Going old school and old testament using Ezekiel's wheel to help you set your goals for the new year

Welcome to episode 228.

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 228. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am making a turn. I'm going to do something besides unity. I know probably a couple of y'all are probably going, praise God, I'm sick of kumbaya stuff. But in all honesty, the unity message— I probably didn't come across as a unifier because I don't know that I am that guy. But we really do need, in the body of Christ, we need to come together. And I think we really can only come together and lock arms on 4 or 5 different areas. And all this other stuff that everyone is fighting and bickering about, we need to just let that fall off. And we need to concentrate on those 4 or 5 areas that we can all agree on. I'm not going to talk about unity anymore. I'm going to move into an area I don't know that I've talked about much, but I believe it has so much to do with your success in life, and no one really talks about it. And it was something, as I was studying the word of God and as I was listening to my pastors preach, it kind of all came together. And it is the wheel in the middle of the wheel with Ezekiel. Back in, it was Ezekiel 1, Let's pick it up in verse 15. Ezekiel 1:15. Now as I looked at the living creatures, behold, a wheel was on the earth beside each living creature with its four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their workings was like the color of beryl, and all four had the same likeness. The appearance of their workings was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. Now I know we've talked about this multiple times about my superior reading skills, but I just can't make you stop everything and read it yourself. I, I just don't think while you're working out or while you're sitting there at the dinner table or driving in your car, wherever you're at, there's no reason for you to grab your Bible and open it up and read it. But I just need you to kind of picture that in your mind, the wheel in the middle of the wheel. And then I want to take the lesson that I got from my pastor of Gateway Church, Pastor Robert Morris, and he talked about the four living creatures and use those creatures as a different foundation of the church. And we've got 4 foundations with that teaching in mind. And I just believe that as you read the Bible and as the Holy Spirit draws you into his word and you have your heart ready to receive, you've dug up the hard ground that's in your heart, so when the pastor throws out a seed, there's something for it to take root in, there's something for it to take hold of. And we've talked about the different levels, the 4 different soils for your— the seed of God, the incorruptible seed of God. The first soil is the hard ground. And when the pastor throws the word of God out, the incorruptible seed, that's the word of God, when he throws that out and it sits there on top of your hard heart, then the birds of the air— nobody in the spirit realm that's not following God, no demon wants you to grow the word. And I've just gotta take a side note, and I've gotta chase a rabbit real quick, but I don't believe Satan is all that wonderful of getting every single seed that is planted, and that's why I believe that when it just sits on the hard ground and there's a little imp or a little demon, it's sitting there, it's not really doing anything, and when the demon sees it, it swoops in there and picks it up so that it'll never grow, And then you've got the very shallow soil, and that is where it goes in the ground, but it doesn't really take any root. So it sprouts up pretty quick. And I see this a lot. When I was teaching back in Sunday school, you would see people get all fired up. You know, you'd have a— you'd announce a big class and you'd get a bunch of people start it. But the people that started it are rarely the people that finish it. And you get maybe 30 or 40. I had 30 or 40 couples start a class, and then at the end, after about 12 weeks, which is a long time, I'll admit that, but after a 12-week lesson, you've got maybe 4 or 5 couples that consistently came and asked questions and were kind of engaged in the process. That's a small number compared to the 30 or 40 that started. So at about 10%, I mean, you could probably go with 10 or 15, 20%, you know, the 80/20 rule. Is probably in play. Next, you have the heart of the believer who's distracted by the things of this world, and we're gonna— we're not gonna go into this, but I am chasing this rabbit, and we have 3 enemies. And remember, one of our enemies is our flesh, one is, is the punk, but one enemy is the world and the world system. This is a true enemy, and this will get a lot of us, Current Company included. I can become distracted very easily I believe in this day and age it's very easy to become distracted with anything. You've got your iPhone, you've got a tablet, you've got your computer, you've got your radio, you've got your television, and I fall prey to this just like anybody else. I'm telling you, this podcast is about an imperfect man as I chase after a perfect example, and I look at Jesus And there's a reason I believe that he walked everywhere he went. He slowed it down when he got here on earth. Now you can argue that there wasn't a lot of computers and there weren't a lot of things, but God could choose when he came. Can he came in the day when everybody was walking around? And I think there's some merit to that. I think we need to slow down. It's really not my message today, but I guess that's what I'm going to talk about. We need to slow down. We need to figure out what's important, and we need to stick with that. And the last soil, the last ground, is the good ground. And that's where when you plant the Word of God, you plant the incorruptible seed, and it grows 30, 60, or 100-fold. And everybody wants, of course, to plant the Word of God into good soil. But how many of us, when we get to church, have got all the rocks, all the cares of the world, have we got it out of the way? And we've got everything dug up. We got our soil, we got the heart, we've meditated, we've been thankful, we've had gratitude. We've got our soil, we've dug down deep, we've humbled ourselves, we've got that soil ready. It is soft and it's ready and waiting for the Word of God. I would argue that not many people get to church in that position, and I think that's a problem. And I'm not here to point fingers because I'm the same way. And you know, when I'm talking about it and when I'm teaching about it, I'm a lot more cognitive about it. That don't mean we don't need to do it. That just means that most of us are in such a big hurry that we're just going to church and we're ticking that little box. Oh yeah, I went. And I think a lot of people, we fall into that trap thinking we've done something when we sit into a church service, and really all we've done is sat for 2 hours and listened to some praise and worship music and listen to the pastor. But if you went in with a hard heart or a shallow heart, and I'm talking about soil. The Word of God, when it's planted, or if it even doesn't get planted, it's just sitting on top of the ground. You don't even know it's sitting there. Your pastor has taken the time and he's prepared the Word. He prays over it. He's getting ready to feed you this Word that God has given him, and we come in there, we zip in and we zip out. And I can't tell you how many times I've walked into church and I've been in a hurry and I'm just glad to get there, and it's nice, you know, the praise and worship music's going, and I listen to the message, and I get up and I think, "Wow, that was a good message." And 2, 3 hours later, because I'm in real estate, I'll go to an open house or I'll go show somebody a property or something, and I can't honestly tell you what the pastor talked about. If someone were to ask me what the service was about, I couldn't even tell them. And that is sad. That's from somebody that's trying. I'm not implying that you're not trying. I mean, I'm just telling you that it is tough sledding out there. You have an enemy, actually have 3 enemies, and they're all fighting against you getting the Word of God into your heart. And now I really want to talk about what I'm going to start talking about in these next episodes, and it's about using this wheel in the middle of the wheel and the four living creatures as the four foundations of the church and kind of bring all that together. And I'm going to use it for— to help you to set goals, because we're coming into New Year's. If you're listening to this in time or within the next few weeks, we will be coming into the year 2022. A lot of us set goals in business and personal and all that stuff, and I personally want to show you as I'm talking to you, and I'll have some handouts, or you can go to the website and download some of these things, but it is the wheel in the middle of the wheel, and it's based on what Pastor Robert talked about, the four foundations of the church, and he used the four creatures in the wheel in the middle of the wheel as representation of different personalities, and we talked about this in previous episodes. I'm going to pull all this together to show you a better way to set goals and to reach goals and to be balanced while you're doing it. That's the key, is the balance. The world system, and I've fallen into it too, and it's just nicely, probably in the last 6 months, has just been a kind of a glaring thing that I just feel like I just need to share with you. It just needs one little tweak, and I think your goal setting, if you're a Christian, can be so much stronger and so much better and give you a better chance of succeeding because we do have enemies in our life. If we don't do it God's way, Satan's not going to help us. I can just tell you right now, and the world system is not going to help us. So we need to get in the Bible and we need to get this figured out. And if you've struggled with setting and reaching goals, these next few episodes are going to help you. It'll be something that you can dig your teeth into. Get into, get a picture of, because I, you know, I've got to picture everything. I'm going to give you a picture of this and we're going to move on. So I just wanted to set the stage. I'm using a lot of moving parts here. I'm using the, the scripture where Jesus was teaching his disciples about the parable of the seed, the sower, and saying, hey, you know, when he told his disciples, you don't understand this parable, how will you understand any of the parables? Jesus, I think, calls this parable out as being the most important one to understand, to understand all of the different parables that he's taught. So I think that this is a very important parable, the parable of the sower and the different types of soil. And then we put the wheel in the middle of the wheel, and we're using the four living creatures and the four foundations of the church. We're going to get busy in the next episode, but I just kind of want to set the stage. I kind of want to get this foundation. We're gonna— that's what we're going to be talking about in the next probably 5 or 6 episodes coming into the new year. And I just kind of want to get you fired up, and I want to show you what it is that I'm working on. And I believe that this is going to change the way I set goals and the way I do things from here on out. And I think it's going to be— I hope, I'm praying that's going to be a big help for you too. Let's pray while I'm talking about praying. God, I thank you so much for this listener. I thank you for your word. God, I thank you that you have given us teachers and you have given us pastors and you have given us your word. And I pray that we would use all of those with the help of the Holy Spirit. And Lord, with wisdom and knowledge, we'll be able to put all this together into something that we can use in our daily lives. 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 in the next episode.

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