In this episode of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, host Greg Ryan shifts focus from the traditional emphasis on Satan to a broader view of spiritual warfare against principalities, powers, and darkness as described in Ephesians 6:12. He argues that the most effective weapon in this battle is love, defined biblically through 1 Corinthians 13:4‑8 and reinforced by 1 John 4:8. Ryan urges listeners to immerse themselves in Scripture—memorizing and meditating on the love passage—to transform their minds (Romans 12:2) and to wield love as a spiritual weapon. He connects love to the triad of faith, hope, and love, emphasizing that love is the greatest and is synonymous with God’s nature. Throughout, he blends theological exposition with practical exhortations, encouraging believers to act lovingly even while confronting evil, and concludes with a prayer invoking God’s love and the gospel message of John 3:16.
Welcome to episode 279.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm tired of talking about the punk enemy, Satan, whatever you want to call him. And there are 4 entities that we talk about and that we're battling. We're not fighting against flesh and blood, and that's found in Ephesians 6:12. I believe it's principalities, it's powers, it's rulers of the darkness of this age, and spiritual hosts of wickedness. In the heavenly places. So that's who we're battling. But I'm sick of talking about him. We've given him way too much airtime. Satan is a punk. He's constantly trying to get you and I off of the Word of God. We need to get into the Word of God. We need to get the Word of God into us. Soapbox moment alert. We have to be in the Word of God. The only time we are changing our lives for the better is when we are washing our mind out with the Bible. And that's found in Romans 12:2, that it says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may know what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So all of that was free. I don't know why I brought those two scriptures up, but we just need to understand that we need to get into this Bible And that's what we're gonna do right now. We're gonna talk about 1 Corinthians 13, which is the love chapter. And we're gonna specifically concentrate on 4 through 8. And I've had them memorized for quite some time. And I've told you this, and I'm gonna go by memory, but if you're on YouTube, I'm gonna put the scriptures up on the screen so that you can read 'em. But love is, and I want you, God made me memorize this one And I say made me, God made a strong suggestion in my spirit man that I need to memorize these scriptures and the fruit of the spirit. So we're gonna talk about that as well. But we wanna know if we're gonna battle evil, we need to know how to do it, why we're doing it, and what is our weapon of choice. And when we look at Corinthians 13 at the very end, Paul says, "But these three remain: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." So we need to understand what love is. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, and right there at the ta— the beginning of 8, we're gonna talk about love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, love does not parade itself, it is not puffed up, Love does not behave rudely, does not seek his own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. So if we get an understanding of what love is, love is what we need to be working in. And the wonderful thing about God's word is it defines it for you because love is also God. And we're going to go to 1 John 4:8, and that John is the love disciple. If you spend any time at all in the word of God, you will know John loves talking about love, and that's just a bunch of love. But John is the love disciple, and we're going to read 1 John 4:8. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. So if you're not loving, John's saying, hey, you don't know God, and because God is love. So in order to know love, we need to define what love is. Love is Jesus. Love is Father God. Love is the Holy Spirit. Love is who God is. That's how God shows himself. And you and I, we're going to talk about love in these next few lessons. We have just got to get an understanding. I want to make this podcast episode really short because I want you to get a hold of this. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. I want you to memorize this. We're going to say it again because love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, love does not parade itself, it is not puffed up, love does not behave rudely, does not seek his own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. We need to have love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, these three remain: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. You get the picture. We are going to dig into and we're going to dive into love and God as love. So we need to define love. We've done that on this episode, but we just need to meditate on these over the weekend. If you're listening to this episode on time, it's going to be Thursday or Friday when it publishes, and you will have the weekend to think about what love is. Love is God. 1 John 4:8. Defines God as love. So that is what we're gonna do. We're gonna start talking about Father God because when we get after this thing and we kick Satan in the teeth and we punch him in the face, we do it with spiritual weapons and we do it in love. We don't love Satan, we hate evil. We've talked about that on the previous 3 episodes. What we've got to do and what I've talked about before, one of the hardest things that I've done was teaching my boys how to be warriors on the field of battle or when they're playing sports, but be gentlemen when they walk outside the arena. And this is the same kind of tightrope that we're going to walk in the spirit realm and in the physical realm. In the spirit realm, we kick the crap out of Satan with the spiritual weapons that God has given us, and we throw him out of our lives by, by the word of God and by the words that come out of our mouth. And by taking authority, but we first have to submit to God. We're going to talk about that. We've talked about this multiple times in this podcast, but we have got to learn how to get evil out of our lives. And but we've got to do it in love, and that means that we have love one to another. And when the world looks at us and they may see weakness, they may think that I'm a wimp because I'm talking about love. I don't care what the world thinks. We're at war or battle with the world system. The worldview. We need a biblical worldview, and the Bible tells us how we should act, and we should act in love. We're going to figure out all this love stuff. It is a stretch for me because I'm more of the ready, fire, aim. Peter was more to my speed where he just jumped in, jumped out of the boat, jumped into the next mess. That's my thing. But John, the Gospel of John, and John the love disciple. That guy knew what was going on, and that guy lived the longest of all the disciples. I think the Bible is pretty clear we need to have a better understanding of love, and that's what we're going to do in the next few episodes. But right now, I want to make this kind of short. We've got a lot to talk about, but I just want to introduce God as love, and I want you to think about how much God loves you. And I've told you this multiple times, that you are God's favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. I don't care if you haven't accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior or you've known him for 20, 30 years. You are God's favorite. God loves you. There's nothing you can do to keep him from loving you. God loves you because you are his. God made you for a specific purpose. We're going to try to figure this all out. It's going to— may take a minute, but we're going to get after it. Let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for sending your Son. I thank you for John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life." God, we are gonna dig into your word, we're gonna dig into your scripture, but we thank you that you first loved us and that you are love. Teach us, Lord, how to love one another and teach us about the love of God. Lord, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting you in the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
