In episode 54 of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, Greg Ryan opens with John 1:1 and urges listeners to begin their Bible study with the Gospel of John, emphasizing slow, meditative reading and asking the Holy Spirit for insight. He connects this practice to the broader theme of spiritual warfare, focusing on the concept of surrender as a component of putting on the armor of God. Greg links daily prayer (specifically Romans 12:1) to a continual “dying to self” and frames surrender as essential for spiritual protection. Using Moses’ encounter with the burning bush and the miracle of the rod‑turned‑snake, he illustrates faith and surrender, noting that unpacking faith will require a longer series. Greg then shifts to meekness, offering a vivid analogy of a wild stallion broken and made meek under a master’s hand, clarifying that meekness is not weakness but gentle, kind submission. He cites Matthew 5:5 and Numbers 12:3 to show biblical endorsement of meekness and humility, highlighting Moses as the ultimate example of meekness/humility. Greg argues that believers should, like Moses, refrain from defending themselves when attacked, trusting God to fight their battles, while still defending God’s honor. He concludes by announcing a forthcoming deeper dive into humbleness, tying it back to surrender and the armor of God series.
Welcome to episode 54, 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.
You know, I just can't get too much of the Gospel of John. If you are looking for a place to pick up that Bible and start to reread and get into the Word again, I want to encourage you to start with the Gospel of John 1:1. Ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, what do you want me to learn from this time with you? Remember, he wrote the book. I didn't write it. And when you ask him, expect he's going to answer. And he'll, he'll kind of quicken— for a good churchy word, he'll— when you're reading it, something I call it kind of jumps off the page to me. It just kind of— it— and it's okay if you want to just stop when, when you read something that you're like, ooh, or wow, or something kind of triggers or clicks. Just slow down. I mean, we don't need to get in a hurry. It is not a speed race. You don't have to read the Bible every once every year. You don't have to go through it 365 days. In fact, if you want to stay on 3 verses for 3 months, God's going to be okay with that if you keep meditating and digging on it and getting that seed planted. I don't know who needed to hear that, but there you go. Get in John. Get in the Gospel of John if you're looking for a start. Get on after it. It ain't gonna hurt you none. Now we left Moses. Remember, he was out in the field. He had just thrown his stick down and it turned into a snake, and he grabbed it by the tail. And we were talking about surrender, and Moses surrendered. I, I want to say he surrendered his life. He— when he grabbed that tail, you could, you could bet that he had died to self. He, you know, he, he just got done talking to God, so he was kind of in that you know, in a God moment, you know, he could— he kind of felt the— he kind of had a goosebump, maybe, you know, where you're in a good service and you get a goosebump, you know. So he had just talked to the, the burning bush. He'd been talking to the Lord. In fact, the Lord was still talking to him, and God told him to throw down the stick, the stick or the rod. And, and it takes faith. And, and this whole Christian walk thing, we're going to talk about faith Faith's probably going to be a whole month lesson because I— it's going to be hard to unpack in 5 or 6 10-minute lessons the, the whole concept of faith. But I'm excited about faith. And in Moses, it's kind of neat to watch because Moses grabbed that tail by faith. And so, but it's also— it was also a picture of surrendering. And I'm still on the surrendering. God won't let me let this go because surrendering— and I never until the other day, I never even considered this part of putting on the armor. Now, I, I always, I always do— I guess I have done that in the past, but I guess I've never really talked about it as part of the armor process is where I die to self. You know, in my 5 daily prayers, the second prayer, or the second step, is Romans 12:1, where I— Paul says, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present yourself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. So every day I die daily. I, I didn't see— I saw that as a separate event from the armor, but I think this is part of the whole thing, that if you have put on the armor of God and you're like, you're still getting, you're still taking some arrows there. I mean, there may be a couple of fixes, and one of them may be this. It may be the surrender. The next word that comes into my mind, and it goes hand in glove with surrender, and that is meekness, and to be meek. And that is a word, and I want to go ahead and get this definition out there because I heard, I heard a definition, or actually it was a picture description, and it was the first time meekness was used, or meek was used, and it was back in a Greek— I think it was a tragedy or something. And I'd— and they've said that this stallion, it was a wild stallion. If you've seen all the, the westerns where they have all the stallions running in the wide open and they're running and untamed and they're free and doing whatever they want whenever they want to do it, And then they, they talked about this guy lassoing this leader, the, you know, the strongest, baddest horse in this, this herd of Mustangs or stallions or whatever the word is. I'm not a horse person, I guess you could tell. They lasso him and then, and then breaks this horse, and it says that he was meek. They, they said that this horse was meek under its master's hand. And I want you to, to kind of picture that way. It's a broken animal, but it was meek. And, and we're going to get into brokenness as well, maybe not in this episode. I just kind of looked at the clock, and, and it— brokenness probably needs an episode all of itself. If you can picture meek to be this— now, this stallion or this Mustang or whatever the— let's call him a stallion, it sounds better and mightier. But this stallion was the exact same horse. It had just fallen under, or it had submitted to go in with this word. It had surrendered to the master's hand, but it's still the most— it's still powerful, it's still just as strong and just as fast, but it was meek. And I, I think that is a cool picture. You know, it's not weak or wimpy. It is just surrendered. Meekness— and that's why I wanted to, to talk about meekness in the same breath as surrender. If you need a couple of words maybe to describe that, we would know better than meekness because we don't use that term a lot, but maybe gentle or kind. Kindness and gentleness are the fruits of the Spirit. So gentleness and kindness, that's, that's a characteristic of meekness. Now, to go back to the example of the horse, he was meek, he was gentle or kind, he was under the direction of the master. And if we will be meek— and Jesus said, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. That's Matthew 5:5. And then if we go to Numbers 12:3, it says, now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the face of the earth. That was the King James Version. Normally I read out of the New King James, but in the New King James it said that Moses was humble instead of meek. And since I'm on meek, I wanted to use the word meek. But now, the man Moses was very humble, more than all the men who were on the face of the earth. And I want to ask you a question: who wrote the book of Numbers? Do you know who wrote that book? Didn't Moses write the first 5 books of the Bible? And Moses wrote that about himself. That's pretty amazing. I don't know that I could have— even if God would have said, hey Greg, I want you to write down that, that you're humble. In fact, I want you to say that you're the most humble man on the whole earth. And I would— I don't know, that would be a tough thing to write with all of the ways, you know, the— some of the church meetings that you go to, you know, who's the most humble, you know, Bob. And if Bob takes the the humble prize or the humble button, then they take it away from him because if he was truly humble, he wouldn't have accepted it. So, you know, when you start getting in, you know, with what people think— but it doesn't matter what people think. God told Moses to write that, and Moses wrote that. So Moses was meek, Moses was humble. And, and if you look at Moses, his disposition It was never— he rarely— I don't think he ever really defended himself. He defended God. And then when people lashed out irrationally at him, and they did that multiple times, all of the children of Israel, God defended Moses. And I think that that is a lesson for us, that when we're talking about being strong in the might, you know, and we're still on verse 6:10, we may be here for the month But when we're talking about putting on the whole armor of God, if we're going to be, if we're going to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, we need to have God fight our battles for us. And in order to do that, we need to take a lesson from Moses, where he was the meekest man or the most humble man on the face of the earth. We need to be like Moses. And when people lash out irrationally against us, we just take it, or we just turn the other cheek, or we, you know, we don't defend. You don't defend yourself. But if they lash out irrationally against your God, that's a difference. Moses didn't take too kindly to when people started talking bad about the Lord. Well, that's enough for the day. I, I think that I'm probably going to continue this conversation with humbleness. We're going to dive into humbleness, and it's amazing how God gives me one word, surrender, and, and he leads me to other scriptures to give you an example and me an example. Well, that's enough for today. Thanks 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.
