Four areas I'm going to grow as a Christian 2023

Welcome to episode 340. In this episode, I'm going to talk about the 4 areas that you and I can grow together in 2023 and how we're going to get after that. There's going to be a lot of scripture in this episode, so get ready. Before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to encourage you in 2023 to just continue this growth pattern that we're on. If you are a fanatic, if you're still coming, I want to thank you personally for being a part of my life. And I want to help you get into the word of God and allow the word of God to get into you. So let's do that. Matthew 6:33, it's one of those scriptures that we love. We talk about it a lot, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. The way we have it defined here in this podcast is God's way of doing things. How does God do things? So we're going to search that out and we're going to try to do our best to walk by faith and not by sight in this next year. We're going to learn how to walk by faith. I know if you've been on this journey with me for a little bit, you know that I got frustrated. And sometimes when I'm teaching, my frustration is similar to maybe what you're going through, or maybe you had never thought about it before, but you're like, yeah, why don't they do that? And one of the reasons that I started talking about faith was because I always heard people say, you need to walk by faith, brother, and not by sight. And it's a popular scripture, but how do you do that? I want the nuts and bolts on taking steps. Before you learn to walk, you've got to strengthen your muscles. You've got to get your core ready. You got to learn to roll over. If you're a baby in Christ, you can't just get up and start walking. You got to strengthen your core. I'm not a physical therapist. My wife is, but she could tell me the steps. I probably need to ask her that. But what are the steps to learning how to walk? And I know one of them is to get your core stronger. That's a foundation. And then you start standing, you start getting your balance, all of those things. I don't know who's supposed to hear that. There you go. But this whole process is not gonna be easy. God didn't say this was gonna be easy. It's simple. There's a difference between simple and easy. Simple to me is not complex. Anybody could do it. The problem I see with most believers is they quit way before the fruit comes. You've got to plant the seed in the ground. There is no way to circumvent the kingdom of God. God's way of doing things is seed time and harvest. Jesus talked about that a lot. I don't know why I'm talking about— I don't know why I'm chasing that rabbit. When you choose God's path, he does not say it's going to be easy. In fact, he says exactly the opposite. In Matthew 7:13-14, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. And we've talked about this multiple times— narrow and few, broad and many. I think it's kind of like an 80/20, 90/10 at best 70/30. I'm gonna do 80/20. You're looking at 80% of the world walking on the broad way and 20% on the narrow way. But inside that 20, half of them I don't know are going to make it. I look at the 10 virgins— there's 5 foolish and there are 5 wise. We've talked about this too. Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now 5 of them were wise and 5 were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. And that's Matthew 25:1-4. I believe that the oil represents the Holy Spirit or being saved. If you do not have the Holy Spirit in you or God in you, if you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you're in church or you're listening to this podcast, Jesus would call you foolish. You are a foolish virgin. Half of the people in the church— I believe this is Jesus' warning to the church saying, hey, not everybody in the pews are going to make heaven. And I want to take you to Matthew 7:21-23. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name and done many wonders in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. That's Matthew 7:21-23. This is a key scripture to motivate you to make sure that you have a relationship with Jesus. And I want to use the analogy of this podcast as an example, because you can listen to this podcast every time I put a new episode up, and you can know me, you can know my voice, you can know my different way of looking at things, and you can kind of get an idea of me. And you can know that my wife's name is Mona, you'll know that one of my son's name is Seth, a daughter is Sarah, you'll know some things about me. But Jesus is saying, hey, you can know who Jesus is But does Jesus know who you are? That's the key. Jesus said, "I never knew you." And that's going to lead me into next episode. I'm not going to talk about it this episode. Next episode, if you're a fanatic, if you're a frequent flyer, I want to get to know you. I want to figure out a way that we can build a relationship. But we'll get that on the next episode. That's a rabbit we're not going to chase in this episode. And why I think this is important, Jesus talked about in Matthew 7:6, "Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine." lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. Now Jesus is telling me in this scripture, you don't need to share this with everybody. And that's one of the reasons why I call it a Christian podcast and we go into the Bible and we talk about scripture, because the world don't want to hear that. You know, there's some people out there that might listen to one or two episodes. The world is not going to consistently come back to listen to a Jesus fanatic. Just not going to happen. So if you're here I believe that either the Holy Spirit is drawing you or you are a Jesus fanatic, and you got a great shot to make heaven if you can declare Jesus Christ as Lord. If you can say Jesus is Lord, I believe you're gonna make it. If you've humbled yourself, if you've asked God to come into your life and declare him Lord of your life, I believe that's what it takes to get saved. It's simple, it's just not easy. There's a lot of pride that's got to fall. You've got to humble yourself. God's gift is freely given. You cannot earn it. There's nothing you can do to earn this gift. It— you have got to ask for it and receive it. And the only— God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. The grace of God that he gives to you and I is his Son, is salvation, is eternal life. But you have to humble yourself. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. I know that's a mouthful, but I wanted to give us some scripture. I want to set the year off right. The 4 areas I I think that we can all do. I think we can all spend time daily in the Word. I think you need to get into the Bible. I think you need to open it up by yourself with your own Bible. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. And if you spend time in the Word, John 8:31 and 32, you know we love those scriptures, but it says that his disciples abide in the Word. That means that's where they live. They're living in the Word of God. And it says, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The only real freedom comes from knowing the Word of God. The second area, I think we could pray daily. If you're driving down the car, if you're in your bed, or the quiet time in the morning, just talk to God and start with thanksgiving. Jesus talked in Matthew 6:5-13, he talked about prayer and how to pray. If you can talk, if you can communicate, instead of just communicating to someone you can see, praying to God is communicating to somebody by faith that you can't see, but you know that God is listening because the Bible is true. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit are all listening. They're all ready to listen to your prayer. I don't understand it all, but I think it's important that you have a communication. I think it starts with thanksgiving. Appreciating who God is. And that leads me into the third thing that I think we can all do, and that's praise and worship God daily. Psalms 100, I think it's 3 or 4, they enter his gates with thanksgiving and they enter his courts with praise. I don't think it's hard to get into the presence of God. I just think you just start thanking him. Be grateful, have gratitude. Thank him for everything that he has done for you today. Thank him for the breath that you're breathing. Thank you if you can see. Thank him for the sight. Thank him for the house. Thank him for your heater if you're cold and the heater's coming on. Thank him for electricity. There's tons of things to be thankful for. Even if you feel like, quote, your life is miserable, you can still thank God for the simple things that he's given you. And then just praise God. After you get done thanking him, praise God for who he is and give him glory for his wonderful plan of salvation. You can praise God after you get done thanking him. Now you're in his presence. Now you can go boldly into the throne of grace. God has given us the ability to talk to him, and if we come in thankful and we come in praising and we come in humble, that's the way I believe God wants his kids to come into his throne room. He don't want you groveling. He don't want you crawling on glass or begging. He just wants you to be thankful. He wants you to be appreciative, and he wants you to come in and talk to him. He— God wants a relationship with you, and that's just bottom line. He just wants to talk to his kids. He wants to love on his kids. And that leads me to the fourth thing that we can do. I believe we can all find someone in our lives to help. When we start helping people and we start getting involved in other people's lives besides ourselves— God created us for relationship, and he wants to have a relationship with us, but he also wants us to have relationship with people that we can see, his children. Let's recap in the 4 things we can do. We can all get in the word of God. I just want to encourage you to get in the word of God, allow the word of God to get into you. Pray to God daily. Just tell him how wonderful he is. Just tell him thank you for anything that you can think of. Get in the habit of daily thanking him. Praise God. Worship God. Put on some worship music or just sing a song in your heart. Just sing to God. Worship God. And help somebody. Find somebody. I don't know that you can daily do that. Maybe you can. If you get the opportunity to help somebody, go ahead and help somebody this year. Let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for this person listening. God, I want to thank you for everything you've done in my life in 2022, and I want to thank you in advance for everything you're going to do for us in 2023. For this person that can hear my voice, I pray a blessing over them. Lord, you said that you would never leave them nor forsake them. God, let them know that you are there. Holy Spirit, guide them into your truth. And God, I thank you, I 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 you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubt.com. NoDoubtOnlyBelieve.com.