The steps and falls I took in 2022

Welcome to episode 339. In this episode, I'm going to give a recap of the year 2022 as it happened on our podcast and in my life. Again, I want to remind you, I am nobody special, but I am going to give you the scripture that you and I can anchor on for the next year. But before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, 2022 is almost over. We're about to put a period on this year and begin 2023. And before I get started, this is not going to be a victory lap. This is more of a humbling experience for me. I'm going to talk about how I walked by faith and not by sight, and how I stumbled through life for another year making mistakes and trying to correct from them. The scripture that I want to talk about is one that I've talked about multiple times, and it's found in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. And Paul starts out this letter talking to the Corinthian church saying, you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not 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 mighty, and the base things of the world 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. Again, this podcast is about an ordinary guy who's following after an extraordinary God, and the ability to make mistakes and to screw up and to still keep getting up and doing it. That's what I want to encourage you to do. That's where I believe that I've taken steps by faith, because the only reason I'm here is to help you get into the word of God and allow the word of God to get into you. That is the only reason that I keep doing this, is so that I can get some of you into the Word of God. Because with the Word of God and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it will change your life. I promise you it's going to change your life because it changed mine, and it's continued to change mine. And even as I mess up, even as I fall and stumble and get back up, God is still there with me. God's still speaking to me. He's still showing me things in his word. And I just want to encourage you that you can do it. I've done 104 episodes after this one on this podcast this year. I started doing the YouTube channel. I'm not doing really great with that. I'm horrible at editing video, but I am trying, and I'm gonna get better. Every time you do something, you get better at it. So the more you do, the better you get. And I just want to encourage you, find something God has put in your hand If you remember the teaching that I taught about Moses, where God asked Moses, "What is it in your hand?" And he said, "A rod." That is the rod of God. God has placed something in your hand to do, and I want to encourage you, just take a step. I talked about at the beginning of 2022 about being fearless, that that was going to be my word of the year. I did relentless in 2021, and I think I accomplished that. I constantly did the podcast. And I was relentless in doing that. But fearless, I think I failed miserably on fearless because I still had fear. I was still fighting doubts and unbelief. Probably why I started talking about faith so much in the last half of the year is because I read that scripture. Jesus said, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth? It didn't speak to me, that screamed to me. It jumped off the page, and I realized that I really wasn't walking by faith as much as I thought I was. I was doing things, but to take a step of faith is a different animal. And we've got to look at the Word of God and start taking steps by faith. And I believe the easiest step to take is just to give. God was a giver. The Bible says, for God gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. That's John 3:16. And God is a giver. So if we're gonna imitate God, the best thing we can do is give of our time or give of our money or give of our wisdom and knowledge if we have any. As you can probably tell, I don't have a lot of it to give, but what I find in the Bible and why I do so much scripture, I know there's wisdom in the word of God. And so that's why I use the word of God. Another step that I took and one that I think that you can take find something that you can do physically. If you are physically able to do something with your body, I want to encourage you to do that. Because in 2022, I made the decision that I was going to do 70 squats every single day. And I'm going to put up— if you're watching on YouTube, I'm going to put up the little graph or the little spreadsheet that I did, and you're going to be able to see that at the end of the year, I did 21,800 40 squats. Now that is a whole bunch of squats if you're gonna do it all in one day, but if over the course of the year, that is just 70 a day, and I took off every Sunday. I took one day a week off, so I did nothing on those days because I wanted to honor the Sabbath. I wanted to honor God's word. I did not do any physical activity one day a week. Of those 70 squats, 7 of them, every 10th squat, I I jumped as high as I could jump. I did 42 jumps every single week, which ended up being 2,184 jumps. So I jumped up in the air 2,184 times. And the reason I'm telling you this is because over the course of time, over one whole year, while I'm looking back, you can do something little bitty, but if you do it every single day, there's a compounding effect. That happens when you do little tasks over and over and over again. And I know it gets boring, and that's why most people don't do it. In Matthew 6:33, Jesus said, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." God's way of doing things is small, incremental, seed-like growth. If you plant a seed in the ground, it takes a long time for that to come up and for you to have a harvest. And it's the same way with physical activity. It's the same way with reading your Bible or reading a book or writing a book or writing anything. If you just do a little bit every single day, by the end of one full year, 365 days, you're going to get an awful lot done. But what most people do is they just take off really fast and they get tired and they go, "Oh, this is too hard." If you find something that you can do and continue to do it over over and over and over again, you will see at the end of a year the progress that you've made. I want to tell you, I'm not in the greatest of shape. I'm still overweight. I've got to do something about that. But physically, my stamina and my leg strength is as good as I can remember. I did a lot of outside work. I was helping my father-in-law with his 3 acres and doing my 3/4 of an acre here at my house. I've got to tell you that over the course of the year, I didn't get as tired as I normally get. And this summer was very hot, down here in Louisiana. And I know that it's because of the exercise, the little bit of exercise I did every day. And I want to encourage you, find something. I've got the Kingdom of God spreadsheet. If it's something— if that's something that you want to do, you can ask for a copy of that and I will send it over to your email. It is a wonderful way to kind of get into the word of God and to see it working. God's way of doing things is seeing the end from the beginning, and I don't want to chase that rabbit I just wanted to do this quick video. I'm going to get off of this because I want to get started on next year. The word that I came up with is the same word that I had in 2022, and it's going to be fearless. I'm going to continue to get after this fearless word, and I'm going to continue to kick fear in the face. It got the better of me this year. God is the God of second chances. If you've messed up, just get up, just do like I'm gonna do, just say I get a redo. I'm going to use fearless as my word in 2023, and I'm just going to get after this life. There are 3 things when I started this podcast I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know that you are God's favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. I also wanted you to know that God's not mad at you. God's not even a little bit upset. He put all of his anger and all of the sin on Jesus at the cross, and Jesus paid that price once and for all. Past, present, and future sin, all the mistakes you're ever going to make, Jesus took those mistakes and he died for you and me. They buried it in the tomb with him, and on the third day he rose again, and we never have to answer for sin again. Jesus died for all sin. That is the wonderful, too good to be true news. All we have to do is accept what Jesus did for us at the cross, and we are forgiven. That is incredible. I want to encourage you, if you've never prayed the prayer, we pray at the end of every episode, and I will pray for you to receive the salvation that Jesus died for. And the last thing is God is one day closer to returning today than he was yesterday. That's the only day we said here. Now I've got to admit that I've kind of sat around some this year waiting on Jesus to return. I don't know if any of you were thinking the same thing. I make jokes all the time, like, I don't know why he didn't come back yesterday. He missed a great day to come back. God knows what he's doing, and God knows his time. He's not going to let me in on it, and I've just got to be prepared. But we are to do business until he returns. We are to occupy this world and to get after it until he returns. And I want God in 2023, if he comes back, I want him to see me and I want him to see you walking in faith. It's not difficult to walk in faith. You just got to take a step, and you cannot be afraid of falling down because we all fall down. If we just admit we're going to fall down, we're going to make some mistakes, the punk can't use that against us. So I want to encourage you, take a couple steps. Let's get after this thing in 2023. I want to thank you for being a part of my life. I want to thank you for being a fanatic if you're still here, and I want to pray for you. God, I thank you so much for this listener. I thank you for this person that is watching this video or listening to this podcast episode, and I want to pray in the mighty name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth for this person's family, for this person's life, for this person's next year. God, I pray that you would continue to lead and guide and direct them. Lord, your word says that you are a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. God, light the way for us next year. I thank you for continuing to encourage, empower, and inspire us and protecting us. And God, if this listener has never accepted you as their Lord and Savior, God, I pray in Jesus' name that they would just get into your word and discover that you died for them. And that if they would accept what you did for them on the cross, they can be saved. All they have to do is confess with their mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in their heart that God raised you from the dead. They shall be saved. It's not difficult, it's simple. It's just not easy. We've got to give over control to you, God. I've done that, I do it every day. Lord, I thank you, I love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to seeing you next year on the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.