In episode 76 of the “No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe” podcast, host Greg Ryan opens with John 1:1 and explains the purpose of the series: to encourage, inspire, and empower listeners in their walk with Christ through short, daily devotional‑style episodes. He frames the episode around the fourth “face” of the four foundational symbols—the Eagle—describing it as the realm of praise and worship. Greg confesses that worship is his personal weak spot, sharing anecdotes about his limited singing ability, his experience in a church choir, and how he has tended to prioritize reading the Word and serving over sustained worship. He uses agricultural and cultural analogies (seed‑time and harvest versus instant‑everything culture) to illustrate the need for patient spiritual growth. Greg then cites 2 Chronicles 20, recounting how King Jehoshaphat placed worshipers at the front of his army, resulting in divine victory, to underscore the power of praise. He introduces a visual “wheel” model that maps the four foundations (Word, Prayer/Lion, Service/ox, and Worship/Eagle) and urges listeners to recognize their dominant foundation while strengthening the others. The episode concludes with a heartfelt prayer for listeners and a promise of future episodes that will explore the other foundations.
Welcome to episode 76. Let's get it started the same way we always do, in the Gospel of 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 76. I want to thank you for being a part of this episode, and if this is your first time, welcome aboard. If you have been with me for a while, I know you're a fanatic, and I thank you for being a part of this. And I just want to encourage you to tell other people. I'm going to start trying to promote this thing a little bit, but tell— if you enjoy this, why, why keep it to yourself? Hey, tell everybody else about this crazy guy in his room by himself talking to a microphone. I am here to give God glory and to help encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. And we know that we have an enemy. We know he's a punk. We just got to continue to take ground. And just little— these little 10-12 minute episodes, I think each day just builds upon his brick upon brick. It's precept upon precept, and we're just building ourselves self up in the faith and the hope and the love of God. And so I, I hope that's what you're doing. I hope that it's inspiring you, this little 10 minutes every day. It's— I want it to be a little bit more than a devotional. I don't want you to just take one, one little word of God and then— but I want you to think about it. I want you to mill it around. How can you apply this to your life? And, and that is my goal. That's what I want to encourage you to do, is figure out how we can get this into our heart and let it start growing and let it start producing fruit. That's our job. If, if you ask me what our job is in this world, it is to grow the fruit of the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit— and I don't know who's supposed to hear this because this wasn't even in my notes— but the gifts of the Spirit are one thing, and there's 9 gifts, but there's fruits. That's a different— there's fruit of the Spirit and there's gifts of the Spirit. The gifts are given to believers to help the church by the Holy Spirit, but the fruit are grown, and you have to grow the fruit. And then you've got to be in the vine to grow the fruit, and you have to be one of the four— the best of the four soils. If you go back to the seed and the kingdom of God and all of that stuff, I'm not going to go into that because I want to talk about the last face of the four foundation, and that's the face of the eagle. I've got to tell you just straight up that this is the one that God has showed me, and I'm putting up air quotes, that I have been the most lacking, has been the face of the eagle. And I'm going to tell you why. A little confession is good for the soul, I hear. Well, without further ado, I'm going to let you know the eagle, the eagle is praise and worship for rising up and getting higher. In the Lord. Reading the Bible is simple. Living the Bible and believing the Bible, that's the thing that just takes effort. You think that you could just read it and believe it. You know, Jesus didn't say in Mark 11:22-24 that if you say unto this mountain, be thou removed and cast into the sea, that it'll happen. He said if you cast in the sea and do not doubt in your heart but believe what you say, you shall have whatever it is you say. It is a difficult thing to take the word and then start applying it. That's why you've got to take it. It— I think one of the analogies in the kingdom of God and what we're going to talk about in the community— again, I'm fired up about the community— but we're going to take the kingdom of God concept of planting the seed. But it takes time. Seed time and harvest, there's a time in there when you, your plant, and you harvest. No gardener, no farmer, nobody can plant a seed in the ground and the next If you plant a seed of corn in the ground, anybody listening to this knows you cannot, I don't care how good technology gets, and I don't care how much money you have, there is no way you can plant a seed of corn into the ground and harvest the corn the next day. It just does not happen. There is a process, and that's the process that most people miss because we're in this cookie-cutter world. You know, fast-paced, instant everything, instant mashed potatoes, fast food restaurants, fast food drive-through dining. It is just so crazy how fast we're going, and you can get any kind of information you need, boom, right now from Google or from Yahoo or from wherever else. I need to go back to the eagle, and it is about praise and worship, and that is the thing that was suffering the most. Now that's not saying I did not praise and worship God, 'cause I praised him in the morning, and I told him my 5 daily prayers. Thank him, and then I praise him. But I didn't just sit for 10, 15, 20 minutes and praise him, you know. I said, God, you are so wonderful. I, I'm so thankful. And, you know, because it would kind of mill into thanking and praising, but I did not get into a spirit of worship. And I think that's where you get the worship music and you got worshipers. I can't sing. I love to sing, I love to make a joyful noise, and I was actually in the choir. For a few of you that have listened to this, I had a good friend of mine that I had to pretty much had to stand next to him because he could sing. He was anointed, or he still is, but I had to— he could hit these notes and I could kind of mimic it. And I remember sitting in the choir one time and the head of the choir was talking, you know, we were singing a song and the leader, I guess it's a worship leader, I struggle at this worship thing, but I'm in the choir And they're like, you know, it sounded good, but somebody was just a little bit flat. And everybody knew who was flat because I'm in the choir and I can't sing. But I'm, you know, I'm trying to find my place. That's the thing when you get in the church, you know, you got that 80/20 rule. It's probably closer to 90/10. 90% of the people just sit and 10% of the people do. And it's 80/20 maybe at best. I needed to praise and worship more. Because I knew it's just not anything I'm good at. I just kind of kicked that to the curb and I got into the Bible as quick as I could get it. I could get in there as quick as I could. Or if somebody need the ox, we talked about that in the previous episode, somebody needs serving, I mean, I would go help in the kitchen or I would go do— and it was more natural than me just to break out in song or just to praise and worship. But God showed me really about a month, month and a half ago. I wasn't worshiping much at all. I was listening to podcasts, I was reading, I was doing all these things, but I wasn't getting into a spirit of worship. And that's where, I mean, it kind of, all of this, God's kind of churning all of this stuff inside of me, but this is the thing that where I knew, I think we all have a struggle and we're not all struggling to sing. You know, there's people that the choir, the people that love the choir and can sing and sing all the time. Now they're the eagles. A lot of the people that were in the choir, you couldn't find them in the kitchen. When we had a potluck or we were putting tables up or we were doing all this other stuff and standing, you had people that were in the choir and they were like, mm, I'm in the choir. And I'm not— I mean, I'm not saying that as judgment. I'm just saying that we all kind of have soft spots, is my point, is that we all need all four of these foundations. And I'm going to talk about that in the next episode, but we are all in this together, and we all have strengths. We're all one of these, one of these four faces. That is our dominant foundational face. I would say mine is probably the word. The thing I find easiest is I'm a reader, and I find it easy just to jump in. I mean, it's— I still get— I'm still fought, you know. Satan don't want me in there. But if you're an eagle and you praise and worship all the time, you probably are distracted. And, and, you know, Satan don't want you praising and worshiping. He don't want you getting stronger on your foundation. That kind of— in my mind, the community, I'm going to have 4 different areas, and I'll talk about this in the next episode. But it's going to be— I think it's going to be really cool. But it's— we got— we've got strengths and we've got weaknesses, but I believe that we need to just— we need to lean into our strengths and understand that our weaknesses we need to make a little bit stronger. We don't have to apologize for them. God made us each individuals, all individuals. We, you and I, are totally different animals, but we have the same— there's 4 different areas that I believe that God wants to raise us up. And the wheel in the middle of the wheel, I'm having that drawn. This is a lady that I've had help me in the past, and she told me that she thought it was a really good idea But we're going to draw this wheel in the middle of the wheel and how God's kind of showed me this. And I hope to be able to put it— give you something to look at here in the near future. But it's, it's this— if you can picture this wheel, and if it's— if you're just leaning on one side, like if you're just in the word, like I'm just in the word all the time, well, it's kind of— it's way high on the word side, but it was way down. It was just kind of like up and down. Instead of if you can put your hand out to kind of level and have your hand kind of tilted one way, you know, you know what level looks like. And in your mind, just think about, I was tilted more to the word and maybe even prayer, you know, with the lion. But no, we're all struggling, and that's my point. I— and, and I'm— the whole reason I do this podcast is to show you that I'm not perfect. It's imperfect action as we follow after a perfect example. That God did not call you and I to be perfect. He got— we got one superstar, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and he did call you to be a king. And I don't care if you're a man or a woman listening to this podcast, you are a king because we are in the body of Christ. We are all part of the same body. There is no male, no nor female. There's no Gentile or Jew. We are all one. In Christ. And we're to— that is the eagle's job. They are a worshiper. And I have noticed, because I told you I struggle with this, I have not even brought out one scripture to verify this. And it— the whole book of Psalms, every psalm is praise and worship. If you want to just read the book of Psalms, you could pick that up. But I want to go real quick to 2 Chronicles and it's gonna start in 2020. And this is the story, you're familiar, we talked about this before, but this was when King Jehoshaphat was told to just stand and be delivered. But it's fascinating that he put the praise and worshipers out front. And this is 2020. So they rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. And as they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, "Hear me, O Judah." And you inhabitants of Jerusalem, believe in the Lord your God, and you shall be established; believe his prophets, and you shall prosper. And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who should sing to the Lord, and who should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and were saying, Praise the Lord, for his mercy endures for ever. Now when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, and they were defeated. Well, there you go. That's just one instance where they put the praise and worshipers, they put the singers out front. And if you've ever been into, uh, most services on Sunday, you do praise and worship in the— before, even before the announcements, there's music going, and then they'll have the announcements, and then they'll have some more praise and worship, and then you'll have the message. But praise and worship is so important And I want to apologize right now to you and to God that I've kind of let that slide. I'm not letting it slide now. He showed me that that was a soft spot, and I have been putting in my earbuds and I've been listening to praise and worship music in the morning. And when I have a chance during the day, I'll put it on some more. And it does, it elevates your spirit. It elevates it. It actually helps me get into the word of God more. And I, it's just crazy. You get distracted and that's what happens. The Satan's a punk. And if you think that you're not distracted, you're deceived, because it just says, be careful when you stand lest you fall. So if you just continue to stay humble and you continue to be teachable, God will teach you. The Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth. And the truth of the matter is Satan's a punk and he's coming to steal, kill, and destroy, and we've got to fight him. And the only way to do that is with the word of God, and the word of God is teaching us about these 4 foundations this week. Well, I want to thank you, you fanatic, if you made it to this part. I want to pray for you. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth that the fanatic that's listening to this podcast right now, that you would just continue to empower them with your word. Holy Spirit, lead, guide, and direct them. Be the, be the lamp to their feet and the light to their path. And I pray that you would just continue to protect this person listening and myself as well. And we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I thank you for making it to the end, and I look forward to talking to you on the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
