Faith and Hope How do faith and grace work together part 2

Welcome to episode 116.

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 116. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to start every episode from here on out with those words because we've talked about grace. Now we're going to talk about peace, but not in this series. I'm thinking if it's good enough for the Apostle Paul to put in just about every one of his writings I think it's good enough to put in every one of my episodes from here on out. You will have that as a staple, something else to look forward to. I know that you wait every day for this episode to come out. That might be a slight over-exaggeration, but I do thank you for being here, and I— it does mean a lot to me that you listen. I appreciate the feedback. Any kind of review would be wonderful. I'm told that that does not hurt on the interwebs. And so if you would feel led for a good churchy word to put in a review, I would appreciate it. And tell other people. I've been talking about promoting this, have not. I've got a confession. I have really not told anybody about this podcast and the people that are listening. I did do a Facebook post a few times, and so I just, I thank you for being a part of this. I really don't know everybody that's out there, but I've talked to a few of you, and thank you for the positive feedback. And I'm going to continue to do this for the rest of 2021 and probably into 2022 if the Lord tarries. But I want to get back to talking about faith, and I've said that it's a noun and a verb. And the noun, because we go to Hebrews 11:1, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So now faith, the right now faith, and that's part of the fanatic definition where the end is now. Now faith, but faith is a substance, which to me means that it's made of something, which again means that it's a noun. You can't have something that's not a person, place, or thing. So something I think would be a thing. It's a substance. So that's where I get the noun. But also when you look at when faith is activated or when someone acts in faith they're acting in faith. The just shall live by faith. You know, we've got a lot of things that kind of contradict it being a noun because you have to take action. And so I believe that it's a noun, and you could also say it's kind of a verb, would be like faithing, like when we start using and exercising our faith in different situations. And I've already told you the picture that I have for faith. I think that is an episode 104. In fact, I know it's 104, I just looked at it on my phone. In that episode, I talk about the bridge, the suspension bridge to somewhere, which is actually— I see the cloud bank. Because we talked about grace in the previous episode, I think it all is going to start working together. I'm going to try to pull all this together, but we kind of got to get an idea. We had to know what grace is to know what we're going into, the spirit realm. It's all laid up for us, the treasure of God, the grace of God is all laid up. Because of what Jesus did on the cross. So it's sitting there in the spirit realm for us, waiting for us. It's already been done. We don't have to move God. Remember, he's not stuck. We just got to go in there by faith and appropriate it to our life. I think faith is appropriating the promises of God to our life. If you need a working definition, it's the appropriation of grace into our lives. I don't know, that's kind of fancy pants. When you walk on the bridge, and as I'm walking on this bridge, the substance is the promises of God. So you're building your faith up as you, as you read your word, as you putting this— faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So as you're reading the word, and that's kind of why when you're trying to get something done in the spirit realm, that's why the, the 365-day reading plan for the Bible That's more of a, a big old shotgun approach to reading the word. It's a lot better than not reading the Bible, but it's, if you're trying to get something done in the spirit realm or in this physical realm, you need to be more specific. You need to start searching out a thing. Again, Proverbs 25:2, we're gonna keep going back to this. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it is the glory of kings to search out a matter. So you've got to— being a king, you've got to search this thing out. You may have heard the saying hidden in plain sight. The word of God has got all the truths hidden, but it's all in the book. They're not hidden, you know, where you got to go start an expedition and you got to go to Egypt and you got to dig through these tombs and go into the pyramids and all of this stuff, and it's hidden behind a secret trap door like Indiana Jones. That is not what it's talking about. It is in the Word of God, but it's spiritually discerned. So you've got to pray. The Holy Spirit has got to lead you into all truth. He is the author of the book. There are a lot of writers, but there's one author, and it's God. You've got to search out— and in fact, it helps me a bunch if I start asking God ahead of time, God, what is it that you want me to find out? Or what is it that you want me to learn from this? Or If it's a specific thing that I'm after, I start asking him, God, I need, I need more clarity on this topic, on, on debt, on financing, on all of these things. They're all of the answers. You hear all the answers are in the word of God, and it's true, but you have to search it out. You just can't read. You can't pick up John, the Gospel of John, and read John through and know everything God was thinking. And you can't pick up 1 Thessalonians or Galatians and start reading that, just read through that, and go, oh, I understand. There's certain truths, and you can't take it out of context. And I'm not telling you to pick and choose verses in the Bible. You have to read it all in context. There are also truths, they're kind of interwoven throughout the Bible. The one thing that I think is all the way through the Bible is faith is voice activated. You have got to speak the word of God out. You have got to use your voice. That's why a lot of times in, in this podcast, why I think one of the reasons that Satan kind of came against me and had me so scattered— he still fights me every day. I still, just to be honest, I've still got a little bit of that imposter syndrome, whatever that means, but I still hear the punk in my head telling me, who are you to be talking about the Bible? Who are you to be bringing these truths out to the world? And I, I've told you before, I'm just ignoring it, but that don't mean it's still not there. And I'm taking imperfect action as I follow after my perfect example, which was Jesus. And so I look at how Jesus did things, and I kind of look at how other people are doing things, and I kind of hold them up. And I'm not trying to hold other ministries up to Gee, but that's— I think that's what the word of God tells you. You know, none of us are perfect, so none of us are going to get this thing all the way right. But there are people in the body of Christ who are searching after God with everything they have, and they're doing everything they can to please our Heavenly Father. And it, and it does not hurt to see how they see the Bible. And, and that's one of the reasons why I'm here, is because other people have taught me things. And so, and I internalized that. And so as, as my pastor is teaching me lessons, and that really the four foundations of the church has come from one of his lessons, because the way that the church is set up, the modern church, he's got to go on to the next topic, he's got to go on to the next thing to keep feeding the sheep that are in his church. And so I kind of just slowed down and said Wait a minute, that is incredible, those four foundations. And then when I started praying and the wheel in the middle of the wheel, I started seeing those four foundations as a standard that we could live our lives in the church. I, I just think that there is a spirit realm and a physical realm, and we— the spirit realm is elevated. So if we don't get the spirit realm right in our life, it doesn't really matter how we handle this physical realm. And a lot of the goal-setting things and a lot of the, the issues that I have— and I didn't really realize I had them until all of this started coming together— but they're putting the spiritual on the same plane as the physical. So finances, spirit, you know, you need to work on your spirit life in the same manner that you need to work on your finances, and you need to work on your marriage in the same vein as you you know, studying the word. And if you don't study the word as much as you should, then, you know, you need to bring that up a little bit. I believe it's the exact opposite. I believe that we are warring— we are not warring against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of this dark age. We are warring against evil.

We are—

and evil is kind of permeated into this world system that we have. So we've got We've got Satan, we've got this worldly system, and he's the prince and power of the air, is what the word says. So we've got him and all of his little demons, and then they're permeating all this world system. And why you're kind of feeling like you're out of control and angst and all of that stuff is because you're probably listening to what the world is giving you, and you're probably immersed in that lifestyle. I know I've got a cell phone. I know it's a smartphone. It's not really that smart with it in my hand, but it has a lot of technology in it that I don't use all that well. And we haven't even talked about our third enemy, which is your flesh, the cravings of your body. You know, you feed your body daily. I would imagine probably a couple, two, three times a day you put something in your body to give it nourishment, and you walk away from the Bible like it's not going to feed you, like it's not the bread of life. I'm here to tell you, soapbox moment, Get in the Word of God because it is so much. It is the Word of God. It is the bread of life. It is living water. It is the sword of the Spirit. It is incorruptible seed. It is Jesus. And I'm telling you, the Word is where our faith comes from. And if we don't get in the Word of God, you cannot build your faith. And I have got to stop right there. I'm going to pray. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this. I pray that your— their faith Lord, as we're just introducing what faith is, I pray that you would quicken in their spirit the faith that you have put into them, the measure of faith. And the word says that we don't need a lot, Lord, we just need your faith, and we need to expand that. Holy Spirit, I pray in Jesus' name that you would help us exercise our faith, help us to understand in these next couple of lessons what faith is and how faith works.. And Lord, I pray that we would just get a quickening of understanding and knowledge from the power of God that we, we can use this faith to move mountains. God, I 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 on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.