In episode 69 of the “No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe” podcast, host Greg Ryan wraps up his series on the biblical “armor of God” (Ephesians 6). He focuses on the final two pieces— the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit— and ties them to Easter themes. Ryan emphasizes the Word of God as the sword that defeats Satan, recounting Jesus’ “It is written” response to temptation. He explains the helmet of salvation as the believer’s assured identity in Christ, counter‑acting Satan’s mental attacks and accusations. He describes Satan’s tactics through the five senses and urges listeners to reject those thoughts by fixing their minds on Scripture. Ryan then moves to the concluding exhortation to pray continuously (Eph 6:18), reminding listeners they are saints, saved, and called to battle spiritually. The episode ends with an Easter reflection on the resurrection, the promise of eternal life, and a call to live fearlessly while sharing the gospel.
Welcome to episode 69, John 1:1.
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 69. We are continuing to put on the whole armor. In fact, we're going to finish up today. This is Easter Saturday for me, so I am excited to be able to put on the whole armor. And we're going to start in Ephesians 6:17-18. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all of the saints. Well, we finally made it to the end of the armor. We've had— after today, we will have had the whole armor put on and held. And today is the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. And I talk— I think I talk every day about the sword of the Spirit. I talk about the word of God and how important it is that we start wielding this word I've said that word is God and the word was God and the word became flesh. Every episode you hear that if you listen to my announcer guy. If you fast forward through it, you don't hear it every time, obviously, but every episode I put that at the beginning of the episode so you understand that the word of God— that's why we're here. If it was not for the Bible, I would not be here right now. I'm telling you, I don't know where, I don't know which, what ditch or what jail I would be in, but I'm pretty confident I would not be in the place that I'm in today. In fact, I can be more than confident. I can promise you that I would not be where I am today without God's Word. And I thank God for the sword of the Spirit, and I've learned to use it. And I, you know, we went to Matthew 4 earlier where Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. And Jesus said, 3 times he was tempted by Satan, the punk, and 3 times Jesus said, "It is written." Now this is very significant that if Jesus, Lord God, if God was here walking on earth and was tempted by Satan, if anybody could have just taken him on and slapped him around a little bit, it would have been Jesus. But he did not. He did not take Satan on hand to hand or mano a mano. He said, "It is written." Jesus took Satan on by using the word of God, the sword of the spirit, and it cuts him up. I'm telling you, the sword of the spirit, that's why you gotta fight to pick this Bible. That's why it's always a battle. It's always, and that's why I wanna keep encouraging you, just pick the Bible up. Satan's a punk. Quit letting him bully you around. Pick the word of God. He does not want you in his word. He does not want you in the Word of God because he knows that he cannot defeat the Word of God. And Jesus said, "It is written," and it shut him down. It locked him out. And the other thing, the helmet of salvation, I wanna move on to the helmet of salvation because if the battle is in your mind, the things that are going on is always in your mind, and Satan is always putting thoughts in there. And you've got thoughts going on in there because you have things that you've done and things that you've seen that are being played back either by your own memory or by Satan saying, hey, you remember that? Hey, how about that? Hey, what about this? He is the accuser of the brethren. He's going to accuse you. He's going to condemn you. And that's why I've told you over and over in Romans 8:1, there is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh. But according to the Spirit. If you're walking in the Spirit, Satan can't— I mean, he can condemn you, and that's why I'm saying the helmet of salvation. You have to know that you know that you know that you are saved. And if you've ever doubted, I mean, we have a— there's a gospel message. I've done it a few times on the episode, the Good Friday or the God Friday message, the last episode, I think episode 68. I, I did a message on salvation, and if you put that helmet of salvation, when you know that you are God's and you know that you've been changed, fear really doesn't have much hold on you. Death has no sting. You know, Satan is such a punk, and I see him as a bee with no stinger and a lion with no fangs, no teeth, and no claws. And so what, you know, I mean, he may, the lion may be able to wrestle with you a little bit, but if he don't have any claws to dig into you and he don't have any teeth to bite you with, I mean, he's all talk. He is all talk. And the only thing that you give, the only thing that you give Satan is when you open up something in your life to him and you start listening to his garbage. And that's all it is. It's just his garbage, his condemning voice inside of your head. I don't know if you've ever heard just condemning thoughts, or if you've ever thought— like, in every, just about every day, I hear thoughts telling me, what are you doing? Why, why are you even— why do you even have a podcast? You know no one's listening to that. You know nobody cares. Why don't you just quit? Why don't you just give up? I mean, I'm hearing that garbage every day, and I've just made up my mind there is power in a made-up mind. And I've just made up my mind, I'm going through 2021 and I'm going to proclaim the Word of God. I am going to encourage, inspire, and empower you to get into his Word. I want to get you talking to the Holy Spirit. I want you to be as strong as you possibly can this year because it is— I don't think it's getting any better out there in the world. I think fear is just— they just keep fire and all this other fear, they bring something else up that you could be fearful about. And if you are in the Word of God, I mean, I've told people all the time and people kind of laugh, but you can't threaten me with heaven. You just cannot threaten me with heaven. So if the worst thing that happens to me is I die, well then I'm in heaven. So, and I don't, I don't know that I'm at the place where Paul was where he said, to live is Christ and to die is gain. I don't know that I wake up every morning and think, oh God, can it be today? Can I die today? I'm not there. But I am saying that I'm not walking around fearful. I am not fearful as I walk through the day, and I don't let all this other garbage that's going on in the world— I don't let it dictate to me how I spend my day. And I, you know, I can watch the same thing you're watching. I choose to not watch as much probably as you're watching because I just can't take all that garbage in. So I just— I'm just concentrating on the word and I'm concentrating on my family, my life, and my business, but I, I'm really not concentrating so much on what Satan's doing. So I, I just want to tell you that the battle is in your mind, and Satan is attacking you with your 5 senses. If you remember, what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you touch, what you smell— those 5 senses, he's going to use that to bring back into remembrance, some stupid stuff you did or things you heard or whatever. I would say just forget that, repent. If you need to put that under the blood, put it under the blood and get moving. And just tell— ask God to remember it. He's going to say, what? He throws all of your sin into the sea of forgetfulness. And I think that is such a wonderful picture, that God just takes everything that you did that was against his word before you were saved and just dunks it into the sea of forgetfulness. And once it goes into the sea of forgetfulness, it's gone, it's forgotten. And if you try to bring it up to God, he's going to say, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? And so you got to repaint the picture and you got to tell him everything because God's forgotten it. He said his word is true. He said, I'm throwing it in the sea, and he casts it as far as the east is from the west. That's how far away it is from you. So I mean, you can never get to— if you leave and start going west, you are never going to reach the east going west. I'm not going to chase that rabbit, but the battle that we're dealing with mostly is in our mind. And if we will get our— if we would get our mind fixed on the Word of God and we get our mind fixed on Jesus, it will pretty much take care of all this other mess that Satan's trying to throw at us. Well, I think we finally made it through the whole armor of God. The only thing left to do now is to pray. If you remember, at the very end of Ephesians 6:18, it says to pray always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for for all the saints. We are supposed to pray for all of the saints. And remember, we talked about earlier that, you know, you are a saint. You are no longer— and I want you to just change your mindset— we're not a sinner anymore. We were a sinner, and now we are saved by grace. And I know it may go against the grain a little bit, and it may not be what you're used to hearing, but you are a child of God, and you are a saint of God. You have been changed. There is one-third of You, your spirit, your spirit man is just like Jesus. It's 100% saved. It is never going to be unsaved. And you are a saint. You have been translated into the kingdom. Put on the armor of God and let's get into the battle. This battle is to the death. Ain't none of us getting out of this thing alive. So let's go kick the crap out of Satan. I'm sick of him. He's a punk. And let's go take care of business. And let's go bring some people into the kingdom and give God glory while we're doing it. Well, that's enough for Easter Saturday. I want to encourage you to, however you're going to worship God tomorrow on Easter Sunday, or if it, if it's past Easter and you're listening to this, I want, I want you to remember what God did for you. I, when you listen to this, think about he has risen, he is risen. Oh, what a wonderful picture of the empty tomb. He went in dead, he came out alive forevermore. I mean, Jesus is alive. He is never going to die again, and that means you and I will never taste death if we've accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior. All right, well, that's enough. Happy Easter, everybody, 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.
