Climbing Gods Mountain Stop two Foundation Part 2

Welcome to episode 147.

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 147. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We are still on our second step, the foundation in the mountain of God, the Christian journey through life. We ended talking about the need for dying daily, and I want to talk about some of the first things when you read in the Bible, this one thing I do. We're going to start with Paul saying this one thing that he does. Remember, Paul wrote Romans and he wrote Romans 12:1, where he said, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present yourselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. This is just reasonable. This is what every Christian should do. So that's just your reasonable service. But the next thing I want you to hear Paul say starts in Philippians 3:12. Not that I have already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Now I know you and I are not like the Apostle Paul. We are not near that passionate maybe as he was, but we all have a past, and that is what Paul is saying. And if you've accepted Jesus, you've stepped from justification you've got yourself saved and now you're trying to build on this foundation of Jesus. We have got to forget the past. We have got to forget all the sin. God has thrown our sin into the sea of forgetfulness, and when you try to remind him, he's gonna say, what are you even talking about? I don't even know what you're talking about. So we have to learn to be like God. We have to forget those things which are behind us. And even yesterday, even if you've been saved for 10 years, you've probably made some mistakes in the last 2, 3 days. I know I have. This is a learned behavior where you just got to put those things behind you. And I try real hard not to use a bunch of sports analogies because I don't know if you're a person of sports or not, but I grew up playing sports. So when I watch great athletes make mistakes— because they make mistakes, even the world-class athletes in different sports, they mess up— but when they do, they just forget about it and they got to keep going. They can't just keep wallowing in that. And if you're gonna be a a world-class warrior for Christ. You can't worry about the times that you've fallen. You've just got to get back up and you just got to get back after it. Let's move to the next thing on the first list that I have in my handy-dandy hand, and it is about giving. Now, I just want you to remember that God is a giver, and so if we're going to imitate God, we have to learn to give. I need to take you to a familiar scripture, John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God is a giver. And in Luke 6:37-38, judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. Now I know this is a popular scripture for giving and for the tithe, and we're going to go to Malachi next. I think this is more the law of reciprocity. It's telling you not to judge or you will be judged. It's telling you not to condemn or you will be condemned, and it's telling you to forgive or you won't be forgiven. Then it goes and talks about giving. So this is a giving scripture, but it's also the law of reciprocity. What I'm trying to get into your head is that we have to give, not to receive, but because God was a giver and we are to imitate Jesus. And I want to step off into Malachi, which is the last book in the Old Testament, and let's go to 3:6. For I am the Lord, I do not change. And then we'll go to 3:8. Will a man rob God? You have robbed me. But you say, In what have we robbed you? In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And try me now in this, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you such a blessing, that there will not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field, says the Lord of hosts. Now this is a beautiful promise from God, and this kind of shows what giving will do, that he will rebuke the devourer. But this is an Old Testament, and I don't want to start getting in the weeds with this, this is an Old Testament promise, and the New Testament is a brand new deal. And I believe you are not cursed with a curse because cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Jesus took the curse for you and I. So I do not believe, if you are a Christian, I do not believe you have— and I'm putting air quotes— that you have to give. I believe it is your privilege and that God says be a cheerful giver. I believe— and again, I'm putting air quotes— you need to give for you. For your sake, for your spirit, for you following Jesus, not to get or not to receive, but so that you can grow, so that you can be more like Christ. Because it's impossible to please God without faith. I really believe that God is trying to show us this in the word. We need to follow God. God says, try me in this. This is the only place in the Bible that I can see God put— giving us a challenge, throwing down the old gauntlet, if you will. He is throwing it down and saying, look, try me in this and see if I won't open the windows of heaven. Over your life. And so I believe that God is saying, hey, this— and that's why I'm dealing with this on the firsts. And I have absolutely nothing to gain on this. I want to come to the microphone and tell you that I think that I'm qualified to talk on this. Two reasons: one, I have tithed since the beginning and God has blessed me. And the second reason is I'm getting nothing out of this if I, quote, convince you to tithe. And to begin to tithe and to start giving to your local church. I'm not talking about giving to me. I'm talking about giving to the house, the storehouse of God, where you're getting fed, where Jesus is being preached and taught in your local church. And that's going to be the next step. But we need to be part of a fellowship of believers. We need to be in a local church. You need to be around people that's going to lift you up and not bring you down. I've already talked about that, about giving, and this is just kind of an introduction to the foundation. One of the first steps is learning to be a giver, and that is because God is a giver. And I truly believe that if you take something that has value here on earth— and we have, say, a dollar has value because, you know, 10% of a dollar is a dime, and a dime, it don't buy as much as it used to, but it will still buy something. It still has physical value here on earth. By faith, it's impossible to please God without faith. We take something that has physical value here on earth, and we give it. We gladly give it to God because God says to give to the storehouse. We gladly give it. We release it from our hands and show God that by faith we're believing his word, and we're gonna give this offering to him because his word said so. And then when we give it, we let go and we don't worry about it. Once we give it, it's then it's the church's responsibility. It's the people of the church, the leadership of the church. And that's why I believe you need to be in a good church. The ground is good and the leadership is good, and they teach the word of God from front to back, that you need to be in a place that God is glorified and magnified. And so then your tithe will get the most power, the most bang for your buck. Not that we want to receive But if you're going to throw it in the ground, why not grow something? The next first things is one of our favorite scriptures, and I'm using air quotes again. I do a lot of that in this episode, but it is Matthew 6:33. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. This is a foundational scripture because we are to seek God's way of doing things seedtime and harvest, it is following in God's footsteps. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, his right standing, his way of doing things, his law. I command these things, I command you. What did Jesus command his believers? The New Testament, I believe, is to love God and love people. If we're seeking the way, God's way of doing things, seedtime and harvest, and loving God and loving his people, I think that is all of Matthew 6:33. It's God's way of doing things and loving God and loving God's people, which by the way is everybody that God has made. Remember, we are not warring against flesh and blood. Flesh and blood are children of God. We are warring against the enemy. We're warring against Satan, who is here to lie, kill, deceive, destroy. You know what the punk does. And the final first step, and I that I'm going to teach on is the parable of the sower, and it kind of goes hand in glove with Matthew 6:33. But I want to go to Mark 4:13, and he said to them, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? And then Jesus starts teaching about the parable of the sower and the seed, that the sower sows the word of God And again, soapbox moment number 152: God's word is seed, and we need to be in the word of God. We need to be putting it inside of us. The seed is to be planted, the seed is to be nurtured, and the seed is to be grown inside of our heart, into the garden of our heart. And we are to become like God. And the only way to become like God, or to imitate God, is to get his word inside of us. And I believe this, that's why I'm here. You know that if you're a fanatic, you know that I'm gonna talk about the Word of God, and I'm gonna tell you that it's the absolute most powerful thing in this whole universe that we have. We hold it in our hands, we can listen to it with our ears, we can put it in our eyes. The Word of God is the seed. And then we're gonna talk about the parable of the sower, and we're gonna talk about the kingdom of God and all of those things, but it starts and ends with the Word of God. Jesus is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. He is the truth, he is the Word of God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. You get the picture. You're here, you've listened to this podcast long enough to where you know I'm going to jump up and down every chance I get to help get you in the Word. I believe that is my biggest reason— my, probably my only reason for being here is just to promote the Word of God and to tell you, look, you're not foolish. You're never gonna be a pastor or a preacher. I know that I'm a podcast guy that does the Bible study, but it says, "Don't let too many of you be teachers." I think that's in James. And when I first read that, and I've told you this, that I thought, well, there's no way in the world that I'm ever gonna be a teacher because that's held at a higher standard. And I sure enough don't need a higher standard. I need a lower standard. The way my life goes, I mess up all the time, and the last thing I need is to be held to a higher standard. But I believe that God has given me the gift of teaching, and I've asked multiple times to him and his Holy Spirit to please forgive me for when I mess up, but to help me to teach his people what he wants them to know. And with all that said, let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. God, you know I love your word. God, you know I love you. Jesus, you are the word. And Jesus, we love you. I love you. I pray in Jesus' name, Holy Spirit, that you would just quicken in this believer's ears, in this listener's ears, that he would just, or she would just, get a fire for the word of God, that you would create a hunger for them, and that they would dive into your word, Lord, that your word is truth, and those that worship you must worship you in spirit and in truth, and the words that you speak are spirit and they are life. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for coming and saving us. And God, I pray in Jesus' name that you would just continue to lead and guide and direct us. Lord, we love you. We thank you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thanks for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.