SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

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 good morning and welcome to the flatline i’m your host rick hughes thank you for being with me today it won’t be long maybe about 30 minutes of motivation some inspiration some education

SPEAKER 02 : 0:35

all done without manipulation because we don’t con people. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not going to ask you for money. We’re not going to ask you to join anything. We just like to ask you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life, teaching from the Bible. It is a show about the Bible. And I hope if you listen and learn, you can make the application into your life if you want to. RickHughesMinistries.org is our website. RickHughesMinistries.org, not Richard Hughes Ministries. That’s a different guy. A lot of times people get us confused. I don’t know where that happened, but some guy in Georgia named RichardHughesMinistries.org sounds almost like ours, but it’s not. We are RickHughesMinistries.org. And you can always call us at 800-831-0718. We have a lot of printed material that we like to make available for you free of charge. And we are in the process of redoing several books. We’ve just redone our book on Christian Problem Solving, a brand new book, brand new edition. And it is available from our website as a downloaded PDF file if you’d like to go there. Under Books, you can see the new one. And we redid the book on Divine Pardon for Incarcerated Individuals. And we’re doing a book now, redoing a book on understanding your soul. And that’s a little bit of what I want to talk to you about today. Because I’ve been tasked with writing, kind of updating this book and changing a few things. And I think it’s going to be for the better. So I hope you’ll stick around as we learn this information. And hopefully apply it into your life. Again, we don’t charge. We just believe if God’s in it, God will pay for it. So we stepped out on faith. We have broadcast in 110 radio stations across America every Sunday morning, and we buy the time. It’s not given to us. We’re not provided by someone else. We purchase that through this ministry. And so it’s been wonderful to watch the Lord pay for our bills as we go through this. Now we’re talking about the soul, S-O-U-L, the soul. The soul happens to be the real you. When it says you’re created in the image of God, it doesn’t mean your body. God doesn’t have a human body. God is eminent and transcendent. He doesn’t look like you. But he does have mentality. He does have volition. He does have consciousness. And he does have self-consciousness. And these have been given to you. So your soul has those four things. You have a mind to think with. You have a conscience to store information with. You have a volition to choose with. And you have self-consciousness to identify yourself with. This is what makes up the essence of your soul. And every believer must grow in his soul because it is your soul that’s going to spend eternity with God in heaven, not your body. Your body’s gonna go back to dust, back to ashes. But your soul and your spirit, if you’re born again, you’ll have a human spirit. They will be in heaven with a new body called a resurrection body. You get your human spirit the minute you’re born again. You see, here’s the way it works. When you’re born into the world the first time, you’re born spiritually dead because of Adam’s original sin. When you’re born again or believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, receive him as your savior, God the Holy Spirit imparts the human spirit to you and you’re born again. Now you are trichotomous. Now the believer is a body, yes, a soul, yes, and a spirit, a human spirit. And the Bible says if you’re going to worship God, you must worship him in spirit and in truth. So it’s necessary to have a human spirit to have fellowship with God. And the soul is critical as well. So we’ve been talking about the soul and what the importance of the soul is, and I gave you a concept of a runaway soul. This happens to be what’s going on in our nation today. There are thousands and thousands of young people who have no brakes, B-R-A-K-E-S, brakes in their soul. The brakes in your soul are the divine viewpoint that should be there that cautions you about doing certain things. A runaway soul is like a train with no brakes or a truck coming down a hill with no brakes to stop it at the bottom of the hill. I consider that runaway soul to be a soul that has no norms and no standards programmed into the conscious mentality. And unfortunately, that’s the job of the parents. The parents are tasked to do this. They’re tasked to train their children. And of course, the first thing any parent should do is teach them about God consciousness, God exists, because it’s from the platform that God exists that they see the need for salvation. If you don’t prepare the soul of a child, even the grandparents have to do it with the grandchildren sometime, if you don’t prepare the soul’s mentality of that child, then you are guaranteeing your child will have no breaks and will eventually crash into some sort of disaster in life, be it social, financial, even criminal. I received a call last night from a dear friend who said that his son is in prison, and it’s a good thing because it’ll get him to where he needs to be to time out in his life of bad decisions, and maybe he’ll look back and want to make a change. The Bible says in Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he’s old, he won’t depart from it. He won’t forget it. He’ll remember it. Ephesians 6, 4, fathers, do not provoke your children to rap and bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. This is the job of the parents. We must program our children and the job of the grandparents. Program your grandchildren. Teach them the word of God. Plant it in their souls so they have breaks when they are tempted to go wide open down the hill with their lost friends. The great news is that through salvation and the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit, any divine viewpoint your children or your grandchildren did not receive because the parents were neglectful, it can be overcome when they get saved and learn and apply the scriptures into their life. And that’s exactly what happened in my case. No one programmed my soul when I was young. I had no one in my family that were Christians or that went to church or taught me anything about the Bible. So I had a lot of blanks to fill in. Why should I? Why should I not do something? Thank goodness for a great pastor who taught me the mechanics of the Christian life and prepared me for the tough choices I had to make in life. So when we’re talking about sin, where does that sin originate? We want to review this just for a minute. It comes from the mentality of your soul, your thinking and your soul. And in order to control the lust patterns of the soul’s mentality, you have to learn a new way of thinking. Everybody has a lust pattern. Some people lust for money. Some people lust for power. Some people lust for alcohol and drugs. And some people lust for sex. It’s not all the same thing. Different people have different lust patterns. In order to break the control of the lust pattern, you have to learn a new way of thinking. That’s why Romans 12, 1 through 3 tells you, stop thinking in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. But think in terms of humility as God has now assigned to us a standard of thinking from his word. That’s divine viewpoint as opposed to human viewpoint. Human viewpoint may be what some social mediator tells you you should do, but divine viewpoint is what the Bible tells you you should do. And it is the job of the parents to program divine viewpoint into the life of their child so they have breaks. Those verses in Romans 12, one through three that I quoted a while ago, They are a divine mandate for us to avoid the traits of arrogance. That’s an unrealistic self-image. Whenever you have arrogance in your soul, The mentality of your soul, it will eventually destroy you. If you get arrogant, if you justify why you’re right and God’s wrong, if you justify why you’re right and the police officers are wrong, why you’re right and your parents are wrong, you’re going to eventually self-destruct. Self-justification leads to self-deception. Self-deception leads to self-absorption. And self-absorption leads to self-destruction. So it’s under the influence of arrogance that you constantly justify yourself your own bad decisions, convincing yourself that you’re right as opposed to what everybody else tells you, even God. That’s why the arrogant unbeliever will justify he doesn’t need God, doesn’t need forgiveness for his sins. He can even justify his actions by evaluating others who call themselves Christians and sees himself as better than them or at least equal to them. But the arrogant soul of the Christian, well, that’s a different story. Because he will convince himself that certain parts of the Bible don’t apply to him. And he often winds up doing several right things, but in the wrong way. This arrogance of souls mentality, believer or unbeliever, is very contagious. Because another person’s arrogance may infect your very own soul if you’re not careful. So be aware that very often you’re being recruited by an arrogant person. I call them the arrogant evangelist. who will try to convince you that wealth does not require honor, that success does not require integrity, or that love does not require virtue. Virtue, honor, and integrity are all basic traits of humility, and humility is the attitude that stems from our personal love for God. That’s why James 4.10 says, Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. And that’s why a nation such as the United States of America, in our own arrogance, we have turned away from the Lord. There’s only one way to get back. It’s not by rectifying social injustice. That’s not the answer. 2 Corinthians 7, 14 is the answer. If my people, that’s Christians, which are called by my name, believers, will humble themselves, there’s the attitude adjustment, humility, and pray, that means to confess your sin, and seek my face, that means to turn to the scriptures. Turn away from your wicked ways, that’s your human viewpoint. Then I will hear your prayer in heaven and I will forgive your sins and I will heal your land. The arrogant souls mentality is exactly the spiritual disease that’s destroying America today. Our soul’s mentality can be easily recruited by the concepts of the evil, which is simply the operational policy of Satan. The most evil thing in the world is organized religion. Organized religion has misled thousands of people into thinking they’re saved because they’re moral and very giving. And the Bible clearly tells us there are none that are righteous, not even one. And yet many people still seek to add good works to their salvation. For example, Some misguided soul is told that he must repent, repent, brother, repent of his sins to be saved. Unfortunately, the Bible does not speak of repenting to be saved, but it is a reference to changing your mind. You were an unbeliever, you repent, you change your mind, you become a believer. How do I know that? Because the word repent from the original languages is a compound verb called meta noeo, which means to change your mind. The word literally means accompanied by an exercise of the mind or with understanding. But the evil of religion is here convincing you that you’re responsible for your own salvation by repenting of your sin. You can’t repent of your sin. That’s crazy. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t teach man is condemned to hell for his sins. That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible doesn’t say you’re going to hell because of your sins. Why would a person go to hell? John 3.18, he that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. The issue in being saved is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But this satanic evil has condemned many souls to hell under the guise of religion, Satan’s number one doctrine. He takes God’s word and distorts it just a little bit and then he waits for you and I to buy into the lie and to believe it and to start to live by it. So essentially any person who doesn’t know Christ is going to be enslaved to their sin nature because they have no breaks. They have nothing in their soul. They have no human spirit and their soul has no breaks. They have no divine viewpoint. But when they accept Christ as their savior, it frees up their enslaved souls mentality. How does it do that? It gives the individual alternatives. They now have the potential for amazing spiritual growth if there’s anyone interested. The amazing spiritual growth is there if the new believer chooses to pursue it. Listen to what the scripture says and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, John 8, 32. Freedom from what? Freedom from satanic illusion. Freedom from sin nature domination now is available by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit and biblical understanding. The soul’s mentality, your brain, the way you think, can now break out of the chains of slavery by renovating the thinking from human viewpoint now to divine viewpoint. But this is only, only possible if the volition part of your soul if the volition of your soul has any hunger to understand and grow. So now the battle for your attention becomes real as Satan will throw many distractions your way after you get saved. Marriage, children, career, all legitimate things will now compete for your intention in order to convince you to stymie your spiritual advance. Your soul has volition. and your life will be a product of your volition, your decisions. The unbeliever is encouraged to choose Christ, and the believer is mandated to obey God now so that you are in his royal family. Joshua made a challenge to his people, the Jews, when his dying wishes, here’s what he said. Joshua 24, 14, now therefore fear the Lord, that’s respect, and serve him in humility and in truth. and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt the Lord you served. You need to serve the Lord, he said. And he says, if it seems evil to you this day to serve the Lord, then you make a decision. You choose who you will serve, whether you’re going to serve the gods of your fathers who they served, On the other side of the flood are the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now dwell. But as for me, as for my house, we will serve the Lord. That’s a volitional decision. Have you ever made that volitional decision? I will 100% commit to serve the Lord. Well, you’re not perfect. You’re going to fail. You’re going to make mistakes. That’s why you have rebound to recover from your failure. So the challenge that Joshua gave to them is to make a decision. Choose you today, not tomorrow, today. That implies urgency. And the same truth is for you and I. We must use our soul’s volition to make a choice. The people of Joshua’s day were not committed 100% to follow God’s plan and they had a choice to make. And very urgent that they do so, but what about you? Suppose you continue to dabble in your sin and ignore the mandates of Scripture. What can you expect? Hebrews 12, 1, Wherefore, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. This verse is your call out. Lay aside every weight and every sin that sets you off the side. Stop flirting with sin. Stop flirting with the desires of your sin nature. In case you think no one’s watching, listen to what the Bible says so great, a cloud of witnesses. That’s a reference to angelic observation. You can demonstrate obedience and loyalty to your Heavenly Father or you can continue to ignore his mandates. Ignoring the authority of your Heavenly Father may be the very exact reason that you’re in such a mess today. Hebrews 12, five through seven. And have you forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children? My son, do not despise when you are rebuked by the Lord, and don’t faint. For those the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son that he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with a son. For what son would it be whom the Father does not correct or chasten? So the very fact that God disciplines his children when they are disobedient is proof that he loves them. Left alone to the desires of the flesh, the believer would eventually destroy himself and more than likely destroy the lives of others that they’re associated with. That’s what the impact of the runaway soul is. The runaway soul with no breaks is horrific and yet exactly what Satan desires. Your failure in your spiritual life is his delight. But discipline from our Heavenly Father is designed to straighten out your thinking. Straighten out the thinking of your soul, your mentality’s thinking. Wrong thoughts lead to wrong actions and divine discipline is a form of enforced humility. It’s designed to wake up you, wake your senses up before you fall victim to Satan’s intentions. Our objective as believers in Christ, yours and mine, is to recognize and expel our wrong thinking. That means we don’t let emotions take control. This is how we purge our souls. A soul’s contamination from involvement in personal sin can leave scars that exist for a lifetime. So do yourself a favor and use your volition to name your sins as 1 John 1, 9 says, if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive our sins. and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now that verse doesn’t say you’ll forget you did it. Satan will always throw it back up at you and tell you what a loser you are. Go sit in the corner and cry, you’re just a loser. And that’s not true. God forgave you, he wiped it out, he doesn’t remember it. Get up, move on. This is genuine humility and it will allow the Holy Spirit to fill you and guide you in your daily life if you rebound, 1 John 1, 9, when you fail. So using the volition of your soul to confess a known sin to God is how we maintain the filling of the Holy Spirit. But not doing so will ensure divine discipline, which sometimes can be very painful. So once we accept Christ, we’re not left defenseless in the devil’s world. We’re instructed by God through the Apostle Paul to arm our souls. Notice Ephesians 6, 11 through 17. Put on the armor of God so that you’ll be able to stand against the strategy of the devil. For we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places. So because of this, Take unto you the whole armor of God that you will be able to stand in the evil day and having done all to keep standing. Stand therefore having your loins girded about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace and above all of this take the shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked and take the heaven of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. The arming of your soul is critical, because if you don’t, you’re gonna fall victim to Satan’s offensive strategy, and that’s simply to use your failure, your messed up life, as an opportunity to vindicate himself and his claims against the justice of God. But arming your soul requires you getting accurate information about the spiritual life, and unfortunately, organized religion is about manipulation, not information. So when the scriptures tell us to put on the belt of truth, it means this. It’s Paul’s way of using a military analogy to communicate the need for you to have an anchor, a basic Bible doctrine in your life that allows you to build soul strength and become a trusted warrior for our Lord in this phrase of the angelic conflict. The breastplate of righteousness is a reference to the righteousness of Christ given to you at your salvation. That’s found in 2 Corinthians 5.21. And it declares the righteousness of Christ bestowed on those of us who receive him as our Savior. And it’s a critical doctrine since the justice of God can bless the perfect righteousness that we now have. Therefore, the justice of God is only free to bless where God’s perfect righteousness exists or resides. And if you don’t have it, you can’t be blessed with eternal life. And this is why divine righteousness is the very first thing you get at salvation. The justice of God as a source of all direct blessing for God, once you get saved, is now free to function towards us without compromise because we have the righteousness of Christ in our life. We also have the ability to manufacture our own righteousness, which is the stability of a nation. And that’s even rewardable in heaven is called the crown of righteousness, which is given for completion of a faithful spiritual life who uses God’s 10 problem solving devices. The mentality of your soul is also providing the opportunity to claim as ours, many divine promises in scripture. This is called faith rest using God’s provision, and it’s critical since Satan’s intent, since the intent of Satan is to instill fear in your life as a way to control you and cause you to doubt God’s provisions. So we are given the word of God as an offensive weapon, an offensive weapon, but we are never told to go on the offense and try to defeat Satan in our own human abilities. That’s a joke. When believers stand together, you and I, other people in your church, when you stand together and lock your shields of faith, much like the Spartans locked shields, the Romans locked shields, when you lock your shield of faith, then you can support one another in spiritual warfare. This is where many spiritual gifts come in to form the unit integrity in a local church, which is critical. Locking shields together using the faith res drill is one of the ways that you overcome the strategy of Satan. Those 10 problem-solving devices are critical for you to understand. If they are not in the mentality of your soul, you will not be able to successfully live the Christian life. You will be deceived, your doctrine will be distorted, and you will not glorify God to the maximum, and you will find in heaven at the judgment seat of Christ a great big bonfire where all your good works will be burned up. That’s all the good things you did, the right things you did in the wrong way. You must understand rebound, how to deal with sin. You must understand the filling of the Holy Spirit, how to be controlled by the Spirit and not the flesh. You must understand faith rest, how to walk by faith and not by fear. You must understand grace orientation, which is saved by grace, living by grace, dying grace, even surpassing grace in heaven. You must understand biblical orientation and the critical essence of learning God’s word and applying it into your life. You must come to see what your personal sense of destiny is, what God left you for, what your spiritual gift is, what God’s plan for your life is. And you must develop personal love for God, which is your greatest virtue. Personal love for God. You can’t love a God you don’t know. And you don’t know a God you don’t understand. And then once you develop personal love for God as a virtue, you can develop impersonal love for all of mankind. And that means you love them on the basis of your integrity, not theirs. This allows you to share the happiness of God in your life and the lives of others, and gives you the opportunity to be occupied with Christ. which is a great problem-solving device. No longer I, but Christ in me, Paul said, the hope of glory. Christ in me. He lives in you. Your job is to exemplify that. Replicate the Lord Jesus Christ in your life by means of what you do and what you think and what you say. That’s a wonderful opportunity so that when people see you, they see Christ. You know, the Jews asked Jesus, show us the Father, and he said, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. We’re ones. And when people want to see Christ, they need to see you. You must be the image of Christ that they see. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re learning. I hope you’re paying attention. It’s my honor to give this information to you. And if the Lord will allow me, we’ll be back next week, the same time, same channel, same way. And please join us at that time for The Flatline. Until then, this is Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:13

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.