You need to get death right to get life right

Welcome to episode 290, 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.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm continuing to talk about Ezekiel's wheel, and instead of just going wide on a topic, we're going to go deep. And we've talked about this, and we're going to take this to the next level. And I think to do that, we have to go on a teaching that I've taught before, but we're going to go again, we're going deeper into this issue. And the issue is death. And I know that's not a very good topic for those of you driving or working out or doing some yard work or whatever it is you're doing while you're listening to this episode. And first of all, I'd like to thank you if you're listening to this episode, if you're a frequent flyer or a fanatic, I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, there's a hundred thousands of other things you could do or podcasts you could listen to. And I do want to thank you for being here. It means a lot to me, but I want to get into this death thing because I believe that if we don't get death right, then we're not going to live. And the Bible is kind of a contrary teaching. You know, Jesus said you've got to die in order to live, and you've got to give to receive. God's ways are not our ways, and if we don't learn to do the things God's way, then our way is always going to get in the way., and I just want to teach you what God is showing me and what the Bible is pretty clear on is that we have to die and not only die once, but we have to die daily. And Paul, the Apostle Paul, does a wonderful job, and I think it's in 1 Corinthians. We're going to go to it. I think it's 15 is where Paul talks about dying daily, and then we've got to be planted. And we've talked about this also in the kingdom of God. I believe Matthew 6:33 is a foundational teaching or scripture for the kingdom of God, and it's God's way of doing things is how I've translated it. And it says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. And the seek first, before you do anything else, look at— and I think God's way of doing things is the kingdom of God. And I'm going to paraphrase this, kind of put it into Greg Ryan's vernacular. Learn the way God does things. Look how God does things in the Bible. Look how God teaches. When God was here, when Jesus was here, What did he tell you and I was how we were to do things? The kingdom of God is as if a man plants seed in the ground, or he sleeps by night and rises by day, and he knows not how it grows. And then it starts talking about the growth pattern. I want to get you to thinking about that seed. And then when he talked to his disciples about the sower of the seed, and the seed is the word of God, we know if you're a frequent flyer here, you know that the incorruptible seed is the Word of God. And the Word of God is Jesus. It's— it is the Bible. It's a lot of things. But we have got to learn— and this is our soapbox moment— we have got to learn how to plant this seed. And we can't just throw it on the ground, because if you read the parable of the sower, that if you throw it on hard ground, the birds of the air, which represents the punk, the demons, they're going to swoop down and they're going to take the seed up. They're not going to allow it to grow. The, the thing Satan cannot fight is the Word of God. So he's going to do everything he can to keep the word of God from being planted in your heart. And if he's got to distract you, if he's got to give you things that you should not have, or if he's got to just take the seed away, he's going to do whatever it takes because he cannot fight this word. And the only way he fights it, and I think is a, it's a wonderful strategy, is just to distract the fire out of you. And we're all distracted. I, I'm distracted, you're distracted, the there are many multiple things that we can be doing all day, every day, and getting in the word of God usually is a struggle for most people because you have opposition to it. Satan don't want you in there. Satan does not want you spending time. And that's why we're here. And that's why I want to thank you for being here because we're digging into this thing and we're getting into the word. Matthew 6:33, seek first God's way of doing things and his righteousness, and all these things were going to be added unto you. If you want things in your life, Look how God does it. And his righteousness— that means when I say if you're not a Christian, none of this stuff's probably going to do you any good because his righteous— it says seek first God's way of doing things and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. So all the things of the world will be added to you when you do it God's way. And again, we're talking about seed time and harvest, and we're talking about the time is what is such a critical component of all of this. And you cannot short circuit, or you can't circumvent, a harvest. You have to plant the seed in the ground, and you have to wait for that seed to die, and then you got to wait for it to start growing underground with the root system and then poking through the ground, and then it grows, and then it can bear fruit, and then you can harvest. And we'll go to 1 Corinthians 15:31, I affirm by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. Paul's telling the Corinthian church, look, I'm going to tell you straight up, I die daily. And he does. And when we go to Romans 12:1, this is another one of those foundational scriptures. And that's why I think death is such an important topic, and most people walk away from it or around it We don't want to think about it. We kind of put that in the back of our mind. Look, we're all going to die. I don't want to— you know, I'm one day closer today of my death than I was yesterday. I'm one day closer for Jesus' return. Time is ticking here on earth, and death is inevitable. If you are born in life, you will die. It's just one of those things that's going to happen. Instead of ignoring it, we're going to embrace it here. We're going to embrace death not because we're morbid, or not because of anything other than what the Word of God says about it. And we need to— God's way of doing things, it's seed time and harvest, but it's also God sees the end from the beginning. So God kind of looks at things backwards. God kind of sees how it's all going to end, and then he plays it back. And I think that's a great way to, quote, live your life, is that if we will with the end in mind, if we'll start living our life with the end in mind, we're all going to be dead one day. This is a tough topic, and I understand, but we're all going to be in a casket. I've had a lot of good friends of mine and family members pass away. You've probably, if you're listening to this, you've probably endured it too, because it just happens. Part of life. We need to understand that one day we're going to stand before Father God. I want to help you here 'Well done, my good and faithful servant.' And I don't think we're going to hear that unless we live with purpose down here. And instead of being distracted by the punk, instead of being distracted by everything going on in this world, distracted with what's going on in our body, all these different enemies that are fighting against us, we need to figure out what we were put here to do. And then we need to work backwards, and we need to figure out where— back to where we are right now and we're going to go forward to this. We're going to look with the end in mind. We're going to seek first God's way of doing things. We're going to point to, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And I've talked to multiple Christians, and every time I say that, most people don't think about it, and they haven't really verbalized that. But I believe just about everybody I've talked to says, "Yeah, I'd like to hear Father God say, 'Well done.'" And I think a lot of people are in the boat that I was that they were just gonna hear, "Welcome." I know multiple Christians that don't have any problem believing they're gonna make heaven. It's just they're not certain that they're gonna hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And I just wanna help. That's why I'm here. I wanna help you hear, "Well done." And you're not gonna do it by just living your life haphazardly. You need to get in the word of God and kind of listen to the Holy Spirit. What does he want you to do? What did he make you for? And I wanna continue to read in 1 Corinthians 'cause this is a wonderful book. If you wanna just a little homework, and I know I've assigned homework before on the podcast, and I don't even know if that's legal. 1 Corinthians 15, I think is a great chapter. It's talking about dying, and if you can picture this seed that we plant in the ground, and then it's, I'm gonna pick it up in 35. There's gonna be a lot of reading, and I know I have superior reading skills, So you're gonna love this. But someone will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come? Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive until it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain, perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he pleases, and each seed its own body. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. 1:21 There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies, and the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 1:22 There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. 1:23 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and after the spiritual. The first man was of the earth made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust. And as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. And I know that was a lot of reading, and I wanted to put that out there because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And as you read 1 Corinthians 15, and that was 35 through 49, but it is a great picture. If you can picture the seed, if you can picture a seed of corn going into the ground and just picture what that grain of corn looks like when it goes into the ground, and then it dies, it decomposes, and then it becomes a corn stalk. It looks nothing like the seed that went in the ground, and then it produces other seeds of corn or kernels of corn. And it is a phenomenon. It is a wonderful picture. It is a wonderful description of what's going on. If you can picture this, that we are— and we're going to pick it up in the next episode because I can just see it going on and me rambling— but this is such a powerful lesson, that it deserves time. It deserves you to ponder. It deserves you to take time and think about. But if you can just picture the end from the beginning, if you can picture hearing Father God, if you can just put that down, write that down on your goal sheet: I want to hear, well done, my good and faithful servant. And if that's you, because that's me, I want to just encourage you to continue into this walk with me. We're going to kind of dig into this death thing because I think if we get death right then we'll get life right. And I know that's maybe counterintuitive, but that's what we're going to do in the next few episodes. And I just want to encourage you, I want to thank you for being a part of this. We're going to pull this all together and into Ezekiel's wheel. We need to get this death thing right, and we need to put this into this teaching. So let's pray real quick. God, we thank you so much for your word. God, we thank you for your Holy Spirit. God, we thank you for your son Jesus, and we thank you that your plan for salvation was pure and it was true and it was accomplished over 2,000 years ago. And God, we thank you that all we have to do is declare Jesus Lord and we are saved. Lord, we thank you for such a wonderful salvation, such a wonderful gospel, good news message. And we thank you that all we have to do is humble ourselves and come before you. 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.

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