In this solo podcast episode (No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe, episode 318), the host outlines two essential requirements for the church to achieve true unity: (1) abiding in God’s Word and (2) loving one another with agape love. He begins by emphasizing the biblical command to “abide” in Jesus’ words (John 8:31‑32), explaining that abiding means living in the Word daily, not merely attending services, and illustrates the challenge of distraction with a personal “squirrel” anecdote. He reinforces the concept with Psalm 91, urging believers to dwell in the secret place of the Most High. The second requirement is love, supported by multiple Johannine passages (John 13:35; John 15:12‑13, 15:16‑17) and the classic love chapter 1 Corinthians 13, which he recites verbatim. He distinguishes love from mere liking, stressing that love is rooted in the character of God (1 John 4:8) and should extend even to those who are difficult, because every person is a child of God. The host concludes with a prayer that reiterates the two pillars—abiding in Scripture and loving one another—as the marks of true discipleship, and invites listeners to continue the series on faith and other topics.
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Welcome to episode 318. I'm going to talk about in this episode the two things that we must do as the church if we are going to want to acquire or to walk in unity. Now, I've been talking about this. We're not going to rehash some of the other things that I've talked about in unity in the other two episodes, and I'm going to figure out how to link all these up. But I want to talk right now about the two things that the church needs to walk in unity. Let's get going. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, hey, if it's good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for us. The first thing I want to talk about of these two is, I believe, is the most important, and we've talked about this before. We find this in John 8:31-32. Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Again, that's John 8:31-32, and I want you to concentrate on that word abide. Now, if you've been here before, you know that I'm going to jump up and down and tell you to get in the word of God and allow the word of God to get into inside of you. But it's not because it's anything that I wrote, it is because that is what Jesus himself said. That you and I must abide in his word. And to abide, that means we got to take up residence. That don't mean that we visit on Sunday morning or that we go on Wednesday evening. Abide means that we live there. You abide in his word. And I know that you may be distracted. I am distracted. I am constantly walking through this life seeing shiny objects or going this way When my daughter brings her dogs over to the house, one of the things that we love doing is we love calling out that there's a squirrel in the backyard. And it is so funny because those dogs go crazy. You say the word squirrel and they take off. And same thing with me. I can be so easily distracted when Satan goes, hey squirrel, and I go, where? It is not lost on me that when I say that to my daughter's dogs that I know that Satan uses the same thing against me and he keeps me distracted. And I have got to constantly get back into the word of God, and I've got to constantly put the word of God into me. And I just want to encourage you, it is so easy to do. You just got to make it an effort. You have got to decide that I'm going to live here, I'm going to abide in this. We're going to go to Psalm 91 I think it's an excellent Psalm, and I've used this during the pandemic, during all that COVID lockdown garbage. I want to remind you what Psalm 91:1-2 says: He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in him I will trust. That is Psalm 91:1-2. And again, I want you to picture this abiding, this not visiting. You don't visit every now and then to have God protect you. If you abide under the shadow of the Most High, then you can say— again, we're not going to talk, I'm not going to chase this rabbit about speaking it, but you have to speak it out loud. You have to say, my God, he is my refuge and my fortress. You have to declare it with your mouth. I'm not done with this series. In the next series, we're going to talk about faith and how we learn to walk by faith and not by sight. But let's go on. The second area that I think the church has to have in order to walk in unity is love. And I believe it is that simple. I think there are two things that we need to do We need to abide in the word. We need to be in the word of God. We need to be people of the book, and we need to have love one for another. And I want to read a few scriptures. This is awesome. This is from Jesus. This was in John. This is exactly what we need to have. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Now that's John 13:35. Now Now let's go to John 15. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. That's John 15:12-13. And one more from John. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should bear fruit and that your fruit should remain. That whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. That's John 15:16 and 17. And if you remember John 15, if you go back to John 15:1, that is where Jesus said, I am the vine and we are the branches. And so he's talking about us abiding in him. He's talking about us being in him and then loving one for another. That is the key, I believe, to unity. And again, we're going to go back. There's other things that keep us from having unity, but I believe the church, the true church of God— and I put up air quotes— if you truly are a disciple of Jesus, if you abide in his word and you love, have love one for another, we're going to have unity. It's the problem with all of the other stuff going on in the world. It's It looks like we do not walk in unity, but I think we are so easily distracted by people that say they're Christians and really are not. And I'm not going to reteach that episode. You can go back and click on— I'll try to have the episodes in here to where you can go back and listen to what I said. But one last thing, and remember, John is the apostle, the love apostle. John taught about love. If you ever really want to get a handle on love and agape love, You've got to read the Apostle John. You got to read the Gospel of John, and you need to read John 1, 2, and 3. The little Johns is what I call them. Also in 1 Corinthians 13, I call that the love chapter. If we just embrace those— in fact, God had me memorize 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 or 7, and where it says love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, Love does not parade itself, it is not puffed up. Love does not behave rudely, does not seek his own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If we are going to walk in love, we need to know what love is. I'm going to end with this scripture. I know I've had a lot of scriptures, but this is a pseudo Bible study. So if you are here, we're going to get into the word of God and we're going to allow the word of God to get into us. Again, soapbox number— I don't know what we're on right now, but that is our soapbox moment. And we have to get into the word of God. And I can't jump up and down and I can't overemphasize this point. And I want you to hear what John says in 1 John 4:8: He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. And again, you can't be any more plain than that. If you do not love, you do not know God. If I was going to say, hey, how can I be sure that I'm saved? I would go to this: do you love people? Now I want to make one point before I finish up. The Bible does not say that you have to like people. The Bible— Jesus said that you have to love one another, and love does not mean that you just got to hang out with them. Or you got to break bread with them all the time, or you got to go over their house, or you got to hang out. Again, love is different than like. You like people for what they do with you and for you. You love people because of who they are. And every person that you see is a child of God. Every per— if you can see them with your eyes, that is a child of God. To love somebody, you go back to 1 Corinthians 13, where love is patient, love is kind. You just go through all of those things and you just understand love does not keep score. You don't want anything bad to happen to any human being that you can see, even if they're rotten, filthy. I just believe that they are a part of the enemy's army or tactics, and we just got to see through those people to the punk. And I'm not going to chase that rabbit. I'm going to conclude right here. We're going to pray. But I just want to remind you, there are two things I believe that we need as the body of believers. We need to love one another, and we need to abide in God's word. We need to be a disciple, and Jesus' disciples said that they abide in his word. And so that's what we're doing here. That's why we're here. That's why I'm doing these episodes, is so that I can abide, and I can show you an example of someone that's not perfect but doing their best. And that's all God asks, is that we do our best as we follow after a perfect example. We're imperfect, but we follow after in the word a perfect example. So let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you that you loved us before we loved you, God, and that that's all you expect us to do is just to love one another. And Lord, it says by this all will know that we are your disciples. This is how the world will know that we are your disciples, Lord, because you— we love each other. God, we thank you. Lord, help us to love everyone more like you loved everyone. God, 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.nodoubtnofearonlybelieve.com. NoDoubtOnlyBelieve.com.
