In episode 92 of the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, host Greg Ryan opens with a biblical proclamation and then delves into a theological discussion distinguishing wisdom, understanding, and knowledge from a Christian perspective. He emphasizes that wisdom is a God‑given gift that can be asked for, while knowledge is simply reading Scripture and understanding is the application of faith to grasp divine truths. Greg then focuses on the trio of faith, hope, and love, using 1 Corinthians 13 and Hebrews 11 as scriptural anchors. He explains that love is the greatest virtue, destined to endure in heaven, and argues that believers should first develop a “love muscle.” He shifts to hope, defining it as a blessed assurance rather than wishful thinking, and ties it to faith, noting that faith is the substance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). Greg illustrates faith as an active, muscle‑building practice, sharing a personal anecdote about using faith to cope with a toothache, highlighting that faith is exercised in imperfect action. He warns against the “Ten Spies Network” of worldly fear and doubt that can drown out faith, urging listeners to limit media consumption and fast from “garbage” information, instead immersing themselves in God’s Word. The episode concludes with a heartfelt prayer for listeners’ physical and spiritual healing, and a reminder to return for future episodes that will further explore faith, hope, and love.
Welcome to episode 92, 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 92. If this is your first time here, welcome aboard. If you are a frequent flyer, welcome back, you fanatic. Hey, I wanted to touch base, want to briefly go over— I don't know if I was confusing yesterday on the difference between wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. I felt like it was important that we talk about it, so that was why I brought it up. Obviously, if you have an idea, wisdom I believe is something— it's It's God-given, the things that— what I'm talking about, what the Bible talks about. Ask for wisdom and it will be given to you. I think it's something that you can ask for and just believe that you get it, and then you receive it. It says in the Bible that we have the mind of Christ, so we just need to tie into that. We, you know, you got to use faith, and we're going to talk about that today. Faith, hope, and love is where I'm going to go in this episode in 1 Corinthians 13. We have to believe that we receive. That's part of the faith. But I want to give us a little picture because we were talking about the eyes to see and the ears to hear, and I kind of want to tie this up in the next two episodes. I want to tie this teaching up kind of in a bow, and I want to talk more about hope than faith. But you need all three of those. And, and I want to go right to that scripture, and I want to pick it up in 1 Corinthians 13, and we're going to start in 13:11. And remember, 1 Corinthians 13 is the love chapter. If you'll read verses 4 through 7, that's the one I memorized. I'm not going to do it, but you can read it, and it's the talks about what love is and the qualities. And I think it's awesome. God had me memorize that a minute ago. It's, uh, served me well. But I want to go to 1 Corinthians 13:11. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, and I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face, now in part. But then I shall know as I am also known. And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. And we're not going to talk about— we've talked about love in a previous episode, but we're not going to talk about that today because love is— of those three virtues, love is the one that will remain in— into heaven. When we're in heaven with God, we're not going to need faith. Because we're going to be able to see him and we're not going to need hope. We're not going to have to understand what hope is because we're going to be there, and hope will just be something that will just start happening. And I don't understand it all, and I'm not even going to talk about that. It's not— I'm not going to chase that rabbit. I am just going to tell you that of these three— faith, hope, and love— love will go with us. So if we can build— and it's why the writer says in Hebrews, the greatest of these is love— if you're going to build a muscle of these three, build your love muscle first. It's the one where you just start loving on people, and we talked about in a previous episode about the four foundations of the church, I think love really is shown in the one to another. It's best represented, I think, in the ox, the face of the ox, which is that servant and helping people and doing the work, you know, being the hands and feet of God. I think that's where the ox comes in. But again, that's another rabbit. That's not what— that's not in my notes today. But I want to talk about faith and hope, but I really want to concentrate on hope. And I don't— you know, when people start talking about hope, ooh, I hope this happens— I'm not talking about hoping, a wishing, and a praying. I'm talking about hope. It's the blessed assurance. And hope to me is when you start really getting into the Bible and you start really understanding what hope is. Well, let me just read a couple scriptures. We're going to go to Hebrews 11:1. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I'll just keep reading. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which were visible. I want to stop there because in order to understand what hope is, we have to also kind of get a grip on what faith is. And I think faith is the action. I mean, I, you know, when people say, well, I just need to have faith, you need to have more faith. And Jesus said, you don't need more faith. I think, and we're going to go back in the next episode, we're going to talk about how you get rid of the unbelief. But Jesus pretty much told them, if you have the faith of a mustard seed, if you get a little bitty tiny bit of faith, you can move a mountain. And so he's pretty much saying— he doesn't really just come out and say what you need is less unbelief, but that's what I believe that's what he's saying. And on that previous episode where I told— talked about the tug of war going on with the, you know, with the red flag, and if you've got faith and unbelief pulling, and if you've got— you've got equal amount of both on each side, you're not going to move any. It's going to be like you're sitting still. And I think that's where most of the church is. I, to be quite honest, I think most of the church is just basking unbelief because we're listening to the world. We're listening to the things of the world. We're listening to the Ten Spies Network. And that's where in a previous episode I talked about sending out the 12 spies of Israel, and only 2 of the spies come back with a good report. The other 10 were just spewing out their fears and all their doubts and unbelief. And the Ten Spies Network, all that news and all that garbage on the national news that's going on, if that's all you're listening to and you're not reading your Bible, you getting a double dose of unbelief. So I believe if you would just turn the TV off and do a fast, not so much of food, but of the garbage you're putting in, and that's why I jump up and down again, you need to be in your word, you need to be in the Bible. I know you get tired of hearing it, but it's true. You need to get more into this, into God's word than you are into the world. And so I'm off of that now. But the faith is being able to take that, just that little bit of seed that's just God-given. He just places that, the measure of faith in you. So God put it in there, and it's our job to exercise that. And that's why I think faith is more of an action word that we, you know, you could almost put an -ing on it, like faithing, faithing, that we're using our faith and we're building our faith muscle. And that's when I, when I talk into my tooth, I mean, I'm building my faith muscle when it was hurting. You know, you don't use your faith to keep things away from you. You need your faith to fight things that come on you. And I hope that makes sense, but it, I didn't need faith for my sore tooth before my tooth got sore. But once it got sore, I'd never had that happen before, and me instead of going to the dentist, me just trying to fix it using faith. And I use that example just so, you know, I mean, just to show you in a real-world example, because this whole podcast is about using imperfect action as we follow our perfect Savior. So when I try to do what the Bible tells me to do, it's not going to happen perfectly. I just, it didn't just over, when I, once I spoke the word, you just snap your finger and boom, the tooth stop hurting. That when I get better and stronger and that, then it has happened like that before. This time it did not happen, and my body was screaming at me. My tooth was killing me, my nerve up my side of my head. But I took some Advil because to shut my body up, you know, and God didn't get mad at me because I didn't have enough faith. It was my body was screaming, and I had to fight the unbelief, and I had to quiet my body down. So that I could continue to get in and dig into the Word. But the— what I want to concentrate on, and I don't even— I don't know who was supposed to hear that, but faith is more of an action. Hope is more of using your eyes and your ears, the things that we've been talking about, your spiritual eyes and your spiritual ears, and it's the ability to see things that aren't there. And we're going to go back to 11:3 where it says, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. So that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. Faith is being able to see things, and really, and I want to use, I kind of want to mix hope, because faith plus hope is when things start happening, and that's, and you go up a couple verses, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And we're going to dig in. I looked at the clock, and I think I'm going to wait to the next episode to kind of dig into hope. I kind of want you to get a picture of it. And remember when we talked about the difference between understanding and wisdom and knowledge? Now, knowledge was me just reading that scripture, and I'm gonna kind of keep going back to that till we can kind of get it anchored to where we're kind of getting a feel for what we're talking about when we start using these words and we see these words in the Bible. When it says understanding, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed. We read the words, but then we go back and see where God said, "Let there be light." We read those words back in Genesis 1, "Let there be light," and then God saw that there was light. By faith, you gotta use your faith muscle to understand that he just spoke it and then it happened. You know, there's people that don't believe in God that don't use any faith. They think it's a bunch of garbage that God could speak the word and have it happen. We have to understand when God said it, he saw it. Then we ask God for wisdom to figure out how we can apply his same, that same teaching to our life. If we understand, faith is when we understand that, hey, God said it and then he saw it. So that's how it happened. And knowledge again, and I don't wanna kick this dead dog, but knowledge is where we just read it. You know, you just read it and understand the words you read is then taking it the next step, it's going, Well, God spoke it and then he saw it. I mean, that's just how it happened. So faith is just believing the Word of God. And we're going to talk about how Abram believed the Word of God. He did not waver at the promise. You know, faith is— faith is putting your flag in the ground, and faith is just believing it. And you've got to have faith. You've got to know that you know that you know that this Word of God is real. And until you get that, then it don't matter how much the other stuff you get. You got to have faith and hope and love. Faith, hope, and love. Those three three remain. And so those are the three. If we're going to build anything in this life, we need to build those three things. And I just thought, you know, this is just a good time to start talking about that. And it may take a minute to get all that out, but I just want to introduce this. We're still in the doubt and fear because I want to tie it all together in a nice little bow for you tomorrow. That'll be Saturday's lesson. And I'm going to start something new, probably going to continue with the faith and hope and love. On Mondays, but I'm going to probably label it something different. But let me pray real quick for you. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this podcast. I thank you for my health, Lord. I thank you for their health. And if they're, if they're struggling with their body right now, I speak to their body and I command the body to be well. Jesus, Holy Spirit, you are there with them. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth that you would touch any part of the body that is hurt, and I pray that you would just heal whatever sickness or disease. If there's anything that this person that's listening to this podcast that needs in a physical healing, Lord, I pray in Jesus' name that you would heal them. Lord, you, you took stripes so that our stripes we can be healed. And I command the healing power that's in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to come through this microphone and into that person's ear and into their spirit and soul. And Lord, let it quicken that they have it. They have already been healed. And Lord, you don't— you've already done everything that you're going to And all they've got to do is, is hook into that promise and believe it. And Lord, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for your son. I thank you for everything you've done for me in my life, and I love you, Lord. 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.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
