What is the fear you need for wisdom

Welcome to episode 240, 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 240. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm going to continue on how to be fearless, and we're going to talk about fear this time, but the good kind of fear and more of the reverent fear, which is the fear of God. And the fear of God— and we're not talking about being scared or the fear that is overwhelming the world right now with the COVID in all of the lockdowns. Talked about on the last episode that we should fear the one that can send your soul and your body to hell. And so we're going to go to that scripture real quick, and we're going to start in Matthew 10:24. A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If they called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household? Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. 23:19 Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. 23:20 And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 23:21 Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. And I really wanted to go to Matthew 10:28: And do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. We are not to fear Men, and we talked about this on the previous episode, the fear of man is a snare. The fear of man will hold you back. If you are worried about what somebody's gonna think, if you're worried about, well, should I do that or should I not do that? What is so-and-so gonna think? Let me hook you up on a little secret that I have learned through all of my many years here on this earth. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. If you can put that in your head, Everybody is worried about themselves, and it really doesn't matter. What you need to decide and what you need to determine, and that's why I'm here every week, is I have determined that I am going to give glory to God. I am going to talk about the power of God. I'm going to talk about the love of God, and I'm going to talk about the word of God. And I think the word of God is the most powerful thing that you and I can hold in our hands. We need to get into the Word of God. It is being fought by the enemy. The enemy does not want you anywhere near the Bible. Now, I know knowledge is going crazy. I want to give you a thought that we are drowning in all this information and all this knowledge. We have just got an overflow of all of this information. We are drowning in information, but we are starving. For wisdom. The Bible is clear where you find wisdom. Proverbs 9:10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. And that is one of the things that I just want you to hear in this episode, is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And the fear, the reverence, like Jesus said in the verse in Matthew Do not fear those who kill the body and but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. And I want to take you back to the scripture that I used in the last episode: The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe. Trusting in the Lord is what you and I need to do. We need to learn to trust in the Lord, and the way to do it— soapbox moment— is get into the Word of God. Find out what the Word has for you. Find out what the Bible says, because all of this is never going away. Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away, but his word will never pass away. And again, I want to remind you that Jesus is the word. So Jesus is saying, look, I'm here forever, guys, and I have spoken these words, and these words are spirit and they are life. And we need to understand that the Bible is how we defeat this world system. The Bible is how we defeat the enemy, and the Bible is what we use to beat up our flesh. And I don't mean to cut it, but to get it in line. And when you start using— and I want to encourage you to get into Proverbs. Proverbs is a wonderful book. There is multiple truths. If you are in business or just life lessons, if you're looking for wonderful life lessons, get into the book of Proverbs. When you start reading the book of Proverbs where it says in Proverbs 4:7, wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. And in all you're getting get understanding. Wisdom is knowing the truth and how to apply it to any given situation. Understanding is knowledge seasoned and modified by wisdom and insight. Did you know that the words wisdom or wise and understanding occur over 140 times in Proverbs? If you are looking for wisdom, dig into this book. Proverbs is not a big book, and in fact, if you just read one chapter in Proverbs every day, In 31 days, you can get through the whole book of Proverbs. In fact, I know multiple people that just read one proverb every single day. They read chapter 1 on day 1, they read chapter 2 on day 2, and in February when there's only 28 days, come February 28th, you're gonna read 28, 29, 30, and 31. It's not that difficult. And then you pick up in March, there's 31 days, you just read proverb 1, you get the idea. But if you'll go in and you get after this and you start digging into this word, you are gonna find wonderful nuggets of truth. And all of these promises of God are for you and they're for me. And if you embrace this, if you just learn to take these into your heart, I'm gonna teach a whole course on how to plant the word of God, how to get this word inside of you I mean, I know I talk about it a lot, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you what I— when I start planting a seed, I start planting it and I start meditating on it and I start digging around and I start looking for other scriptures that'll help water the seed that I'm trying to plant. If you've ever planted a garden, the one thing you do after you get the soil ready, after you get all the rocks and all the debris and everything out of the way, is you plant the seed and you don't go and dig up the seed every day to see if it's growing. You plant the seed in the ground and you allow the ground to do what the ground does and make the seed come to life. And it's incredible, this death to life theme is all through the Bible, but it is the power of the seed. And when you plant it in the ground, that seed dies. But when that seed dies, it opens up and the life that is inside of it comes to life, and the seed doesn't look anything like the plant. I just want you to hear that because I don't know what my new body is going to look like. My— when I put off this mortality and I get immortality, I've got no idea what that's going to look like. I believe the Bible is pretty clear that we're going to recognize one another in heaven, so I don't know that we're going to look a lot different, or we'll just know everything. We'll be— we'll have the mind of Christ and we'll be able to know. But I'm telling you, it's going to be good. It's going to be a wonderful body. I just want you to remember, when Jesus came back, when his resurrected body— no one, not any of his disciples, recognized him. And even when he told them who he was, some of them still had the eyebrow up and the head cocked. And if you want to read that for yourself, go and read all the different times when Jesus appeared to his disciples. All of them, to the man and woman didn't recognize him. We are going to be different because the Bible is pretty clear. Jesus was not the same. He did not look the same to his disciples. And then Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians 5, and then we'll just start at 15, and he died for all that those who live should live no longer for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. And I want to concentrate on 2 Corinthians 5:16. Therefore, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Now Paul has a revelation here, and I just want you to think about what he is saying. He knew who Christ was. He knew— I mean, now he was not a follower of Christ, and he was not a disciple of Christ. In fact, Paul was on the other side of the argument. Paul was of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and he was in that sect that called for his crucifixion. I'm sure Paul was screaming because he was a fanatic. He was probably screaming to crucify him, and everything that he was seeing, I'm certain, for Jesus' crucifixion. And now God has called him into the ministry. He has forgiven Paul. Paul has become a new creation, and now Paul is saying, we knew him walking around in the body, Yet now we know him thus no longer. Now he's a new creation. Now Christ is brand new. And again, I'll remind you that all the disciples and all of his followers, when he was resurrected, did not recognize him. And Paul did not see him resurrected until after the Damascus encounter, where he saw a bright light and it blinded him. And this is where Paul was saved, when he was— when Jesus was telling— this is in— this is found in Acts. I think it's Acts 9 is where it starts, but you can go to Acts and read where Paul was converted, and it was on this road to Damascus. He was going to kill and imprison believers. Jesus called him out. Paul did not know Jesus walking around in the flesh. Paul knew him as a spirit, and the Spirit of God is the one that trained up Paul. He went out in the desert. He was 3 years away from everybody. He took what he knew, and to be a Pharisee, you had to know the Word of God. In fact, I think you had to memorize the first 5 books of the Torah or of the Old Testament. You had to have that memorized. So Paul was no fool, and Paul was very familiar with the Old Testament. But he had an encounter with Jesus, and that encounter changed him forever. And when you think about what he said, 'And thus I know him by the flesh no longer,' this is an important key. And if we can ever get to the place where we're not looking at people on the outside but what they have on the inside— and this is when I'm taping this, this is Martin Luther King Day, it's a Monday. This will go public on the next day, Tuesday. I believe this is what Martin Luther King Jr. said. We would be judged based on the character of the person and not the color of their skin. And I think that's important. I don't think the skin color matters. I don't think the height matters. I don't think the sex matters. I don't think it matters if you're Jew or Gentile, Greek. I don't think it matters. I think What you have on the inside of you, if you have Jesus Christ living on the inside of you, I think that's all that really matters. Flippant about people that have not accepted Jesus, I know that at the Day of Judgment, God is gonna ask you one question: What did you do with my Son? And if you cannot say, I accepted him as Lord and Savior, I think you've got big trouble. And so that's why I'm here. If you have not accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you need to dig into this book. You need to get involved in the Bible, and you need to talk to the Holy Spirit and find out what you need to do to be saved. That's enough for this episode. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for everything you've done for us. Lord, help us to see people from the inside out and from the bottom up. Lord, 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.