SPEAKER 01 : 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 02 : 0:22

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stay with me. It won’t be a long time, only 30 minutes, but a lot of inspiration, some motivation, some education. And as we say every day, no manipulation, because we don’t con people. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not trying to get you to join anything. We’re not going to ask you to give up anything. We’re just going to ask you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. If I can do that, then obviously you have the freedom of choice to orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. But if you’re a new listener to this morning’s show, you may be because we’ve added 35 different radio stations within the last month and a half. And I like it that we’re growing, going towards the number 200 soon. I’d love to be able to say we have 200 stations across America playing this radio show. It’s a real act of faith on our part since we don’t try to sell anything. So we trust the Lord if he’s in it, he’ll honor it and he’ll take care of the expenses. So if you’re a new listener this morning, perhaps you’ve tuned in to the brand new radio show which you’ve never heard before. And it is called the FLOT, F-L-O-T, the FLOT line. This radio show addresses how you can have a wonderful life based on you learning some Christian problem-solving devices taught from the Word of God. And it’s nothing new. It’s not some fancy new invention. These are age-old Bible doctrinal principles that every Christian needs to know and understand if they want to stop the outside source of adversity before it creates stress on the inside. The word FLOT, F-L-O-T, is a military acronym. If you don’t know what it stands for, it stands for the Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T. And these 10 unique problem-solving devices that I’m going to talk to you about, they act sort of like a main line of resistance in your soul’s mentality, so that they allow you to handle adversity without converting that into stress in your life. The biblical concept of this 10 problem-solving devices was first taught by my pastor, R.B. Thiem Jr. at Baraka Church in Houston, Texas. Reverend Thiem served as pastor for over 50 years at that church. And what I’m sharing with you is a lot of the information that I learned from him. So let’s look at the first problem we face. The very first problem all of us face is taught in Hebrews 9, 27, 28. Maybe you didn’t know you had a problem. But you do. Here it is. And as it is appointed to men once to die, but after that the judgment. So Christ was offered once to bear the sins of the many. To those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. So and as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this the judgment. Each one of us has two appointments in eternity future. The first appointment we have is called the DOD, our day of departure. You know it as the word death. We know we can’t escape our DOD or our day of departure, so it’s coming sooner or later. The second is judgment. There will be a judgment. And this is a personal evaluation by God concerning your eternal status. The Christian is evaluated at the judgment seat of Christ found in 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 15. If you’ve never read that, I wish you would read it because it talks about how you can manufacture a lot of good works that do not honor God. They are simply called wood, hay, and stubble. This comes because you wind up doing right things but in the wrong way. And that’s in the energy of the flesh. Not manufactured, not produced by the filling of the Holy Spirit. It’s just energy of the flesh and it is no good. It does not honor God. And that will be kicked out or evaluated in 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 15. What you did good, that did honor God, the right thing done in the right way, is called gold, silver, and precious stones. And that you’ll be rewarded for. The non-Christian, I’m sorry to say, is evaluated at the great white throne of judgment. And this is explained to us in Revelation 20, verses 11 through verses 15. You do not want to be at the great white throne of judgment. But you will be at one of these two judgments. And the choice is yours to make. So I’m urging you right now to consider receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. And today, not tomorrow, not later, not next week, today. Why do I emphasize that? Because you do not have a written contract guaranteeing you’ll be here tomorrow. The wonderful thing is that your salvation and your deliverance from eternal damnation is absolutely free, a free gift. Free, I said free, it’s a free gift, compliments of the grace of God because of the work of Jesus Christ. How can I say it’s free? Well, Romans says this in Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Verse 24, Romans 3.24, being justified freely, there’s your word free, by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So what the Lord Jesus Christ did on that cross for us is he set us free from the slave market of sin. When we receive him as our Savior, we are justified in the eyes of God. We have equal righteousness. His righteousness is given to us. That’s why it says he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. When we have that righteousness of Christ, we are justified free. It didn’t cost us, it cost him. He paid for it, not you and I. In verse 25 of Romans 3 says, God set forth Jesus Christ as a propitiation by his blood through faith that’s free again, to demonstrate his righteousness because in his patience, our forbearance, the word, God has passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. Wow. You can go to heaven. You can have eternal life. You can skip this great white throne of judgment in Revelation 20, 11 through 15 by putting your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Some people say you can’t do it with a simple prayer. They come up with all sorts of things that you’re supposed to do. But the Bible does say, whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And you can do that. If you’re ready to do that, you can simply say, Father, I admit I’m a sinner and I’m willing to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. It’s a simple prayer. The words are not important. It’s the attitude of your heart that’s important. If you believe that Christ is the anointed Son of God and you’re willing to receive him as your Savior, I suggest you pray that prayer. Father, I know I’m a sinner. I’m willing to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. You might want to say, I believe he died for me and I accept his death, burial, and resurrection as my forgiveness for my sin. Your faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on that Roman cross is in fact your guarantee of a personal sense of destiny concerning eternity. Personal sense of destiny concerning eternity. I want you to hear that word again, your personal sense of destiny. That’s a problem-solving device. In 2 Peter 3.13, the Bible says, but according to his promises, we are looking forward to, that’s a personal sense of destiny, new heavens and a new earth in which perfect righteousness lives forever. In my case, I accepted Christ as my Savior in 1967. That should tell you how old I am. It happened after a chance encounter with an old high school cheerleader named Jane. We bumped into each other at a shopping mall, and even though we never dated in high school, I was too busy going steady with two other girls at the time. That’s right, I was going steady with two at one time until they found out about it when they went to different schools. When they found out about it, I was in trouble. When I ran into Jane, I was trying to date Jane, and I was able to secure a date with her on one condition. She said I had to go to church. Well, I felt disconnected in church since I never attended any church, and it was after the service was over. Jane convinced me to go with her to a youth fellowship. It was there that I heard the gospel message and accepted Christ as my Savior. After that night, I began to tell my friends what had happened to me. And I also began to read the Bible given to me at that youth fellowship by Coach Frank McCoy, one of the coaches at the University of Alabama where I had played some freshman football a few years earlier. And Coach McCoy gave me a New Testament and said, you need to start reading this in the book of John, which I did. As I started reading the Bible and the book of John, everything in there seemed like it was talking just about me. It seemed to have my name on it. And I had no idea what God did that night. I really didn’t. I mean, I knew I’d gotten saved, and I went to bed that night. I had peace with God in my life. I slept like a baby because I knew that I’d been forgiven of my sin, but I didn’t understand all of it. I really had no idea what God had done that night, but after enrolling in Southeastern Bible College and meeting some mature believers, I began to understand that God had given me a spiritual gift. Today, it’s known as the gift of evangelism. I am an evangelist. I’m not a pastor, teacher. I’m an evangelist. The destiny God designed for me was absolutely incredible. And my history, looking back at it, is incredible too, and I’ll tell you a little bit about that. Because after meeting my wife in 1966 at a college-age Bible study in Birmingham, Alabama, we married, had four wonderful children, and I started a ministry speaking to high schools across the country. And this ministry opportunity led me into hundreds of schools, predominantly private schools, since the public schools would not allow messages about God in their assemblies. And eventually, at the request of students, it was about 1969 to 2022, those are the years I spent traveling and speaking in schools, 1969 until 2022 added up. It was during these five-day weeks, five-day assemblies. We called them spiritual emphasis weeks. The kids asked me to do this, and I started doing this. I used to do one assembly a day or three assemblies a day, actually, one at 10, one at 1, and one at 2. They were all at different schools, but now I’d go to one school and stay one week. While this was going on in my life, the door opened up for a radio ministry. And that has now become my primary outreach. That started in 2005. We’re now in 2026. And I currently host currently almost 180 radio shows every Sunday morning. The only way I could be effective in these opportunities was to be extremely accurate in my messages. When I was at the school speaking, that’s the thing that the administrators liked. I didn’t play with the emotions of the kids. I didn’t try to get them to come forward and promise they would be good little kids. I gave them the truth. I taught them the word of God. I taught them the mechanics to the Christian life. Same thing we do on the radio show. And the kids liked it because they knew what was right and what was wrong. They didn’t need me to pump them up for Jesus. But thank goodness my pastor, Colonel Thiem, we called him in Baraka Church, he prepared me for these sort of times by teaching me exactly what I needed to know so that I would not mislead individuals. nor would I misrepresent. I said misrepresent. You hear that word? I would not misrepresent God’s plan. I cannot begin to explain how relaxing it is to know that I have a personal sense of destiny. I have learned to trust God for the finances and not ask for offerings nor charge for books. I keep my eye on the goal and never look back or second guess God’s plan. This confidence allows me not to be plagued by doubt or uncertainty about my future or my past. So the question I want to ask is what about you? Do you have a personal sense of destiny? Do you know what God’s plan is for your life? Do you know what your spiritual gift is? The believer who’s advancing to spiritual maturity in his life will discover God’s plan for their personal life, and they will take great confidence in fulfilling that plan. You may say, how do I advance? Well, I give you a little equation. The filling of the Holy Spirit plus GAP, G-A-P, which stands for Grace Apparatus for Perception, that’s taking in the Bible, learning it, and applying it into your life, equals 10 PSD, 10 Problem Solving Devices. So FHS, Filling of the Holy Spirit, plus GAP, Grace Apparatus for Perception, equals 10 Problem Solving Devices. And that’s how you advance the spiritual maturity, one day at a time, learning, applying the word of God into your life. You might be in your 70s, you may be in your 80s like me, and you may wonder, how could God use me? I’m too old. Well, I suggest the ministry of prayer is one way you could serve him. People like me need a lot of prayer. I need the prayers and you need the practice. So pray for me. Pray for your family. Pray for your pastor. Pray for a lot of your country, your nation, your president. I mean, this is an incredible ministry of prayer that some people could have that aren’t able to get out and do other things. You could write down a prayer list and start praying every day for whoever you wanted to pray for. Maybe you would have the gift of giving. That’s a wonderful gift as well. And you are able to support the needs of your local church as well as missionaries who carry the gospel into the devil’s world. One of the greatest principles of having a personal sense of destiny is that you finally learn to take responsibility for your own decisions. And I’m talking about the good ones and the bad ones. Once you understand your personal sense of destiny, what God designed you to do, what God wants you to be, then you will be able to identify the wrong priorities to stay out of self-absorption and you can answer the question, then why exactly am I here? This is where a lot of people get sidetracked. They get these good ideas and good intentions and they go down the my way highway and they’re believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, but they wind up wasting years doing stupid things that didn’t pay off. There are serious things that’ll pay off. The filling of the Holy Spirit plus the Gary Saperitis for perception on a daily basis, learning, studying, and applying the word of God into your life gives you that personal sense of destiny. So once you understand that, you will be able to identify those wrong priorities in your life. Okay, let’s give you some principles. One, a personal sense of destiny requires cognition. That’s learning and applying. It requires cognition of the word of God, pertinent to and understanding the protocol plan of God for the church. What I mean by the protocol plan of God, I mean that God says things got to be done in the right way in the right time. A right thing done in the wrong way is wrong, and a right thing done in the right way is right. So we live in the church age. We must understand the mystery doctrines of the church. You have something no one in the Old Testament had. You have Christ in you, living inside of you. And instead of going to the temple to worship, you are the temple. Let’s listen to these verses. In Colossians 1.26, the mystery, there it is, The mystery which has been hidden from all ages, from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory. This is amazing. No one in the Old Testament had this. The Messiah living in them, Jesus Christ living in you. In 1 Corinthians 3, 16 and 17, here’s the thing about the temple. Don’t you know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. So you have the Lord Jesus Christ living in you. You have God the Holy Spirit living in you. And you have God the Father living in you. You’re a member of the church, the royal family of God, the body of Christ, the bride. So part number two, a personal sense of destiny demands the function of at least three spiritual skills. You got to learn these. You got to use these. You got to understand how they work so that you can utilize the power of God and glorify God to the maximum. The first one is the filling of the Holy Spirit, and that’s problem solving device number one on the flight line of your soul. Actually, number two, number one is rebound when you confess your sin. That’s the problem with sin. And number two is the filling of the Holy Spirit rather than being controlled by your sin nature. So you’ve got to understand when you’re out of fellowship, being controlled by your sin nature, and when you’re in fellowship, being controlled by the Holy Spirit. And then the second thing is you must have the word of God circulating in your stream of consciousness. You must have learned and applied the word in your soul, in your soul’s mentality. And then you need to produce those, those 10 problem-solving devices are produced on the flat line of your soul so that you can stop the outside source of adversity before it becomes the inside source of stress in your life. You with me so far? Good. All right, here we go. Three, a personal sense of destiny lives by the power and the provision of God rather than the foibles and the failures of the arrogant skills. Arrogant skills, self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption. The arrogant skills include a lust for power, and that’s the motivations of the sin nature. So you can let your oaths and that you’re getting control and it’ll work off with your arrogance. And you’ll justify why you’re right and the preacher’s wrong, why you’re right and your wife’s wrong, why you’re right and your children are wrong, why you’re right and the government’s wrong. And you’ll be thinking that you’re right all the time and everybody else is wrong. Four, our Lord Jesus Christ had a personal sense of destiny. He knew why he was here. He knew what he had to accomplish. and he did not react with anger or frustration to the shame of that cross that he had to endure. Five, if you have not established the word of God as your highest priority in your life, then you will never have a personal sense of destiny because every time you succeed in the acquisition of any lust in your soul, any successful thing, any stimulation, It’ll just increase your unhappiness because it won’t make you happy. Unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. To miss occupation with Christ, that’s the last problem-solving device you can have, is to miss the greatest blessing that this life has to offer you. In order to grow up spiritually and develop that personal sense of destiny, you’ve got to make some decisions based on priorities. Not based on your passions, but on your priorities. I mean, many well-meaning Christians waste years following their passions, but have never made it to spiritual growth, maturity. They’ve never made growing up spiritually a priority in their life. I’m telling you, you can’t know what God wants you to do at 15, 16, 17, 18. It takes a few years of learning and applying and growing before it becomes clear in your mind. So you have to take your time. God was in business before you got here. God will be in business when you’re gone. He’s not going to short circuit himself. You just have to do the right thing so you don’t wind up doing something goofy and think you’re serving the Lord when you’re just following some lust fashion. In regards to personal relationship, it’s your relationship with God the Father that must take priority in your life. If you do that, then everything else will stay in the proper perspective. Listen to what Paul said to the believers in Ephesus, talking about keeping things in perspective. Ephesians 5, 16, see that you walk circumspectly, not as a fool, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore, don’t be unwise or stupid, but understand what is the will of the Lord, what is the will of God. If you have a personal sense of destiny, it gives you the ability to handle the details in your life. Because it’s the little things in your life that get you distracted from your spiritual advance. The prophet Jeremiah wrote about this when he said in Jeremiah 12, 5, if you have run with footmen and they wearied you, then how can you contend with the horses? And if in the land of peace in which you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplains of the Jordan? a solemn warning to being distracted by not having the right priorities. The AI Christian, not artificial intelligence, no, no, no, but arrogant plus ignorance. That’s AI Christian, arrogant plus ignorance. He will never have what I’m speaking about because he will never have the humility needed to be obedient to God’s instruction concerning the spiritual life. The instructions are found, three words, study, grow, learn. Study, grow, learn. 2 Timothy 2.15, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed. Grow, 2 Peter 3.18, grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Learn, Matthew 11.29, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. Study, grow, learn. You will never be able to complete the Christian life and have the destiny God designed for you until you do that. So the personal sense of destiny is attained by using power option number one, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and growing in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Having the execution of the protocol plan of God, by learning God’s word, applying God’s word, keeps us alive and protects us with a wall of fire so that we can have equal privilege and equal opportunity to attain a personal sense of destiny. Everybody has a choice. Some will make it, some won’t. Some will advance to spiritual maturity, some will not. It goes back to your priorities. I know many believers who actually moved to a new city so they could get solid, sound Bible teaching at a local church. They moved there when they were in their 20s, and you know, some of them still live there today, and they’re in their 70s, serving God in that particular church. It was their destiny. So in conclusion, if you think that the word of God, if you think the word of God, then you will see clearly if you learn to think it. Put it in your mind. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. If you do that, you will see clearly what God’s equipped you to do for his glory. Because he has a personal sense of destiny designed just for you. What he wants you to think, what he wants you to do, where he wants you to be. We wrote a book about it called Christian Problem Solving. All of these things that I talked to you today are in that book, those 10 problem-solving devices. They’re all in that book. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call 800-831-0718, and we will provide the book to you free of charge. Or you can go to our website, rickhughesministries.org, and order the book from the website. We appreciate you listening. We appreciate you being with us today. Thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time, and I sure hope you’ll come back next week, same time, same station, and we’ll continue this study of other things that are essential for you to execute the plan of God in your life. Did you learn something today? I hope you did. I hope you were challenged today, and I hope you will trust the Lord Jesus Christ to be your Savior if you haven’t done it. Okay? So next week, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, host of the Flatline Radio Show, saying thank you for giving me a few moments of your time this morning.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:03

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.