In episode 74 of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, host Greg Ryan continues his series on the four living creatures, four faces, and four foundations of the church. He focuses on the "lion face," interpreting the lion as a symbol of divine power, the spirit of prayer, and the authority of the Lion of Judah (Jesus). Ryan contrasts God‑given power with fear, citing 2 Timothy 1:7 to argue that fear that paralyses is not from God, while a healthy, instructive fear is a protective response. He weaves in several biblical passages—1 Corinthians 1:26‑29, 2 Chronicles 7:14, 1 Peter 5:8, John 10:10—to illustrate how God calls the weak and foolish to reflect His glory through prayer. Ryan emphasizes that prayer should be the first line of offense, not a last‑ditch effort, and demonstrates a vivid, spoken prayer to model active intercession. He warns that Satan masquerades as a roaring lion, seeking to deceive believers, and stresses the necessity of grounding oneself in Scripture to avoid deception. Throughout, Ryan invites listeners to identify with the lion face, join a growing community of believers who self‑identify with the four faces, and engage in collective prayer and study. The episode ends with a benediction and a preview of the next face—the ox.
Welcome to episode 74, 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 74. In this episode, we're going to continue to talk about the four living creatures and the four faces and the four foundations of the church. Hang on, if you are here for the first time, I want to thank you for being a part of this. If you are a frequent flyer, as I like to say, welcome aboard, you fanatic. And I think that is found in episode 72, that definition. So we're gonna, we're gonna be a word fanatic from here on out, and we are going to continue to dig in. We are in the book of Revelation and the book of Ezekiel, and we found the living creature. And in this episode, I want to talk about the face of a lion. And I want you to think about what lion represents. One of the first things that comes to my mind is king of the beasts. And lion is king of all in the— in Africa, you know, you don't mess with a lion. And then you think of the Lion of Judah, which is from the root of David. This is Jesus. And before the face, you know, we talked about Jesus was the man, and he's the chief cornerstone in the previous episode, but the lion represents, I believe, power. And I'm drawn for some reason, I think maybe it might be God, I don't know, it may have been the pizza I had last night, actually I think it was stromboli, but I am drawn to 2 Timothy 1:7, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power." and of love and of a sound mind. And if that is not an appropriate scripture for the days that we're living in and all of the fear and all the garbage that's going around in our heads or your head or my head, I believe it's the exact scripture you needed to hear as you're driving, working out, or doing anything. If there's fear coming against you, I wanna tell you and I wanna call it out, that is not from God. The only fear that's appropriate is right now the fear, you know, the fight-or-flight fear. And that's if you're about to swerve and miss something, or you're about to, you know, hit the brakes real quick if you're driving. Most of the good fear is immediate, and it's instructive, and it's kind of circumstantial. I don't know if that's, if that's kind of hitting home, but the good fear, the fear that we need, you know, like if you touch a hot stove, you know, and you feel fear, oh, and you pull your hand back, you know, and then you know that fear is— it's instructive fear to where like, nah, don't touch that stove again. That is good fear. The fear that is not good and the fear that keeps being— that is being seeped on us day in and day out, that kind of fear makes you feel powerless. It makes you feel crazy sometimes, and it makes you feel unloved. God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind. If you've got any fear that makes you feel powerless, if you've got any fear that makes you feel unloved, if you've got any fear that makes you feel crazy and out of your mind kind of fear to where you know it's not rational, that's from, that's from the punk. And we're going to talk today about the lion. We're going to talk today about the power that's in prayer, the power that the lion brings when you start breaking the teeth and you start destroying. Because Satan, he mimics everything that's good of God and he tries to take it and destroy it. You remember, he— the reason he fell was pride. He, he tried to raise himself up and put himself into God's position, and he decided that he wanted to be praised and worshiped and he wanted the glory. And God— we've talked about this in a previous episode— God God does not share his glory with anyone. In fact, my, my— one of my anchor scriptures— I got a lot of anchor scriptures if you hadn't noticed that— but what my calling I talked about, and it's probably your calling too, unless you are, unless you are noble or wise or strong. And it's found in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. And Paul starts off saying, saying, you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many many mighty, not many noble are called, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are strong, and God— and the base things and the things that are despised God has chosen, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. May have butchered that up a little bit. That's from memory. That's what I've got planted in my heart. You will find that scripture in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. Satan tried to glory in God's presence, and God is teaching us through this, through Paul, we're not to glory— we're not here to get the glory from God. We are here to reflect and to bring glory to God, and we do that by prayer. We do that with our relationship with God. We when we humble ourselves and pray. You remember in, in 1 Chronicles 7:14— actually, I think it's 2 Chronicles, but I just wanted to show you also, and I left that in because it's— you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to know this Bible inside and out, and you don't have to know exactly where it is. You just got to have it inside of you. You got to learn to carry the Bible in you. But 2 Chronicles reads 'If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive, forgive their sin and heal their land.' And that is such a powerful scripture. But if you humble yourselves and seek his face and pray and— there's a lot of 'ands' in there that we need to do, but one of the most powerful 'ands' is pray and seek his face. And that is where the lion comes in. When we start praying— and I've, I've given you an example before— if I just go with dead air and say, look, I'm going to pray for you, and then I just give you one of these, and so that's your prayer, how does that benefit? That doesn't benefit you as much as when I say, God, I'm praying in Jesus' name, the person listening to this podcast right now at this very moment I pray that you just bind up anything that has come, any fear that's coming against them, any kind of doubt, any kind of unbelief. I bind it up in Jesus' name and I release the power that's in the mighty name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. As they're driving, as they're working out, as they're mowing the lawn, as they're doing whatever they're doing, Holy Spirit, you know right where they are. I release the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth on this person and I command the power to flow through them and give them joy and peace that surpasses all understanding. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, isn't that more powerful than a silent prayer? And I'm not against that. I'm not against you just being quiet before the Lord, but prayer— prayer is meant to be. And I want to say that the punk has kind of gotten us into the place where, you know, you're not supposed to pray. You know, you don't— you might offend somebody. Well, you know, I— you kind of got to have a sound mind. You know, the power— spirit of power and love and a sound mind, that's the Holy Spirit. It's not fear. You got to use a sound mind. I mean, you can't just grab a hold of somebody in a restaurant and start shaking them and telling them, I'm gonna pray for you. You know, you kind of got to use your— you gotta use your mind a little bit, and you kind of got to see your environment. You don't want to embarrass anybody, and you don't want to look like a fool. I think a lot of I think sometimes we get labeled as kind of crazy or a fool because sometimes, you know, we act a little bit weird. You know, you don't ever carry on a conversation and then your voice raises or you go into some kind of, "Oh, Holy Spirit!" You know, I mean, you just talk. And that's when I pray to God. I talk to him just like I'm talking to you, just like I'm talking to this microphone in this room. God is with me. God is hearing everything I'm saying. I'm sure he's rolling his eyes every now and then and thinking, "No, that ain't for me." But a lot of the stuff that I'm saying, I mean, he's hearing. I mean, he hears everything that I say. He's my number one fan of the podcast, and not because I'm doing everything right, it's because I'm taking action. And faith requires action. Faith without works is dead. And that was a little extra bonus rabbit that I started chasing. It has really nothing to do with prayer. If you needed to hear that today, you're welcome. But when I'm driving down the road and I'm, you know, and I'm talking to him and I'm carrying on a conversation, that's prayer. And what it's doing is it's building myself up. Me and God are having a relationship. We're having a moment. And I want to encourage you, the line, the face is prayer. The face, you know, you got some intercessors, you got some people that are mighty in power and mighty in prayer. And if that's you, and you're going to find one of these four foundations of the church one of these four foundations, one of these four faces, you are going to resonate with. It's gonna— you're gonna go, that's me, that is where I am. And I'm building a community. I'm excited about it. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm building a community so that we can hang out as believers. I'm going to have different areas because you're going to, quote, self-identify. That's a nice little 2021 word. We're going to self-identify with one of these four faces, and we're going to kind of hang out with and, and get together with like-minded believers, we're going to get busy and we're going to kick the snot out of Satan. I'm sick of him, he's a punk. But we do it— part of what we use is prayer, the power, the lion. We bring the lion. And if you've ever heard a roaring lion, it's very intimidating and very fearful to hear. But remember, I told you that Satan tries to counterfeit or do all kinds of things that are similar to God. Remember, the punk wants to be God. He'll never be God, but he's very good at deceiving. He's deceptive, all of this. And if you are not taking in the word of God, you're going to be deceived. If you don't know the truth, the truth can't set you free. And I'm about to give you— I'm about to lay some truth on you. 1 Peter 5:8: Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Now, like a roaring lion— that is not the Lion of Judah. That is like— he's trying to be like God. He is deceptive. He is a punk. He is a liar. But if all you're taking in is his deceptive garbage, if you're not taking God in, then you're going to be deceived and you are going to fall prey to the lion. And he, he can't think of anything he'd rather do than destroy you. Steal, kill, and destroy— that's found in John 10:10, the Gospel of John. That's his, that's his role. He, he comes only to do those three things. So you need to get in the word, you fanatic, and you need to get in and dig in and fall in love with this word because it will set you free. And the power of prayer— the lion, the lion is the symbol, the face of the lion, a foundational part of the church is prayer. A national pastor that I've listened to, one of his analogies is a lot of people, and most people that he's seen in the church, uses prayer as the last line of defense, that if all things else fail, they pray. But he says that prayer should be your first line of offense, and I don't think I could agree with him more. Prayer is a foundational truth. It's a foundation of the church, and we need to get into it. And that's the lion, that is the face of the lion. So I want to, I want to encourage you fanatics to get in the word and start praying. And we're going to, the next episode, we are going to get introduced to the ox. God, I pray that the person listening to this will get a hunger for your word and they will start talking to you more and start praying. Lord, I thank you for these fanatics. If they've made it to the end of this broadcast or into this episode, they are fanatical about you, Jesus. And I thank you and I love you, and we ask it all in Jesus' name. Thanks for being a part of this, and I'll talk to you on the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
