In episode 75 of the “No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe” podcast, Greg Ryan continues his series on the four foundations of the church and the four living creatures, focusing on the ox, which represents the servant/worker. He argues that true Christianity requires being a doer of the Word (citing James) and warns against self‑deception. Ryan describes Satan as a real, deceptive force that must be defeated with love, drawing on 1 Corinthians 13, John 15:12‑13, and John 13:34‑35 to define love as an active, sacrificial service rather than a feeling. He illustrates love with a concrete example of feeding a hungry friend, emphasizing that prayer alone is insufficient when a tangible need is evident. Using Matthew 20:25‑28, he presents servant leadership as the Christian model: the higher one rises in Christ, the lower one must serve. Ryan shares personal reflections, noting he relates more to Peter’s action‑oriented style than to John’s relational love, and he reveals plans to build a community centered on the four foundations, including a 5‑day challenge and four “rooms” for different gifting (the ox being the servant). He cites Zig Ziglar’s principle that helping others leads to personal blessing, and he closes with a prayer for listeners, encouraging them to pursue the “well‑done, good and faithful servant” promise.
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Welcome to episode 75.
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 75. I can't believe I've made it 75 episodes, but here I am and here you are, and I want to thank you for being a part of this. If you're a regular fanatic, welcome back, and if this is your first time, I think it's episode 72 where I define fanatic, and you can see— listen to that episode and see if you are one. All right, let's get busy on talking, continuing our talk about the four foundations of the church and the four creatures and the 4 faces. And today we're going to talk about the face of the ox. And the ox stands for servant or worker. And in James, I'm not exactly sure what the scripture, which, which verse, scripture and verse, but where it says to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only, deceiving yourselves. Now we know that Satan is a punk, and Satan is liar, he's a stealer, he's a deceiver, he's a murderer, he's all these things. But he's really good at deception. In fact, I think that's probably his greatest gift is being able to deceive. He's so good at it that he has deceived most of the people in the church and all everyone outside the church that he's not really real or he's not anything to contend with. Half of the people in the church believe that Satan is a concept, and if you think he's a concept, you need to dig in a little bit deeper into the word. Satan is real, he's a punk, and he needs to be defeated. He He has been defeated by Jesus, but he has not been banished yet. And we are to defeat him, I think, with love. And that's what we're gonna talk about in this episode is the love that Jesus gave to his disciples. He showed in love, faith, hope, and love, and these three remain. I think that we're gonna concentrate on these three down in future episodes, but love, it says the greatest of these is love. Love is an action word. Faith, hope, and love, all three of these have action attached to them. You just can't just sit in a room and just love somebody. And I believe that you show your love one to another. I, I believe you take something, take your love to other people. But before I get into the love, I want to talk again about the verse in James where it says you deceive yourselves. So it's— this isn't Satan deceiving us, this is us deceiving ourselves if we don't think we need to be a doer of the word. We need to get into the word, we need to read the word, but we also need to do what God or the Holy Spirit is, is trying to lead us to do. Now the definition of love, I think, is found pretty much in the 1 Corinthians. I memorized that, and it's in a previous episode, but it's 1 Corinthians 13. I call it the love chapter, and it's verses 4 through 7. The love disciple was John. If you really want to know what love is and how John personally knew love, it is found in the book, the Gospel of John, and John 1, 2, and 3. John's concept and picture of love is very good, and I would encourage you to, to dig in. I've already told you multiple times today, if you, if you're looking for a place to start, start in the Gospel of John and read the whole book. And don't get in a hurry just read and think and ponder. But get into John. He is the love disciple. And I want to go to John 15:12-13. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. And I want to read another scripture in John. It's in 13 34 and 35. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another. And I think the King James— this is a New King James Version, but I think the King James Version says love one to another, and I'll check that out. But I see love as an act. I see love as taking— say, say you're hungry and I've got some— say I've got some leftover chicken and dumplings, and I don't, but just say I do, and you're hungry, and I know you're hungry. In fact, I know it because you're saying, man, I'm hungry, I, I don't know what we're going to eat tonight. And if I say, brother, I'm gonna pray for you, man, I'm gonna pray that God sends you some food or gives you some money, and you reach, you stretch your hand out, and you get all spiritual, and you and you pray for that person to get fed, or pray— a friend of yours prays for you to be fed. If it was me that said that prayer to you and put my hand out and walked away, have I helped you? Have I loved you? Now, I'm not saying that you don't need prayer and prayer is not vital. And remember, in the last episode we talked about the lion and the power and prayer. So there's a place, there's a time and a place for prayer, but is this the time and the place? Have I really helped you bringing the lion? I don't believe I do. If God shows someone, so shows you a need, and you do not fill that need, I think you have not acted in love. This is the exact same scenario, you know, I say, how's things going? Oh, it's going good, but man, I'm so hungry. We hadn't had anything to eat in the last day. Oh brother, and I go get you my chicken and dumplings that I have left over, or I fix you up a brand new batch of something. And I bring it. I take my love, my food that I see the need, and I take the food to you and actually deliver it to you, one to another. I take the love. And it's not, you know, I don't— everything's love is not huggy, touchy, kissy. I mean, I, I kind of get a little weirded out. And I, I've just got to be honest, the reason I I do. I like Peter better because I relate more to Peter, him jumping out the boat and you ready, fire, aim. And if you've listened to me, you know that I, I relate to Peter. I jump in. And one of the disciples that I have a harder time relating to is John. And it's not— and it may just be because the dog in me, I don't know. But, and I've done— maybe I need to get a hold of my feelings to lay on his chest at dinner. I just don't— that right now where I'm sitting talking to this microphone, that's just not me. I'm just not that guy that's going to be laid up on Jesus' chest listening to every word that he says. And, and John just— John and Jesus, they loved each other. I mean, it was a brotherly love. They loved being in the same room together. They just loved the company. And I get that, but I'm more like Peter, you know, I want to go do something, or I want to go kick the crap out of something. And I probably shouldn't say crap. I mean, my personality, my mentality. So when we start talking about love, it takes me a minute to kind of dig around what love is. And that's why I'm— that's why I'm excited to talk to you about this ox, because this is where— and these four foundations, you're going to find out in a later episode that I believe we're— the things that we struggle in is where we need to kind of concentrate. We have a gifting. One of the four of these foundations I think are key to who you are. And then the other three, we're gonna— in the community that I'm building, we're gonna go around to each community and we're gonna hang out with some of these people that are gifted as an ox. I mean, that's their whole life is serving.
And we're—
the next scripture we're going to talk about is the serving, and that's found in Matthew 20:25-28. But Jesus called them to himself and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you, but whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant, and whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Now that is a true picture of love, and that is the Christian walk, is to— the higher you get in, in Christ and Jesus, the lower you become, and you become a servant. And I think these four foundations, they're so important that we get ahold of this idea. And I mean, really, I'm gonna turn, I think, my whole quote ministry into this studying and digging out these four different foundations because I think it's so important that if we just hook in, the Christian walk is simple. I mean, believe the word, right? But it's not easy. And I think we're all part of the same body of Christ. And we're all— but we're all different. We're all different parts of the same body, and we're all coming into this body at a different time. We didn't all get saved on the exact same day. I got saved when I was 30, back in '93. You got saved when you got saved. Your date, you know when you were saved. And so we're all coming at this in a different time. We're different growths in, in the body. We're at different parts of the body, and now we've got different giftings. The more I dig into it, the clearer it gets. But I can see why it's so difficult. And if you're— all you're doing is going to church or listening to church on Sunday, and that's the only church you're quote getting, and then you get all of the— what the world's got, all of what Satan is putting out, and all of this fear and doubt and unbelief, and then you're trying to win this battle— you can't do it. You cannot do it. And so what I have— I mean, really, what I'm digging around is I'm going to create a community, and I want encourage and power and inspire us to continue to just keep reaching higher and being around like-minded believers. I'm getting a little bit pumped up about it, but I'm, I'm going to have a 5-day challenge. Just invite people in and, and we're going to go live and I'm going to get on the videos. And so it's—
it—
I'm getting ready to, to kick that off. But this thing right here, this ox, the servant, I just want you to picture that the thing that kicked me into this was I've got a friend of mine that that's his go-to. I mean, he just goes and serves, and that's— I mean, he just does it like a duck takes to water. As I was praying before I even started this podcast and why I was even going to be a part of all of this is because I just felt like— and I've probably told you this— I just felt like when I got to heaven, I was going to be welcomed to heaven based on what I was doing. For in my mind, I wouldn't— I didn't think I was going to hear the well done. Well done, my good and faithful servant. I mean, I was going to be welcomed in and I, you know, I'm gonna make heaven. I think you and I, if you're listening to this, you want to hear well done. If I can help— Zig Ziglar was a big influence of mine and he said, if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want. And what I want to do and what I'm praying about is helping as many people as I can hear, well done, my good and faithful servant. If, and if I, and to do that, I think I've got to clear out some of the clutter in your mind and, and get it out of my mind too. So as I'm doing this and as I'm developing this, I'm getting excited. And so I want to invite you, it's not ready yet, but I get ready because I'm going to invite you into a community that of like-minded believers where there's 4 foundations and we're going to have 4 different rooms. And I think it's going to be really cool. And I'll, you know, in a later podcast, I'm going to let you know about it. Just get ready. This is— this has gone a whole lot longer than I wanted, and I haven't had a sponsor in a while, so I figured what the heck, I might as well talk about what I'm doing. So thank you so much for being a part of this, you fanatic. I'm going to pray real quick. God, I pray for this person that is listening to this podcast. If they're here to this end, they're a fanatic, Lord, and I pray that you would just pour into them your love your faith and your hope. And I thank them for listening. I thank you for listening. I ask it all in Jesus' name. I thank you for listening to this, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
