Did Jesus promise life would be light and easy

Welcome to episode 212, 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 212. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to continue to talk about how we need to put God first, and the Bible is our best way of doing that, is if we take time to study, learn the Bible, read the Bible, get the Bible inside of us. I'm— I know I'm starting early on my soapbox, but we have got to get the Bible inside of us, and the only way to do it The Bible is clear in Romans 10:17, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So we have got to hear the Bible, and that doesn't mean we got to listen to it on our audio or we got to listen to it on the podcast or a CD. We have to read it out loud. We have to— in with our spiritual ears, we have to hear this. We need to meditate on it, and we need to believe that it is the Word of God. And on the Christian journey, the little map that I've got— and of course I've changed it from the mountain of God to the Christian discipleship journey or something, but it's still a work in progress— but what we're doing is we're taking a trip up this mountain of God, and we start off as a follower. When we accept Christ, we are a follower. We, we just learn to— it's easy, we're a child We're baby stepping, and we learn to just follow in Jesus' footsteps. We need to figure out what the Bible says, what are good fundamental foundational scriptures, what are good fundamental foundational teachings and lessons, and then we learn that, and we, we learn to follow after Jesus, and we need to walk like he's walking. Then we takes a turn and we take another step up the mountain And then we need to start believing, and we need to start believing what the Bible says. It's totally different than following after. This takes another little twist to where we actually have to believe what is written in the word. And I know it's maybe semantics, but we just really have to look at what is in the Bible and what people are saying. And we start off following because we have the faith. God places that faith, the faith of Christ, inside of us. And we have that faith in us, but we need to learn how to use that faith. And the only way we can learn to use that faith is to work at it and to believe that what the Bible says is true. And the only way to— faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God— the only way to believe the Bible is actually to read it and meditate on it, because you're going to have questions. Maybe you won't, but every time I sit down and read it It, it just goes against the physical realm. It goes against what my mind thinks it ought to do. And God's ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. So we have to elevate our thinking, and the only way to elevate our thinking is to get into the word of God. And I know you probably think, well, this Yahoo's because he's talking about a Bible study. No, I believe that we need to have a hunger and a thirst for the righteousness. It says in Matthew 6:33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you. If you want things in your life, the only way you're going to get them from God is to seek first the kingdom of God. And that is God's way of doing things. And I know that we've probably talked about this ad nauseam, but I think we just need to revisit the Kingdom of God lesson, and I'm going to link to it in the show notes. But we need to get involved in planting the incorruptible seed into our soul. We need to put it in, we need to water it, we need to nurture it, we need to grow it, and then when we, we can call on it, we when it's time, when we've got, if we don't plant the seed, and we've talked about this before, but if you're trying to plant corn, you've gotta throw corn seed into good soil. And the only way to do that, you gotta prepare the soil before you throw it down. If you just throw corn seed on the ground, the birds of the air is gonna get it. You're just not gonna have a good crop, but you've got to nurture the soil. You got to do the same thing in your heart. And what I'm talking about, the only way to do this I believe is to go all in on God. And that's where we go to Matthew 7:13, and it says, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. So if you want to be one of the few who find it, just be prepared that this spiritual walk is going to be a little bit difficult. Now that don't mean that you've got to go out and throw a big old boulder on your shoulder and you just gotta carry this heavy burden up this hill because the next scripture I'm gonna talk about is Matthew 11:25. At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for it seemed good in your sight. All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. There you go, the promise of light and easy right in the Bible in red letters. That is God speaking with his mouth, and it is the word of God, and we just need to believe it. But there's a couple of things that you need to notice. Remember, we go back to 7:13 where it says difficult and narrow. You've got to weed yourself down into this place. Where all you want to do— and, and as I'm meditating on this and as I'm digging into the word of God, the only time that Jesus promises that his yoke is going to be easy and his burden is light is when you get into the yoke with Jesus. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. If your soul, your mind, will, and emotion, if you're gonna rest, I believe what you need to do— and this is Greg talking, this is what I'm doing, and so I'm giving you my example— but I'm entering into God's way of doing things. I'm entering into this plan of God to build God's kingdom. This is not Greg's kingdom. I did not write one word in this Bible. What I am doing is I'm encouraging you to get into God's word, dig it out for yourself, and I'm just reading seeing this and telling you what I'm seeing and to help you kind of go, oh, you know, I never really saw that. But if we're building God's kingdom, I don't think Jesus is going to throw his yoke on you and start building your kingdom. Because our kingdom— it says that our kingdom, that we— what seems right to a man— and hang on, let me go to that before I just barbecue it. Proverbs 16:25: There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Look, in the physical realm, this does not make sense. This word of God is spirit and it's life. That's what Jesus says, that his words that, that he speaks— and he spoke when God was walking here on earth. Jesus spoke, and you'll see red letters if you have a red letter Bible. You'll see what actually came out of Jesus' mouth. All of the Bible, this is the word of God, and the word became flesh. So Jesus became the Bible. And I know that's kind of hard to wrap— I can't— I'm not sure I've got my mind wrapped all the way around that. But Jesus is the Word. And so when we read the Word— and I know my intro guy tells you that all the time, but you may fast forward through the intro and forget to listen— that the Word is God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh. And dwelt among us. We are growing in our faith, we're growing in our knowledge, we're growing in our truth based on how much we stay in his word. And I just want you to, I wanna encourage you that this word is life and it doesn't necessarily make sense to your carnal mind, your earthly mind, your brain, because I was just reading through Proverbs again and Proverbs 13:7, says, there is one who makes himself rich yet has nothing, and one who makes himself poor yet has great riches. Now, how does that make any sense in the physical realm? How does that make any sense to anybody that is just counting on money, that is just counting on the wealth of this world? And again, we've got three enemies. If this is your first time listening, where our enemies that we're fighting against is our own flesh. And that's not our body, we don't cut ourselves, it's just the carnal part, the 5 senses, the physical realm. It is never going to be totally redeemed. So the body is never going to be— we're going to get a brand new body. So that's one of our enemies, is our body is going to fight against our spirit man. The Bible is clear on that. The second enemy is the world system, and we're constantly fighting that. And if you watch too much news and you listen to too much radio or, or stuff that's going through in your ears that's not scripture, then you're going to get anxious, you're going to get nervous, and you're going to kind of enter into that battle in the wrong arena. We need to pull our battle plan into the spirit realm. And the third enemy that we've got is the punk. And that's the demons, the spiritual demonic forces of evil, and they're totally against the Word of God. That's the Antichrist spirit is out and among us, and if we are following after the Most High God, the Antichrist has absolutely no power over us. But what happens is, is he uses all these other things, the world system, and our flesh, and our lust for fleshy stuff like food, or sex, or whatever it is that has caught your eye, Satan uses those things against you. He's very good at what he does. He's a punk, but he knows what he's doing, and that's why we have to spend time with God and in his word. So I know this was a lot. We really got to go all in on this thing. And in the next episode, I'm gonna tell you the scripture that kind of lit me up And it's— I saw for the— I mean, I didn't see for the first time, but I saw kind of where I was kind of going into a, into a wrong pattern. And so I was just encouraged by God's word. You need to be either hot or cold. And I— that's what I'll say. And you probably know the scripture that I'm looking at, but we'll talk about that in the next episode. But right now, let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. God, I thank you for your Holy Spirit. Father, I thank you for sending Jesus. And Jesus, thank you for coming and taking away all the sin of the whole world. God, we thank you for your ways are so much higher and better than our ways. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would teach us your ways and teach us to walk in your way and teach us to help to build your kingdom. God, we know that the time is short. We've got one less day than we had yesterday to get after this thing for you. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would continue to lead and guide and empower us to help you build your kingdom. 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 with you on the next episode.

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