Ezekiel's Wheel - Learning obedience with your spirit, soul and body

Welcome to episode 289.

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.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I want to continue to talk about our wheel in the middle of the wheel, Ezekiel's wheel. Someone asked me one time, you know, what is your superpower? What do you think your superpower is? I used to think that I was an encourager, that I enjoyed courage people and telling, hey, you did this or you did this well. But really, I think if you boil it down, I take something that is maybe spiritually complex or a complex something and bring it down into simplistic terms, or at least that's what I try to do, to where we can take this concept of the wheel in the middle of the wheel and spirit, soul, and body and the three transformations, and we kind of bring all that together into one kind of cohesive training or cohesive teaching to where you kind of get— have a handle to grab onto. When I hear someone talking about walking in the Spirit, you know, you got to walk in the Spirit, brother. My next thing is, okay, I'm fine with all of that, but how do you do that? How do you walk in the Spirit? As I was praying about and trying to put all that together, then this wheel in the middle of the wheel, the four living creatures, and it kind of all come together. And I don't know if it was just indigestion one night pizza, or it was the Holy Spirit. I'm going to give God credit for giving me all of this teaching and kind of getting it together. But we have 3 transformations, and we talked about this in the previous episode. But you have the spirit realm and you have the physical realm, and we've talked about also having 3 enemies. And I want to remind you that our 3 enemies are the punk, which is Satan. We hate him. We try to kick him in the teeth as often as we can. And then it's the world system or the worldview. And then it's also our flesh, our body. Remember, if we're spirit, soul, and body, there's 3 parts, and the body is never going to be redeemed. And, and if you don't get a hold of this concept or this idea, Christianity is going to be a struggle from the word go because you're not going to understand these concepts because these are spiritual truths. This Bible is a spiritual book written to spiritual beings, and if your spirit man is dead, then you're not going to understand it. And why a lot of people struggle with Christianity— and these are non-Christians and even Christians, people that have just gotten saved, you know, maybe baby Christians and don't understand Christianity— to be quite honest, I don't think a lot of Christians understand it. And so, and until you're ready to dive in and commit to the book and commit to saying, hey, this is the word of God. And it— we've got to understand that there's a spirit realm, there's a heaven, and there's a hell. And we have got to understand that God is in the spirit realm, and God had first pick. God could have chosen, hey, I want to manifest myself in this physical realm, but he chose to take the spirit realm, and that's where God is. And God could come in and manifest himself all the time here in the physical realm, to get into the Word of God, it requires faith. It's impossible to please God without faith. That's Hebrews 11:6. But we have got to get into this by faith. But I think it helps if we get little handles to hang on to, these, these truths, these things that once you have it, you don't have to let go of it. And it's these 3 transformations that I just want you to picture. And everything's kind of in threes. You know, we got 3 enemies in our body, and I'm not talking about our flesh, you know, like you need to cut yourself or you need to punish yourself. We talked about this before, that this is really just your vehicle. This is your earth suit so that you can survive, your spirit man and your soul can survive here on earth. This body is never going to be redeemed. That's why God allows us to die. That's why he allowed Adam to die, because he was merciful. And he did not want Adam to live forever or an eternity in his fallen state. He wants to give us a brand new body, and that is the third transformation, and that's one that's awaiting us. And nobody is going to see that on this side. No one is going to see that here on earth. You have got to lose that fear because you got to believe that God is who he says he is, is going to do what he says he's going to do, and that comes by faith. And then again, we're going to talk about obedience. And because, you know, a lot of times you see the Old Testament stories like King David, who was— God said he was a man after God's own heart. And then you look back and you see David, a regular guy, and he has the same inconsistencies that you and I maybe have. The man after God's own heart in the Old Testament, King David, one of the mightiest kings ever, if not the mightiest king, and he fell. He was an adulterer and a murderer, yet God said that he's a man after God's own heart. And I just want you to see in, in a reason, just a quick little synopsis here. It's in 1 Samuel 15:22, and this is when Saul disobeyed God, and really for the last time. God had had it with Saul, King Saul, and he sent Samuel to tell him, look, I'm done. I'm done with you. So Samuel said, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offering and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. And what Samuel was telling Saul, it's not that God does not care about sacrificing. If he had to pick sacrifice or obedience, he— God wants you to obey his word. And that's where faith comes in. God tells you to do something and you, quote, by faith do it. You just believe the word of God. That's what Abraham did. He forsook everything and obeyed the word of the Lord. Abraham is the father of faith because he just— when God told him to do something, Abraham didn't do it perfectly, but he went after it. He just stayed on it. Faith looks like going after something until it happens. And that's where I think a lot of the modern church, they get tired of, or they don't see it happening, or they've got a wrong doctrine. That's a problem in the modern church because we're in an instant gratification period. Everything is so fast. You can get it on your phone almost immediately. If you've got a question, you just ask Google, or you ask Alexa, or you, you know, you just go and search for it. You don't necessarily have to dig in the scriptures and ponder and ask the Holy Spirit. And I think that's one of the reasons why Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, is God's way of doing things, and that's seed time and harvest. And we've talked about this multiple times, you cannot speed up a harvest. You've got to plant it, you've got to water it, and you've got to wait, and you've got to wait, and you've got to wait. And then when the harvest comes, then you can harvest. It's kind of laughable when I hear people say, well, I'm just going to get God to move in this situation, or we need to move God. God's not stuck. God is always listening. God is always working. One thing I want you to remember, and we got to understand this by faith, that when Jesus says, it is finished, The grace of God was poured out for all mankind. Jesus died and did away with sin. Jesus took care of it. It's a done deal. We need to understand that these transformations that we're talking about is another way to understand this Bible. And the wheel in the middle of the wheel is physical representation of what's going on from the spirit realm to the physical realm. And I think most of us, if you want, if you would be honest, are really just more focused on the physical realm. And I think that's really why, as I was pondering and thinking about, you know, the Zig Ziglar wheel, Zig was just dealing with businessmen. That was his target market, was just businessmen and women. He went and spoke to them and they weren't necessarily Christians. At the end of the business meeting, if you want to know why I think I'm so successful, he'd give his testimony. And he would share his faith at the end, but it was an optional deal and it was tagged on at the end. People could leave and be done with everything and get everything that Zig had to offer except his testimony and the salvation message. I really believe that Zig was doing the best he could with the market that he had, and he probably had a revelation on this wheel in the middle of the wheel, but I'm specifically talking to Christians, so I don't necessarily have to sugarcoat it or put everything on the same level. And I don't believe that's true. I think the spirit realm is elevated. And I think if you, if you can just kind of picture this wheel flipping upside down, you've got the spirit realm on top. And so we can be spirit-led instead of spirit-dead. And the whole world, for the most part, is spirit-dead. So they— the only thing they can go by is their 5 senses or the worldview. And And when you start talking about a biblical worldview, I mean, people just short circuit and you see people just go snap. They just go off when something doesn't work and Christians don't have all the answers. Or we suggest, hey, I think you ought to do it like this and it don't work. Well, then everybody's got the knives and guns out. So I just want to reiterate that there's 3 transformations. There's 3 parts of this wheel. We are 3 parts. Spirit, soul, and body. There's three parts to God— there's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So all of these threes, God working in these threes. But the three transformations again is salvation. And I think if you can kind of picture this also, the modern church, they know that without the first transformation, the other two don't matter. So they've really put an emphasis on making babies and creating baby Christians, and they know that without the first step, there's not the other two. So they've put an emphasis, and it quite honestly, it's easier to keep track of. You can tell how many people have walked the aisle, or you can tell how many people has filled out a card saying, hey, I gave my life to the Lord today. But the discipleship, the second transformation, is the transformation or sanctification of your soul. Be ye not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may know what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. That's in Romans 12:2. You have got to renew your mind, and that is by getting into the word of God and letting the word of God get into you, and it starts permeating through your soul, your mind, will, and emotion. And what we're going to talk about in the next episode, probably is how we kind of do that and how the kingdom of God works in this soulish spirit realm. Because everybody is in the physical realm and everyone's looking at everything going on in this physical realm and they're wringing their hands thinking, oh. And then when we look and they see the church people failing and this stuff not working, well then they just throwing stones. Everyone wants to pick up a stone and throw it at somebody. We're not going to do that here. What we're trying to do is make this complex issue more simple. And there are 3 transformations. It is spirit, soul, and body. Your spirit man is transformed at salvation. Your spirit man becomes like new, becomes just like Jesus. So your spirit man is 100% just like God. Your spirit man is totally redeemed. There's nothing left to do with that transformation. The second transformation is your soul. That's your mind, will, and emotion. And that is how you learn to love God and love people, and you start growing in knowledge and in truth. And you stay in this Bible, it takes you the rest of your life. And that's why there's not a big long line with discipleship classes, is because there's really not an endpoint until you die. Everybody wants it now, and I am guilty of that myself, is I can be impatient and I want it now. I'm not any different than anybody else listening to this, but you have to train yourself to know there's a better way to do it, and you just have to trust the word of God, and you've got to trust the process. And then the third transformation is your glorified body when Christ returns. Jesus was the resurrection, the first resurrection. He was the first fruits. And when you see what Jesus did when he came back you and I are going to be able to do, and that's exciting. And he went to heaven to prepare a place for us. So you have to understand, when you're reading this word, sometimes it's speaking to the physical body, sometimes the word is speaking to your soul—your mind, will, and emotion—and sometimes the spirit is talking to the spirit. And when you're reading that, you just got to contemplate or meditate on What realm is God trying to teach me in? That's enough for this episode. To obey the word of God is better than sacrifice. You've got to learn to just trust what's in this word. And I know I've harped on that, and I know I can constantly talk about being in the word of God, but it's true. We do— the more we get into this, the more we water this word, the more it grows, and the better this life and the next life's going to be. Well, let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for this listener. God, I thank you for your word. Holy Spirit, thank you for never leaving us nor forsaking us. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would just start leading this listener, this watcher, into your understanding, or what you want them to understand from this lesson. God, 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 the next episode.

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