In episode 95 of the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, host Greg Ryan explores the relationship between faith and hope through a series of biblical analogies and personal reflections. He begins by comparing the kingdom of God to a seed, using a corn kernel illustration to show how something small can produce exponential growth when buried and nurtured, paralleling how faith and hope develop when surrendered to God. Ryan then discusses why the resurrected Jesus was not recognized by his disciples, emphasizing that true perception comes from the heart rather than the eyes. He cites Hebrews 11:1 and Romans 12 to explain that faith is a measured substance given by God, likening it to a measuring cup, and argues that lack of faith is actually unbelief that must be removed. Ryan stresses personal responsibility in salvation: individuals must die to self, confess Christ, and receive the “measure of faith” placed in their hearts. He expands on the Greek term “sozo,” describing salvation as more than entry to heaven—it includes transformation, empowerment, and becoming a spiritual warrior or king. Drawing on King David’s rise, he illustrates how believers can expand their spiritual kingdoms through perseverance. Ryan calls listeners to daily renewal of the mind, living sacrifice, and building a “faith muscle” through Scripture and the Holy Spirit. The episode concludes with a prayer for understanding faith and hope, and an invitation to continue the journey.
Welcome to episode 95, 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 95. I want to jump right in. We're talking about faith and hope, and I really want to kind of concentrate this episode on faith. I taught in a previous episode about how the disciples did not recognize the resurrected Jesus, and there's a few reasons for that, but the, the biggest reason I believe is that he was a different— in a different form. He had a resurrected body or a glorified body. And that's what we're gonna have when we get back. And it didn't look the same as his earthly body, or the one that the disciples were used to seeing with their eyes and hearing with their ears. And it makes sense if you think about the kingdom of God is like a seed. Remember the power of the seed? And when something is— was buried, or is buried into the ground, then that seed will sprout up and new life comes from that seed. And I believe I used the analogy in a previous episode, but I think it's appropriate here. You can tell how many grains of corn are in an ear. If you get an ear of corn, you can cut all of those little kernels or seeds or grains of corn off of that ear of corn, and you know exactly how many seeds you have, one ear of corn has. But you have no idea how many ears of corn one seed can produce. And that's where we're talking about the 30 and the 60 and the 100-fold. When something is buried in the ground, it has, it takes on a life of its own, and it just magnifies. When God does the changing and something turns, it takes on a life of its own. And that is why we continually talk about dying to self, dying daily, repenting, and having that surrendering spirit. We talked about that on previous episodes. I'm not gonna go back. That was in the Armor of God. Episodes. When you come before God and you humble yourself and you crawl up— and the 5 prayers that I've talked about— when you crawl up onto the altar of God and you present yourself to him, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, that's your reasonable service. That's what the Bible says. And so we die daily, and we can produce— there's no telling what we can produce through God. When you look at the seed, if you look at the kernel— and I'm just going to continue with this kernel of corn If you look at the kernel of corn and you look at it and then you put it in the ground as a seed and you bury it and you leave it alone and you water it, the earth brings forth that fruit. But I want you to think about what that kernel of corn— when it, when this, when it shoots up out of the ground, does it look like that kernel of corn? It doesn't. It looks like a stalk of corn. It doesn't look anything like what you put in the ground. And I believe if you just kind of get that same thought, when Jesus was put into the ground, into the tomb, he died. He was completely dead. He was dead and buried for 3 days, and on that third day he rose again. And every time the disciples saw him, or Mary, or the women saw him, they did not recognize him because they were looking with their eyes. I kind of want to just keep hammering this thought. Is that it's the eyes of our heart, and that is where faith— faith and hope is using eyes that aren't in our head, they're in our heart. And we have to learn to see with our heart. And if we can learn to see with our heart, we will destroy the works of the enemy. And I'm telling you this because I'm still struggling with it. I'm not, I'm not preaching to you and saying, hey, I've got this all figured out. I just know reading the Word of God, this is something that Greg Ryan needs to work on.. And I found that if I need to work on it, then other people in my audience, or when I'm teaching Bible study, they need to work on it as well. And I believe that this is a key. This— if we can learn how to see with the eyes of our heart, when you close your eyes, and that's kind of— hope is going to take form when we start using our eyes and start— and then that's vision. But I really— what I want to do is I want to talk about faith I said all of that to talk about faith. The two of them, they're kind of interchangeable. It's kind of like salt is sodium chloride, but sodium by itself and chloride by itself I think are poisonous. But when you combine them together, then it's something that's essential for our daily life. And I, you know, and some of this stuff with God's word, you have got to combine it with other truths in the word. But I want to go to Hebrews 11:1, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So I think that's telling us that faith is a substance. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. And see how faith and hope kind of play together? The evidence of things not seen. And I want to then go to Romans. Salvation part is all done by faith. And in Romans, Romans 12:3 For I say through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. And then that's in the New King James, but in the King James it says the measure of faith. Now I don't want to split hairs with this, but I believe each person— if you go to the New King— the Old King James where it says the measure It's like a measuring cup. Each person, God has given each person the— I don't think you have more faith than I have. And again, I wanna go back to Jesus' words where he said, you know, where the disciples were saying, "Man, we need more faith." And Jesus said, "You don't need more faith. If you had the faith of a mustard seed, you could say unto this mountain, 'Be thou removed and cast to the sea,' and it would obey you." Faith is not the problem. Unbelief is the problem, and we need to get the unbelief out of our body, out of our mind, out of our will, out of our soul. We need to release that unbelief. But that's a process, and it happens with faith and hope. And that's why I'm here on this episode, is I kind of want to get an introduction to what I believe. It's personal responsibility. It's a personal faith walk. I cannot help you other than giving you the gospel, I cannot help you get saved. You have to decide to die to yourself and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior on your own. This is you— between you and God. It is between you and the Holy Spirit. It has absolutely nothing to do with me other than faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. When I proclaim, or anyone proclaims the word of God to you, that is where the faith is deposited. When you hear the word of God and God places the measure of faith into your heart, the first step of faith, in my opinion, would be the easiest one. The salvation step of faith is just believing. It's just confessing with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead, and you shall be saved. That is your salvation faith. That is— I think that is a God-given the measure of faith, and from there we build our faith muscle. From that planting of faith, when salvation happens, your spirit man comes alive, and salvation then opens up all of the other things that salvation— salvation is not just making it to heaven. I think the Greek word is sozo, and it means so much more. We're going to get into what salvation, the definition of salvation, means. If it's just getting us into heaven then we're just going to get the crud kicked out of us down here. That's not what Jesus told his disciples. You know, he said we were going to have some persecutions, but you're going to have all of these other things with persecutions. You're gonna, you're gonna conquer. You're going to be more than conquerors. We're not doormats as Christians. We are not doormats. We are, we are warriors. We are mighty kings. Each one of us is a king, and we have our own little kingdom that we're kings over. And as, as we take authority and we take ground in our king— our kingdom, it grows. If you look at King David, King David started off, he was anointed king, but look how long he— it took him to become king of Israel and then to have Jerusalem and Judea combined, those kingdoms combined under his rule and reign. And he had— I mean, it wasn't without effort. King David fought for most of his life. So I don't want you to think that this Christian walk is going to be just a cakewalk. If you had some kind of impression that, wow, once I got saved, it's going to be easy— well, once you get saved, you have the ability to say, I'm forgiven, and then I know where my eternal destination is going to be. But you got to then start— and here comes the soapbox— you got to get into the word of God, and you got to start learning from the Holy Spirit about what this salvation means. If you are anything like me, and I hope you weren't, I hope you got saved when you were 8 years old or when you were 10 years old. I got saved when I was about 30, so I had 29 and some change years on me of doing it the wrong way. So I had some horrible programming in my head. My mind, will, and emotion— my soul was all messed up. And the— in Romans 12:1 says, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present yourself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. And then 12:2 says, and do not be conformed to this world, but Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then we read 13 earlier in this episode, and if I misquoted that, I went from memory, and I want to do that occasionally. I don't want to have to look down at my Bible all the time and read it to you. We need to put this stuff in, and I want you to know that, you know, after 28 years, I've put some of this stuff into my heart, and that's what I'm encouraging you to do. You just keep digging in. And keep getting after this, and it's going to happen. And, and I want to— I'm going to stop there. This has gone longer than I really wanted it to go, but I want to— I kind of wanted to open this up. This is a personal responsibility thing, and if you're not into personal responsibility, if you think it's somebody else's fault, or you think somebody else needs to do something for you to get something, then we need to kind of twist that thinking just a little bit. And I hope that I can do that But right now I want to pray. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this episode, and I thank you, Lord, if they are here right now, then they are— they could be a fanatic. And Lord, I thank you that they love you, and I thank you that they are trying their best to get more like your Son. And I, I want to ask in Jesus' name that you would just help us to understand faith as we walk into faith And we open up the doors to faith and hope. Lord, you— Holy Spirit, you would help us to understand how we can apply these truths to our lives. Lord, we love you and we thank you, and 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.
