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

Welcome to episode 130, 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 130. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to start a brand new lesson on the Jesus pattern and how you can apply it to your life. But before I get started in the scripture, I want to tell you about when my son— and I don't know if you've had— if you don't have any kids, you probably can't appreciate this, but if you had children and you were— they were growing up in your house, they would say things that would just stick. Now, they, they talk— my kids talked a lot, and most of it didn't stick. But sometimes they would come home and say something, and then we just kind of incorporated it into our vocabulary or our vernacular or whatever the word is. You know, English is not my first language. When Seth was growing up, he was in math class, and he brought home these little handouts that the teacher had given him. And I said, "Son, what are you working on this week?" And he said, "Dad, we're working on patterns." I said, "Patterns?" He said, "Yes, sir, we're working on patterns." And so from that day on, in my house anyway, and maybe not in my house, but between my wife and I, every time we see the word pattern, we think Patteran. And in order to try to make these episodes a little more enjoyable, I try to bring in a little bit of a human element to the whole thing. I want you to kind of peek behind the curtain. You know, I'm not going to reveal all of my nasty, dirty skeletons. I've got a boatload of them, and I hope God doesn't have me open up and tell you every one of them. I'm praying that he would just leave me alone on that deal, because we've all got a closet. We all got someplace that we just— God, don't take me in there. But I use examples to kind of get you to remember back when you— if you had children, if you've reared children, you know, kind of some of the things that they did that made you smile and that made you laugh and changed how you talk to each other and stuff like that. And I just wanna remind you that Father God is not mad. Father God is the perfect Father. So if you, being an imperfect parent, can laugh and smile at some of the things your children did, just imagine what Father God does when you do something to make him smile. If God is the perfect Father, then he's smiling Sometimes he's shaking his head and going, no, Greg, that's, that's not it, that's not it. Holy Spirit, straighten that up. I have said on multiple episodes that our goal is not perfection, but it's imitation. I think I've come up with maybe a better tweak to that because it rhymes. It's not perfection, but it's correction. Our whole Christian walk, it's not a straight arrow. And if you've ever seen a diagram, and I may have that in the show notes, I may not, but I'm, I'm trying to get a little better with my show notes. But the diagram, if you've ever seen from point A to point B, and in your mind you think it's a straight shot, but in reality it's a squiggly, circly line of going all these going backwards and forwards. And it's a pretty good picture of real life, and I'll do my best to give it the picture up there because the picture, it does a whole lot better than my description. And And I believe that if we walk in repentance, and that don't mean we're always repenting, "Oh God, forgive me for that mistake," and you take another step, "Oh God, forgive me for that mistake." No, when you do something bad and you get way off course, or maybe not even way off course, but you can feel yourself getting a little off course, then just change course. Just repent or just say, "God, help me with that," and then just move back. I think a great analogy for following Jesus is when a farmer, if you've, and I've never farmed, so I don't need any letters or any comments, but I am— I'm told that farmers that have been farming for a long time can tell when they have a new farmer or a new person on the tractor because the rows are a little bit squiggly or wiggly and, and they haven't been trained properly. But a long-time trained-up farmer will pick a point at the very end of the row and he'll drive the tractor straight to that point in the distance. And then when he gets there, then he turns around, picks another point, and drives straight to that point. Now there's some obstacles, you know, if there's a rock or if there's some big ditch or something that gets in the way, he either has to get— stop the tractor, get out, move the obstacle, or go around it. But if he's— if there's no obstacle in his way and he's focused on something in the distance, then he goes straight to that point and the rows are dead straight. And I think that's how we are supposedly, and I'm putting air quotes, that's how we're supposed to be with Jesus, is we're not to get our eyes off of Christ. But in reality, we'll look down, or we'll look at our life, or we'll look at something on TV, or we'll hear something on the radio, or we'll turn into the news. Oh my gosh. Or the traffic for me. Oh my. And we'll kind of get off-center. We will take our eyes off of Jesus and we start looking at the things of this world, or we start listening to our body, or we start listening to the punk. And so we get off that track and our line gets a little squiggly, but we just— if you can just hear the Holy Spirit go, "Uh-uh-uh, let's go back here, little course correction," and then go back. And I'm telling you, daily my lines are more squiggly than straight. And Jesus sent his Holy Spirit to help us, and so we just ask him, and I do constantly, "Holy Spirit, help me with that." Oh, I don't know about that. Help me with that. And I feel kind of— and I've talked about the childlike faith. I'm not going to jump into that, but I want us to get a picture of Jesus. If we can put our eyes on Jesus, and for doing that, when we read the Gospels, I think the best place to get an idea of God's will, or how if God was here on earth, how would he act, or how would he react? And that's where the Gospels— Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John— if we get in there with that on our mind, how would Jesus do it? What would Jesus do? There was a bracelet, and and there was a book that came out, and it was a good book, and it was, you know, people were asking the question, what would Jesus do? How would he react? And that's a great question, but a better question I think is what did Jesus do? And so you look at it, and you look at the circumstances, and if you get all in, and that's what I wanna talk about, there's a pattern to how Jesus did things, and I wanna pick up that pattern in Matthew. The first time we see it is in Matthew 4. And before we start reading, I wanna tell you Jesus had been baptized by John the Baptist, He was out in the— he's already been out in the wilderness and had been tempted by Satan. He'd fasted for 40 days. But in Matthew 4:17, it says, "From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" He then starts calling his disciples. But in Matthew 4:23 is where I believe the Jesus pattern is the first place I saw it, and I wanna read it to you. And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. Then his fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. Great multitudes followed him from Galilee and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. Now I'm told you're supposed to have two witnesses before you can make anything a pattern or a truth that you want to teach or to kind of anchor something. I— this is where I'm going to plant a flag. So I couldn't just do it with one scripture. There's a lot of places in the Bible like where Peter walked on water. There's only one scripture where Peter walked on water. Three different gospels where it talked about Jesus walking on water, but only one of those three gospels had Peter getting out of the boat and walking on water. So you can't have— in my opinion, I can't start a water walking ministry. And so I, I don't. I just told you that I wrote down on a piece of paper that I was gonna walk on water, and that's just me being me. Now I want to go to Matthew 9 where I see the second part of this pattern, or patterin' if you want to stay consistent. And in Matthew 9— and Matthew is actually the person that wrote this book, but he calls Matthew as a disciple. Remember, in, in Matthew 4, he had started calling some disciples. I think it was John and James and Peter. But it— he called a disciple Matthew. And then we're going to go down into Matthew 9:35. Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Now this is just an introduction on this episode, but I just want you to see if you can kind of spot the pattern and see if you could figure out what the pattern is. And in the next episode, I'm going to step it up a little bit and attach it to another lesson that I've had in the previous episodes. I'll try to find the number. In my mind, I right now have absolutely no idea what that number is, but I'm going to tie all this together. And I hope you're excited. I'm excited to teach this. It's going to be— I don't know if it's going to be controversial, but there may be a couple of eyebrows go up. When a couple of heads turn sideways when I start talking about this. But this is something God showed me in his word, and I think it's appropriate, and I don't think it's gonna hurt anything. And if you wanna build your ministry, and if you wanna build God's kingdom, I think this is the pattern. Well, before I start going off on a tangent, let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for your Holy Spirit. Jesus, thank you for coming and walking and giving us an example. To live by. God, I thank you, Father God, for not mashing me every time I mess up, but gently and lovingly and kindly working me back to the proper line. God, I thank you for everything. I thank you for this person listening to this episode, and I pray in Jesus' name that you would— you know right where they are and that you would help them, whatever they're struggling with. And if this is— if it's this lesson, Lord, I pray that I did not confuse them, but if I did I pray in Jesus' name that you would help them see your truth. God, I 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.

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