Faith and Hope How do faith and grace work together part 3

Episode 117: 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 117. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. How would your life be different if grace and peace followed you all the days of your life? Well, it, it does. The grace of God is yours daily. The grace was poured out for all mankind over 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ died, lived a perfect life, and then died a death and was raised from the dead on the third day, and he is at the right hand of the Father right now making intercessions for us. And the grace of God, all of the things that he won in that victory at the cross, all of those things have been added up for you and I, and we just got to figure out how to go get them. And we're going to do that by faith. And again, faith is an action word. Faith is getting after it. And we're going to look at some examples today on faith, and it's a positive response. You can't be in fear and faith. So if, if you're doing something out of fear, if you're fearful— and that's why Satan— again, this is No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast— if you do anything in fear, faith cannot work. And if we look back at what Jesus said to Jairus back in Mark 5 is 21. You'll, you'll find the story, 5:21 through 36. Well, actually it goes past 36, but I want to talk about when Jesus heard the word, when Jairus heard the word, don't trouble the master. And, and we're going to pick it up in 35. While he was still speaking, some came from the ruler of the synagogue's house who said, your daughter is dead, why trouble the teacher any further? As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not be afraid, only believe.' Fear will stop faith in its tracks. You cannot have faith and fear at the same time. That's why you have got to release that unbelief. Unbelief is the same thing, and unbelief kind of, I think, is comes out of fear, because if you truly know God and you know grace and you know that these are the promises Fear's got to leave. And part of what the enemy does is so subtle, but it is so dangerous. He just has us watching the news. And I know when I watch the news, and I've really had to turn it off— I talked to a friend of mine the other day and was telling him, you know, I very rarely watch the news anymore because it's just so negative. But it just comes in and I hear these things and I get all fired up and I get all wrapped around the axle about something that I can't control. It takes me days to get over it. And if I continually put that garbage in my head, and I've heard someone else say, one of the teachers that I listen to calls it the 12, the 10 Spies Network, because back in, you know, when Joshua, well actually when Moses sent out the 12 spies into the land of Canaan to spy out the land that was flowing with milk and honey, 10 of those spies came back with a negative report. And the 10 spies network like CNN and even Fox News and all of these other— they're not giving us the news that's going to lift us up and it's going to say, hey, Jesus did this, or God, look at what the church is doing, and all of these things. You may have a nice warm fuzzy report every now and then, but for the most part, it's all this negative stuff. It's all this stuff to get you all fired up, but really what it does is it brings in fear. And so when you have fear present, it's kind of like just a wet blanket, or it's just a fire hose. If faith is a fire, then it just puts that fire out. And we have got to release the fear. And this is what Jesus said to Jairus in, in Mark 5:36. And notice, as soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not be afraid, only believe. And then he permitted no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John. I believe Jesus knew who had faith and who had the unbelief and who was walking in fear. I think you got to keep your crowd small and, and the people that, that you allow to speak into your life. And that's why I want to say I appreciate you if you've been a part of this podcast and these episodes. I want to thank you for trusting me to speak faith and speak power and love into your life. And the reason that I, I'm pretty confident that I'm doing is because I'm using the word of God. I'm using it to build you up. I, you know, I'm not using it to build me up. I'm telling you, this takes me a lot of effort and a lot of time, and I'm doing it for you, and I'm doing it to glorify God because God put me here on this earth and he gave me a talent for opening up the word and teaching. And I just enjoy doing this. I enjoy opening up the Word of God and telling you what I see. Now sometimes I may be off, and I'm not— I'm telling you, perfection is not the goal. It is obedience to what God put on me. God said, Greg— he didn't say this, but he pushes me. I can feel God kind of urging me, or, you know, what's the— what's a good churchy word? I can, I can sense God leading me. To teach you. And I, and I don't know if that's it. I, I just know that I can't put this down. I, I just can't. Every time I try to not teach the Bible, it just drives me crazy. It— I just got— I'm talking about, I'm reading it all the time, and so I'm talking about it. And I thought, well, why not just have a podcast? There's other people that have podcasts, and it doesn't cost you anything other than time to listen to this. But what I want to do is I want to build you up. I want to encourage you. I want to empower you that if you'll get into this Bible and if you will turn off some of that garbage and some of the music and some of the stuff coming into your life, it will be easier to build up your faith. Now, that's not to say you got to unplug from everything, and I'm not of that, but I do know of the three— and I know you're probably getting tired of me talking about it, but the more I talk about it, maybe the more it'll start sinking in— that we have three enemies, and only one of them is the punk. Only one of them is Satan, but he's got his meat hooks in all of the other two, or the other two into the world system. If you don't think that Satan is not in Big Tech and all these social media giants, all these people, none of them— I, I don't know of any of them that profess Christianity. I mean, they all kind of have their own little thing, and they got their own little thing going, and I'm not calling them out. I'm just saying, if you're dialed into all of this and you're spending more time on the book of faces, on the YouTubes, or on the Instagrams than you are in God's word, you know, there may be a reason that faith isn't working really good in your life. It may just boil down to you're being deceived. John 8:32 says, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. And not, you shall know the news of the day and the news of the day shall make you free. It is the truth, and there's only one truth. And Jesus said that in John 14:6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. Jesus is saying he is the way. In fact, Christians back in the day, they were— it was called the way. And so that, I mean, it was because of what Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. The way. That was the Christian— that was the name for the Christian. They were people of the way. Well, I hope I made my point on the fear. Now I want to go to the unbelief. About this for in multiple episodes about doubt and unbelief, but we're going to go to Mark 11:22-24. So Jesus answered and said to them, have faith in God, for assuredly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. Now you may notice Mark 5:36 and 11:22-24 are anchor scriptures for this podcast that just happens to be titled No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe. And it's taking from these two scriptures, and it's taken because Jesus was saying, look, this is how you have faith. Is you've got to have no doubt and no fear, and you have to just believe. From there, you got no doubt, no fear, then believe. Only believe. That— if I could get in one thing as I'm jumping up and down and trying to make my point, is that we have to quit reading our Bible only. You've got to read it, you got to start believing what you read. It's not enough to read the words on the page. And that's why I've spent so much time talking about what does grace look like, what does faith look like, what does hope look like, what about the law, what about all this other stuff, what about love. All of these things are important. Humility, surrender, all of these things are important. But if you're just reading words and they're just words to get to the next paragraph, it's not going to take hold. Nothing is going to be planted. We have got to understand that the Word of God is living and breathing. It's a two-edged sword. It is Jesus. It is so much, and it's where the Holy Spirit needs us to be so that he can properly educate us. He's gonna lead us into all truth. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. The words that I speak are spirit and they are life. They are truth." All of this stuff, it all comes together, but it starts with the Word of God. And it starts with believing the things that you read. And I'm going to go back to telling— there's 7 principles, and I'm probably in the next episode I'm going to bring those back up. 7 things, 7 truths that I think over 70% of Christians don't believe. All 7 of these truths, and it's mind-blowing, some of these things. And they're not way out there, they're not things that you would think, well, you know, it's just what the world is, what society is, what Satan— hath God said? Has God truly said? Is that really in the Bible? Do you believe the Bible? I mean, you can just hear Satan's slimy voice when you start hearing these truths in the next episode that I'm going to talk about, these 7 things that is coming against the church. And there's a lot in the church, and, and maybe You're, when you hear some of them, you'll go, "Eh, well." It's based on the Bible. These are truths that are found in the Word of God, and I'm gonna bring those to you on the next episode. But let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your Word. I thank you for Jesus. Thank Jesus, thank you for coming and living the life that we could not live, giving us the example to live by, God. And I thank you for not mashing me. Every time I mess up, I thank you, God, that even though I mess up and probably daily, that Lord, you still help me back up, dust me off, and let me— tell me to go get it again. And I thank you for loving me. I thank you for loving this person listening to this episode. And I thank you one more time for sending your Spirit to be with us, to never leave us nor forsake us. God, we love you. We thank 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.