In Episode 114 of the “No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe” podcast, host Greg Ryan opens with a biblical proclamation and quickly moves to a deep exploration of God’s grace. He stresses the importance of visualizing spiritual words—grace, joy, peace, love—so listeners can internalize their meaning. Ryan describes grace as a “treasure chest” of God’s promises waiting to be appropriated, and he introduces a cruise‑ship analogy: believers have already bought a ticket (Jesus paid the price), and the ship offers all‑inclusive blessings that should be fully enjoyed rather than staying in a cabin. He argues that faith is a muscle that grows when unbelief is pushed aside, and that focusing on God’s promises leaves no room for doubt. The episode shifts to spiritual warfare, urging listeners to take up the “sword of the Spirit” (the Word of God) and the “whole armor of God” to defeat Satan, whom he describes as a powerless “punk” fed by human unbelief. Ryan repeatedly encourages daily, intentional Bible reading, allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate the text, and frames the Christian life as a marathon‑style battle for dominion over God’s creation. He concludes with a prayer for deeper understanding of grace, affirming that God’s grace surpasses all understanding and that believers are God’s favorites, invited to live victoriously.
Welcome to episode 114, 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 114, and I want to start this episode a little different than I have in the past, and it's because we've already talked about grace and we're kind of getting an idea, and I want to finish up with the cruise ship story today. But before I do, I want to start with a scripture that Paul starts most of his epistles with, and it is: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That is such a wonderful— and I don't know why it took me so long to get to that, but since we have not talked about grace yet, I, you know, I've just got an aversion to just reading words, and I don't know if you figured that out yet or not, but I just need to have— when I read a word, I need to have a picture of what that word means, if, if I can picture it. And so that's in my mind when I'm talking about grace and and truth and peace and joy and faith and mercy and love, all of those things, I think that we need to have some kind of representation in our minds, in our mind's eye, in the eyes of our heart. All of those things, we're kind of trying to pull all of this teaching together. But if we can picture what that means to us, where we've got a deep down sense of, I know what that is. And when you, when you hear the word joy, then you, the— you feel what joy is. But I just sure don't want to chase that rabbit today. I want to get back to the grace of God, and I want us to be able to picture— when we see the word grace, or when we read the word grace, or we talk about grace, I want us to see this treasure chest of God's promises just sitting, waiting for you to appropriate into your life. I just have to have you, if you can, if you can picture it— and I'm doing this for me too, and don't think that, that I'm so spiritual that I've got all this stuff figured out. The more that I dig into this word and the more that I try to teach you this word, the more that I'm learning. And I've just— when I see these words now, is I get— I remind myself, you know, that is, that is just sitting there waiting for me. And some of these promises of God And we're going to talk in the next episode about how we're going to build this bridge of faith and to get over there. But we had to figure out what we're going towards. We got to have a goal in mind, and the goal is grace. And I want you to know that the grace of God has been poured out for all humanity. Whether you participate in the grace of God or not, it is there waiting for you in the spirit realm. And that's why Satan— here comes the soapbox moment— this is why Satan does not want you in the word of God. He does not want you reading God's word because then you'll figure it out for yourself with the help of the Holy Spirit. You will know that the grace of God is for— is poured out for you, and that you are God's favorite. All you really have to do is ask using your faith. So we're going to get into all that. We're going to try to tie this all up in a pretty little bow here, probably. And I don't even know, it— this has gone on longer than I thought. It— this is a lot when you start talking about hope and faith. And if you can't— if you don't introduce grace, and if you don't talk about love, and if you don't talk about the law, I think that's part of the problem, is that we start, you know, we start throwing these words like, we got to have faith, you just got to have more faith, brother. Jesus, again, we're going to talk about the mustard seed. You don't need more faith, you need less unbelief. We have got to get our unbelief out of the way. But I think instead of trying to push unbelief out, we can just start pulling in all of this grace, and there just won't be any room for unbelief. When God starts moving in his grace, when you see the grace of God working in your life, there's not going to be a whole lot of room for unbelief. It's just going to get pushed out. And one of the things I found in life is that if I concentrate on my strengths instead of my weaknesses, my strengths grow, and it kind of pushes my weaknesses. I still have my weaknesses, but they get pushed aside. Because my strengths are getting stronger. I don't know if that makes any sense, but with that same mindset, I want to go in and push in this— pull this grace of God into our lives. One of the reasons that I tell you that God's not mad at you and that you are God's favorite is because everything's just sitting there piled up in the spirit realm waiting on us to take advantage of. God's not stuck. You know, when people— I, I hear people sometimes, and, and I think they're doing it out of a— what's the spiritual word— they're doing it out of a pure heart, if you will. But they're saying, you know, I'm just going to get in my prayer closet, I'm going to move God, I'm going to get God to move on this thing. When I hear that, I'm thinking, you know, God's not stuck. God is not sitting there stuck and waiting on you to act. God has already acted. God has already done everything that he's going to do for you or I. None of this has caught God off guard. God is sitting there in heaven. He is the perfect Father. And he's wanting us to use our faith, and he's wanting you— us to use his word. And the Holy Spirit is there to help, and Father God is there with his arms open in, in the spirit realm saying, take another step, take another step. And that's what I want to encourage you. That's why I use that— the cruise ship analogy. I just think it works. One, because I really like going on a cruise. I've only been on two in my life. And I enjoyed both of them. The second one that I went on, I went on with some friends and it was— the time was short. I mean, we only went for like 4 days, I think. That's aside. Now that's a rabbit, but I do enjoy the cruise ship. And what I found is that there's just so much to do on this ship and there's so many things. And the cool thing is, is once you buy the ticket, you're pretty much good for all of it. You know, there's some extras and I don't want someone writing in or calling in saying, You know, you gotta buy this and you gotta do this, but for the most part, when you walk on that ship, you don't have to worry about going hungry and you don't have to worry about going thirsty. And you are gonna eat and drink and someone's gonna take care of you. You walk out of your room, your cabin, and someone comes in. You walk back in 2, 3 hours later and the bed's all made. And I mean, it's just wonderful. I mean, people, you're getting pampered. All of those things are cool. And what I want to key in on is God has given us all of those things. Every promise in the word of God is ours, and every promise that God has given us, we can appropriate to our lives. We have to listen to it. Faith come by hearing, hearing by the word of God. And so we have got to continue to build up our faith. It's like a muscle. Again, it is— it's a verb, it's a noun and a verb. The way I've got it pictured, I got to picture this bridge, and we're getting And I'm kind of feeling myself trying to teach on faith, but I really want to get this grace not put to bed, but I want you to get this picture that everything, all of these promises, all of these things that are in the Bible are in the Bible for you, and they're in the Bible for me, and we have to pull them out. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it's the glory of kings to search out a matter. And you and I are kings. Jesus is the King of Kings and he is the Lord of Lords, and he put us here on earth for a purpose, and that purpose is to expand his kingdom. And you do it. And you know, you and I probably are not going to fill soccer stadiums or football stadiums or baseball stadiums. I'm not here to talk to 100,000 people. I'm here to talk to you, and I'm here to encourage you take up the sword of the Spirit, take up the whole armor of God, and let's go kick the crap out of Satan. I am so sick of him. He hates us. I've got a book that I'm gonna write. I'm gonna probably give you the, the, uh, title down the road, but I've got a book that I'm probably gonna write, and it has to do with Satan and kicking his teeth in. I am so sick, and he's such a punk, and he's just— he has no power except what we give him. I just know that we have given him way too much space in our head. We've given him way too much unbelief, and he just questions all the time the Word of God, and he's just a punk, and he's gotta go. But we are gonna beat, he's defeated, he just hadn't been banished. So we just need to keep pushing him back. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. We have all of these promises in the Word of God, but we have to take authority of it. We have to put it inside of us. We need to grab our sword and we need to go get after it. And the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. And that's why I'm always constantly telling you, hey, grab the Bible, pick it up, you know, just read a few chapters, read a few verses, and just, just kind of let it just percolate, for lack of a better word. It just kind of gets into your system. And I'm not against the Bible in a year. If you're just trying to get from start to finish, it's better than not reading the Bible at all. But if you're reading and wanting to spend time with God and wanting to spend time with his Holy Spirit, and you start reading the Bible with, with an intention of finding out something, and you start reading and the Holy Spirit starts opening up your mind, it's okay to stop. It's okay to just sit there and say, Holy Spirit, what are you trying to tell me? And then just let that word go for the day and then go back to that same word the next morning. And read that— those same verses, the same chapter again, and let it speak to you. It's okay. There's— this is not a sprint, this is a marathon race, and we can really walk. You can, you can just barely move through this world, and I'm telling you, if you take progress, daily progress every single day, you'd be amazed. I'm amazed at where God has me from where I started. Since he is not a respecter of persons, He'll do the same thing for you. I promise you, you are God's favorite, and I am here to help. I'm just here to encourage, inspire, and empower you to pick up his word. It is so cool. I just— he changed my life with it, and if he changed my life, he'll change your life. I really want us to, to know, when, when you're thinking of— when you see the word grace, I want you to think, even if you don't like cruise ships, I want you to think of all of the things that go with the purchase. Jesus paid the price. The ticket has been bought. There's no more— you don't have to— you can't pay it anyway. You couldn't pay the price, so Jesus got you on this ship. Take advantage of the whole thing. Don't sit in your cabin. Don't eat the cheese crackers. Don't eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Get out there and get that 7-course meal. Ask God, man, what do you want me to see today? And just start walking around and start looking at the world that God created in 6 days, by the way. And there's a rabbit. But he created this for you and I to have dominion over, and we are— need that. We need to take our dominion, and we need to go get after this thing we call life. And again, I'm going to say one more time that life is a battle. Life is— you know, people call it the game of life, but I think it's a battle, and it's a battle to the death. None of us are getting out of this thing alive, so we might as well fight for God, our King, and our Savior and our Lord. And we might as well be on the winning team because I read the end of the book and we're gonna win. That's enough for today. I thank you for being a part of this. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you, Holy Spirit, for leading and guiding and direct us into all truth. God, please open up our hearts, open up our minds to just show us this grace, this word that's grace. It is 5 letters But Lord, it is so powerful. The grace of God, it surpasses all of the peace of God, surpasses all understanding. But the grace of God is so wonderful. Lord, help us to understand what you've done for us. Lord, help us to know you and to see everything that you're doing in our lives. 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.
