The one thing I will do this year to break the deception in my life. hint (James 1:22)

Welcome to episode 345. In this episode, I'm going to talk about the one thing I would change in the modern church if it was in my power to do so. But before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this episode might be a little bit heavy because I'm going to start talking about some things that I think need changing and something that has been highlighted in my Christian walk, and I want to make sure that we're all on the same page. This is not me trying to be better than anybody else. Romans 8:1 says, there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. We've got to remember that God's not judging us, God's not condemning, I'm not condemning. But I read an article that said over 65% of Americans are overweight and that the church is even a higher percentage. That just hit me like a ton of bricks because I'm a little bit overweight. I'm not obese. I don't think that I would make the obesity scale, but I'm probably about 20 pounds, and I'm making efforts to get there. But I want to remind you that we have an enemy. The punk hates us. He comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. Jesus has come that we may have life and that we may have it more abundantly. So we have an enemy. We've got to remember that we are fighting not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and against powers. We are fighting demons. We're not fighting man. We are in a battle, and the deceiver, the punk, has not been banished. He's been defeated. Jesus has defeated Satan, but we have to take our authority. We've got to learn to do what God has called us to do And that's what we're going to get into in this episode. I believe this one thing that I would change— we need to be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves. And we're going to go to James, and that's 1:21-25. I know that's a lot of scripture, but this is what we do here. Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. Now I know James is kind of harsh and he's kind of in your face. I love the book of James because it just kind of smacks me upside the head when I need it the most. I just want to give you a little background because I have gone to church and I try real hard not to just put an X on the calendar to say, hey, I've done something for God. But there's many times when I'll sit in the pew and I'll listen to the sermon and I'll take notes, and then we'll go out to eat, or in the afternoon or the next day someone says, hey, did you go to church? Well, how was it? And then I start rating the church. Oh, it was really good. It was a good message. Well, then someone says, hey, well, what did he talk about? Dead air. I got a blank look, and I've got to remember, what was it that he talked about? And instead of applying this, if you are in church and if you're sitting in a pew, or if you're listening to a sermon online, or anything, I want to encourage you to take notes and to just start planting that seed. Your pastor, he has gone to the trouble of going into the word, praying about it, and we have got to do a better job of taking this word and doing something with it and not being hearers only. And it says deceiving yourselves. This is a huge problem, but I think it's one that I can help solve because faith is both a noun and a verb. I believe faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That's Hebrews 11:1. But it all— we're also called to walk by faith and not by sight, and that's 2 Corinthians. And I just want to get us into the habit of learning to take steps, that we're not just supposed to be sitting on our backsides in the pew waiting for God to do something, or just nodding to God, you know, where we're just sitting there, oh yeah, that was very good, oh yes, that was That was wonderful. No, we need to start doing something with this word that God has given us. We need to plant the word into us and allow this word to grow. It's an incorruptible seed. That is in 1 Peter 1:23, I believe, that we are born again, not of corruptible, but incorruptible seed. We are born again by the word of God, which is the most powerful thing that you can hold in your hand and to plant in your heart is the word of God, and we've got to do a better job of planning it. And with that in mind, I want to go to this Kingdom of God calculator that I've talked about, and I'm going to show this on my screen. If you're not watching this on the YouTubes, if you're just listening to this, I want to encourage you, I'm going to put a link in for this video so that you can watch this. But this Kingdom of God calculator, I believe, is the— not the best step,. But if you're overweight or out of shape, this right here, this one thing, it will change your life. I'm telling you this because it has changed my life, and God is not a respecter of persons. This one thing, and it's God's way of doing things— in the, in the previous episode, I'll link to that here as well. If you didn't listen to that, I want you to go back and listen to that. But this is the one thing that we need to be doing. We need to put this word to action. We've got to do a little bit. And Matthew 6:33 says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. And I've translated the kingdom of God as God's way of doing things. And God's way of doing things here on earth is seed time and harvest. We plant our seeds and then we harvest. Most people talk about, oh, we need to walk in the spirit, but how do we take steps? If faith is a verb, how do we put our faith into action? Because faith without works is dead. That's what James says. Again, James is going to hit you over the head if you want to read James. And I want to encourage you because James is a great book, but we've got to start working at this faith thing. Faith is also a substance. I believe those are the promises of God that we build our lives on. This is the word of God that we build our lives on, but it's also— it's a noun and it's a verb. And this is what I'm talking about in this Kingdom of God Calculator. I want to show you what I'm doing right now. It is such small thing, but it is a huge deal if you will commit to doing this for one year. And I know that's a long time, but really it's not, because you're going to be one year older this time next year if Jesus does not come back for all of his kids. You're going to be one year older. So why not do something? And why not do something so simple that it's almost laughable? And this is what I'm doing. I started this year with 15 push-ups. I know it says lower body, but just disregard this because I'm doing something else with squats and I've already talked about it. But I'm doing 15 push-ups. I started this and I'm doing 2 pull-ups because that was all I could do easily. I can do 2 pull-ups very easy, so that's what I did. And I'm doing 30 crunches. And I want to show you the power of this. It starts off slow and we've talked about this, this little one up here. Is a 1% increase per day, every day. It takes about 90 days, and I'm going to scroll down here. 90 days, it is double what you start with. So in 90 days, that's 3 months, you're going to go day by day and you're going to get a day off. We see the Sabbath here. In 90 days, if you started like with 15, I'm going to be on day 90, it says 32, and I'm going to be doing 4 pull-ups and I'm going to be doing 65 crunches. That's starting to get my attention a little bit. We're moving, but I want to show you what happens after 180 days. And at 180 days, now we're starting to get somewhere. Now we're looking at a little over 4, 4.5 times. So now we're starting— after 6 months in, this might be where you start getting that harvest. If I'm doing 69 push-ups every single day, I believe my body is changing. I'll be able to feel it in the way my clothes are fitting. I'm doing 9 pull-ups. I'm easily doing 2 right now, but this is looking in the future. And that's what I want to talk about. The coolest thing, in my opinion, is to be able to plug these numbers in on something real easy and then be able to see the end from the beginning. And that's one of the comments that I get, that a lot of people love this. You can literally see what you're going to be doing this time next year, and it kind of encourages you. It kind of keeps you going. And you start with a number that is easy. I didn't start with 69 push-ups. I started with 15 push-ups. And I didn't start with 9 pull-ups. I started with 2 pull-ups. But by 6 months in, I am at 9 pull-ups and I'm doing 139 crunches. So this thing's getting a little bit out of control. And by the 9th month, 270, we're at right at 10 times the starting number. And we're 9 months in, I think that's probably into September, and that's when I told you it starts getting out of control, is that when you start getting about month 9, you are 10 times your starting number. And this is so wonderful. And I'll talk about in the class what I do to keep up with all of this stuff. But this right here will change your physical life. And not only will it change your physical life, it will change your spiritual life as well, because you will then be a doer of the word and not a hearer only. And this one thing, this one thing that I would change in the church would be to get people off the pew and doing something. And God showed me that over 65% of the church is out of shape and overweight. If that includes you, if you're a little overweight, if you don't have the energy that you think you should be having at this time in your life, I want to encourage you to take a look at this Kingdom of God spreadsheet. It is going to be up and online by the time you hear this. I want to challenge you, this will change your life. You're going to be one year older this time next year, why not try something different? Instead of sitting there and wondering what God wants you to do, let's get moving. Because this is step 2. Step 1 is the spiritual animal quiz, and my step-by-step guide is that you take your spiritual animal quiz. And I know probably a lot of you have taken that already, and if not, I'll have a link to that in the show notes too. The spiritual animal quiz, I believe, is important because we're going to start walking towards this Ezekiel's wheel, and I think it's important to know what your spiritual animal is. Then the next step is to then let's— we got to take a step of faith. We got to start walking. I believe the thing that God is showing me, the church needs to get in shape and start getting some energy because we got a battle to fight and we got a punk to kick the crap out of and we need to have the energy to do it. This is a great start and I want to challenge you. This is what I'm doing. If you want to follow along, here I go. So I want to thank you. Let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for showing me this one thing that I can do. And Lord, I'm not doing this to condemn anyone. There is no condemnation. None of us are perfect. You were perfect, Lord, and we take what you did, your perfect life, and we by faith ask you to put that on us. And we thank you for our salvation, Lord. We thank you that when God the Father looks at us, he sees your perfect image in us. But that does not mean, God, that we are perfect, and we still need to grow in grace and truth. And God, I pray in Jesus' name that this person listening to my voice will be challenged to take a step of faith, Lord. And it doesn't have to be this, but this is what you've showed me. This is an easy step, and this is something that is needed, I believe, in the church. And so I pray that this person would just be encouraged, empowered, and inspired to get into your word and allow the word to get into them. God, we thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.