Faith and Hope Light and easy does it pulling it all together conclusion

Welcome to episode 129.

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 129. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I am finishing up Faith and Hope, and maybe some of you are out there going, finally! My goodness, this started back in episode 94, and God has taken me on a couple of twists and turns that I didn't see coming. But that's kind of how my Christian walk is, is I just stay in the word And I kind of try to keep these big old cauliflower ears open to kind of hear, or the leading— good Christian word, churchy word— the leading of the Holy Spirit. And that's really appropriate since Psalm 23 says God is our shepherd and we shall not want. The reason God called us sheep and that we are his and that he is our shepherd— have you noticed that a sheep's not a very good pack animal and a sheep isn't very good swimmer And a sheep doesn't do well on his own, and a sheep needs somebody there, a shepherd with a big staff. If you look at King David with his— he killed a lion and a bear. What if he wouldn't have been there on those days that the lion and the bear came to visit the sheep? What if the Good Shepherd would not have been there with his slingshot and the power of God behind him? I believe those sheep would have been destroyed. And that's the same thing with God. We have got to have Jesus as our Good Shepherd. We've got to be in the vine. And we're going to try to pull all this together. I know, I know, I know there's not probably any way that I can do that. So I've prayed and asked God to pull it all together, and I was surprised at the two verses that he gave me. One of them I thought was probably, I almost said pretty good. One of them I kind of saw coming, and that's in John 15:1. We've talked about Jesus as the vine, and that if we're not in the vine, we can do nothing. We can't grow any fruit without being in the vine. So we have to be, we're in the body of Christ. Jesus is our head. We have got all of that. And with the vine analogy, let me go and read that. I am the vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so that you will be my disciples. And if you're thinking about faith and hope and love and the law and obedience and sacrifice and being humble, all of those things kind of fit into us being in Christ. If we're in the vine and we become his disciples— and, and really, that's our goal. Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 28 to go into all the world and make disciples of the nations. He didn't say make babies, and we've talked about this multiple times. Jesus did not tell his disciples to make babies. He told them to make disciples, and the disciple is in the vine, he's in the word, he's bearing fruit, all of these things. And but you have got to— in, in to be in the vine and to be in the word You have got to rely on God, His Holy Spirit, and His Word. And Father God, all of these three combined will continue to help you grow fruit. And the fruit, remember, the fruit is for everyone else. The fruit is not for you. An apple tree doesn't pluck apples off of itself to eat. The apple tree produces apples for other people to eat. We as children of God, we are, we as trees that are planted by the rivers of water, we bear fruit for the world. We bear fruit so that when somebody is hungry— so there's a dying and, and thirsty and starving world out there— you and I are bearing fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Those fruit— we are fruit trees, and we are bearing the fruit of the Spirit so that the world can come when it needs it. Now, the world most of the time is probably going to spit on us, kick us, cuss us— what, what the world does with Christians. I mean, that's what it did with Jesus. But when, when the world was hungry, when the world was hurting, when the world was needing Jesus and he was walking here on earth, the world came and got what it needed. Now, it turned on him, but I believe that was motivated by the punk, this thief that comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And God allowed it to happen so that he could be the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb that took away the sin of the world. So all of this happened so that we could be saved. Now the second verse that I didn't see coming is found in Matthew 11:25. At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and had revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight, all things have been delivered to me by my Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. How about finishing up the teaching on faith and hope with a promise that it's going to be light and easy? How cool is our God? Light and easy. If we are in the vine— and I want you to go back to the apple tree or an orange tree or any kind of fruit-bearing tree. And I want you to think, and we talked about this in a previous episode, but how hard is it for the fruit— say it's an apple tree— how is it painful for the fruit to come out of the apple tree, or is it just natural? Isn't it just natural for the fruit to come out, for the apple blossom to show up on the apple tree, and then that blossom turns into— now I'm going to get way over my head on all this, but I'm no gardener or no— or a botanist maybe is the word I'm looking for. Now I am obviously not that guy, but how hard is it for an apple to become an apple on an apple tree? All it has to do is stay in the vine. All it has to do is to continue to be part of the tree, part of the trunk, part of the root system, and this apple branch or apple tree branch will produce apples. And that is true on any fruit-bearing tree. This is true for a fig tree, it's true for an orange tree, it's true for a peach tree, it's true for any tree that all it has to do is stay connected. And that again is what I'm begging you to do. I'm jumping up and down, flailing my arms, get in the Word of God. The only way that you can truly understand what faith and hope and love and joy and peace and childlike faith and having no fear and having strength and authority. The only way we can figure this stuff out is to get in the Word of God and then have the Holy Spirit quicken in us what the Holy Spirit wants us to know. And that is why I say we need to get into the Word, and that's why on these little 10-minute episodes I just want to come here every day and just encourage you Get in the Word of God. The only way that you and I are going to get stronger in the Lord is to continue eating from the Bread of Life. We got to continue to get nourishment. We got to continue to drink the water. The living water will never thirst. Jesus told the woman at the well, "If you knew who you were talking to, you would ask for living water." If you would go to this living water well and drink, you will never thirst spiritually. If you will go to this bread of life and eat from the bread of life, you will never hunger spiritually. And if you will, as, as it says in Matthew 11:28, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You come to Jesus, you accept him, you you fall down. And, and this is babes. Again, we talked about the childlike faith. Jesus is thanking the Father that he hid it from all these wise— you know, there's so many people that are so intelligent out there. Then you see all this garbage going on in the news, and you see how all these people that are, quote, in control, they lie and they manipulate and they're telling stories, and then they turn it around so it's somehow our fault. That's just a bunch of garbage. But look, we don't need to worry about what the world— the world is, is led by a liar. The world is led by the father of lies. The airways, if you're not dialed into the word of God, you are being misled one way or the other. And Jesus is giving us a picture when he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. How many of you, if you could just raise your hand, how many of you would like a little bit of rest for your soul, your mind, will, and emotion? How many of you just need a little bit of rest? All you got to do is just enter in to what Jesus is doing for you, or why, and just kind of go, God, why did you make me? God, what is going on? Why am I here? And I, you know, I know that's kind of deep questions, and, and we're not even trying to go that way, but I'm telling you, as God is my witness, I have entered into his yoke. I'm just doing this podcast thing, and you're following along with me, and I appreciate you being here. But if you're not here, if you turn this thing off tomorrow and don't ever come back, know this: I'm going to continue on because this is why God made me. God told me in not so many words, you're going to teach my people, and I am going to continue to do this. I just want to encourage and power and inspire you to get in the Word of God. And when I was asking him for a scripture or for a verse to finish this thing up on, and I know that I haven't finished faith and hope and love, and I know that you're not walking in perfect understanding of all of this or perfect wisdom of all of these concepts. This is, we're just scratching the surface. But if all we did was just pull back a layer of unbelief, or if all we did was just knock off some element of doubt in your life on a Word of God, then I feel like that we've won. We've won this battle. And I just wanna encourage you, I wanna encourage you just to stay on this, stay in the Word of God, stay on these ideas and try to get a little bit deeper, get a better understanding of grace and faith and hope and love than I've got. I dare you. I dare you to get in there and get after it and find out what grace really is. And then come back to me and say, "Hey, you had it all wrong. This is what grace looks like." or, "Hey, I don't think faith looks like a bridge at all. I think faith is this." Or say, "Hey, that thermostat analogy is a horrible analogy. I think that's a bunch of garbage, but I think if you use hope like this and faith like this, then it works a whole lot better. And that salt, that sodium chloride analogy, I think that's a bunch of garbage too." Do that. Dig in. Again, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna finish up with Proverbs 25:2. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it's the glory of kings to search out a matter. It's our job as kings, and that's— I want to introduce, as I'm doing this, I'm going to introduce teaching I've taught before, but I'm going to teach here in the near future. It's going to be called Kings and Priests. I'm going to talk about the Jesus pattern that God showed me. If you want to see some church growth or if you want to see growth in your ministry, or if you want to see growth in your Christian walk, I think next week's lesson may be valuable for you. It may be eye-opening. Maybe you've never seen this, or maybe you already knew this, and maybe this is just going to be a, a refresher course. So now you know what is coming next if you just need something to look forward to, and I know you do. I know you can't wait till the next episode comes out. But let's pray. God, I thank you so much for giving us your word. God, I thank you, Holy Spirit, for being here and leading us into your word. And I thank you that you heard my prayer and that you answered, Lord, the best that you could for me. And God, I pray that the person listening to this podcast, this episode, will see how it fits together, how your yoke, if we'll just be in the yoke with you, that you do all the heavy lifting, you do all the pulling, as long as we're going in your direction, as long as we're building your kingdom, Lord, You're in the yoke and all we're doing is following along. Lord, you're leading us, you're the good shepherd, and I pray in Jesus' name that you would just continue to lead and guide and direct us. God, I thank you for just being there for us, letting us be in the vine, and let us be a part of the vine, and allowing us to grow the fruit of the Spirit. God, I pray in Jesus' name that we would each concentrate on a specific fruit, that we're gonna try to grow for the people around us, and Lord, that we will not get upset when they pluck it off of our branch because they need it. Lord, it has not grown for us, it has grown for them. And Lord, I thank you for your word, I thank you for what you've done for us, and I thank you and we love 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 in the next episode.

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