Christian Podcast: How to use the Bible to overcome satan and his lies

Welcome to episode 267.

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 gonna try to conclude this teaching on how jacked up I've been on my finances. And the reason that I've been doing this is just to show you that just because someone reads the Bible every day and gets into the Word of God and has a Christian podcast doesn't mean that he knows everything about everything. And I am here to tell you that I am still just in the learning process. Of the Bible study. And I know there's a few scriptures that I'm gonna bring out that's one of the things that just keeps me in this word and it keeps me fighting for the truth. The first one, of course, is John 14:6, and where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Jesus is the truth, and in this world, that we fought against all the time. We're going day and night, it seems like, that we're going against the truth. And the world system and how people are trying to do, you know, you got corporate media, you've got corporate corporations that are all kind of coming together, you got government all kind of coming together, and they're trying to manipulate us. And everybody has always tried to manipulate you and I, and it's just, been this way. It's human nature that we try to control one another. It is so amazing that God came to serve. Jesus said that I did not come to be served but to serve, and he came and he was the servant. He left his place in heaven at the right hand of the Father, and he agreed to come down here on earth to die for you and I. And I think that is amazing. You may not agree with me. You may not believe that that's why Jesus came, but I do. And it says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And I will challenge you, and this is my soapbox moment, I will challenge you to get into the word. I will challenge you to get into John, Gospel of John, start at chapter 1, and just ask the Holy Spirit, even if you don't believe the Holy Spirit is there, just say, Holy Spirit, I need to understand. I think this is a bunch of garbage. I think this guy is full of crap. No, I probably shouldn't say crap. This guy, he's misleading me. But if you are there, lead me into all truth. And I would just read the Bible. I would just start in John and I would read John. And that's what I heard the gospel for the first time. It was at a business conference. I'm not going to go back into all of that. You can listen to some of the previous episodes. But I became a Christian at age 29, and I believe that that was the single biggest event in my life other than being born. I mean, I couldn't have done it without being first born of water. And that is what it— that's what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, where he said, you must first be born, you must be here on earth, but then That's, that's the first step. The second step is to be born again. He set the stage that there is a spirit realm and there's a physical realm, and the two of them— that's salvation— that when the two of them come together, Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit are in the spirit realm, you and I are here on earth in this physical realm. And so with all of that put together, I believe we have a battle 'Cause the demons, Satan the punk, and all of his imps and all his demons, they are spiritual beings also. And we talked about this in the previous episode where Paul said in Ephesians 6:12 that we don't war against flesh and blood. We're not warring against each other. Now it may look like it the way we go on in life, and it's because we don't know the word. And we're gonna get into that. Paul said, principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this age, and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. That's our enemy, and that's who we're fighting. And the only way to fight that enemy is to get into the truth and get the truth into you. And the only truth, I believe, is the Word of God. Now, our understanding of it— and because we have all these different inputs, we have the media, we have TV, we have our parents, we have our friends and relatives, we have our work— We have all of these different inputs that come into us. We run it through our prism in our mind. We run all of these inputs through this prism, and then we make a decision based on all of these different inputs. And I want to challenge you, and this is where I'm here, that to try to tie this teaching all up, Us Versus Them, kind of in a bow on finances, is that we have to be fully committed., and we have to understand that we don't understand everything. And I don't know if that made any sense, but we've got to know, you and I, we're not the person that knows everything. God allowed me to not have to be the smartest person in any room I ever walk into, and that is liberating, if you really want to know the truth, that I don't have to always be the one with all the answers. Now, I tend to try to give you my opinion, but that don't mean it's right. And that's kind of my personality, my ready, fire, aim. You know, if I've got an opinion, you're probably gonna know it. But I try to do it now in love. God's taught me to learn the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13, and I think it's 4 through 7 where it talks about what love is. And I'm telling you, that helps tremendously. When I start feeling myself getting all wrapped around the axle when I'm driving, or when something doesn't go quite my way, then I just say, well, love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, love does not parade itself, love is not puffed up, love does not behave rudely, does not seek his own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, love 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. And that is what I'm talking about. When you start getting the word of God inside of you, and I'm telling you, I didn't look at my Bible. That is, it may be wrong, but that's how I've got it memorized. And love, and I just continue, when I feel myself getting a little nervous and anxious, I just start talking about what love is because God is love. And if I'm gonna try to react like God reacts, I've gotta be like love. And that is very difficult. I'm just here to tell you that it is— takes the help of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and me all working in unison to try to bring this thing together. And that's what I want to encourage you today on this episode, is I want to talk to you, and I'm going to go to a few scriptures because that's— this is a Bible study. But we're going to go to Matthew, one of the, one of the key scriptures in all of this. We have to have a certain level of commitment. You have got to be fully committed, and I'm not talking about just barely committed. And I've used the analogy before with the commitment on breakfast. A chicken can be involved in your breakfast, but the pig with the bacon is fully committed to your breakfast. And we need to, in God's eyes, we need to be fully committed. And that's why I love Revelation 12:11. It's my favorite scripture. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. The death commitment, the fully committed unto death. And then that brings in Romans 12:1, and it says, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. And then it goes on and in Romans 12:2, and I don't have that one as memorized, but it says, "Do not be conformed, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, so you may know what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God." I think it's something like that. But in Romans 12:2, we are told to not be conformed to this world. We are not to look at and have the world change us. We are to be in this word and allow the word to change us. And I wanna go to the commitment part, and that's in Matthew 13:44. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and for the joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. And I want to just talk about that. That is commitment. That is seeing something and being totally committed, being all in. And I think some of us just have our little toe in, and I believe that's what Jesus was talking about, about a lukewarm Christian. And I do not want to be God vomit. If you are a lukewarm, kind of in the middle of the road, you're either going to get run over being in the middle of the road. You need to pick a side. Either be hot or be cold. Jesus said, I wish you were either hot or cold, but this lukewarmness makes me want to vomit. Is— and I'm paraphrasing. And that's in Revelation, I think it's 2 or 3. It's where Jesus was talking to the lukewarm church, I think Church of Laodicea. He is saying, look, lukewarm ain't gonna get it. You have got to pick a side, and it's us versus them. We have got to know that there's only two sides. It's darkness and it's light. It's evil and it's good. And it's love and kindness and it's steal, kill, and destroy. It is so obvious to me when you start getting into this word of God, we have an enemy. And I call him the punk because his job is only to steal, kill, and destroy. He is so good at what he does. He deceives. He's deceptive. He's divisive. This unity thing where we're supposed to come together like as a community where we can all come together. We're not all going to agree. I don't agree with my— my wife don't agree with me on everything. I don't agree with her on everything, but we come together as a couple or as a family unit. My family doesn't agree with everything I do and say, and I don't agree with everything they do and say, but we love each other as a family. And that's what we're talking about, is a unity thing. We don't have to have it all figured out, but if we're all pointing at the same, in the same direction, or at the same end, I believe that we can move on in this world. And all of this other stuff, if you can see, it's all divisive. It's all this us versus them, and you're wrong and you're right, and all of that stuff is just not conducive to a good dialogue. It's not conducive to a peaceful life. And a peaceful lifestyle. And some of this stuff, when people start looking into this and saying, well, God hates homosexuals— no, God does— God loves everybody. God is love. God does not like the sin. God hates the sin, and he sent his Son to die for the sin. And there's a difference, I believe, and we've talked about this multiple times, of being caught in sin or being a practicer of lawlessness. And if you wake up every morning and you can't wait to practice lawlessness, I would encourage you to relook at your salvation. Because if you are waking up and you don't have a little bit of a, ah, this ain't, this ain't quite right, because I know my salvation and I know all the time God corrects me almost daily. And I want to end on this because I think there's a difference, and I think words have meaning and words have power. Proverbs, I think it's 18:21, says death and life is in the power of the tongue. We are all sinners. All have sinned. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So we all have sinned and we all were once sinners. But I believe when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, that you become a new creation. You became a new creature in Christ Jesus. I don't think you're a sinner anymore. And I've had people argue with me because they want to feel some kind of way about, oh, I still sin. I'm not saying I don't sin, and I'm not saying that you don't sin. I'm saying in front of God and everybody that I was once a sinner, but I am now saved by what God did. I am saved by grace through faith. I, by the faith of what the Bible said, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God, I read what the Bible said about Jesus and what the Bible said about me, and I said, look, I want to take what Jesus did for me. I want to just by faith— I don't understand how it all works. You don't have to understand how it all works. You just have to say with your mind, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead, you shall be saved. If you just say it and believe it then you can have it. And what it does is it does not impute, which is an accounting term, it does not impute your sin. God no longer imputes your sin to your account. What he does is he takes that sin and he throws it on, and he took this. When Jesus took the sin of the world, everybody, past, present, and future sin was thrown onto Jesus Christ of Nazareth. On the cross. It was nailed to that cross and it was buried and it does not come out. Sin is no longer the issue. The issue is, did— have you declared Jesus Christ your Lord? And you can't— this lukewarm wishy-washy— you have got to make a commitment and you've got to— then I want to encourage you to do it today because when I— and I've talked about my finances and— but I talk about how Satan misrepresents and misleads and deceives. And, and I've used all of these examples of my imperfection, but as I follow after the perfect example in God, and you see the kingdom of God that we'll probably talk about next episode, but you start seeing how God does things and you start applying how God does things to your life and use this kingdom of God and the Word and the Holy Spirit, and you ask for help and you say, God, I'm kind of screwed up on this deal, and that's what I've done. He's given me the opportunity to talk to you about it and to come clean and say, look, I used to chase after get-rich-quick stuff and investing in stuff that I didn't know really much of anything about. And I'm not here to, to raid against Bitcoin, investing in this cryptocurrency because it's down here low, but it's going to one day be worth a million. Each coin is going to be worth And so that kind of captured me. Right now, I'm finding that just doing a little bit here, a little bit there, and every day just get a little bit closer and just dig in just a little bit more, that's a whole lot more profitable. And I'm just here to tell you, the kingdom of God and the way God does things is a whole lot more profitable than trying to get rich quick and trying to get this, this suddenly become wealthy. It's just not gonna happen. And I wanna stop there. I look, I'm rattling and I'm sorry. But let's pray. God, I thank you so much for this listener.

I—

if they're still here, Lord, I thank you for what you've done in my life. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would continue to lead and guide and direct me like your word says you will, and help this listener as they listen to my problems and my mess-ups, and help them to see that we're all here and messing up but you paid the price for all of those. And God, we thank you right now in Jesus' name for sending your Son, Father God, and for Jesus for agreeing to do it, and Holy Spirit for staying here with us and never leaving us nor forsaking us. God, 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 with you in the next episode.

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