In episode 206 of the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, host Greg Ryan reflects on what it means to seek God’s kingdom and live according to His way. Using the recent death of his father as a backdrop, Greg explains the biblical principle of “seeing the end from the beginning,” urging listeners to picture their final day and work backwards to shape daily decisions. He ties this perspective to Scripture (Matthew 6:33, Psalm 139) and to the doctrine of imputed righteousness—Jesus’ perfect life credited to believers’ spiritual accounts, a balance that cannot be erased. Greg critiques a deterministic view of God’s sovereignty, proposing instead that God permits human freedom while inviting us into His family. He outlines a three‑stage Christian discipleship journey—Follower (new creation), Believer (trusting what the Bible says), and Disciple (abiding in the Word). Throughout, he emphasizes practical devotion: digging into the original biblical text, believing what you read, and adopting an “all‑in” mindset like the pearl parable (Matt 13:45). The episode ends with a prayer and a promise to explore concrete steps for applying the “end‑from‑beginning” discipline in the next show.
Welcome to episode 206.
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 206. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I want to continue to talk about seeing the end from the beginning, and I want to go back to Matthew 6:33. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. And when we seek God's kingdom, or the kingdom of God, and his righteousness— now we've talked about this multiple episodes, and go back if you need. I'll link to it in the show notes of the Kingdom of God series. But with, again, with my dad's death right in the backdrop, and something that I'm still dealing with and have just seen with my own eyes— I know if you have lost a loved one that you know the finality of it, and I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But what I want to do is I want to use this as a teaching opportunity because God knows the day. God knows the day when you and I are going to be called home. And so to use that as our end date and then work backwards, and I think that's God's way of doing things, the kingdom of God. It's one of the ways that God does things is that he sees the end from the beginning. And when we take that end date and whatever that date is, get that in our mind and we get it fixed knowing that there's a fixed date out there. And if you go back to Psalm 139, Psalm 139 tells us that God had the days numbered, and he knew before we were ever even formed in our mother's womb that he had all the days written out. And so it is awesome to think about that God had a purpose and every day planned out, or he knew what every day— and I, and I don't even want to get into the sovereignty of God because I've touched on that before, And when we start talking about God controlling, you know, when some people think about the sovereignty of God, that we're just nothing but robots and there's nothing we can do, you know, God controls everything. And I do not believe that at all. In fact, I've come on the podcast multiple times and say I think that's one of the worst doctrines in the body of Christ. If you think that God controls everything, then you're not— you're just a robot. You're nothing more than a puppet, and you think, well, there's nothing I could do. So then you're blaming God again. Here's my picture of God, is that he allows, even though he knows that we're going to do wrong, he knows that we're not perfect, we're not God, but he has invited us into his family and into his kingdom simply by saying, hey, I want, I want to do, I want to get credit for what Jesus did. Jesus lived a perfect life. And I want to, by faith, just have that accredited to my account. And so God does that. God takes Jesus' perfect life and puts it on top of our account like we lived a perfect life. And that's how Father God sees us. And I know you can't hardly wrap your mind around that. I can't hardly do. But when God looks at you and I, that's why I say, God, you are his God's favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. God looks at you and he sees perfect. He sees his Son's perfection, and he has accounted it to you. So when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, his righteousness— God's righteousness, Jesus' righteousness— has been accounted to you. It's in your account. If we're talking about an accounting transaction, or if we're talking about a checking account, it is in your balance, and there's nothing you can do to take it off. So no sin, no screw-up, no anything is gonna take what Jesus did for you on the cross away from your account. And that is awesome. I'm telling you, that is incredible. But with that in mind, Let's go to the kingdom of God. And again, when we talk about God's way of doing things, seeing the end from the beginning— and if you can picture that, that day that you and I are going to end up in that box one day, if Jesus tarries, if we don't hear the trumpet blast and we don't get raptured out of the church, we are gonna not make eternity in this body and in this state. And it was just mercy on God's part to kick us out of the Garden of Eden. God did not want us biting the tree of life. He did not want Adam and Eve to eat the tree of life and be eternal creatures in their present sinful state. You can think that he was mad, or you can think that he was being angry, or, you know, he was punishing Adam and Eve by throwing them out of the Garden of Eden. That was not a punishment. That was a merciful correction. He could not allow them to eat from the Tree of Life, because when we get to heaven and we get a glorified body and we chomp on the fruit from the Tree of Life, we are going to live forever. Don't say I understand it all. Don't have any idea exactly how that's going to play out, but that's what the Word of God says. And so if the Word of God says it, I'm believing it. I've got to anchor my life on something, and I'm anchoring my life and my eternity on what the Word of God says. I am not going on what someone else says. I'm not going on an interpretation or a translation. I am digging in to see what the Word of God says, and like a child, I am just believing it. And I— and if it says something that I don't understand, I go back and I make sure that that is the right translation and that it exactly says what it— back in the Hebrew, back in the Dead Sea Scroll stuff. I mean, I'm digging in, and I have sold out on this all the way. I don't know that you can tell that. I don't know that I've ever told you that, but one of those scriptures, one of the scriptures that I've quoted multiple times is found in Matthew 13:45. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. That is just showing an all-in, sold-out mentality on this word of God. Jesus is saying, look, you need to sell out on this deal. You need to understand that the kingdom of God God's kingdom is about selling out to Father God. It's about going— getting into his family, and once there, by faith, just believing everything the word says. We have got to go from a follower of Christ— and, and you're going to see this on the map, and I'm going to start talking about more and more of these little steps— and I've talked about the mountain of God And I think I'm going to change that name. I want to say I'm going to change it to Christian— the Christian Discipleship Journey. I don't know, something that's a little more flowery. It's got a little more descriptive title because we are Christians. If you're going up this mountain and it's all about discipleship and it's a journey. So I mean, I'm trying to figure out as I'm going through this, these podcasts, and as I'm going through teaching and all this stuff, I'm trying to get it to where, you know, because Mountain of God, I mean, there's a song, and I don't want to confuse people with what I name it. I think I'm going to change the name, and I'm— you'll still be able to use the Mountain of God link, but I think I'm going to change the title to Christian Discipleship Journey, or The Christian Discipleship Journey. It don't matter, but it's going to be something like that because there's 3 levels to this mountain, and the first one is you, you come into this as a new creation, and you're just a follower, and you're just following like a baby, you know, he's following in dad's footsteps. And you really don't know what part of the body you are. You don't know everything that the Father has for you. And as a little child, you're not supposed to know everything. And so when you're brand new, newborn, you're totally a new creation in Jesus, and you've been spiritually reborn. You got to grow up in the body, and you got to grow up in the faith. And so you need to learn some of these concepts, and then you take another step up the next level of the, of the mountain, or up this Christian journey, and you go from being a follower to a believer. And if you've listened to this podcast, I've talked about a few times saying, you know, if you— if I could just tweak one thing that you're doing as you go through your Christian walk or life, I would change you from reading your Bible to believing what you read. And it seems like it's the same thing, but you can read over passages, you don't take any ownership of the— what you just read. You don't just let it soak in or meditate on actually believing what the Bible says. When people come against the word of God and you've got to defend it, if you don't believe it, well, when someone says, well, I don't believe that Noah's Ark really happened? Well, if you don't believe what you read, you're going to be standing there going, well, I don't know. And so what kind of position is that? I mean, that's lukewarm, middle-of-the-road stuff. You're going to get run over. We need to know that we believe what we read, and that's the second level. And then the third level is the disciple. And when you abide in his word, that means you're in it and the word is in you. And it takes a little bit Again, a tree is just not grown overnight, and it's going to take a while to become a disciple. And God's fine with that. And God doesn't want anybody to just jump in from being a brand new baby Christian to being a disciple that is taking on the enemy and doing all that stuff. You, you need to grow in grace and truth. I mean, Jesus went 30 years before he started his ministry. So don't think for a minute that God's in this big huge hurry to get you into the ministry. He knows exactly where you are. He knows exactly what needs to be done. God is omnipresent, he's omnipotent, and he's omniscient. And those are the three omnis. That means he's all-powerful, he's all-knowing, and he's everywhere. So if you've got that God on your team, what difference does it make who comes against you? Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. We ain't got to worry about the punk. The punk is a punk. He's very good at what he does. He'll deceive you. He'll get you all twisted around the axle. He'll get you all wrapped up in life and the cares of this world. I mean, he knows what he's doing, but we have to go back into the word. We got to abide in the word. And here's the soapbox moment. Getting the Word of God, I'm just telling you, it changes your life. If it changed my life, it'll change your life. And I just want to encourage you that if you just want to dig in, in the next episode we're going to talk about what we specifically, what we can do to see the end from the beginning, and what I'm, what I've done and what I've written down and how I've gone about it. And I think it's pretty cool. I mean, not because I've done it, But I've heard of other people doing it, and a business person had really told me about it. And so I was thinking, you know, that is a great idea for living a Christian life, much less a businessman or a business life. I mean, I just think it's a great idea to figure out how you want all this to end and then work backwards from that. Well, that's enough for right now. God, I thank you so much for everything you're doing in my life. I thank you for this listener., and I pray in Jesus' name that you would just continue to encourage this listener and encourage— continue to lead and guide and direct me. Lord, I thank you for everything that you're teaching me, and I hope that you are teaching this listener. Holy Spirit, thank you for being with us, and I thank you, I love you. I 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.
