In episode 207 of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, host Greg Ryan presents a theological framework centered on the belief that the Bible is the infallible Word of God and the ultimate guide for life. He emphasizes the concept of "seeing the end from the beginning" by seeking the Kingdom of God first (Matthew 6:33) and interpreting Scripture as a user manual for believers. Ryan critiques the common teaching of divine sovereignty as a lazy doctrine that can lead to blaming God, arguing instead that God grants humanity free will—the "second most powerful gift"—which enables personal responsibility and moral decision‑making. He connects this view to the founding principles of the United States, suggesting that the Declaration of Independence reflects biblical truths about unalienable rights. The episode then introduces a distinctive doctrine that God has two families: a spiritual family of angels and heavenly hosts, and a physical family of human beings created in God's image. Ryan explains that spiritual warfare is fought against principalities, powers, and demonic beings rather than other humans, citing Ephesians 6:12 and examples of Jesus’ interactions with demons. Throughout, he shares personal testimony about the transformative power of meditating on and applying Scripture, using seed metaphors to illustrate the growth of good and bad spiritual habits. The episode concludes with a prayer and a preview of the next discussion on creating the end from the beginning.
Welcome to episode 207.
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 207. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am continuing to talk about seeing the end from the beginning, and that is part of God's way of doing things, the kingdom of God. And, and we're going back to Matthew 6:33. That is a key scripture in all that we're going to do here in No doubt, no fear, only believe. In this podcast, we are going to anchor on the Word of God, and the Word of God is Jesus, and it is the truth, and it is unfallible, or without error. And that's just what we believe. And if you don't believe that, or if you've got your eyebrow up, or for some reason you don't think that this is true, this is probably not the podcast for you. We use the Word of God as if it's God speaking directly to us. This is our direction. This is our user manual. This is everything that we anchor our lives on, and we are told to build on this foundation. And another scripture that we love here at this podcast is Proverbs 25:2, and that reads, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter." And that is what we do when we dig into this Bible, when we start studying it, we start meditating on the Word of God, is that we are digging out a matter. We are searching out a matter, if you will, if you want to stay with the biblical context, that we are searching in the Word of God to find the meaning, to find God's will. And it says to seek and keep seeking and knock and keep knocking, and the door will be open to you. And those that seek will find, and those that ask will receive. So we're going to ask and keep asking, and that's what we're We're just searching out— first, you got to come at this with the belief that the Word of God is actually the Word of God. There are some givens before we even get started on our journey and our little Christian journey up this mountain. The goal, the ultimate goal for you and I, is to hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And that is what we are striving to do. And the only way— it's impossible to please God without faith. So the only way that you and I are going to hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant," is if we apply by faith the Word of God to our lives. And that is what we're doing, and that is what I have done for almost 30 years now, and it's actually 28-some. It has been incredible when I actually get into the Word of God and meditate on the Word of God and apply the Word of God to my life. It is incredible how the Word of God changes my life for the better. Now, does it happen overnight? No, we've talked about planting the seed and how it takes time to grow, and we've also talked about the good seed and the bad seed and how bad seed seems to grow a lot faster in my life anyway. I don't know how it happens in yours. When you screw up or when you planted some bad seed that's not the quote "Word of God" into your life, It just seems like in my walk, it seems like the bad seed, the stupid crap that I do, and I know I'm probably not supposed to say crap, but the stupid stuff that I do in my life tends to grow very quickly, and I get to harvest that stupid stuff a lot quicker than I get to harvest the good stuff. And a lot of stuff that I planted years and years and years ago, I don't know that I've harvested it yet. But it's down there, it's in there, and I just believe one day that I'm going to have just this incredible harvest and it's going to be wonderful. And I believe that it's coming and I believe that God is faithful and his word, he watches over his word. And I just believe this. I want to encourage you to try to believe it too. And you've got to, it's, it's by faith that you believe this and it's got to be internalized. It's got to be something that that you put inside of your being and then let it grow. And that's where we talk about the different soils. You know, to talk about this sort of thing on a 10 or 15-minute program, it's ridiculous, really. It's laughable to try to figure out how to just get this one thing or to get this whole concept of believing the Word of God down in a 12-minute episode. But I want to talk specifically about this kingdom of God seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. And the specific thing that I just want you to look at is the kingdom of God, and we've kind of tweaked that to mean God's way of doing things. Specifically, now he's got a lot of different ways of doing things, and it— then we're specifically talking about how God sees the end from the beginning. God knows you're never going to catch God off guard. You're never going to surprise God. God knows everything. Now, the sovereignty of God— this teaching that God controls everything— is, I think, the laziest and the worst teaching that you could probably put inside of your spirit man, or inside of your soul— your mind, will, and emotions. What comes out of all of that teaching is that we start blaming God, who is perfect and good and the perfect Father, And so when you start blaming him and saying, "Well, it must not have been God's will," it must— instead of looking at yourself who's flawed, has got problems. I mean, if you're anything like me, you make mistakes. And I mean, not every day, but you, you know, you go through life and you don't live a perfect life. And so when you make a mistake, you've got to either correct course or you've got to pay whatever price that costs you for making that mistake. And that's my point. If we just think that fate or that, you know, God's got this whole thing written out, it's just impossible to do anything. I'm just this little robot and I just see someone with stiff arms and stiff legs walking through life. That's not how I walk through life. I make decisions every day and somebody a lot smarter than me is probably saying, well, that's God making your decisions for you. Well, it doesn't feel like God making decisions. It feels like I make the decisions for myself, and so I'm going to go with that. I'm going to say that God gives me the second most powerful thing that God gives you and I as a free gift is our free will. And when I tell you that God is dangerous and God is loving and kind and all of this, that's a dangerous, dangerous gift to give is someone's freedom. And that's why I think America is such a unique and wonderful, quote, experiment. Is that the founders knew when they wrote the Declaration of Independence is they knew we were to pursue life, liberty. And I know it's not scripture, but I have got to read the part that the founders— and I know there's teaching out there that says that these are a bunch of angry white men. If you're falling into that trap, I mean, I think you just need to pull yourself out or unhook yourself because these guys were God-fearing and they were in prayer, and they wrote these words down, and they wrote it based on their understanding of biblical truths. And this is part of what they said: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, this is an incredible document, and that's why people fight and die for this freedom. It's because it's God-given. This country came into being because they centered it on the Word of God, and we are breaking that foundation. And I really don't want to get political on this podcast because, you know, politics and religion— I'm already jumping into the religious bucket, but when I start getting into the politics bucket That's a totally different animal. If you base your life on the Word of God, the politics, I believe, will take care of themselves. Now, that's not going to mean we're not going to have to fight and defeat the enemy in the world system, but being endowed by their Creator, I mean, that is incredible, and certain unalienable rights. I mean, these rights that every person has been given, you can't separate these rights, and it's the free will. And this is what I want to talk about. It is the free will that God gave every one of his kids. And here's where I may just flip your old turban a little bit. I don't know if you have never thought about this. I believe we're in this incredible love story with the backdrop of this huge turf war. And the turf war is between God and his enemies, which are kids that he created. And these are divine beings. And I don't know how you want to come around to that. Paul says that we're not warring against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, and the spiritual hosts of wickedness. And that's Ephesians, I think it's 6:12. We're not fighting against humans. We're not fighting against flesh and blood. Our battle is with these other entities, if you will, these spiritual beings. In some Bible translations, these are also called the sons of God. And that's— I'm quoting, they're putting air quotes up right now, but the sons of God. And it's not human sons of God. God has other kids. If you read Revelation, you see the living creature that's got four faces and it's got wings and wheel in the middle of the wheel. It's Fascinating. I've got some teaching on that. But God created a bunch of kids, and the kids— he created you and I in his image. But you know, he could have created and probably did create— people would argue, and I've heard teachings on— that he created the sons of God in the spirit realm. A lot of people would call angels or spiritual sons of God. So if you can just kind of picture— and I know I'm getting off on a tangent, but I just need you to kind of picture where I'm at, and I've got to picture everything. So if you can imagine, God has two families, and they're all the same family, but it's two families. One of them are spiritual beings, and these are your angels. These are your divine hosts, your divine beings, all of these things that are spiritual beings that he's made that, that reside in the spirit realm. Which is in heaven and where God is. And then he said way back in Genesis, hey, let's make man in our own image. And a lot of people believe that that's the Trinity, you know, that he's talking to himself. And I, I just don't know that I believe that. I think that he was talking to maybe the Divine Council or all the, all of his kids, all his heavenly hosts, all of these angels that he created. And he's saying, hey, I, I've got this idea why don't we create human forms and put them on earth? I mean, I like that idea. I mean, I— it's incredible. And it may be an introduction to you on that, but it is amazing. It's fascinating just to think about how cool God is and how awesome and infinite. Just because you can't figure out how to do that, or you don't know, that does not mean that he does not have two sets of kids and that each one are his kids. And if you look at when Jesus came back and was casting out demons, it makes sense that these were God's kids because he treated them nice. When the demons know who God is, who Jesus is, they declare Son of Man or Son of God, and they know exactly who Jesus is, and they beg him not to throw them in the abyss or not to put them in the dungeon or whatever they're saying. And Jesus grants them. And I don't know if you've ever wondered, you know, if, if you could bind these demons— and I'm picturing right now the person, the man in the tombs that had the legion in him in the story. And I'm not going to stop to find it, but if, if you want to go look, it's where he told these, these demons that they could go in all these swine, all the pigs. He let them go into the swine and they went into them. And then they ran down that huge embankment and drowned in the sea. When they asked not to be thrown into the abyss and God granted that, it's just amazing. And I've got to stop there. I just looked up and it's going long, but I just want you to think about that God has two sets of kids. And I don't even know why I went off on this tangent, but here we are. And I just want you to think there's spiritual kids and then there's physical kids. We are physically bodied with a spirit man inside of us And maybe the spirit beings up there in heaven, you know, there's sometimes where they can put on a physical body and be down here. You've heard stories about angels taking on human or characteristics, and I'm not going to go there right now. But anyway, I just wanted to get you thinking, and we're going to talk in the next episode about— we're going to try to finish that, that we're creating the end from the beginning. And I just got to set the stage for what we're doing., but I just want to— let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for this listener. I thank you for this podcast. I thank you for your Word. I thank you for your Son, and I thank you for your Holy Spirit. Father God, you are awesome, and we love you, and we thank you, and we ask you to protect us, lead and guide and direct us. Lord, we look forward to hearing from you and to helping build your kingdom. Lord, we thank you. We love 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.
