In episode 106 of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, host Greg Ryan delivers a passionate devotional centered on the importance of spending time in God’s Word, the relationship between the Law and faith, and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. He begins by urging listeners to read the Bible not merely to get through chapters, but to encounter God personally, emphasizing that true relationship with Jesus is cultivated through Scripture and the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Ryan then contrasts the Law—presented as an impossible, perfect standard that condemns all humanity—with faith, explaining that the Law reveals our sinfulness and our need for a spotless Savior. He outlines how Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Law, became the sinless “spotless lamb,” and died as a substitutionary sacrifice, thereby providing justification for believers. Ryan also touches on the future judgment seat, urging listeners not to judge others because each person will answer to Christ individually. Throughout, he shares personal testimony of battling to read the Word, encourages daily Bible engagement, and closes with a prayer for the Holy Spirit to lead listeners into truth. The episode serves both as theological instruction and practical encouragement to deepen one’s walk with Christ.
Welcome to episode 106.
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 106. If this is your first time with us, thank you for stopping by. If you are a frequent flyer, welcome back, you fanatic. Well, I am going to continue the talk on faith and hope. I gave you a picture the last 3 episodes on what faith, hope, and grace— and we're— I just want you to kind of hang on to that picture right now. I don't want you to do anything with it. We're going to go back to that probably multiple times. But I, again, like I told you, we need to have a handle on what these things look like so that when we start, instead of just calling words like my wife says, you know, when she gets tired and she starts reading her Bible or any book or whatever and she's getting tired, she's not reading the material, she's not understanding what she's reading, she's just calling out words and she'll just shut it and then she'll go to bed. And we're all the same way. And when we start reading our Bible, if your goal is to read the Bible, I'll guarantee you there's times when all you do is just call words. You're just reading the words to get to the chapter, to get to that point in the book that you said, "I'm gonna get through this." That is not the reason to read the Bible. The reason to read the Bible is to spend time with God and to get to know who God is. You wanna spend time in his word because he is the word. Again, here's the soapbox moment. If you're not in his word, you're not spending time with God. Now you can pray to God and you can talk to him and the Holy Spirit is there and I can't argue that. And you can listen to praise and worship music, and all of that is great. The true relationship is built with time with Jesus, and Jesus is the Word. And the Holy Spirit is with us, but he leads us into all truth. And the only way he can lead us, other than speaking directly to us or giving us thoughts and just consistently and constantly giving you the same thought over and over and over until he just makes you do what he wants you to do. The only way to spend time with Jesus here on Earth, in my opinion, that, that's really going to elevate your life is spending time in his word. Again, I'm going to jump off this soapbox, but I just want to encourage you. My whole reason for being here is just to encourage you to get into God's word, because I know how much it's changed my life. I know what it means to me the time that I spend in the Word of God and how the Holy Spirit speaks to me through God's Word. I just want the same thing for you. I really do. That— he's going to change me because I'm going to stay in the Word whether you do or not. So your life— my judgment seat experience is probably not going to have anything to do with your life. So that's another reason why we don't judge people. And this is a rabbit I'm about to start chasing, but we are not to judge people because we've got our own life to deal with. We've got our own issues to deal with. And if I'm sitting there judging somebody else, I don't want— we're all going to have a judgment seat experience if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. We're going to sit down in the judgment seat of Christ, and we're going to answer for everything that we do. And I don't want to answer for something that I put my eyebrow up and cock my head to the right a little bit and say, well, I wonder why they did that. Well, I don't have to wonder. I don't have to care because I'm told not to judge you. So whatever you're doing and however you're living, that's none of my business. And so what I'm here to do— and here I'm gonna again one more time encourage you— get in the Word of God, because the Holy Spirit is the one that leads you into all truth. It's the other guy who leads you away from the truth. He don't want you anywhere near this Bible. And I know from personal experience that he fights it all the time. Me trying to get into the Word of God is a constant battle, but I've just— there's a power of a made-up mind and I just make up my mind, look, I'm getting in the Word today. And so I just get in the Word and I read the Word and I spend time in the Word. And again, I'm not super spiritual. I just sit down and take the time just to read the Bible. I don't know what I'm gonna get out of it. God knows what he's gonna put in, but I'm ready to receive. I give God time every day, and I just want to encourage you to do that too. Well, enough of that, and I'm sorry, somebody needed to hear that. Maybe it was me. But I want to talk about faith, and I know that faith is such a huge topic. Faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. Faith is one of the top 3 that Paul was talking about in Corinthians 13, that these are the 3 things. If you're going to do 3 things in your life and you're going to, you're going to work on 3 topics: faith, hope, and love. And if you don't know what love is, I can encourage you to read the whole chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. Now I call that the love chapter. It's going to teach you what love is. He said that, you know, if you do things and you don't do it in love, then it's, it's worthless. It counts you nothing. So you need to know what love is, but that's not this episode. We're going to talk about faith. And again, when I talk about faith, I want to talk about what faith right now, what it's not. And it's easier kind of for me sometimes to picture what faith is when I look at what it's not. And faith is not the law. The law of God is— was given so that we would have a standard. And let's go to Romans 3:19-20. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Faith is different. I want to bring the law up just to shine a light on, because I think a lot of times people get saved, and I look back when I was saved, you know, we're saved, we're under the law until we come into Christ, until we become a Christian. We are— everyone is under the law, and we're trying to keep the law, and we're trying to do good. The law is not used as a whipping boy for Christians. The law is used to keep non-Christians in line. And I, I want that to sink in for a minute, and, and because you're going to be held— when you stand before God, you're going to be held to the standard that God has set, and the standard that he set is perfection. And if you can't stand up to that, you're going to hell. And I hate to be that harsh, and I hate to be that straightforward, but that's just the rules. I didn't write no, not one word of this book. I am nowhere near as good as God, and I don't have nowhere near the information or the knowledge and the wisdom that God's got. But he, he set the standard, and he had Ten Commandments, and I think there's 613 laws, I've been told. I hadn't counted them. You've got to keep every one of those. You can't miss on one. If you miss on one law, you are bound for hell. And that is harsh, that is brutal, and I think that's kind of why people, you know, "That's just too much, that's just so mean." I didn't write the book. God said, "This is the way, this is perfection." And then, just to show you how cool God is, God sent his Son to live that life he said was perfection. Jesus Christ came here on earth, he was born a virgin, he was a baby. And he lived a perfect life. He did not break one law. He had the blood of God in him, and he lived perfection. And then the blood of God that was in him was nailed to the cross because we needed a spotless lamb, and that was the spotless lamb. And now we can look at that spotless, sinless lamb and that sacrifice for our sin, all sin. He said he put the all sin on that one person. And again, it's so wonderful when you start looking at how, how God did it, because I— before I was saying it was like, how can one guy, how can Adam biting one piece of fruit, you know? And I've seen people put an apple up there. I don't think it was an apple. I mean, because I, I like apples, and I don't think that's sin to eat an apple. But it was one piece of fruit. It's from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. He bit it, and he was the second person to bite it. And we've already talked about it on a previous episode. Eve bit the fruit first, and then she handed it to Adam, and he bit it. And being the second person, he bit the fruit, and it was accounted one man's sin put us all into sin. And I've just like, wow, that is pretty harsh, God. But the cool thing about it If one man's sin can bring everybody down, what about one man's perfection can bring everybody up? It's so simp— the simplicity of it is so cool, but it is not easy because it is— it took a perfect, not break one law for the whole life, and it, it took a God, and God became man, and he walked here on Earth. And I know we're, we're not talking about— I mean, it seems like we're not talking about faith. You got to figure out what the law is before we can figure out what faith is. I mean, we kind of— it's kind of a compare and contrast kind of thing. I want to get us the picture that the law came to show us, you and I, that we are, we are not worthy. We, we should have died if we break one. It's a pass/fail deal, not you get an 80%. It's not graded on a curve. If you miss one question, if you just wake up one day and you're trying to keep this whole law, and you wake up one day and you break one— you've kept it for, say, you kept it for 29, 30 years, and you wake up one day and you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you break one law, you're guilty of all of it. It's like you broke them all day every day for the first 30 years of your life. It's impossible. It says all have sinned, all have missed the mark. Nobody can live by the law's standard except one. God had one superstar and it wasn't you or I. It was Jesus, and he lived a perfect life, and he died a death that he should not have had to have died, but he died it for— he died for me. But he also— the good news is he died for you. He died once for all. I kind of want to set the table on this one. I, I wanted to get— and this is going to be— I'm telling you, there's been a bunch of books written on faith, there's been a few written on hope and grace and all of that, and we're going to try to mix it all together, so it's going to take time. To put this thing together in a 10-minute episode. So I just kind of want to set the table. We're going to talk about the law, we're going to talk about how that affects us. Let's pray before we go. God, I thank you so much for sending your Son to die on the cross, Lord, for me and for this person that's listening to this episode. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would open up your word to them, and when they read your word, that Holy Spirit, you will lead them into all truth. God, I thank you. 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 on the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
