In episode 60 of the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, host Greg Ryan continues his series on the Armor of God, focusing on Ephesians 6:12‑13. He begins with a reading of Ephesians 6:10‑13 and reminds listeners of earlier lessons about surrender, humility, and meekness. Ryan then shares a vivid personal anecdote about road‑rage, describing how he repeatedly called other drivers “idiots” until a sudden, internal thought—perceived as the Holy Spirit’s voice—stopped him. He interprets this experience as a divine lesson that believers do not fight flesh and blood, because every person is a child of God. He explains that the true battle is against unseen spiritual forces: principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, and spiritual hosts, which operate in various realms. Ryan outlines the three primary enemies of the Christian: the flesh (our sinful nature), the world (its values and temptations), and Satan. He emphasizes the need to discern the different voices in our heads—the self, Satan, and the Holy Spirit—and to put on the full armor of God. He urges listeners to study the Bible to uncover truth and avoid deception, and previews that upcoming episodes will delve deeper into how to wear each piece of the armor. The episode ends with a call to recognize the spiritual battle and prepare for the inevitable, ultimate confrontation.
Welcome to episode 60. We're going to begin it the same way we begin every episode, in 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 60. I think this is part 9 in the Spiritual Warfare: The Armor of God lessons. But I am talking about, or trying to talk about, Ephesians 6:10-18, and I think I've made it as far as Ephesians 6:11. So we're not getting a long way in our 9th episode, but we're going to try to move along. I'm going to talk about 12 and 13 today, I believe, and I'm going to go ahead and read 6:10-13 just to kind of give us a refresher. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Well, if you've listened to any of the episodes previously about, about the teachings on the armor, I had talked about surrendering. I talked about humbleness. I've talked about being meek, and I've talked about the position that we need to put ourselves in. We need to be weak so that God can be strong, so that we can stand to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. If we are going to use God's power, we have to let go of our power. God is all-powerful. He is omnipotent. He's omnipresent, and he's omnip— omnipotent, and he knows everything. He's everywhere, and he's the most powerful being in the whole universe, in all creation. So in order— we just need to get out of our own way. But this episode, I want to talk about 12 for right now. That— and you can kind of see that there's a hierarchy in the demonic realm, and I think the angelic warriors, there's, there's a hierarchy of, you know, there's, there's leaders, and then there's people under them, and they— everybody's got their own role and different roles to play. It's telling us that we are not fighting against flesh and blood. And I want to— I mean, I've got to give you a little story about how God taught me this lesson. And I don't know if any of y'all ever suffered with road rage. And I'm not talking about, you know, getting a gun out and shooting people road rage. I'm just talking about driving down the road and someone cuts you off and you get mad, or Or if someone in front of you is going slow, or if it's bumper to bumper and someone's trying to pull out in front of you out of a parking lot when there's a traffic light a few yards away from where they're trying to pull out against traffic. And I mean, it's just a mess. People gotta stop. And I can already feel my blood pressure going up when I'm imagining people not using the light and making 5 lanes of traffic stop so they can turn left against the traffic. And it just kind of fries my head. Well, I had to give you all of that to tell you kind of how God taught me about we're not warring against flesh and blood. I'm driving and I've been blasting people. Now, I don't cuss people because I know the Holy Spirit is riding with me, so it's very rare that I start just blasting people, you know, really ugly-like. But I've kind of gotten into a pattern of calling these people idiots. Look at this idiot. And I mean, I'm in my car by myself, or my kids were in the backseat, and I'd say, "Look at this bubba," or, you know, "Look at this idiot." You know, and I didn't even realize I was saying it, but it was just, I guess it was just a frustration in my, I guess stress or whatever. I mean, my wife sometimes tells me I need to get over myself, but anyway, that's a different story. Multiple days for multiple weeks, I was getting frustrated, And I was blasting these people, calling them idiots. Every, you know, it just, every, it seemed like every day or a couple of times, 2 or 3 times a week. I'm driving to work and it's on Saturday morning and there's nobody on this street. I'm in the right lane about to turn into my office. There's no one in the left lane. There's no one in front of me. There's nobody behind me. And this little old lady pulls out, just, I'm going 35 miles an hour. And this little old lady pulls out in front of me, puts me in my windshield, pulls out in front of me. And I slam on the brakes, and she don't know more than I know that I'm there than the man on the moon. And she just drives off, and I couldn't move over because I was about to turn right into my office. So I turned right into my office, and I put it in park, and I just start blasting this poor little old lady. She's still— I mean, she's probably going down the road to Walmart or Brookshire's or Kroger or someplace— but she was just driving and she was on her own little world. And I'm blasting it! "Man, I am so sick of these idiots driving down the road!" Rrrr rrrr! And I've already put the car in park; I've already turned the car off and I'm still sitting there. It's 8 o'clock in the morning. I think I'm meeting clients at my office at 8:30 AM, so I got 30 minutes to use all 30 just to blast this poor lady. About mid- sentence and blasting, I get this thought in my head. And it just, it was just a random thought that comes in and it said, "What would you do if a grown man called Seth an idiot right to your face?" That thought was nowhere anywhere where I was at the moment. I'm telling you, I'm still blasting this poor little old lady. I'm not thinking at all about my son and it just comes out of the blue. I thought, then it just stopped me. So then I answered in my head. I mean, this was not an audible voice, it was a thought. And it was in my vernacular, but it was talking to me. And it just said, "What would you do if a grown man called your son an idiot right to your face?" And so then I answered it in my head. I said, "Well, I don't think I'd like that." The next thought that came just stopped me. It said, "I've been listening to you call my kids an idiot for the last few weeks and I've had about enough." And I want to tell you, I just froze. Now, I've told you before that there are 3 voices going on in my head and in your head. One of them is you talking to you. One of them, I think, is Satan talking to you, or one of his demons. And one of them is the Holy Spirit or God talking to you. And you kind of got to discern the different voices. I was pretty sure this wasn't me, because the voice that I had going on in the moment that I was in, I was hot. I mean, I'm telling you, I was still blasting this poor little old lady, and I heard that clear. I had that thought in my mind, just— and I don't know if you've ever thought things. I mean, I don't know if you think out loud or if you think to yourself, but I think— I mean, I can't be that unique to where I get thought— I just get thoughts in my head. Sometimes those thoughts, and you know, if you've ever had those thoughts that you're just like, where did that come, you know, some random like, you know, you need to go just kill that person, or do, I mean, I very rarely have that thought, but so settle down. You know, just those random nasty, violent, mean, horrible thoughts, I would give that credit to the enemy, the guy that comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And a lot of thoughts sometimes may be your own head, you know, what you're thinking. Out loud. But I want to get back to this, this specific thought is where God— I believe that was the Holy Spirit talking to me in my own vernacular, talking inside my little voice box, wherever that is in you. It's in the kind of back right corner is kind of where I hear it. It stopped me dead in my tracks, you know, when he said, "And I've had just about enough of it," and, "I've heard enough." Well, what it did was it verified to me, because I don't know if you'd ever thought about it. I really honestly, I I'll be honest with you, I never thought, you know, that everybody was God's children. I always thought that, you know, just the Christians, just the sexy people were God's children. But God made it abundantly clear because I was blasting. I was an equal opportunity blaster on this road, or when I was driving down the road stressed out. I didn't care who pulled out in front of me. I didn't care who tried to go 4 or 5 lanes across traffic. When there was a stop sign there. I didn't care who went 10 miles an hour slower than me. I was gonna, I was gonna call him a bubba or an idiot or look at this, look at this jack wagon or what. I hope that's not a cuss word. But anyway, I was gonna, I was blasting whomever whenever if they, if they had the audacity to drive in front of me in a manner which I did not appreciate. So I said all of that to, to make the, the point that we are not warring against flesh and blood. We are not warring against God's children. And everybody— God made it abundantly clear that day that everyone, every child, every person that I saw was his kid. And he believes that they can do no wrong, that you are— if you're listening to this, you've heard it before maybe, but you You are God's favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. So you are not a problem for God. Now you may have denied him or you may not believe in him, but God believes in you. And you are, take it from me, God don't like it when anybody gets on to his kids. And so I wanna encourage you that we are not warring against the people that we can see, but it is all of these things behind them that we cannot see. And I want to tell you that we are all deceived, and the— your level of deception, I think, is based on how much or how little of the truth you know. So people that just deny Jesus, and so they're totally— I think they're in total deception and don't even know it. And one of the— I mean, one of the slimy horrible things about deception is, you know, you don't know you're deceived. So what you got to come to the conclusion of is that you are deceived in some manner if you don't know the truth. And again, I'm going to tell you, get into the Bible, because if you get into the Bible, you can know the truth and it'll help set you free. Back to 6:12, it talks about the principalities and the powers and the rulers of the darkness of this age and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. I mean, there's 4 things that we're fighting against, and they're all— I think they all have different jobs and they have different tactics that they use, and maybe different realms or different areas. Like, maybe some of them are over states and some of them are over countries and some of them are over governments. I, I mean, I don't know. I'm not ready to talk about all of that, and I don't want to get down in the weeds with all of that, but I just want— I just want to make you aware that we are fighting against demons. We are fighting against things that we cannot see, not people. And I really just want to encourage you, you know, when I talk about the, the spiritual realm and the physical realm, we— I think we have three enemies. We have three things that, that we're— that constantly fight against God, or that's against the Spirit. One is our flesh. If you remember in Spirit, Soul, and Body, it says that the body and the spirit are enmity, that they're against each other. Our body here on earth is never going to fall in line with the spirit. The second thing that we're at odds with is the world or the things of this world. It's in 1 John 2:15-17, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world," the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. So that— we're not going to start chasing that rabbit, but that we've got the flesh, we've got the world, and our other enemy is Satan, the punk. So I just want to let you know that that's when we start putting on the armor. Probably— it looks like it's probably going to be next week, it may be in a couple days, but we are fighting. I just want to get you a picture of whom we are fighting. We are, we are in a battle. This is a battle to the death. None of us are getting out of this thing alive, but if we get death right, then we can truly live and we can live forever. That's enough for this episode. I had to tell that story, and I hope to visit with you again tomorrow on the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
