What is the one thing a Christian can use to overcome the world system

Welcome to episode 238.

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 238. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am continuing on talking about being fearless in 2022, and we're going to go to the Word of God. Imagine that. And we're going to open up and talk about the thing that overcomes this world, because if you and I had to admit who was coming against us? First, we'd probably say the punk, but mostly I think it's this world system. And before I go off on another tangent, let's go to the scripture. 1 John, and we're going to go to chapter 5, verse 1. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves him who begot also loves him who is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. For whoever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Now that is a mouthful, and I know I have superior reading skills. That in a nutshell, and I really wanted to read verse 4, "For whoever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith." That's the one that I wanted to highlight, but all those other verses as I was trying to figure out where I was gonna start and what I was gonna talk about, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. That is incredible. We've talked about this multiple times, but we have to declare Jesus as Lord of our life. If you have not done that, I don't believe you can really truly call yourself a Christian. Now, you can consider yourself a reader of the Bible, and you could follow after Jesus, but when God calls us home, we have to have a personal relationship with Jesus because, as we've talked about multiple times, Jesus is going to call everybody out and he's going to say, depart from me, and I'm going to go to that real quick, but where he says, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness, I knew you not, and that is going to be strong as a garlic milkshake, and you are not going to want to hear those words coming from our Lord and Savior. Let's go to that real quick. If you're a frequent flyer, you probably are already aware that it is in Matthew 7:21. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name?' And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. And I want to tell you that you never ever want to hear that. These are for the people that I believe are playing church. These are the ones that are going around and saying, oh, praise God, praise Jesus, oh Jesus Lord, oh my goodness, oh, I love Jesus, but have never had a personal relationship with Jesus, he is gonna one day, he's gonna say, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. We've talked about this before, but you have to wake up every day to practice something. And if you're going to practice lawlessness, if you're going to do whatever the heck you want to do, whenever the heck you want to do it, and it goes against the word of God, I'm afraid you're going to have— I was going to say hell to pay, but it's going to be a tough day. There's nothing you're going to be able to do on that side when Jesus is looking at you. And you do not want to be there when Jesus looks you dead in the eye and says, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. And I want to go up one verse in 22. Many will say to me— this is Jesus talking to his disciples, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name? That to me sounds like church. That to me sounds like church folk. And I'm telling you, there is going to be a separation, and you want to separate yourself on this side of the ground, on this side of the rapture. You want to make sure that you have declared Jesus Lord, and you want to do whatever you can to make sure that you have fulfilled what 1 John 5 talks about. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves him who begot also loves him who is begotten of him. By this We know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. We have got to keep his commandments. That's when Jesus said, you who practice lawlessness. Now, that don't mean we can't sin, and that don't mean we can't screw up, and that don't mean we got to walk around on eggshells. I don't believe that God is all up there in heaven, and I've talked about this before, he don't have his arms crossed and he's not looking to knock you over. I believe he is the perfect father. He is not mad. He He is fired up with every step you take, and whenever you stumble and if ever you fall, he's there to make sure you didn't hurt yourself, and he's gonna make sure nobody pushed you down. If this is all on your own doing, then he's gonna expect you to get up, dust yourself off, and start going forward again. That's called repentance. That's called taking personal responsibility. And I know that's a subject that most people don't want to talk about. Is because it's so much easier just to blame other folks. It's so much easier to blame the devil or blame the world or blame Facebook or blame Google or blame Fauci or blame whoever, Trump. You can blame whoever for anything, but until you start taking personal responsibility for your actions, because one day when Jesus is looking you dead in the eye, you are gonna answer for your actions. You're not going to answer for mine. And you can get all mad and wrapped around the axle on something I've said, and I know that I make mistakes. I am not perfect. I don't always bring the best to this podcast, but I bring you the best that I can do. I bring you the best that I have in me at this time. And I'm constantly growing. I'm constantly learning. And I just want to encourage you to do the same thing. And that's the only reason I'm here. Is just to show you that just a regular old guy who just loves his family, loves his wife, has a career, goes about his day, but loves his God and tries to give glory to the one true God. I am here to give glory to Father God. I am here to give glory to the Holy Spirit, and I'm here to give glory to Jesus. Only way I know to do that is just to read his word and encourage you to do the same thing. I am not here to tell you you're doing everything all wrong. Heck, I'm— I don't do everything wrong, but there's enough that I do wrong that I don't need to be pointing out any of your failures. In fact, I want to go to a scripture that I'm sure you've probably read, but it's the one that just came to my mind. It's in Luke 6:39, and he spoke a parable to them: Can the blind lead the blind? Will not they both fall into a ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, And then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother's eye. Again, this is Jesus talking to his disciples, and he's trying to make a point. You need to deal with your issues first. You need to understand that the only person that you can control is yourself. And when you start looking at your life and you start looking at the things that you're doing, all you got to do is just clean yourself up. And the whole reason that we get into the word of God is so that we can start reading it, and it's like a mirror to your soul. This— it's a spiritual mirror. If you put a regular mirror up to your face, you're not seeing yourself. You're actually seeing a reflection of yourself. So you never really get to see yourself, hear your voice. That's one of the reasons why I have a hard time listening to the podcast is because I've got to listen to my voice, and it doesn't sound the same way coming through earphones as it does as I talk. It sounds totally different. When you look into a mirror, you are just seeing a reflection of yourself. You're not truly seeing yourself. And I know that may be a little bit deep. It's probably too deep for me. The Bible, it is a spiritual reflection. When you start getting into the Word of God and you start reading it, you start seeing where you're doing something right. Or more naturally, what I do is I see that I'm doing something wrong, and so then I can correct. And repentance means to change your mind. Repentance is, is like a 180. It's like just changing your mind on a situation. And the only real way to do that is to go into something that's not changing. This Word of God been going for thousands and thousands of years, and it's not going to change. It's never going to change. And if you don't change and allow it to change you, it will change you for the better. Jesus is telling you, hey, you've got a plank in your eye. Quit worrying about your brother or your sister or your wife. The number one thing you can do to help your situation and to help your life is to get in the Word of God and let the Word of God get into you and change you. Don't worry about what's going on with your brother or sister or wife. Worry about what's going on with you. And I don't mean to preach at you. I'm really preaching at myself because I got this big old plank when I'm trying to get something out of Mona's eye. You know, I said, oh, I think I see a speck in your eye. And I just beat the fire out of her with the 2x4 that's coming out of my own eye. Jesus is pretty much telling you, hey, don't worry about your brother's speck. Get after what you've got going on in your life, because in all honesty, that's all we can change. And how this applies to fear is that we have to use faith. God gives us the faith in his word. We have got to dig into faith. The only way to overcome the world is by faith. And that's what 1 John 5, I think it's 4, says is that, and this is the thing that overcomes the world, is our faith. And that is how we are going to destroy the works of the enemy. That's how we're going to destroy the works of this world, is our faith. And we're going to talk about in the next episode how we're going to turn that up a notch. But I just want to thank you right now, and I want to close this up. I just looked at the clock. And it is going on far longer than I thought it was gonna. Father God, I thank you for everything that you've done, and I thank you most of all for your word. Lord, I thank you for the Bible, and Jesus, I thank you that you are the word. And I thank you, Holy Spirit, that you said you would never leave us nor forsake us. I pray in Jesus' name that you would just be with this listener, and I pray that you would encourage, empower, and inspire them to get into your word. And to use their faith to start overcoming this world system that we're in. 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 on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.