How to walk in the spirit and not the flesh using praise and worship

Welcome to episode 296.

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.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm continuing to talk about how to walk in the spirit and not in the flesh, and I know that's a huge topic. That's why I'm spending multiple episodes on it, and I'm tying it all together with the wheel and Ezekiel's wheel and the four living creatures. And now I want to introduce grace back into the mix and faith. You know, the just shall live by faith. We've talked about this on previous episode that if you are justified just as if you have never sinned, you are justified in Christ. You've become a new creature. Old things have been passed away. Behold, all things have become new. So Paul is letting us know that we are new creatures. We are not of this world. Jesus said that to his disciples in John, I think it's 16 and 17. But we are no longer part of this world, and I don't understand all of it, and I'm not here to tell you that I've got it all nailed down, but I want to remind you that God came to die. Jesus came so that you and I could have salvation. He knew that we were separated by sin. It wasn't your sin that separated you from God. It was way back at the beginning when Adam and Eve bit of the forbidden fruit They had one stinking rule. They had one thing to do: just don't eat of this tree. You can do anything else. There was no other rules in the Garden of Eden. Do whatever it is that comes to your mind. Do whatever you want to do. Just don't eat of this tree. And I just want to remind you that with one rule, man fell. They had help. It wasn't all Adam's and Eve's fault. In fact, they would never have fallen had it not been for the punk. And I know I've talked about him multiple times. I hate him. We hate the punk. We are here to kick Satan in the teeth every chance we get. He is a defeated foe. He is a bee with no stinger. He is a lion with no teeth, unless of course you allow him to grow the stinger and to grow the teeth. And you do that by entering into his world through the prism of your 5 senses. We've talked about that. I'm not going to chase that rabbit on this episode. I I want to remind you about the grace of God, and I want to go to one scripture, one specific verse in the Bible that I think brings all of the grace together. And I just want you to memorize this scripture. I've been thinking about this, I've been meditating on this scripture for quite some time. And in Romans 8, he's speaking about the grace of God, and he talks, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. We're going to talk about the eagle in this episode because we're talking about the four pillars, and it's the four living creatures, the face of the man, the face of the lion. We've already talked about that on previous episodes. We're going to talk about the face of the eagle this episode, but that's praise and worship. We are called to be kings and priests, and this is the one I've just got to make a public confession. This is the one that I struggle with the most. Now, I don't struggle with praising and worshiping God, but I tend to tack that on the end. You know, I don't quote have time for all of that mess because I'm in the word and I'm doing this and I'm doing this podcast and I'm doing all these other things. I believe each one of us has a soft spot on one of these four areas in our lives. I believe, and I've told this jumping up and down multiple times, you have got to be in the Word of God. I believe the face of the man is critical for every believer, that we are made in God's image. We are to be in the Word of God because Jesus is the Word, and Jesus is the perfect representation of Father God. So we have got to be in the Word of God if we are going to walk in the Spirit. If you are not in the Word of God, if you have not fallen in love with the Word of God, I don't believe there's any way that you can walk in the Spirit. You're going to be driven to the flesh because again, we've got the spirit, soul, and body thing going. And I understand this is a very deep topic, and that's why I'm taking multiple episodes. In fact, that's why I'm really diving into this area, and I'm going to start teaching a class specifically on Ezekiel's wheel, the four living creatures, and all of this, maybe have it in a concentrated form. This is my podcast and I can do whatever I want here, and I just believe that God wants me to talk about these four living creatures, or these four faces on the living creatures. The face of an eagle, I believe that we have to introduce grace. I don't think most of us really have a, a working definition or a working understanding of just how wonderful the grace of God is. And I believe that when we start praising and worshiping God, that our mind is elevated. We are lifted. God inhabits the praises of his people. So when we start praising and worshiping God, I believe— I don't know how it happens. Again, I'm just here to just tell you what's going on in my pea brain, but I believe that we are— we elevate ourselves and God comes into where we are. And we're worshiping God and the kings and priests. And I kind of fall in more towards the king, that I just want to go take— kick the crap out of Satan, the gates of hell. I don't have a problem with going out and getting after it. I've just never really seen myself as a priest. This is a struggle, and I'm just telling you what's going on with me. Maybe you can worship and praise, but you have a hard time getting in the word. I'm just telling you, we have an enemy and he hates us. He hates the Word of God. He hates the Holy Spirit. He don't want anything to do with you walking in the Spirit. So every chance he gets, he's going to fight you tooth and nail. He— if he can keep you from walking in the Spirit, then he's going to do it. He's going to pull you in. He's going to use your parents. He's going to use your family. He's going to use your pastor. He's going to use your priest. He's going to use anybody you— he can use to drag you away from the word of God. He will even use me to make you upset at something I say because I'm going to say something that's not entirely accurate. I try real hard not to, but I'm human. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm not trying to make mistakes, and I've asked God multiple times, hey, help me not to make so many mistakes. But again, I'm just a guy, and so I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to come on here and I'm going to say stuff that's like Mm, I'm not sure that's what that says. And so what I want to do is I just want to acknowledge that, that I am not perfect. I am by no means the poster child for what Christ looked like when he was walking on earth. I am not that guy. I'm just a regular guy. And what I want to do though, God has put into me the need to get into the word of God, and it's changed my life so much that I want to help you because I know that if it changed me, it will change you. And we're going to go to 2 Timothy again. I've been meditating on that for quite some time, and I've told you about that. And I thought it was really just because there was so much fear in the world, and, and so I just thought, well, maybe we need to work on— and I've taught Wake Up Fearless is a lesson that I've taught, and it's about getting into this specific verse. And it's 2 Timothy 1:7: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And I believe those three things that God has given us, that's kind of a picture into how we walk in the Spirit. Now we have to be in the Word of God. That is soapbox moment. I don't know how many it was on this episode, but you have got to be in the Word of God and get the Word of God in you. If you're not in the Word of God, then I don't think any of this is going to matter. God has not given us a spirit of fear. Satan gives us the spirit of fear. If you are walking around fearful If you're wringing your hands, if you're worried about this, if you're anxious about that, if you're concerned, if you, if you wake up nervous and anxious every morning, that is the spirit of fear. That is Satan. We need to get in the word of God. We're going to do all that here, but I just want to encourage you, that's not God. God does not give you that spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And the power is the lion. We've talked about that in a previous episode. The love is coming in the next episode. That's the ox. But the sound mind, I believe that is the eagle. That is where we praise and worship God. We take it off of ourselves and we put it on. We put the— give the glory and the power and all of the praise to our Father God. We minister to God. That just strikes me a little different. I don't know if it strikes you. God has us ministering to him, and God does not need it. He just enjoys it. He created you and I to worship him for his pleasure, and we are here because God created us and he wants us to give him glory. And that's where Satan got into a bind, and that's where pride came in, and he started looking at himself and saying, man, look how good I am. And so what he wanted to do is he wanted to elevate himself up to God's level. He wanted people praising and worshiping him because he looked so good and he was so wonderful. And God made him wonderful, but he made him below God. We are not going to get any of God's glory. That is not why we're here. We are here to tell you, praise God. We are here to do everything we can to give God glory. If you struggle with praising and worshiping, I want to encourage you that it elevates your thinking, it elevates your mind, it lifts some of that anxiousness and some of that burden. And I just am reminded every time I turn on praise and worship music, or every time I just get quiet and just tell God how wonderful he is, because we enter his gates with thanksgiving and we enter his courts with praise. We enter God's presence with thanksgiving and praise. I do that every morning when I pray, but I kind of tack it on with prayer, and I'm not always just worshiping and singing and listening and doing that sort of thing. If you struggle like me to enter into worshiping God, I want to encourage you to get around an eagle. Get around someone that you know can praise and worship God and ask them, hey, what music are you listening to? What songs are you listening to? How do you do this? Because that's what I do. And when I start reminding myself that, hey, it ain't about me, this is not about me, and so then I start listening to music, I start praising and worshiping God, and it just pulls everything else up. And that's why I believe— and I'm going to tie that to Ezekiel's wheel— I believe I can get out of balance pretty quick when I'm in the word of God and I'm doing prayer. And if you see my hand right here, if you're on YouTube, you can see my wheel kind of gets a little crooked because my pray— my praise and worship, and maybe my ox, my serving others gets down here while I'm reading the Bible and I'm praying. But I'm— you can see that I'm just not balanced. And I think that when we start praying to God and we start asking to walk in the Spirit, we have to be balanced in our life and we have to do things God's way. And again, I go back to Ezekiel 1 where it says the Spirit was in the wheel, and that's why I've got that wheel in the middle of the wheel is that we need to pull our spirit man out of the way the world's doing it. I think that's why we get in such a bind as Christians, is we're trying to appease the world. The world's going to hate you. You are not of this world, you're of a different world. So we need to do it a different way. And if we're going to do it a different way, if we're going to do it God's way, we got to do it in the spirit, and we got to do it by faith, and we got to understand grace. And grace is so wonderful that if you will read Romans 8:1, there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. There is no condemnation. God is not mad at you. I said that all the time on this podcast. God is not mad. He's not even a little bit upset. There is no kind— he's not condemning you. That's the punk that he's going to bring up all the stupid crap you do He is just a punk, and God is not condemning you. That is the grace of God. God is just sitting there saying, "Man, you are my favorite. I can't believe how wonderful you are." And he's just constantly fired up about you. If you're a parent and had a child and they've ever done anything to just make you smile or make you just, "Oh, that is so wonderful," that's God all the time with you. He loves you. You are his favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. You are God's favorite. The grace of God has been poured out to everyone on the earth. He loves all of his kids equally, and he poured it all out. The problem is, is not everybody accepts it, and not everybody walks in faith, and not everybody is going to end up in heaven, but not because of anything God's done. It's because of what we did. I want to stop there. I can feel myself rambling on, and I'm getting longer and longer. It seems like every time I do these things But I want to thank you for being a part of this. I want to encourage you to start praising and worshiping God and ministering to him like it's all about him, because it is. When we get to heaven, we're going to realize that it's all about God and that we were put here to minister to him. So let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. God, I thank you for your Holy Spirit, for you sending him here to lead and guide and direct me and to direct this listener. And God, we thank you for the ability to praise and worship you, and we thank you for you not mashing me every time I don't do it the way I'm supposed to. God, you know I love you. You know this person that is listening, they're here this long, they are a fanatic as well, and they love you. And God, help us to be more like your son. 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.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.