When Jesus returns will He find faith on the earth

Welcome to episode 222.

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 222. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I just wanted to make a quick little note here that if you are wondering, if you've ever just said, why does he start the show off the exact same way every time? It's getting old. He needs to change it up. Something needs to be done. This guy don't know what he's doing. Here's my thought on it, that if you're tired of hearing it, you can usually just skip to like 35 seconds. It takes about 30, 40 seconds to get all this in here. And if you don't need the introduction and you don't need to hear that the word of God is Jesus and you need to be in it, you get it, then just move to 40 seconds. I don't know, you can check it out, but you can fast forward through that. I'm trying to be consistent, and it's really difficult for me because I want to change something up every stinking time. And I just got to tell you, it's a struggle. Because I'm like, ah, they got to be getting tired of that. So if you're getting tired of that, just zip to 40 seconds. But if you're not, if you enjoy hearing the same thing, that's the reason I'm doing it, because consistency and just drilling this in. Because a lot of people— I use a big broad brush here— but many people I don't think are using the word of God like they should be using the word of God. And I think, in my humble opinion, that you should be chewing on the Word of God every single day. Jesus in the Lord's Prayer said, give us this day our daily bread. And when Jesus said that he is the bread of life that has come down from heaven, and that it says that Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life, and it said in John 1:1 that the Word became flesh— and actually that's John 1:14 but it said, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So it's just telling you and I that the Word is Jesus, and that we need to daily get into the Word of God, and we need to get the Word of God into us. And that's give us this day our daily bread, and it's a spiritual truth. And I know if you're a frequent flyer here, you know all of this. It's not going to hurt you to hear it again. The Bible is Jesus, and we need to daily eat of it. We're not gonna miss a meal, most of us, unless we're fasting, and I'm putting up air quotes, unless we're fasting and we're trying to get closer to God. And I'll just let you in on a little secret that fasting does not get you any closer to God because God doesn't move away from you. What fasting does is it shuts your body up because we are three parts, we're spirit, soul, and body. And when you fast, you are shutting your body up. Now, when you fast, if you're anything like me, when you fast, the one thing it doesn't do is shut your body up. So if you stop eating food, your body starts talking to you. And I don't know if you've ever done this or gone on a prolonged fast, and I don't even know why I'm talking about this. Whoever's supposed to hear this, this is for you. When you go on a prolonged fast, your body at first starts going, "Oh my God, Greg, you're going to kill us. We're going to starve to death." And your body— and it doesn't talk like that, but you know, if you've ever missed a meal, your stomach starts growling and you start, "Oh my gosh, I need to get something in my belly." That is your body. That is your flesh talking to you, your soul, your mind, will, and emotion. Your body is starting to, hey, tapping your soul on the shoulder and say, "Hey, did you forget about something here?" What's going on? We need to eat, we're gonna die. That's your body talking. And what you do when you fast is you shut that up. And then what I do, pretty much what I do, is I just make my mind up and say, look, I'm going on a 3-day fast, I'm not going to eat anything for 3 days. Body, you just need to fall in line, or I'm going to make it a 7-day fast. And my body shuts up pretty quick. My body has learned that I'm kind of hard-headed, my mind, will, and emotion. I get a little bit radical. If you hadn't figured that out, then I'm a fanatic. And if I tell my body now that we're going to go on a 3-day fast, my body pretty much understands. Now, the first day is, you know, it's a little bit tougher because my body's like, hey, we need to eat something. And I'll just tell it, hey body, shut up. But anyway, that's enough of that. I just wanted to tell you, if you're going to go on a fast, you need to just make up your mind. And know that your body is going to be screaming and hollering at first. And what you're trying to do is get your body in line with the word of God, because your body, it's an enmity to the spirit. Your body and your spirit— and I don't want to go into a spiritual— by, that's not the— that's not this episode. But anyway, again, I'm going to chase a rabbit. It's been a minute since I've chased a rabbit, so I, I'm doing this for whoever's supposed to hear this. But your body it needs to shut up, and then you start listening to your spirit. And your spirit is just like Jesus, and you just need to listen. And you read the word and you kind of get your ears to hear, you know, those spiritual ears, kind of just listen to what the spirit is saying. And here's another little quick little tip that you need to go into a fast and ask the spirit something instead of just, hey, I'm going to miss meal for 3 days, I'm just not going to eat anything. And if you're not asking the Spirit of God, or if you're not asking God for an answer, or if you're not fasting for a specific reason, then you're just pretty much just going to miss 3 meals, I think. You know, now God may speak to you, but you need to go into a fast— if you're doing a spiritual fast, you need to go into that with a question or with an idea. Say, hey, Holy Spirit, I just need to know I'm really struggling with this part right here. I'm, I'm all confused, or whatever. And God is not the spirit of confusion. God is the spirit of clarity and of truth, and he will tell you what you want to know, or what he wants you to know, if you ask him the question and you expect an answer. Well, there we go. I'm going to move into my lesson. What I have in my notes— none of that was in my notes, by the way. We've been talking about the hot and cold, and then we moved in, we kind of segued into the body of Christ. And so we're talking about the body, and I want you to think about the body of Christ. We've talked about it in previous episodes that we, you know, I was a little toe and that's my example. I'm, you know, I don't know what I am. I'm sure if you asked my wife, I'd be somewhere in the vicinity of the backside. But enough of that. Let's get into our lesson really quick-like. And the scripture I want to talk about, and it's kind of a hard transition. I know, because I've been rambling on, but I want to go to 2 Corinthians 5:15. 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 know I've got superior reading skills, and I know you love hearing me read the Word of God, but since this is about the Bible and it is scriptural, I've got to have some reading of the Word of God. So you're just going to have to get over it, and I want you to go to 2 Corinthians 5:15 for yourselves and start reading that. And what I want you to picture is that Jesus died and came back to life. He rose again. He died for all sin. But if we are all part of the body of Christ, he died for you and I. And he— remember, he placed each one of us into the body as he pleased. The Holy Spirit puts us in the body where he pleases and for the purpose that he designed us for. And we no longer go by sight. We no longer use what we see. We don't look according to the flesh. Now, that doesn't mean we, you know, we walk around blind and we don't use our eyes anymore and we don't do anything like that. But the thing that we really regard heavily the most is what we see with our spiritual eyes. And that's why I jump up and down and say, look, we need to get in the word of God We need to start looking and seeing with our heart, with our imagination, with our spiritual eyes, with our spiritual ears. We have got to see what Jesus looks like in the spirit. And that's what Paul is saying. And brothers and sisters, we need to look at what each person looks like in the spirit realm. We need to stop looking at what they look like on the outside and what do they look like on the inside? And that is the fruit of the Spirit. We are not to be judgmental, but we are to be fruit inspectors. I believe that our best guide is what are the fruits of the Spirit this person is growing, or which fruits are they have available to feed the body of Christ and the world around them. Fruits— and I'm probably miss one or two— but it's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. I don't know, I may have missed one, but there's 9 fruit. And I don't do a wonderful job of growing all 9 fruit at a time. In fact, the patience part— if you've listened to this podcast in the past, you know that patience is not my go-to fruit of the Spirit. In fact, it's a struggle. You know, when you grow fruit, an apple tree doesn't struggle to grow apples. They just produce apples. That's what apple trees do. We're walking in the Spirit. It's not a struggle to grow the fruit of the Spirit. But here's the problem, and here's the issue. What I have found when I'm walking through life— or actually driving through life is a better way of saying the same thing— when I'm driving, my patience is tested. And I don't know why. I need to get over myself. I know this, But it's easier said than done, and that's why I say constantly on this podcast that this is a podcast of imperfect action as I follow after a perfect example. I am not trying to be imperfect. That's a reality. I am imperfect just because I am a human being, and you are imperfect. There are things that you mess up with. Just get over it and try to correct. And I'm praying about it, and I'm trying to slow down, and I'm trying to do better. When I'm driving on the road, but I'm not there yet. And I'm telling you, it's getting better, but it's nowhere near probably what you are. If you're driving and you're calm when you're driving, that's not me. I just, I just gotta come right out. They say confession's good for the soul. Well, just listen to me on this deal. I'm not real good when I drive down the road and people cut me off or they go across lanes. It just fires me up. I've talked about this before. I'm not gonna rehash it. But I'm still a work in process, and I am trying to do my best, but I mess up all the time. And I just want to encourage you, the Bible is clear. It says the just shall live by faith. If you just started, if you stumbled on this episode right here for the first time, just is just as if I had never sinned. If you are justified, if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are justified in Christ. You are a new creation. Old things have been passed away. This is in your spirit man. This has nothing to do with your flesh. Your flesh is never going to be redeemed. It just can't. It's impossible. That's why we have to, quote, die, or we got on the trumpet at the rapture. We are going to get a new body. We're going to put off mortal and then we're going to go to immortality. And that's what's so exciting. That's what fires me up. But we're not there yet. And I just want to encourage you, the just shall live by faith. And I want to go to one last scripture, and it's in Luke 18, and we'll start in 1. This is the parable of the persistent widow. Then he spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying, there was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city, and she came to him saying, 'Get justice for me from my adversary.' And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, 'Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.' Then the Lord said, 'Hear what the unjust judge said! And shall God not avenge his own elect, who cry out day and night to him?' Though he bears long with them, I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth? And I've read that whole thing, and I know you love me reading to you. Feel like bedtime stories here. I'm just reading to you. In 18:8, that was what I was wanting to get to, is the scripture in 18:8, and I just didn't feel like I could just do it justice by just reading that one verse. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, When the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth? That's the question I want to leave you, and that's one the Holy Spirit has put this in my mind, and I've just continually thought about. If God came back today, would he have found faith in me? If God comes back tomorrow, if God comes back next Thursday, would he truly find faith here on earth? And that is amazing, because the more I see this world the way it's going. And the more we start seeing all the people trying to control it and all this government and all this chaos and all this lawlessness, and it's just breeding division and it's just breeding fear. And if you can't see it, you're not paying attention. The way you defeat fear is with faith. Faith is the opposite of fear. If there was a coin like heads and tails, if you flip that and heads was faith and tails was fear. You've got to either act one way or the other, and if you're in fear, you're not in faith. And so I just want to encourage you, we're going to dig in a little bit deeper on this. I know I kind of rambled at the beginning, but somebody needed to hear it, and I'm probably going to keep that in there. But let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this episode, and I thank you, Lord, that you have put in my spirit to just continue to teach your word God, I thank you for allowing me to be in your word, and God, I really thank you for allowing this listener and myself to talk to you. That is incredible that the creator of the universe is listening to what we say. God, we thank you for that. 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.

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