Discover the Jesus pattern and how to apply it to your life part 6

Welcome to episode 135. We're going to start this one like we do every other episode.

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 135. If you are a frequent flyer, welcome back, you fanatic. And we have finished another whole week. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, as you can probably figure out, I am not going to finish this Jesus pattern in one week. I thought I could do it. I thought I could put it all together, but 10 minutes just doesn't seem to be enough time to package all this goodness into one show, one week. It's really cool kind of how God pulls me through his word, and I hope that you're enjoying this. I know I am, and I guess that the biggest reason that I'm doing this and continue to do this is so that I can get deeper into God's word and so I can get a better understanding of what God is trying to speak to me. And if I get this understanding and if I can teach it to you, then I think it's a win-win. And so I hope, I pray that you are getting something out of this. I wanna recap real quick. The first step was to know God's business. You got to be about doing Father's business. The next step was about the Holy Spirit, that we have to do it with the Holy Spirit's help. We can't do it without the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples, "Hey, don't even open your mouth about witnessing until you receive the power, till you are endued with power." So that's step 2. We have to have the Holy Spirit's help Step 3, we need to know what is the work God has called us to do, and I think he answered that pretty clearly in John 6:29. He said, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent." And we talked about that on yesterday's episode, and today I want to take this next step, and for that we're going to go back to Matthew, and that's in 4:18. And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. Then he said to them, 'Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.' They immediately left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Now that is If you're keeping score at home, the step number 4, the Christian walk is not to be done alone. Jesus didn't start his ministry by himself. Jesus called disciples and he had people. If you'll notice, when Jesus was in his ministry, when he was in helping people, and we're gonna get to all this, but when he was there, he was never alone when he was, quote, ministering to people. Now, he was alone when he's spending time with the Father and in his prayer closet, and we can get to that, but that's not— the Jesus pattern is about prayer and worship, and that you can do by yourself. But when you are ministering to people, if you are working on your ministry, if you're working on what you're to do in God's kingdom and for God, it is to be done with others. We are not to be by ourselves. I want to remind you, we have 3 enemies in this world. And the first enemy is the punk. We hate him, we can't stand him. We are told, we are told to hate evil, and he— there's nothing but evil in the punk. And so we hate him, we do not enjoy him being around, we don't enjoy him speaking to us. The Bible is clear, it says submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. So we are to take authority over the punk, but we have to submit ourselves to God, then we can resist. And that is another rabbit. We have the punk out there that we gotta battle against. We also have the world and the world's way of doing things. And that is, we've talked about that in the Seedtime and Harvest and the Kingdom of God, those episodes. But the kingdom of God is one way and the kingdom of this world is another way. And so we are fighting the world system. If you feel like things, you're on a hamster wheel and things are going so fast and you can't keep up, That's the world system. You think you're missing out on something, you're either looking too far in the future or you're looking too far in the past. Today is— we are to worry about today. To worries for today is sufficient. So if we're worried about what's going to happen next Thursday, are we worried about what happened last Thursday, we're missing today. And so part of the battle is with the world and the world system and the kingdom of God is God's system and God's way of doing things. And that is found in Matthew 6:33. We, I, we love this scripture: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. If you're looking for things in this world, do it God's way and God will add those things to you. Jesus was clear. He said our heavenly fathers know that we have need for those things, but he said to seek first his way of doing things and then these things will be added. We tend to try to— and I do, and I'm putting myself in this bucket— is that I tend to get out there and start getting after something, and then I ask God to bless it. And I've talked about this before, and I'm not going to get into beating myself up about it, but that's just the way it— that's the way it works. I mean, that we get caught up in the world system. That is the second thing we're fighting. And the third thing we're fighting is our flesh. It— we are in this body God put us on this earth. He created the body. He created this system, and we are in this body. We are— have this flesh. But remember, we are fighting our spirit man. We are three parts. We're spirit, soul, and body, and we're going to talk about that in the next episode. But we are spirit, soul, and body, and our spirit man is just like Jesus. It is 100% wall-to-wall just like Jesus. When you get to heaven and you stand before God, if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior Your spirit man is completely redeemed. You have nothing— nothing will change when you get to heaven. Your spirit man— in fact, if you understand and if you read the Bible, your spirit man's already in heaven. I think your spirit man can go back and forth, and he's there. He's seated in heavenly places. Now, I don't mean that I understand all that, but that's just what the word says, and if the word says it, it's true. We don't have to understand it. Again, I've talked about what my Pastor used to say, look, I don't understand electricity, but I refuse to sit in the dark until I figure it out. I just flip the light switch. So we are seated in heavenly places, don't exactly understand all that. We have the mind of Christ. I believe that means we have the ability to, by faith, go into— we need to appropriate— that's like the grace of God where we got to go in there. And again, that's on the lesson in a previous episode. We're battling these three things, but the one thing I want to remind you is that we are not— and this is the step 4— we are not to do this alone. We are to lock arms with brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not to try to do this on our own. We don't need to be Superman out there. We don't need to be trying to do all this by ourselves because I want to read this next scripture and see if you agree with it. And since this is a Bible study, we're going to get a lot of the Bible. And I know you love my superior reading skills. You know my favorite apostle is Peter. When I go to 1 Peter, I can't just read one verse, you know that. Therefore, this is 1 Peter 5:6. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by our brotherhood in the world. Look, I want to remind you that Satan has one playbook. He is old school. He uses deception, fear, division. He uses all of these things, but it's the same thing over and over and over again. And his whole modus operandi is to separate us. If you've ever seen those documentaries with the lions and they're hunting, you know, and they've got the wildebeest, they scare these wildebeest. All these wildebeest are going to take off, and they usually take off in a group. And the lions don't run at— they run after the group, but they're waiting for one of them, the weak one, to either fall back or one to just separate itself from this herd. Because the lions cannot attack the herd, won't attack that herd because they'll get trampled or they'll get killed. You know, if they all— if all the wildebeest figured out, look, all we got to do is turn around. Some of us may fall, but if we turn around and take out all these lions, well, what, what they're doing is they're just running. And they're running in a group. And if one of the— the lion's looking for the weak one. The lion is looking for the one that would separate itself from the herd. And if you're— if you ever watch these documentaries and if you see all of these wildebeests go left, there's one wildebeest that is either panicked or scared or for whatever reason didn't get the memo, we're turning left. He turns right and this wildebeest goes off to the right by himself. That's where the lion goes. The lion chases that single wildebeest, and if it's a pack, they tackle this wildebeest and they destroy the wildebeest right there by itself while the pack goes off. And the wildebeest, the single wildebeest— and so this is the picture that Peter is trying to paint for us, is that our adversary devil walks about like a roaring lion. Remember I've talked about in a previous episode that that Satan is just all mouth. He's such a punk. The only thing he's got is words. Remember, God created the whole world with words. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. That's Proverbs 18:21, that we have to use our word. Faith is voice activated. We have to use our words. I've talked about this multiple episodes, but we have got to get involved in the word of God. We gotta use our words. We gotta use the word of God. And he cannot stand against the Word of God, and he cannot, will not stand against 2 or 3 people submitted to God walking in the same direction. I've got 3 men that I pray for daily, and I know those 3 men, I've talked to them, I know that they pray for me daily. And I want to encourage you that if you're not in a group to where you can just call them and say, hey, if I call any one of those 3 men and ask them for something, I know that they would do their best to get it for me. And that's the kind of thing that we need. We need to have a group of people. It doesn't have to be a bunch of people. In fact, Jesus only had 12. But I want to take you to Ecclesiastes 4:9. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm, but how can one warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Now I want you to think about who you can get, who you can lock arms with, so that you know that you're not alone. Jesus did not— the Jesus pattern, he did not send anybody out by himself. In fact, Jesus did not minister by himself. So I want you to find somebody. If you don't have anybody, I need you to pray about who God would put in your life. Holy Spirit, I pray in Jesus' name that you would quicken in this person's spirit, Lord, that they could hook arms, they could lock arms with a fellow believer, and that they could start praying together, praying for one another, praying for their families, and ministering together. God, I pray that we would just see your pattern, and Lord, I pray that we would enter into this. And that we could become more like you. Jesus, 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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