In episode 276 of the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, host Greg Ryan opens with a personal testimony about his ongoing "spiritual audacity" challenge of attempting to walk on water, emphasizing reliance on the Holy Spirit rather than personal ability. He then pivots to the central question of the episode: "Is a Christian supposed to hate?" Ryan argues that Christians are indeed called to hate, but only the entity of evil—not people. He grounds this claim in a series of biblical passages, primarily from Proverbs (1:7, 2, 8) where wisdom is personified and declares that the fear of the Lord leads to hating evil, pride, arrogance, and perverse speech. He connects this to New Testament teachings on spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:12), submission to God and resistance of the devil (James 4:7), and presenting one's body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). Throughout, Ryan emphasizes the importance of reading and internalizing Scripture, seeking wisdom as a treasure, and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide one's mind, will, and emotions. He concludes with a prayer asking for wisdom to discern good from evil and a call for listeners to actively resist evil and live as living sacrifices.
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Welcome to episode 276.
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 am starting a new teaching, a new lesson, and I know you're probably— if you've been listening to the Spiritual Audacity for a minute, you're probably glad to move on. But I am going to continue to talk about spiritual audacity in the future because every Wednesday, like I've told you before, every Wednesday I'm going to attempt to walk on water and I am like zero for 200 and change. So it is a battle, it's a struggle with me. I am going to continue to try to bring this word to life in my life. And of course, I didn't pick just something that I could just pray about and throw the emojis up and say, oh, I'm praying for you, or I'm praying about this. And not to make any fun, but I'm picking something that unless God intervenes It is bound to fail, and it has failed multiple times. God has yet to intervene, but I am going to continue because I don't think God's condemning me. The Bible's pretty clear, God is not condemning us. He said, "There is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus that walk not according to flesh but according to the Spirit." And that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to walk in the Spirit, and the only way I'm going to walk on water is by walking on top of the water with my spirit man in charge, and my body just becoming a total subservient to my spirit man. And my soul is just going to go— my mind, will, and emotion is going to go along for the ride. I don't know exactly— if I knew how that was going to work, I would have already done it. So I'm just here to encourage you, man, let's get after this thing, because who cares what anybody thinks?
I—
the only person that I'm trying to please is Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, which is all the same person. And three different gods. I don't understand all that. The Trinity is fascinating, but I'm not going to chase that rabbit, and we're not going to talk about that today. Today I want to answer the question, is a Christian supposed to hate? And I believe— we've talked about this multiple times— I believe that yes, we are to hate, but it's one specific thing that we're supposed to hate, and that is evil. We're going to be in Proverbs for a little bit. One of the things in Proverbs, as I was reading, because I want to get some background, because I say Satan is a punk and that we are to hate evil, and I just hate him. I hate him with a passion. I want to kick his teeth in every chance I get. When he shows his stupid head, I want to kick him in the teeth. He is just a punk. We hate Satan here at No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe. We just think He's a punk. He comes only to steal, to kill, and destroy. So who wants that kind of anything being in our life? We are to learn to kick him out. And so what we're going to do is we're going to read Proverbs, a few scriptures in Proverbs. And I want to encourage you to start reading Proverbs. It's a great book. Psalms, great book. They're all great books. Proverbs specifically, that personifies or brings wisdom to life. And if you follow this podcast for any length of time, you know that I have to picture things. And when I see wisdom pictured as a her or as a female, that's encouraging because that means that wisdom has a personality. Wisdom is a— I think a being. I think wisdom is truly a being, and I've got to picture that. It may or may have just— maybe God personified as a female. I don't know, but in the Bible it says her, that if we will seek her. And I'm not going to get into all that, but I want to go to Proverbs 1, verse 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. So I want to stop there. We've talked about fear. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind. Now the fear the Bible is talking about in 2 Timothy 1:7 is fear, and that is being scared or being afraid or terror, that kind of fear. In Proverbs 1:7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge. That is a reverent, more of a reverence fear, where, where we actually revere the Lord and we place him in high esteem. And so when you start putting God— and we're talking about putting God first And when you put God at the beginning and at the center and at the top, everything in your life, if you have fully committed, you have taken the first step. That's the beginning step. And I just want to encourage you that this is a journey through life. You know, the destination will eventually be— and we're talking here about hearing, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." But the destination for you and I, if we've accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, is heaven or paradise, or going to be the New Jerusalem and the New Earth. So all of those things, we are going to spend eternity with Father God, with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We are pointing to that day, but right now we're here, and so we need to learn the truth, and that comes only from the Bible. We've talked about this multiple times. John 8:31 and 32 says, if you're a disciple you will abide in my word, and that you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. We are abiding. This is what we're doing here. We are staying in the word of God. We're trying to get the word of God into us, and so we're abiding. And so in order to abide in the word, you've got to actually read the word. And that's where I'm going, Proverbs 2. Now I'm going to read a few verses in Proverbs 2 because this is wisdom. I want you to kind of picture This is wisdom talking to us. And Proverbs 2:1, my son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding, yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk uprightly. He guards the path of justice and preserves the way of his saints. Now that is a lot. We're going to stop right there for a minute, and I want to kind of unpack some of this. And this is where Wisdom introduces herself. And it tells you if you receive, that means that, that if-then statement means you have to make a decision to receive. And I believe you have to ask for wisdom. I believe you have to seek after. And again, the Bible is clear when Jesus says, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened unto you, ask and you shall receive. And I know I've twisted those around, but ask, seek, and knock. That's what we're doing. And when we start asking for wisdom, God's going to pour it out to us. He's got all wisdom. He's got all knowledge. Father God longs to give this to us, and we are going to see in the next verse that I'm going to read. Let's go to Proverbs 8:10. Now this is wisdom talking to us again. Receive my instructions and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her. I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence and find out knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride and arrogance and the evil way, and the perverse mouth I hate. Counsel is mine and sound wisdom. I am understanding, I have strength. And I want to stop there. This is Wisdom talking about who she is and, and what she hates. Wisdom is telling you the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. God is love, so we need to understand that we are to love in every instance. God is love. God loves you and I. God can't stop loving you and I regardless of what you do or don't do. God is always going to love you, and that is so comforting if you know that God is love and he just loves you, and, and he's the perfect Father, and he's looking down from heaven and he sees you just, if you've accepted his son as your Lord and Savior, he looks at your spirit man and he sees exactly you looking just like Jesus. You are 100% perfect for God. And he sees your spirit man, which has been perfected by the what Jesus did on the cross for you and I. And this is exciting. And you have got to understand that God is not against you. I've said this multiple, multiple times. That you are God's favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. God loves you, and God is not mad at you. God is not looking to mash you. God is looking to embrace you and encourage you and inspire you to get in his word and kick the snot out of Satan. I'm telling you, God hates evil. Wisdom hates evil. And I believe the Bible gives you and I permission to hate evil. That's why I have Satan is a punk on a shirt that you can wear that with pride and know that you can hate evil because Jesus hates evil, wisdom hates evil. You get the picture. Evil is something that we need to hate. And again, we— our war is not against flesh and blood. This is found in Ephesians 6:12-ish, I think. But it says that we do not war against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, and against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Those are the people or the beings or the entities that we are to hate. Now here's the problem. We're living in a physical realm, in a physical world, And we're seeing with our physical eyes people, and we're seeing people that are being misled and deceived by the evil, by the principalities, by the powers, by the spiritual hosts. You get it. But they are being misled, they're being deceived, they are causing division among you and I. In fact, you and I, the true— if we don't know the truth, if you are not constantly in the Bible, I would argue that you and I are deceived. I know that I am deceived in areas of my life, and I'm trying to get all my areas under the Bible and into the truth. But I'm here to tell you, news flash, I don't have this all figured out. I'm doing the same thing you're doing. I'm trying to get into the Word of God, and I'm trying to allow this Bible to get into me. And I think that this is a good jumping-off point. We are to hate evil. I think it's just imperative that we start taking our fight to the enemy and our true enemy. And I don't think we need to apologize. I don't think we need to go, "Oh dear devil." No, it says to submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. That's in James 4:7. We've talked about this multiple times. In Romans 12:1, where it's Paul says, "I beseech you, brethren," By the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. I want you to leave this episode, present your body a living sacrifice, resist the devil, and he's gonna flee. Because we're submitted to God, we resist the devil, and that means evil has got to go. And so before I end this, I want to pray real quick, which I do with every episode. God, I thank you so much for this listener. I thank you for your word, wisdom. I thank you that you are there calling out to me and calling out to this listener. God, we're praying in Jesus' name that wisdom, you will come into our mind, will, and emotion, and you will draw us into your world, into your word, and help us to understand the good and the evil that's going on. 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.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
