Climbing Gods Mountain Stop Four Imitating Jesus Part 2

Welcome to episode 152, 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.

Welcome to episode 152. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. If you hadn't figured it out by now that I have changed a little bit on how I do each episode, I am giving you a salutation. I guess that's the right word, the grace to you and peace from God our Father, the same thing that Paul used in most of his epistles. But I also, at the end of each episode, I try to pray, and I'm not— I don't have it scripted, obviously, and some of my prayers aren't all that wonderful, but I want you to hear me praying for you. It's important that you hear it because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, and faith is voice activated. So when you stay to the end— and I want to thank you if you stay and listen to the end of the podcast— that I'm going to pray for you, whatever God puts on my heart or whatever comes out of my mouth. My only side note to that is Jesus said hypocrites love to pray, and, and I don't want to take that the wrong way. I'm I know God was just trying to say, "Hey, don't stand up in the square," maybe, I hope. But I wanna pray for you every episode. I just have gotten into a pattern, and that's how I wanna close every episode. And I promise you, it's not anything that I just love doing, but I feel like I need to do that. And I hope that you enjoy that. I hope that you take that prayer as it's intended, that I am just talking to God for you. This whole thing is for you. I'm doing this for you to listen, to encourage, empower, and inspire you to be the best you can in Christ. And, you know, while I'm doing that, I've gotta be honest, it's helping me as well. So it's got me into the Gospels, and what's bad about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, having to reread all of those Gospels, is absolutely nothing. It just opens up the Word of God to me. It is incredible just to see what Jesus did and how he did it, and it's just amazing to watch how Jesus walked through his life and what he did. And we, we left the ep— last episode seeing that he walked into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan, but then he came out of the wilderness. I want you to see that Jesus was alone during his temptation. He was not alone, actually. He's with the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit led him out there. But this was his working out his own salvation. He had to fight his enemy. He had to fight Satan and put him in his place. And then he started his ministry. And when he started his ministry, he started calling disciples. And you see that in Mark 1:14. Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. And as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. Then Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men." They immediately left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little further from there, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who also were in a boat mending their nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went after him. Now I know this is what did Jesus do part of the mountain, but I want you to see the response that the disciples had, and I think it's critical. And I think if as we go up to the, the next step in the mountain, I— but I want to— I've got to put a little highlight here. The disciples, they didn't pray about it, they didn't sit and think about it, they immediately followed Jesus. And I think that that is the key to being a disciple of Christ, or a good disciple, or— I don't know if there's any such thing as a bad disciple. But when Jesus called, they answered immediately. They didn't think about it. They didn't make an excuse. They didn't say, you know, I'm a fisherman. Jesus called his disciples right after he got tempted by Satan. Then he started his ministry, and he didn't do it by himself. Now, because this is just going to be a brief overview of what I believe this stop on The mountain is going to be. I'm just going to kind of touch base on some of the things that he did, and we're going to have a deep dive. I'm sure we'll have lessons on, you know, what did Jesus do and imitating him. We've talked about a lot of the things that he's done before, and one of the things he prayed— he got by himself and prayed, but he healed people. Remember the Jesus pattern? He healed, he preached the gospel, and he taught in their synagogues. So he, he preached, he taught, and he healed. His ministry was Jesus going about. Now, he just went into Jerusalem. He just pretty much stayed inside Jerusalem and Judea. Now, he went every now and then, he went to Samaria. You remember the woman at the well where he, he met her. But most of what he did was to the Jews, the Jewish nation, is he just simply went and taught in their synagogues, and he went about all of Israel is where he went around. It was his ministry. And if you remember in Acts, at the beginning of Acts, where he says to wait on the Holy Spirit and you will be witness of me to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world. But Jesus stuck with Jerusalem pattern. And the reason I say that Jesus was pretty much staying with Israel is because let's go to Matthew 15:22. And behold, a woman of Canaan came from the region and cried out to him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, Send her away, for she cries out after us. But he answered and said, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then she came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me! But he answered and said, it is not good to take the children's bread and to throw it to the little dogs. And she said, yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered and said to her, O woman, great is your faith. Let it be to you as you desire. And her daughter was healed from that very hour. And I want you to see there's two places in scripture, in the gospels, where Jesus said that there was great faith. And I think— I, I don't know that I'm stepping out of school, but I think both of them were from Gentiles. I think the other one was the centurion, and I think he was the Roman centurion. I don't know if he had agreed to the Jewish custom and he became a Jewish— I don't know even what they call that, but a citizen or whatever that took on the Jewish traditions. That was the other time where he had said great is your faith when the centurion said, I'm not worthy that you come into my house, just say the word and my servant will be healed. This lady said the same thing, and I want you to see that it's the words, and, and the power of words is so strong. And that's when Jesus said, hey, you know, you're on to something here. This is incredible that you understand that all you have to do is say the word, or that all you got to do is humble yourself. And I think that that's what this lady was saying. She didn't necessarily say you don't have to come, She just humbled herself and said, you know, even the little dogs get the crumbs. I don't need, I don't need all of you, Lord. I just need a little bitty tiny bit of you to help my daughter. And I think that's where Jesus said, great is your faith, because she humbled herself. She didn't have to be the center of attention. By humbling herself and saying that, she became part of this Bible. She made Matthew's Gospel. And it will forever be talked about now and in heaven. And I think it's awesome. I think it's incredible. And I think that it— just to see kind of what Jesus did and how he did it. And he had a purpose. He was told by his Father what to do and how to do it. And with that in mind, I've got to go to the one last scripture before I close on this one. And I know I'm not gonna— I'm just scratching the surface. And I want to encourage you, this is just, again, this is just an introduction as going up the mountain. But what did Jesus do? But I want us to go to John 14:12, which is one of my favorite scriptures, and I know I say that a lot, but John 14:12, most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also, and greater works than these he will do, because I go to my Father. And whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. I've said this multiple times, I didn't write a word in the Bible. I didn't put one I, one the, one and, not one single word, not one letter did I write. But this is in red in my Bible, and this is God speaking, and he's saying, most assuredly, listen to this one thing. All of these things I said before this is one thing, but most assuredly I say to you He who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also. And so what did Jesus do? That's the question, and that's where we dig in. And then we ask this question in John 14:12: The works that I do, he will do also. If you believe in Jesus, this is the scripture. This is one of the reasons I like it, and it's a very challenging scripture. I'm not going to lie to you. This will challenge your faith, and it's impossible to please God without faith. But we have the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead living on the inside of us, and we just need to learn what we have. We've got it. The Bible says we have it. Now, we don't have to understand it, but we just by faith have to believe it. And then we gotta kind of figure out how to draw this power. It's not our power. This is God's power., but it's not up in heaven, it's inside of us. And we've gotta figure out how to draw that out into the world to affect our world. And how do we help people around us come to know Jesus? And I, again, the, it goes back to the Jesus pattern. I think this is a key scripture for imitating Jesus for the fourth stop on the mountain. Anything that you see Jesus doing, You can do also. And I want to stop it there. I just need you to meditate on that. I need you to dig that around. I want to encourage you— I don't know that I can give you homework on a podcast episode, but I want to encourage you in the next month or so, if you're going to read a book, why not read the book of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John? If you're going to pick up a new book, pick up that book. And I want to encourage you, if you haven't read the Gospels lately, I want to encourage you with starting with the Gospel of John and ask the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, help me to get out what you want me to. God's gonna speak to you individually where you're living through your filter, what you need from the word for you. It's not what I think you need, it's what the Holy Spirit has for you. And I would just dig in there and I would get your belly full of the bread of life. And I just wanna encourage you, soapbox moment number 753, but I just, you know why I'm here. I'm here to encourage you just to get in the word because it's gonna change your life. Well, that's enough for now. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this episode. God, I pray that they would look at what you did, Jesus. God, when you were here on earth, you were Emmanuel, you were God with us. You came as a man and you walked on this earth and you walked to show us how to do it. God, and it's so amazing that you will allow us to mess up and still have the same power that you had. And all we gotta do is just apologize, and God, I mess up all the time, and I apologize all the time. And God, I apologize again for anything that I messed up in this episode. I pray that you would just straighten it out in this person's mind or in this person's Christian walk, and Lord, help encourage him or her to be more like what you created them to be. And 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 on the next episode.

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