Faith and Hope What does grace look like

Welcome to episode 105.

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 105. I want to get right in. We've talked about what hope looks like. We've talked about what faith looks like. And now I kind of want to get an idea of what grace looks like, because I think we're going to need all three. Now, 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, "Now abide faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." but I think you got to mix grace in there. So I'm kind of just doing a little bit of addition that's not in— I'm not adding to the word of God. I think you have to mix grace with faith, but I also think you need faith and hope and love. That if you figure this whole thing out and you don't have love, I mean, you, you've missed the whole mark because God is love. And again, I go— if you just go back in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, I've told you this multiple times, but I've memorized that scripture. I've put that into my spirit man. And I, you know, I sometimes I call it because when I start feeling myself getting anxious, because God is patient, God is kind, God does not envy. And when I'm driving on the road, I'm telling you, I've got to continually say that over and over, that God is patient, God is kind, God does not envy, God does not parade himself, he is not puffed up, he does not behave rudely. He does not seek his own. He is not provoked. He thinks no evil. He does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. He bears all things. He believes all things. He hopes all things. He endures all things. Love never fails. God is love. But man, when I'm driving, and I don't know what it is about the driving, but I, I feel myself getting all wrapped around the axle about trying to— oh my goodness, I just want to change people as they're driving, and I can't change anything. I can teach people, but I— it's you, you got to be the one to change. So I'm driving, and I— so what I'm doing is I'm praying. I'm reminding myself that love is patient. God is patient. Greg is patient. Greg is kind. Greg is not provoked. Greg struggles with behind the wheel sometimes. I'm getting better, I really am. But I had a friend of mine tell me what— said, man, why are you getting up so uptight? And this man that told me that, he hadn't really had a job for like a year, and he was telling me that, and I'm like, dude, and I'm thinking to myself, are you kidding me? I mean, I'm going to the next appointment, and I've got this, and I've got that, and I've got this, and I got that. And I thought, you know, negatively, well, some of us has got to work for a living. So anyway, that's just my head going on, but I've constantly tried to settle down and try to not take myself so serious and try to not be in such a hurry. God told me one time that he walked everywhere he went, and that kind of shook me up. I never even thought about that. It has slowed me down a little bit, but I still— I'm still Greg, and I'm still trying to clean this thing up, and it's, it's a struggle. It's a work in process. I promise you, I have not made it. I have left— I, you know, I forget those— like Paul, I forget those things that are behind me, and I press forward. So I— that's where I'm going. I'm going forward. And when I, when I get into a bind and I get on the street, I remind myself about 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and what love is. I was in Corinthians 13 and saw, and saw, now abide faith, hope, and love. And I just thought we needed to talk about faith and hope because we've talked about love before, but the grace The grace is not mentioned in 1 Corinthians, but it is mentioned in Ephesians, and it's chapter 2. That is the Ephesians chapter 2, by grace through faith. And it's been a while since you've heard my superior English and reading skills, so I'm going to read a lot of scripture here. In chapter 2, verse 4, but God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Well, that's a lot of scripture, but again, I've told you multiple times, it's not going to kill you. It has not killed me, and it has made me stronger in my walk with Christ. So it's going to be okay if we read some scripture on a podcast that's all about the word of God. But I want to concentrate on a very popular scripture that's too— Ephesians 2:8: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourself, it is the gift of God. You have been given the gift of God, which is grace. And that's kind of when we're picturing grace, because we're, we're going to try to get a picture of what grace looks like. We kind of have a picture, kind of not, maybe not a great picture of hope, and we kind of got a picture of faith. At least it's the picture that I have in my mind. And what I want to encourage you to do is you read your Bible. And as you use your imagination and as you start picturing things for yourself that you get a picture of, it's okay to picture things for yourself. And that's what really what I want to help you, encourage you to do, that if my bridge that I'm walking across the promises of God into, into a, into the spirit realm, and that's where we're going to get to with the clouds and all that stuff, the bridge to nowhere, to actually the bridge to somewhere, which is actually the bridge into the spirit realm. That's kind of why I like to see the clouds, because you can't— you can see the physical bridge going into clouds, which is kind of a transition into the spirit realm. And then you reach— and what I see grace as, here's where I'm going to tell you about the picture that I see grace. I see this huge treasure, and I see this huge room with nothing but just gold and treasures and gems And it's just unfathomable about how much wealth and how much treasure is in this room. And it may even be underground because you got to go find it. I mean, you walk into this kind of like this cave. I, I guess I've got the Pirates of the Caribbean or something in my head where they walk in and there's just all this treasure everywhere under. They got to go underground. But anyway, you go into a room And this is through faith, for by grace you have been saved through faith. By great— the grace of God. And the treasures, these are spiritual treasures. And I've got to get— I mean, I've got to picture it to something that makes you— if you've ever seen a treasure, like a treasure chest, like a pirate's treasure chest of just all this doubloon or all this gold and all this stuff that just represents unbelievable wealth. That is, if you can picture the grace of God as this treasure of God that God has stored up for you, and what you've got to do— again, we're going to go to Proverbs 25:2— it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it's the glory of kings to search out a matter. And this is to our glory. We're searching out, we're digging in. We're— you're listening to this podcast. I hope you just didn't stumble across. I hope you've been listening But if you have, we— this is where we dig into the Word of God, and this is where we try to figure out what the Word is telling us. And we ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, what is it that you want me to know about grace? And the picture that I have of grace is just this treasure that God has stored for you and that you have to go get through faith. You have to use faith to get to grace. Grace, one of the treasures, and probably— not probably, the absolute most valuable treasure is salvation. The grace of God that gives us salvation, and that grace— Jesus died so that we could have salvation, so that none of our sin was counted against us ever again, and we would just accept what Jesus did by faith because the word of God told us to. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. I want you to start seeing how some of this stuff works together. But when you're just calling words, like my wife used to say, or a lot says when she starts getting tired, she's just, well, I got to go to bed, I'm just calling words. If you're reading your Bible and you're just calling words, it's not getting in. The enemy can come and steal that word because it's just sitting there, that like grace or faith or hope, when you read that word and if you just read over to the next word and you don't get a picture of what that word actually means, it's— you're not planting anything. You're just calling words. And I want to do more than just call words, and a picture is worth a thousand words. And so the grace of God is the treasure that God has stored up for you, but you gotta go get it. And how do you get it? You get it by faith. Well, how do you use faith? You look at the promise that God has told you that he's got, and then you walk across this bridge of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So we gotta see ourselves walking across this bridge. And again, this is where you use hope. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for. So we're picturing us walking across this bridge that's made of the promises of God. And then we walk into this cloud bank and we really can't see. We don't know what we're doing because we're not using our eyes now. We're using our spiritual eyes. And we go over and we reach into the spirit realm and we take this promise of God and we say, God, you gave this for me. You died so that I could live. And so you reach across and God helps you. God gives you the measure of faith. So he gives you the faith. To believe that Jesus died on the cross, because faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. And you heard the word of God, and then God imparts the faith into your heart, and then you just reach out and you take the grace of God and you accept his salvation and you become a new creature. And then the Bible just opens up and it starts to explode, and the Holy Spirit, you You go, "Oh, well hey, Holy Spirit, how long you been here?" Been here the whole time. Welcome to the party. Again, this is just my sense of humor or my, you know, just my way of just trying to connect that Jesus came and died, but the Holy Spirit, the Helper, Jesus, when he went to the right hand of the Father, he sent the Helper. The Helper has been here for thousands of years, but the last 2,000 since Jesus died, The Holy Spirit has been here leading and guiding and directing all of this stuff. And all of the chaos that you so see going on, that's the punk and that's the world system. But the Holy Spirit's still here. The Holy Spirit hasn't left, and the Holy Spirit is not going anywhere. And so he is there. He's called the Comforter. He's called the Helper for a reason, because he's there to help you. He's there to lead you into all truth. And so that's why I want to just— I got to get a picture of— I got to have something to hold on to. I hope this kind of helps you in some degree. Now, you know, it's not gonna be, 'cause I'm not perfect and I'm not the best, probably I'm not even top 10 of people who ought to be bringing this message, but remember, my word is relentless. And so God is gonna use me to help you picture his word and get in his word. And then once you get in his word, then it's the Holy Spirit is gonna lead you into all truth. It's not Greg Ryan that's gonna lead you into all truth, I told you multiple times, I make a horrible Holy Spirit. My only job is to get you into the Word of God, then, and, and to get you into the Word of God in a position to where God can speak to you. And, and that is my motivation. I want to help you hear, well done, my good and faithful servant, or well done, my good and faithful son or daughter. I— that's all I really want. I want you to get in the Word of God I want you to get fired up. I want you to start fighting this battle. The battle's to the death whether you participate or not. None of us are getting out of this thing alive. I want to get us in and get us stirred up, and that's my whole deal. So there you have it. Let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. Jesus, I thank you for coming and dying for us. God, I thank you for being so patient with me. And Lord, I thank you for loving me even when I'm unlovable. God, I thank you. We love you, Lord. This person that's listening to this, I pray for the person right now. You know right where they are, Lord, and you know exactly what they need. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would give the person listening to this exactly what they're asking for, as long as it does not go against your word. God, I thank you so much. 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.

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