Doubt and Fear Asking for Wisdom and Believing you Receive

Welcome to episode 93, 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 93. I'm going to do my best to kind of pull all this seeing and hearing with your heart together and the doubt and fear, everything that we've been talking about the last week or so. I just want to kind of pull it all together and see if I can't get it to make some kind of sense. But I, I really enjoyed teaching on this, but I kind of, I feel like sometimes I chase rabbits. And when I started talking about the wisdom and understanding and knowledge. I don't want to confuse you, but I want to make sure that everybody's on— that we're all on the same page. That if, if I'm talking about wisdom and I say, hey, you know, this is when we ask, when we pray for God's wisdom— and this is kind of my thought behind all this— the Bible is pretty clear when it says if anyone asks for wisdom, he will get it. And that verse is found in James 1:5. If any of you lacks wisdom, Let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. And I think that this scripture helps me put the bow on top of all of this teaching because it kind of combines faith and it combines wisdom. We started talking with about doubt and fear, and if we are walking around in fear day in and day out, if you're listening to the news, if you're listening to any of the TV shows or anything, you're gonna be inundated with fear, with doubt and fear. It's just overwhelming. So that's pretty much why I've turned most of that stuff off. And I'm not telling you to do that. Again, this whole podcast is telling me taking imperfect action following a perfect example. And I don't see in the Bible where Jesus looked at CNN or Fox News all day, every day. He was talking to God. He was walking. He was living his life. He was loving on people. You know, as Jesus as our example, I mean, if we're supposed to imitate Christ, and again, I'm gonna say we're not called to be perfect. You and I are never gonna be perfect until we get to heaven and we get our glorified body and we get all of the things that God has promised with the resurrection. But right now we're living in an imperfect state, and that's really why in God's mercy and grace, he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden before they bit on the tree of life. When I first read that, I'm like, man, that's pretty, that's pretty tough. They break one rule and get thrown out of the garden, but God purposely sent them out in mercy. Because if you look at your body now and how it kind of— mine at least is kind of, you know, it's trying to fall apart, it's getting older. I mean, I'm going to be 58 this month, and it's— or next month, whatever. I'm gonna be 58 years old, and things aren't working the way they were working when I was 25. I don't know about you, but I kind of like the idea of never getting old and having strength and having wisdom. And I, I mean, really, I, I love the idea of heaven I'm like everybody else. I'm not sure I'm ready to get there. I'm still fighting this good fight, and we're still battling. But this whole scripture, this wisdom and asking and the faith— if, if you— faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And we're starting to look at, you know, the wisdom. When I, when I started teaching this, I hadn't thought about teaching you the difference between wisdom and understanding and knowledge, but that's just kind of the way God works with me, is he gives me some— get an idea, I just that I'll kind of blurt out what's going on in my mind, and a lot of times it's something that I hadn't even been thinking about. And so I just give— sometimes I give credit, you know, if it's kind of like one of those eye rolls and, "Ah, I don't think I'd have said that," that's probably Greg talking. But sometimes it's the Holy Spirit speaking through me to you. And I think in this case, this is one of those cases. When I started this series, I really wasn't prepared to talk about wisdom and knowledge and understanding. But when I started looking at the scriptures that I was going to use, and, you know, wisdom came up and then understanding came up, and then the thought was, well, does everybody know difference between wisdom and understanding and knowledge? And so I, I, I went down that road, and I, I mean, I'm glad I did because it gives me a, a better understanding too, because sometimes I read the Bible and I read words just like you do, and I don't meditate on it. And I, you know, when you read understanding, it's better if you have a quote understanding of what that word means when you read it. And if you read wisdom, so if we're going to ask for wisdom, we need to know what we're asking for. And then it says a double-minded man can expect nothing. And in my mind, it's not a schizophrenic person, but it's somebody that's carnally minded and spiritually minded, and you're, you're waffling between two different realms, the spirit realm and the physical realm. And remember in Hebrews 11:6, I don't think I brought it up because I really wasn't going to talk a lot about faith, but the faith— it's impossible to please God without faith. And again, we've talked in previous episodes that God's not in heaven with his arms folded. He is not mad at you. He's not even a little bit upset but he is trying to coax you like a perfect father. He's trying to get you to take that step of faith and then that next step of faith. And kind of like in the, in the weight room, you know, where you're working out, if you've ever worked out, you don't start off with 450 pounds on the squat rack. You know, you may start off with the bar or maybe nothing and just do bodyweight squats, and then you put the bar on, and then you put some weight on, and then it's a process, and you build those muscles up. Faith is the same thing. Faith, you're building your faith muscle as you exercise that, and that's God speaking to you, say, "Hey, do this, use this, read this word, try to apply that to your life." And that, in this example, is I believe where wisdom comes in, is we learn to apply, we ask God to help us apply his wisdom to our understanding and our knowledge. And we take the knowledge of the written word of God, and then what we believe it says, that's our understanding. And then we kind of just mix it with the Holy Spirit's interpretation, and, and we just ask, and we've got to believe. And I don't know exactly how that all happens.

It—

the Bible tells us that we have the mind of Christ, so everything that Jesus has in the Holy Spirit is in us and with us and all of that. But everything— we have the mind of Christ in our spirit man. Our physical man, you remember, we're spirit, soul, and body, so our body doesn't have that. And that's the mind I'm talking about. Now, it's a physical brain, so that's part of the flesh. Your mind is going to go with you to heaven. Your mind, your soul, is your mind, will, and emotion. And I don't claim to understand all this, but you are three parts. And your body is what's going to be left here. It's what's going to be planted like a seed. If you— if we die before Jesus returns, your body is going to be planted in the ground, and it's going to resurrect into something completely different. And I was praying about what I'm going to teach about next week, And I keep reading the scriptures where Jesus, his disciples saw him after his resurrection and they didn't recognize him. And that is incredible to me. If, and you know, we think, God, if you, if you would only come here, and we keep asking, Jesus, help me, Jesus, you know, instead of, again, I'm going to get on my soapbox, but the Holy Spirit is here. If we're calling out for Jesus, what if Jesus showed up? What if Jesus has come into your life 2 or 3 times after you've asked? Because Jesus said, I ain't doing nothing right now. Why don't I go down and help Greg out? He's done called me 4 or 5 times on this one issue. Let me go down there and see about helping him. And he comes in his form now, and I didn't recognize it. He came to help, you know, I blew him off. Well, who is this guy? What is this guy coming in here trying to meddle in my business? And I just keep shooing him away because I don't have time for this guy. I don't know who this guy is putting his two cents in where I didn't ask him. I didn't recognize— and I'm not saying that ever happened, I'm just using this as an example. That if Jesus— if his disciples who spent 3 and a half years walking and talking and laughing and eating and doing all the things they did with Jesus, and then he died and was resurrected— and you look at the Bible at the end of each of the gospels and you look how many times they didn't recognize him. These people, that they did not recognize Jesus. And I think I'm going to talk about that next week. I'm gonna— but right now I want to, I want to continue on this wisdom. And this is kind of going again, I tend to ramble, but I want to kind of tie this all pull up, because James, I think, it does a wonderful job. If we ask, we have to believe. We've got to exercise our faith muscle that, hey, I asked it. That don't mean that, you know, in my mind I understand it yet, in my physical mind or my soul, but you just got to have faith that it's there and you just need to pull it out. And that's kind of where, you know, with the seeing and hearing with the eyes of your heart, you have just got to make up your mind that everything in this Bible is the truth. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody gets to the Father except through me. You have to make up your mind Jesus is the truth and Jesus is the word. And if you read it in this Bible that you're holding either on your phone or in your— on your nightstand, if you read it, it is the truth. And it doesn't matter what anything else is telling you. I don't care what the news is telling you. I don't care what your body is telling you. I don't care about anything other than what does the truth say. Now, you know, your body can say something, but what does the truth say? And you have to get into the place that you are not double-minded, that you are going straight to the Word of God. If you hear something and you, you go straight to, how does that line up with what I'm studying right now? If you go to church and the pastor tells you something, you go to the Word and you dig it out and you go, how does that line up with what God's talking to me right now? Oh yeah, that That looks here and here and here. So, I mean, I'm just telling you, it is exciting when you start digging in this life, this Christian walk by faith. The just shall live by faith. It is exciting because you're having to use different eyes and different ears, and it's a totally different animal than what you're used to. You're used to looking at the world through your 5 senses— your what you see, what you smell, what you taste, what you touch. You understand, you're looking at, you're getting all this input from your 5 senses, and if that's all you're taking, that's carnally minded. That's using your 5 senses. Nothing wrong with that. If you're gonna drive a car, I want you to be carnally minded. If I'm on the road, or if I'm in the car with you, you have to be carnally minded. There's some things in life that you have to use your 5 senses. In fact, most things when you're walking through this world, you have to use your 5 senses. But when you're starting to dig in and asking God for wisdom, when you start asking for the Holy Spirit's help, and you start asking, "How do I apply that to my life?" You have to believe that you've received it, and then you gotta start digging it out. Remember in Proverbs 25:2 where it said, "It's the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it's the glory of kings to search out a matter." You are a king, and it's to your glory to search it out. God has put it up. God's kind of hidden it, and he ain't hidden it to where you can't find it. But how cool— if you ever, as a kid, or you watch your grandchildren or your children running around looking for Easter eggs or whatever on the, you know, on Easter, and I'm not, you know, I'm not endorsing that or whatever. I mean, I don't want y'all to start writing me in, telling me, you know, there's no such thing as Easter eggs. Just finding and searching out and trying to find it, and the joy and the fun when they find it, and the prize that's inside of there. If you can kind of picture the perfect Father that's hiding things in his word, and he's just saying, dig it out, just go search, I want you to go search for this. That's what I'm here to do is I'm here to help you, you know, kind of point you in a direction, not help. The Holy Spirit is the one's gonna, is what's gonna enlighten it to you. But here, all I'm here to do is motivate you to pick up your Bible. If I can't do anything else, I promise you, that's all I want you to do is open up the same Bible that I open up and dig in the same way I dig in. God is not a respecter of persons. He will help you if he helps me. Well, this is going way longer than I wanted, and I apologize. I think that— I don't know that I tied it up, but James did a wonderful job of tying up eyes to see and ears to hear and asking for wisdom, the difference between wisdom and understanding and knowledge. It wasn't in that scripture I read, but what we talked about in the previous episodes, if you can kind of tie it all together, we can do the knowledge and the understanding ourselves. We don't necessarily need God for the knowledge and understanding. What we need God for, and we would need the Holy Spirit for when we ask, and that's what the Bible, that's what James is saying, hey, we need wisdom. We need wisdom to step in and help us with this. Help us, tell us, teach us how to apply these spiritual truths that I just read, and I know something's different. I know if I just tweak this a little bit, this will be huge in my life. That's where the Holy Spirit comes in. Let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you, Lord, for sending your Holy Spirit here to be with us. Where two or more are gathered, there you are right there in our midst. And Jesus, I thank you for that. And Holy Spirit, I pray that you would help the person listening to this podcast. Lord, if I've confused them, I pray that you would just take away the confusion. And I pray that you would open up their wisdom, open up wisdom to them, and open up the understanding and the knowledge that you've helped them with. And I thank you, Lord. I thank you for everything you've done. I love you, and I 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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