, but your salvation is like the foundation of a house. It cannot be burned up. It cannot be destroyed. So you’re going to be in heaven. You’re going to have eternal life, but you might not have the rewards you’d like to have because you never learned how to operate effectively as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. The gold, silver, and precious stones refers to things done for God while filled with the Holy Spirit. The wood, hay, and stubble can be some of those same things but done in the energy of the flesh. In other words, the believer out of fellowship because of unconfessed sin in his life has the ability to do things for God, but those things are totally unacceptable due to the source, the flesh. My team and I put together a couple of books that explain all of this in much greater detail. We’ve written a book called These Things, and that refers to what Jesus told the disciples. I’ve told you these things so that you might understand. And we also put together a book called The Christian Spiritual Life. How’s your spiritual life, we ask in that book. We’ve also assembled a book called The Divine Pardon, which tells you how to receive your eternal pardon from God. These can be ordered free of charge by means of going to our website, rickhughesministries.org, or by calling 800-831-0718. All right. Thank you for listening this morning. Thank you for hanging in there with me for this 30 minutes. It’s been my honor and my privilege to give you this information. We pray that God, the Holy Spirit, will use it to challenge you so that Jesus Christ might be glorified through in your life and you can represent him effectively. Okay, until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, host of The Flatline, saying thank you for listening today.

SPEAKER 02 : 26:43

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.