In episode 287 of the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, host Greg Ryan uses a visual “wheel‑in‑the‑wheel” metaphor to explain the biblical concept of the three‑part nature of humanity (spirit, soul, body) and its parallel to the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). He critiques the traditional church model of a single weekly worship service, urging listeners to feed themselves daily with Scripture. Greg describes a central wheel representing God and the spirit realm, four spokes symbolizing the four living creatures (pillars of the spirit realm), and an outer wheel representing the soul and body. He illustrates the Trinity with the three states of water—solid, liquid, vapor—highlighting God’s design of ice being lighter than water. He connects the fall of Adam to the death of the “spirit man,” distinguishing it from the still‑alive body and soul. Greg introduces a framework of three spiritual transformations (birth‑again spirit, soul‑level renewal, and bodily glorification) and explains why unsaved people only experience the first. The episode ends with a prayer for listeners to understand the teaching and an invitation to continue the series.
Welcome to episode 287.
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, last episode was a longer episode, and I apologize. I'm trying to cut this thing down, and I'm going to do my best this one to get it a little more concise. But there's a lot to cover, and I've got a lot on this pea brain of mine that I want to get out. And I don't know that I'm doing a great job of it, but I just want you to continue to just dig in And let's be a part of this thing together as God is opening up this wheel in the middle of the wheel. It's Ezekiel's wheel, and it's the living creatures. It's all of this combined together, and we're going to go deep. We're going to take our time, and we're going to go down, and we're going to try to see how this is going to apply to your lives. Because in the— we talked about it before that I said, hey, the church just paints with a big wide broad brush, and when you go in there on Sunday morning, you usually listen to whatever series or whatever the pastor feels like, hit the whole congregation. And if you're one of a thousand or if you're one of a hundred, there's no way that that pastor can form a message to speak to each one individually. And so that is a problem, or that is a challenge, I guess is a better word to say, for every pastor. And I believe that the pastors do their best, to come in and to teach and to hear from God and then to bring that word to their congregation. And I got hats off to every pastor that have been doing this and getting after it and getting in the fight. But we need to try, I think, to do something different. You know, we talked about Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same things over and over again and expect different results. We can't keep doing the same thing. And if you're trying to get all of your God in on Sunday morning or Saturday afternoon or whenever it is that you go and worship, if that's your big day and that's your one time, you are starving to death the other 6 days, and the punk's going to kick the crap out of you. And we have got to get fed daily. We have got to learn to feed ourselves. Soapbox moment. That's why I'm here. I'm here to help you put the spoon into your mouth and to open up this word and allow you and the Holy Spirit to kind of dig into this smorgasbord of all this wonderful food that God has. And it's not just what God has showed me, but it is anything. If you just ask for wisdom and knowledge and you have a problem— and that's what I want to talk about— is we need to dig into the specific problem. The Bible itself, you can find every answer to every problem under the earth but we have to dig in. We have to know what we're doing, and we have to get in there, and we have to ask God for help. God does not steer a parked car. So if you're just sitting there praying and not reading the Bible and not doing anything else and not putting feet to it, then God's just gonna— I don't know what God's gonna do. I'm not gonna play God. You're not gonna get your prayers answered as much as when you just dig in. And even if you're going in the wrong direction, like maybe I am, God's going to steer me and turn me around because I'm at least moving. And that's why I'm here today. That's why I'm getting after this thing. That's why I'm encouraged by what the Word of God is telling me and the Holy Spirit is— I think he's just egging me to keep going. So I'm going to keep going. And we've got this wheel in the middle of the wheel, and we've talked about that we're pulled this spiritual aspect of this goal setting out. I'm gonna have this picture of what I've got this wheel in the middle of the wheel looking like. I've got my 3D guy working on it right now, but I don't have anything as of this recording. I don't have it. Maybe by the time I get done with this recording and post it, this is going to be on, I don't even know, Thursday the whatever. We're getting close to the 4th of July weekend. We are going to have it posted as soon as I can get it. I'll have a link whenever it's available for you to look at. But the wheel, the 2D wheel that I've got that I had created a while back, and maybe you've seen, maybe you haven't, but it's got the wheel in the middle of the wheel, and it's harder— that's why I wanted the 3D rendering, because it's harder to see the differentiation on that. The wheel, the center wheel, is where God is and where the spirit realm is, and there's 4 spokes that go out of that center wheel, and those are the 4 foundations, the 4 pillars, if you will, of the spirit realm. And that represents the four living creatures. And you're going to see when we get done with all of this, you're going to see how all this works together. Those four faces represent four different pillars or four different foundations in the spirit realm. And we have talked about this on previous episodes. We're going to talk about it again in the next episode or two. But I want to go back to the wheel. So we got the wheel in the middle we've got the 4 living creatures in that center wheel with God in the middle. All of those things represent the spirit realm. And so the spokes on this wheel are the things that connect you to the, the outside wheel, or the tire if you will, on this wheel. That is going to be your soul. So we got the spirit, your soul, and then your body is the bottom of this wheel. So there are 3 parts. We are made in God's image. We're 3 parts. We are body, soul, and spirit, and God is three parts, and he is Father God, he is Jesus, and he is the Holy Spirit. So there are three parts, one God. And I'm not here to tell you I understand all of that, but you just got to kind of picture that this Trinity is a big deal, and this Trinity is real, and this Trinity— there's things like we've got in those— in the physical realm, if you think about water And if you think about the 3 different states of an element or whatever it is that we're talking about, like water has 3 different states. It's got the solid state, it's got the liquid state, and it's got the vapor, I guess. I don't even know what steam or whatever it is, that state. It's the same element but 3 different states. And one of the things that fascinates me now that I brought water into this, and I'm going to chase this rabbit for a minute, is that I read somewhere that if God would have designed water like all the other elements, then life on this planet would not be sustainable. And let me explain what that means. It is, if you think about water and when you freeze it, when it's in its solid state, that water is lighter in its solid state than it is in its liquid state. And I believe— I may be talking out of school because I didn't research this all the way to the nth degree— but I believe that is the only thing that is lighter as a solid than it is as a liquid. And if you can't see God's hand in that, then you're not looking very hard, because God had water— if you've ever thought about an ice cube in your glass, but think about the lakes. Think about up in— like, in— I'm here in the United States, and just some of the lakes up in Michigan, or some of the ponds, and that have fish in them, or that have living creatures in the water, and that freezes, and the top of it freezes. And you think about ice fishing, all of the ice is on top. You cut a hole in the ice and it goes down into the water. It's because if ice was heavier than the liquid the— it would form on the top and float down to the bottom, and it would just continue to do that until the whole water was frozen. So every winter you'd have a bunch of frozen dead fish, or frozen dead— they would only live for 6 months. But God is a wonderful Creator. He thought all of this thing through from the beginning. You can't outsmart God. God is so wonderful. He's so kind. But it is just fascinating But when you start digging into this Bible, it just gets really deep really fast. And so I just want to go back to we're three parts, we're one person. I am Greg Ryan, is one person. When— but when you see me, I have a physical body, I have a soul, and I have a spirit. Now you don't necessarily— you can't necessarily see my soul and my spirit, but you can kind of see how my soul acts. Like if I get angry, or if I get happy. Emotion, your mind, will, and emotion is your soul. So you can kind of see somebody's soul if you look, and you can obviously see their flesh. You can tell that my hair is graying. You can tell that I'm getting old, and I'm getting older every day, just like you are. But I am getting older. My body is getting older. My soul, my mind, will, and emotion is part of me, but my spirit man, my spirit man, you can't feel your spirit man. And we go back to Genesis 3 where Adam bit the fruit, his spirit man died. We've talked about that before, but something died when Adam and Eve bit the fruit. And I know pretty much that it was his spirit man that died because he was naked and he covered himself, so his body didn't die. And he was afraid, he was naked and afraid. So that's his emotion, that's his soul, that didn't die. So his spirit man, something died because the word of God is true. So his spirit man died. And so we're getting into all of this stuff, but we have got to see— when we start seeing these patterns in the word of God, I just want to make sure that you understand that I'm just not pulling this out of my backside. That when I say this wheel in the middle of the wheel, that there are three parts to this wheel and all three are important. And I believe that these three elements— and one of the reasons that the punk doesn't want you to understand this is because once you get a grasp of this, then it makes other parts of the Bible a lot more understandable. That when you get an understanding of this spirit realm and this soulish and this physical realm, the Bible is written to all different areas of your life. And so if you can kind of get a picture of how this works, this is going to change how you read the Bible. And I just want to encourage you that this is wonderful news. This is great news. And one more thing before I sign off, because I'd want to make this as quick as I can, but there are 3 transformations as well. And I don't know that I've ever talked about this, but we're going to deal with this on all these different episodes as I'm teaching on this series. But there are 3 transformations for every person, and if you are not a Christian, you really only have a chance for one of them. If you are unsaved, the first transformation is when your spirit man— you're born again, your spirit man becomes brand new creation, or a brand new creature is what the Bible says. And we become alive again in our spirit man. And so we're going to move on. When the next episode, I'm going to start talking about the transformations But I just want you to think about, there are 3 transformations. The Bible speaks to each one. And if you're just reading it from a person that has never been transformed, your spirit man's never come alive. That's why a lot of people read the Bible and go, that's a bunch of garbage. That's why a lot of people can say it's an antiquated book, it really doesn't apply to me, blah blah blah blah blah. But because their spirit man is dead, you know that if something's dead, they can't hear or react. If your spirit man is dead and the Spirit is trying to read to a dead person, that's not going to happen. So anyway, I'm not going to chase that rabbit today. I'm going to real quick, we're going to pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. God, I thank you for this listener, and I pray in Jesus' name that you would open up your word to them, Lord, that you would just give them an understanding of what I'm trying to say. Holy Spirit, help me if I've confused them. I pray that you would help them understand what it is you want them to know 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 next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
