7 Powerful words every one needs to say to themselves

Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your host of the Marriage After God podcast. And today’s episode, we are going to be sharing God’s word and what we should be speaking over ourselves.

Before we get into this episode and the topics for today, I just want to invite you if you haven’t done already, to subscribe to our channel and if you’re listening on Spotify or iTunes, so you can subscribe there so you don’t miss any episodes. And lastly, if you haven’t left us a review or a star rating, we’d love for you to do that. We love reading all of the reviews and those star ratings help get our podcast to rank higher in charts so that other people can find our show. But going into our topics for today, this is kind of along the lines of what we’re going to be talking about today, about having people that speak things to you and remind you of good things, which is what we’re trying to do for you guys. It’s been awesome lately. God’s been showing me how valuable community is showing how valuable having good close, godly friends are.

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There’s been several times now in the last month or so that I have sat down with a close Christian friend of mine and I’ve just shared things in my heart about certain situations, certain people in my life that I’m praying for and that I’m concerned about, not necessarily gossiping, just needing advice because a leader in my church and I don’t know always what to do. And in doing so, I’m often reminded of patience. I’m often reminded to be praying for these people and then also reminded that God’s moving, that God’s working. And then what’s awesome is, and I told you all these stories, each time something’s happened where I get a text message, I get something that just confirms that God’s working in that person’s life. And it confirms that things that I’ve been praying for I’m seeing happen and it’s really awesome. So I just want to encourage you all out there that that’s why we have each other.

Yeah, we’re relying on each other and encouraging each other. Also, it gives those people that you’re in communications with and connected with the opportunity to also see those ways that God is moving, which is really

Cool to speak into our lives and remind us of the truth, which is what we’re planning on doing today.

Exactly. Speaking of the truth, in Bible time this week, I just got inspired to talk to the kids about prophecy and just to see what they are familiar with, what they know. And so I started by reading out Isaiah 53 and I didn’t give them any context. I didn’t tell ’em who or what it was about. I just started reading it. And then afterwards I started asking them questions and you helped me do this, but just asking them, okay, so who does this remind you? Who does this remind you? And they caught on very quickly that it was about Jesus. And I asked them why. And Elliot pointed out the verse that talks about how he was crushed for our iniquities. And so we just had a really good conversation about that and then leading into what is prophecy and why does it matter and how does it affirm God’s word? And I don’t know, I love that aspect of the Bible of how God foretold through prophets and messengers his truth and what was to come. And this

Was Olive asked a good question. She’s like, there’s all these prophecies in the Old Testament about Jesus in that time, but what about today? Why aren’t the prophets today? I was like, well, we’ve been teaching through revelation that’s prophecy about today and things to come that haven’t even happened yet. Speaking of a friend of ours sent us a video, what was it, NBC or a BC? It was C-B-S-C-B-S. I’m way off,

But it’s still a huge

News. Yeah. CBS did a whole report on the war in Israel and it was all about the red heifers that are being bred for the consummation, the sacrifice that’s necessary for the launch of the third temple that they want to build,

Which they’ve been on the search that’s prophecy and the hunt for the red heifer for a long time, a perfect

Unblemished one.

So then the kids were like, well, what’s unblemished? And then we got to talk to them about that too. So anyways, just a small encouragement that our kids are so eager to learn and being able to jump into a topic like prophecy doesn’t have to be intimidating. And so just if you want to start in Isaiah 53, it’s a really cool passage. And then Aaron, you even brought up how Jesus, when he was in his ministry, went to the synagogue, and I love this story. They handed where, do you remember where it’s at? It was Luke. It

Was Luke. Oh no, I can’t remember.

Okay, it’s in Luke. But it says that the people in the synagogue handed Jesus the scroll of Isaiah. So it’s not like he was reaching for it, but obviously he knew it

Gonna’ was going to dig in and they hand him Isaiah to read from because that was custom.

So then we got to share with the kids that Jesus read the part of scripture that says that basically what I’m reading about is he’s going to heal and heal the blind. And that was about him. That was a prophecy about him and what a cool experience for them.

Yeah. So if you ever had any doubt if those prophecies in Isaiah are about Jesus, Jesus says they are. Yeah. I thought that was awesome. So in this episode, so the last handful of episodes, we’ve been talking a lot about words, the power of words, the spiritual nature of words, how words have shaped this world, how words shape our society. Real

Quick, one more interruption. So you just brought up that we’ve been through this series and it’s an eight part series on words. We’re going to take a short break after this series, maybe one week, and then we’re going to jump into the next topic. And I’m really excited about this. It has to do with what we just talked about, but we’re going to talk all about Jesus and prophecy. So it’s going to be awesome. Like he said, make sure that you’re subscribed so that you cannot miss an episode so that you don’t. Good little plug

For next series.

I love that. Okay, so go ahead.

So in this episode, we want to talk about words that we could be speaking to ourselves, because again, we talk about how the world has its own words. The world has its own message. The world has something it wants us to believe. Like we talked about in last episode, there was the cheka and the king of Assyria wanting Hezekiah to believe his words over God’s words, wanting him not to put his trust in God. And so in this episode we want to talk about, we want to bring up words, scriptures that bring life and not death. Words that we could be ruminating on, words that we could be meditating on, words that are good for us,

Which I think we highlighted this how there’s always words all the time around us, in us.

Well, we’re constantly thinking there’s something going on in our heads.

And even I think it was the first or second episode, we talked about temptation and how words play a role in the way that we’re tempted. But I think it’s so important to just acknowledge the fact that we are thinking about words all the time. And so our biggest encouragement today is we should be full of words that are encouraging and uplifting and scriptural versus the words of our flesh, which can be very destructive.

So what is it that we’re filling ourselves up with? Because that’s going to be what comes out of us. Speaking of this, we talked about how I think it was in last episode, we probably mentioned every episode, but there’s just certain words that sometimes we hear, especially when we’re younger, someone says something and just we attach to it whether we wanted to or we didn’t understand it or whatever, but we just attached to it and it kind of guided our whole life. It directed it paths. And I was just talking with a friend a couple weeks ago and he told me a story and I asked him, I said, can I use this story? Because he told me this story about his own life, and I was like, this perfectly lines up with what we’ve been talking about. And he was saying how he, he’s going through some really amazing spiritual transformations. God’s just been convicting him on sin in his life and addictions and things that he’s been holding onto and not letting go of. And he finally got to a point of recognizing God, speaking to him, showing him and him surrendering in this and him feeling everything that he’s been believing, being taken apart by God and God replacing it with truth.

I just want to stop right there and say, if you’re listening right now and you’re in this same position where God’s speaking to you and the Holy Spirit’s revealing and convicting things about your life choices, we understand that that’s a really hard place to be, and it’s a really hard thing to do to surrender. But if you get anything out of today, it’s that it’s worth it. It’s worth it to follow Jesus in this way and to let him reign in your life that if he says, I want you to cut this thing out, trust him, to cut it out and to get rid of it and to choose better. Because there are so many things in this life that can hurt us and destroy us and separate us and sever our relationship with God. And we know that that’s a painful experience, but so beneficial.

Yeah, it’s painful, but it’s good. It’s good. It’s better for

Us. It’s so good.

And that’s what he’s going through. And so he told me, he said There was this Christian man I knew years ago, 10 years ago now, and I really looked up to him and I asked him, I said, what advice do you have for me as a Christian Young man in following Jesus? And he says, and this guy gave me the worst advice I ever got, and I only am just now recognizing it. He

Said, so he received it in the moment. Yeah,

He heard and he thought it was the best advice ever, but after, yeah. And the guy said to him, he’s like, if I can boil Christianity down to one sentence, it’s love Jesus and do what you want. And he’s like, and I’ve lived the last 10 years of my life that way. He’s like, and all it’s done is left me dead. That’s what he said to me. He says, I heard that. And I was like, that sounds good. I like that. Love Jesus and do what I want. And so the things in his life that he’s been trapped by were because he thought that he was able to do what he wanted and he thought he was walking in freedom in that when in reality he was being trapped by it. And he even said something, he’s like, something I’m learning is in order to gain freedom, true freedom, you often have to put yourself into a different kind of bondage. And so he said, I am surrendering to God. I’m putting myself in his bondage, in the bondage of Christ, and I’m actually feeling more freedom than I ever have.

When you said the word bondage, I thought of bandage, bandage, and I thought in how many ways when you’re being bound to something, it feels like tight and suffocating and it hurts, but bandage is more like a covering. It’s to keep you close to heal.

And I asked him, I said, can I use this? Because that’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about is we can grasp onto something that we’re like, that’s my truth. And that thing just keeps you trapped for decades.

Let’s talk about that phrase really quick that he was given. If you love Jesus, you can do what you want. What’s the deception there? Because what I hear,

Well, the deception is, is that I can do what I want as long as I love Jesus. Because

Loving Jesus is the most important thing. But how do you love Jesus if you’re doing whatever you want?

Yeah. Well take it into the marriage context. If I told my kids, yeah, love your wife and do what you want,

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How does that play out? It might make sense. And I know there’s a lot of believers out there that think this way, like, oh, the only thing I need to worry about is just I just want to love Jesus and all the rest of the stuff is useless. It doesn’t matter. All the rest of the decisions I make doesn’t matter. But that’s not the truth. The truth is his loving Jesus is surrendering to him is wanting what he wants is desiring. What he desires is having my heart changed to his, is being transformed by the renewing of my mind, by walking in his word, not my word. And he just said, he’s like, I believe that life for 10 years. And all it did was give me death.

How much more powerful it is to receive the true life-giving words, which is what we feel like our job is today, is to give you scripture. They’re not our words. They’re his words. Man, that’s a wild story.

It is. But we’ve all done this. It’s similar to something I used to believe. We all hold onto something that keeps us being allowed to do what we want and think that it’s okay justified instead of being transformed, instead of being changed, instead of being made new. But that’s what the Bible calls us new creations.

Well, I also have a short story that I wanted to share about an encouragement from a friend. And this is more of a positive story than what your friend received. But I shared with you guys that we recently found out that I’m pregnant and I’ve been on a journey this whole last year of trying to get healthy. And I lost a lot of weight and was very active and felt really good about the goals that I was accomplishing and just the milestones that I was reaching personally in my life. And when you get pregnant, your body changes, especially after I’ve already had five. It’s like it knew what to do.

Yeah. This is number six,

So you haven’t been tracking

It.

Literally my body started changing before I even found out that the test was positive. And when my friend found out, she told me that she kind of had this vision, she could see me at the end of my pregnancy and how beautiful I looked and it was such a short sentence, but it really stuck with me. And it was such an encouragement. And in this season where morning sickness is really getting to me and I haven’t been feeling that great, I have found myself trying to cope with eating either more quantity of food or different types of food than I’ve been used to eating in the last year. Just kind of not caring in a way of what I’m eating and just trying to get by each day. However, and I do feel conviction on that, and I’m trying to make better choices each day. And as I start to feel better, it’s easier. But I hear my friend’s words in the back of my head when I go to make those choices and I get so encouraged by it like, oh, she saw me a certain way and I want to be that way. When I get to the end of my pregnancy, I want to have

A, that’s how you want to see yourself. That’s

How I want to see myself. I want to have the full belly but also look healthy and look beautiful and look like I made all the right choices. And so I’m just sharing that with you guys because well, one, if anyone’s listening and they’re pregnant, I get it. It can be a very challenging circumstance to walk through. And it’s a long journey, nine months of just being tested in all the ways. But when we use our words to encourage our friends and we give them those visions or encouragement or things that they see in us or about us that are good qualities, it’s empowering. And I just want to encourage anyone listening that if you are that friend and you see something in someone’s life that you can speak to, oh man,

Use words to build up, use

Your words to build it up and to show them it might be something that they’re not even thinking of. I wasn’t thinking about my weight, I wasn’t thinking about my body at all, but since she has said that, I’m paying attention. And I’m like, okay, I can do this

Like that. And when you shared it with me the other night, you were so encouraged by it. You’re like, first of all, I feel convicted on the way I’m being, but I’m also really encouraged by what she said and I want to be that person. Yeah.

It’s like it already exists and I can step into that every day.

So that’s exactly what we want to do for you today with these words. We have seven words that we want to share with you and scriptures that we want to use as the foundation for those words. Because again, if we can take these words and we can redefine them however we want, but we’re going to define them and give us biblical foundation for these words. And

These are specific scriptures to encourage yourself as an individual, as a person who believes in Jesus, that we

Speak these to ourselves. And when we do that, it changes our behavior, our way of thinking, our way of acting, the way we speak to other people. So that’s what we want. Take these verses, take these ideas, take these words and practice speaking them to yourself. Practice believing them, which is the first word, believe. Believe. I put this one first because I think, I don’t think this is the most important word, it’s the most pivotal word when it comes to any person’s life because as we’ve talked about in the past in many different episodes, what we believe dictates how we behave and where we’re going and how we act. So

I’ll be honest, it’s been a hard word for me in my life, and it’s just one of those things where it’s like, what does it really mean? Because I do believe, but then there’s this doubt in the back of my mind and I’m like, I don’t get it. And it was funny because my journey with jujitsu, being able to be in a place that is a little bit uncomfortable and you’re doing things that are very physical. I remember we were doing throws and you work with a partner and you basically are, you’re being

Thrown.

You’re being thrown down onto these padded mats. And I remember I took my turn and I threw my partner down on the, it is something called an U, I dunno if you guys want to look it up, but it’s just like you kick your foot back and you throw him down. And I heard coach’s voice say, you got to believe Jen. And I remember being so frustrated. I’m like, was

He actually saying it or were you hearing it in

Your No, he said it to me. Oh, he said it. Okay, I can hear it. He’s got this soft, assertive voice. But I remember him saying, you got to believe Jen. Yeah, he never yells. No, but I was encouraged, but I was also frustrated like, but I did it. I do believe I can do it. I just didn’t do it perfectly. But what does he mean believe? And so I kept hearing his voice say this every time that I went to go throw and when I would tell myself like, okay, believe it Jen, and then I’d go for it. I had a little bit more and then I would do it better.

A little more follow through.

Yeah. So it did impact me to believe that you can actually do something or accomplish something. I kind of get it, but I kind don’t. And I’m just being honest.

I think it’s hard because this word believe we can say the word but not understand what it means when you say, I do believe, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I believe in. But really it’s so much more than just saying you believe something, it’s belief. It is a spiritual action. It’s something that happens. So the most important word, it’s what saves us is what we believe in. So jump

Into the first verse,

First verse, John 14, one, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. This is Jesus’s encouragement. He’s saying, don’t be troubled by the things you’re hearing. Believe in God and believe in me. This is the whole goal of a Christian believe in God and believe in Jesus. And this doesn’t just mean I believe he was a person. I believe what he said was good things. It’s truly believing that he is the savior of the world. It’s truly believing that God sent him.

Well, and in context too, it says, let not your hearts be troubled. Obviously, he knew that not just for them who he was speaking to, but for all of humanity that our hearts do get troubled for a lot of different reasons. And bottom line is he wants us to trust in him

And believe in him with our whole hearts. And so as we’re going through these verses, be thinking about them in a sense of how can I make these words louder than other words in my heart, other words in my mind, other words that are coming at me, believe in God, believe also in me. So starting in that first spot for the Christian, we believe in God and we believe in his son Jesus, that he’s died and through his death and resurrection, we are saved. That’s all the work has done, and he just requires us to believe, which is huge. Amen. Why don’t you do the second verse,

Romans 3 21 through 22. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe, for there is no distinction.

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible because of that last part that says, for there is no distinction, and he goes on to say between Jew or Gentile Greek, he takes away all of the cultural. Well,

There’s no favoritism.

No, he does not make a distinction. It’s for all who believe the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. So if we believe in Jesus Christ, we have his righteousness and we can rest in that. And there’s no distinction. It’s not that he’s picked that guy over there because look at all the good things he’s done and that he’s going to get much more of God and much more righteousness if

You were trying to memorize these scriptures so that when you’re just on the daily, you can be saying, when fear pops up or anxiety, you can say, let not your heart be troubled. How would you summarize this one or what stands out to you that you would say to yourself to remind yourself

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ? For our whole belief that that’s what we get, and it says by now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. So the righteousness of God is in Jesus Christ, not in the law.

So not by doing.

Yeah, yeah. We’re not made righteous by doing. We’re made righteous in Christ only, which

This is a huge comfort too. Those which is maybe all who may struggle with self-condemnation, putting yourself down because you feel like you haven’t met your own expectation or standard or you failed that day or whatever it is. We’re so quick to be hard on ourselves. And so to remember that the righteousness that we experience is Jesus’s righteousness, not our own.

And we receive it by belief. So when we get in those places, we need to be reminding ourselves of who it is we’re believing in. Are we believing in ourselves and our own righteousness

In our own capabilities,

Or are we believing in Christ that’s good and what he did? Okay, next verse. Psalm 1, 19 66, teach me good judgment and knowledge for I believe in your commandments. What I love about this is he’s asking God to teach him good judgment and knowledge. And then he’s saying, for I believe in your commandments. So understanding that the command of God is good. So my friend who was going through this thing saying, I used to believe this one thing, love Jesus and do what I want, is not believing God’s command

Because God didn’t say love Jesus and do what you want.

No, he didn’t. So he’s made up his own thing. So he wasn’t learning judgment and knowledge. And so believing in what God has said is true, believing in his commands, believing in what his word says is how we get judgment and knowledge.

Is there a distinction here on when it says, I believe in your commandments, obviously I go straight to the 10 commandments. Or is it

Often in the Old Testament you see things like commandments and precepts and you have these ideas of yes, it’s the 10 commandments that God gave, but in reality it’s the whole word that he gave, that you believe in what God has done and said, and it’s exactly what we’re supposed to do today. We believe in Jesus. Jesus says, if you love me, you’ll obey me. And then the commands that Jesus gave were love the Lord you got with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor yourself. And he says, all the laws hangs on these two. So he’s saying exactly what this says about himself. So again, if you love Jesus, you’re going to love what he has said. You’re going to love what he’s called us to do and be and how he calls us to behave. So again, it’s all in belief.

And if you truly believe these things, then you will also believe the importance and priority of being in God’s word. Because how can you know His commandments if you are not

Reading it? That was the other reason I put it in there. Okay, I’m glad you said that. Lemme read that last verse for the word believe.

Yeah, it’s Psalm 27 13. By the way, we keep reading ESB, that’s the version that we always tend to rely

Upon. English standard version. Yeah.

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

First of all, these are not the only verses that you could look at. There’s so many verses and you should do a word study on each one of these words and look up your own. But I put this in here because I’ve heard people, friends of mine recently say, I just haven’t heard from God. I don’t feel like he’s speaking to me. I don’t feel like he’s present. I don’t feel like he’s, and he says, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the lane of living. Sometimes I think we’re looking for something and we’re missing what is already there. We’re missing the grace, we’re missing the mercy. We’re missing the patience. We’re missing everything that we have that we immediately can be thankful for, that we can believe that we are going to see God’s goodness right now. It’s not something that one day we’ll see, which it is. We will one day see his goodness in the flesh. We’ll be there seeing the fullness of his goodness. But right now we will see the goodness of God in the lane of the living and saying, right where you’re at in the land you live in, as you are alive today, you’ll see the goodness of God. And we got to believe that. We got to believe that because how often do you feel like you’re in the midst of something hard and you’re like, I don’t feel the goodness of God right now,

But I love that you added this one. And I think gratitude is such an important aspect of our belief and what we believe to be true about God and our experience here on earth. And when we operate in that mode of gratitude, it really changes your perspective of how you’re experiencing life and even amidst the hardship, even maybe when you’re down or feeling like you’re in that desert, there are still things that have already taken place that you can look up to God and be grateful for.

It’s true. Thankfulness changes a lot of things. Yeah. Next word. What is that word?

Loved,

Loved.

You are loved.

Yeah. I put loved because it’s something that we can own and it’s something that’s true about us. We are loved. And so the first verse I have here is one John four 16 is actually they’re both from one four, but this is one John four 16 says, so we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him,

Which means love abides in him.

I love that. The word believe is in here. It’s know and to believe the love.

I thought that too, God has for us thought when you were reading it. Isn’t he sneaky?

Well, a lot of these are connected. They’re going to have a lot of connections to him. But I like that. Do you believe the love that God has for you? This is one of the hardest things. Just know it. I believe Christians struggle with that God actually loves us, that God can love this. And you listening that God loves you.

I think maybe you listening have heard this connection before, but relating your relationship to God with your earthly father or even mother, just your parents and how if you’ve had trauma or difficult, challenging or an

Absent father

Or experiences with them, that that same feeling comes across in your relationship with God. And so I think for a lot of people I, knowing that plays a role in the psyche and just your heart, I think that it could be hard for a lot of people to, they might know it that they’re loved, but to truly believe that God loves them and to know what that love feels like when for an entire childhood that wasn’t the case with their earthly parents. And so the encouragement there is just to be able to separate the two and to know that God is your creator, your designer. He knows you intimately way more than parents do. And we think we know our children. We’re with them all the time, and in a way we do know them intimately, but not like God knows us so we can trust him.

And the love that God has for you is unlike any other love you’ve ever experienced. It’s not experienced.

It’s not an earthly love, it’s heavenly, it’s divine, it’s spiritual, it’s beautiful.

And there was something I was thinking about when you were saying that about how often we don’t just relate to God and understand his love based off of relationships toward us like our parents. That’s a part of it. But the reason I just talked about the two greatest commandments, love the Lord you God and love your neighbor as yourself. The love your neighbor as yourself is often the definer of how we perceive love. And what I mean by that is we often believe God loves us the way we love others. We often believe God loves us the way we love ourselves. And so if we have a hard time loving ourselves, and I don’t mean truly loving ourselves as the Bible defined it, taking care of ourselves, believing that we’re valuable, believing that we deserve love, that we deserve to be healthy and deserve to be walking upright and maturing and growing.

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Those are things that you love for your kids. You want them to be healthy and safe and grow up and mature and wise and full of knowledge. But often how we love ourselves is how we’re going to love others and often how we love ourselves and how we love others, we’re going to define God’s love the same way, oh, God loves me that way. I don’t forgive that person or that sort of thing because of this, this and this. So God must not forgive me when I’m that way. And so we define, we have a hard time believing God loves us differently than the way we love.

I also want to say that sometimes we can deceive ourselves in thinking that we’re loving. So you might think that you’re loving yourself by taking care of yourself and going to the spot and getting a little treatment. You’re loving yourself. You may be loving your physical body, but is there something in your life that you feel shame over because you haven’t forgiven yourself like you were just talking about? And so sometimes we can be blinded because we think, oh, of course I love that friend of mine. I just brought her coffee and I gave her a birthday gift, but you’re holding on to something. Did you forgive her for that mistake she made two years ago? So I love what you’re touching on right here, and I think it does play a big part in what we believe about God affects ourselves and our relationships.

And for many Christians, it’s hard for them to believe that God actually loves them. They feel like they have to earn his love, which is so interesting because the Bible tells us that he loved us yet while we were still sinners, and he proved it by sending his son Jesus to die for us. We nothing changed about us before he did those things. I

Just got this image in my mind of the prodigal son and how the father runs out to him with this beautiful robe and it’s just like, I think he had new sandals and just wants to, it’s a ring on his finger, wants to lavish him with all this love, and you can probably imagine the look on the son’s face of like, what are you doing? I don’t deserve this right now. I just wasted all

That money. He went back to go be a servant and the father’s like, no, I received my son back from the dead. That’s what he says. So it’s really hard for us. The next verse in this section is First John four 18, when he read that

There is no fear and love, but perfect love casts out fear for fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

So I talked to someone once that said they really were struggling with feeling like they are winning the race. They felt like they were letting God down. They felt like they were, if God was to come back, that they were not going to be received by him.

I mean, we all been in a place of mentally wrestling with that kind of shame

And could be okay of feeling conviction of, oh, am I walking right, change. But if we think that our salvation lies in us, you can’t expect to be saved because it doesn’t rely on us at all.

There lies in Christ’s not one good or perfect. No.

And you could do as many good things as you want and you can try, but you are not going to win that. You’ll

Never measure it.

So I encouraged him. I said, do you believe in Jesus that what he did isn’t enough for you? And they said, yeah. And I’m like, then you can have full confidence that you are going to be standing before him without shame. I said, but if there’s things in your life that God’s convicting you on, that’s because he loves you and he’s in you. So be encouraged that you’re feeling that conviction. Don’t feel shame. The enemy wants you to feel like, oh look, you’re being convicted. That means he doesn’t love you. When the Bible makes it very clear that God’s chastisement is because he does love us and it proves that we’re not illegitimate children proves that we are his children.

Well, in the verse above, we were talking about how when you abide in God, his love abides in you. And so it makes sense that this next one talks about how that love is perfected in us

And it should take away our fear, not our fear of God, but our fear of punishment. Punishment is not the same thing as discipline parents. Listen, punishment is not the same thing as discipline. We don’t as parents punish our children. We discipline. We teach them what’s right because they’re our children. Punishment is what a criminal gets when they’re convicted of a crime. Discipline is what a parent gives to their children to raise them up, to mature them, to teach them our father in heaven, discipline. So when it says that perfect love, cast out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The punishment that we deserve was poured out on Christ. Amen. That’s it. Yeah. If you believe in Jesus and you desire to follow him, and when you do that, God puts his Holy Spirit in you that perfect love that now is in you and that God desires you to abide in because it’s good for us, cast out the fear of punishment. And so I wanted to encourage you listening to let that perfect love of God cast out that fear that we have of failing so much that

Not being good enough. Yeah,

Don’t be deceived by that.

Okay, moving on. I like this next one. I like how someone

Flow together. Yeah.

It says, do not fear.

Do not fear.

So the first verse we have for you is Genesis 15, one after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, fear not Abraham. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great.

This often happens when God comes to people. He’s so mighty and so great, and he comes in a miraculous ways. He often reminds them to not be afraid. And I’ve heard before that this shows up 365 times in the Bible, one for every day. I tried finding that the numbers were not quite 365, but it’s a lot. It’s more than 365 times in the Bible. This idea of being not afraid and not fearing, but understanding why we don’t have to be afraid, believing why we don’t have be afraid that God is our shield, that Christ is our savior, that we can put our trust in him. That when God came to Abraham who had no idea who this God was, but until that moment and believed what God said to him. But the first thing was is don’t be afraid and believe, I believe Abraham believed that. He’s like, oh, I don’t have to be afraid of this God who’s speaking to me. That means he’s good. That means I can listen. That means I can trust him. And we should be the same, that we don’t have to be afraid in this world. In this world right now, the enemy and the government and everything, all the wars that are going on, there’s plenty that want to make us afraid.

I was going to say even social media and just the way we get our news or the way we are plugged in,

It’s like it’s fear mongering at its best, trying to put fear in us, to destroy us, to diminish us, to break us down.

I think this word shield really stands out to me, and it reminds me that it’s so important also to be in the word so that we know the character of God because how can you trust something you don’t know or you’re not familiar with? And so throughout scripture we get these pictures of God’s character and who he is and what he’s capable of. And so being a shield is something that protects. There’s other ones like a strong tower, a refuge. And when we know these things, we also can be quick to encourage others. I had a friend who reached out. We have a little ladies group thread, and there was several people struggling with a sense of sadness and being downcast. And I don’t know if it’s seasonal or just kind of a moment where there’s some hard sad feelings going on, but I quickly reminded them that God, he is these things for us. I said, run to him. He is a strong tower and you can feel safe with him. He is your refuge. When you know these character qualities of who God is and how he can minister to your heart, when you know those things and you hear a friend or a child or someone going through something hard, it’s so easy and so quick to say, well, this is how I get through it. This is what I remember of who God is. Let him be that for you.

That’s what he is. Yeah.

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The next verse is Luke 12 four. This one’s much more extreme, but there’s people all over the world currently. We may not be in a place in America, thank God, where we have too many opportunities for physical harm where it’s not like there’s war at our doorsteps, which we never know. Maybe one day, hope not. But in Israel right now, in Palestine right now, or Ukraine, in Ukraine right now in Russia right now, there’s lots of war going on and probably other countries that I don’t even know about because I’m not digging too deep into that. But it says this, Luke 12, verse four, I tell you, my friends do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do. This encouragement that we get in Luke is explaining that if we’re fearing men who can only kill this body, they can only touch this body, I’ll die. And then what else can I do? They can do nothing else. Then I’m not putting my fear in the Lord. And again, we’re not talking about the fear that we talked about earlier. This is a reverence. This is an awe of God. This is a trust of him that I’m going to dictate my life in that fear. I’m going to do everyth right thing I can to avoid that.

That’s really good. I read it again and I know it uses the word who can kill the body, which is like a reference to a person. But could this also be like when you think about, because I think about my anxious thoughts and how if one of my kids is sick or if I find this morning I woke up, what can you kill the body? Yeah. I had a lump under my eye and I was like, oh no, what is that? And you’re like, it’s probably is it? So when we have anxious thoughts, fearful thoughts about what can kill the body, I think it’s also important to remember even those things, what more can they do to us after they have affected us? Nothing.

This life is, we talked about several episodes ago about Paul calling these bodies tents.

They are temporary. How

Purposeful that word is that it’s not a house like this. It’s a tent. It’s temporary. It’s a temporary dwelling place. While we are currently walking in D wilderness waiting for the promised land, but we put our fear in the Lord, we won’t fear man. We won’t fear sickness. We won’t fear things that can just harm this body and maybe kill it. The worst thing it could do is take our life here on earth, which everyone’s appointed to have is to die once anyway. And so that’s what salvation is to do, is to take away the fear of death and sin. And so next verses Isaiah 35, 4, when you read that one,

Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong fear, not behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God, he will come and save you.

This is true for Isaiah’s time, and this is true for our time, and this has been true for every generation since that we can tell our anxious hearts to trust that the Lord will redeem us, will save us, will even avenge us. I’ve been taught teaching through revelation as I brought up before, and there’s several times I’m like, this is God revealing his vengeance for us and for himself that he is getting justice and he will get justice. So we may see the world and be like, look at all the injustice, but just know that God keeps perfect account. And so we don’t have to fear. We can trust him for that.

The next word that we’re going to encourage you guys to really focus on for yourself is the word forgiven. And I know we already touched on this, but being able to forgive yourself, being able to forgive others. These are really important.

Truly believing we are forgiven.

These are really important elements of being a Christian. Acts 10 43 says to him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Wait, how many who? How many people?

Everyone.

That what? Who

Believes?

Oh, not everyone that does. Everyone

That works. Everyone who believes

In him. Everyone who believes receives forgiveness for sins through his name, his name, his character, what he did. That’s it. There’s nothing else you can do to earn forgiveness from Jesus or from God. There’s no amount of working, no amount of doing that makes your life worthy of forgiveness other than believing in the one who gave the forgiveness

And believing that he forgave you.

And we are forgiven. Yeah, fully. There is no need for a purgatory. There is no need for some time in history to what about the things that I haven’t apologized for that I don’t know about. God’s forgiveness is complete and perfect. The rest of our life is sanctification, not an act of trying to find the things that we need forgiveness for. It’s the act of being transformed into his likeness. You listening, you’re fully forgiven. God wants you to believe that. It says to him, all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness. So the next verse is Ephesians one, seven. It says in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace in him, we have a redemption. I didn’t have to go too many into this because as believers, we just need to know that this is a base level truth. This is the most foundational truth as believers, is that we are forgiven in Jesus Christ and it’s through his blood that we’re redeemed

Past, present, and future. Yeah,

That’s it. Next word. We’re almost done about halfway. The next word is free. Free.

Free indeed. Yeah,

Free indeed. Romans eight, two, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. I brought this up earlier about that fear of death. We’ve been set free from the law of sin and death that that truth is true now, not in the future one day, not when you’ve done this or that. It’s true now. So for any of you, for us, for all believers who feel like you’re trapped in some sin that has a power over you that you don’t have any control over, that’s false because the Bible tells us that we’ve been set free in Christ Jesus,

Which this next verse that we’re going to share has been a huge one and pivotal for both of us and just in our marriage alone, reminding each other of this freedom. And so we just highly encourage that you guys memorize this verse, Galatians five, one, for freedom. Christ has set us free stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

So it tells us right here, it’s for freedom that we’re set free. It’s for nothing else. Christ set us free because he wants us to be free. He desires us to be free. Free from the yoke of working for our salvation from festivals and feasts, from having to do, we get to rest in what he has already done. That’s the freedom he wants us to have.

I remember seeing this picture of a sad lion like cartoon stuck in a cage, but then if you keep looking, the backside of the cage is open

And he’s just sitting there free.

But not, we do that to ourselves. We

Do. There is no chains, there is no cage. It might feel that way in the moment. It might feel like you’re trapped under control of this sin in your life. But we must believe that what Christ did freed us from that when we believe in him, you are no longer aon to that one. Corinthians 10 13. Here’s proof of that in this verse. And I just want you to know this is true right now. This is not true when you’ve gotten enough self-control or when you’ve gotten enough power. This is true right now. No temptation is overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Do you remember a couple of episodes ago when I talked about we’ve heard people say, oh, God won’t ever give you what you can’t handle. And I said, that’s straight lie from the Al because it’s not what the Bible says. This verse is what they’re referencing. And this verse is specifically about temptation and about falling under that temptation. And it’s saying there’s no temptation that’s unique. Meaning what you’re tempted by that’s not uniquely powerful over this temptation over here. And then it also said that God’s faithful and he won’t let us be tempted beyond our ability, which means in Christ we will always have the ability to walk in freedom and not fall into that temptation.

And here’s the importance about this verse. You guys, even if you just remember the part about escape and that he will provide a way of escape, when you have this written on your heart and you’re in the middle of being tempted, just cry out and ask, God, will you help me escape this? He will. He’s faithful. You have to believe that he’s faithful and that he will watch what happens. Going back to that last verse really quick, at the very end I realized it said in Galatians five, one it says, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery and how active that is for us as believers to make sure that we’re not doing that. But it reminds me of your friend that you shared that story of that He said he was going from one bondage to another, but a better one for God. But how all throughout that time of believing the wrong thing, he kept submitting himself to a Yoko slavery without even knowing it.

And this is the state of the believer. If we’re as believers and we’re walking in unrepentant sin, it’s a choice we’ve made to submit ourselves to that bondage. That’s the truth. And the reality is we are actually free from that, but we’re choosing to be in it. And that was something that one truth, right there was a massive transformation in my life to start walking in freedom. And it’s something that I constantly am reminded of every day. The sixth word, word, number six phrase, phrase six, provided for we

Are provided for, provided

That often we want to feel like we’re where my needs being taken care of, we’re being provided for.

Or again, you’re working so hard to provide for yourself without giving God the glory for your job or what your income is or what someone has shared with you recently

Two Peter one, three is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Also, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

We share that verse in marriage after God. Yeah, I love that verse.

I’ve talked to many believers that are like, I just feel like I don’t have what it takes or what I need, or I feel like there’s something I’m missing. And the Bible tells us that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life. And

Calvins, we’ve had this conversation before when I’ve been struggling, and you say, what external thing are you waiting for? You’ve already been given everything you need. It’s true. It’s been very encouraging

And it’s something that good reminders I need to be reminded of every day because there’s days that I feel like I don’t have it in me. It’s like, no, you

Do. You have him in you. You have him in you. You’re good.

Second Timothy one, seven. Why don’t you read that one?

For God gave us a spirit, not a fear, but of power and love and self-control.

So this kind of ties into the other things we were just talking about. What spirit did God give us? One of fear no, no of power and love and it doesn’t leave it there. It could be easy to say power and love and like, oh, holy Spirit and love. Yeah, no, no. Self-control. Yeah, that’s a

Hard one right there. That’s an important word to have. Oh man. But we’ve been provided the ability to have

Given us a spirit that is power and love and allows us to walk in self-control. So

Walk in it guys, girls, let’s

Do it. Ephesians one 17 through 20, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of in the knowledge of him having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you? What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe there’s that word, believe again according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places. Essentially this is saying the power that God used to raise Christ from the dead

He’s using to raise you up

Is in us that same love. It’s a good reminder. This immeasurable greatness, glorious inheritance hearts, enlightened riches. These are all the things that God’s provided for us in Christ. And it’s found for those who believe toward us who believe. So you believe all of that gets poured onto you.

So good. So the last verse in this section is Romans eight, 10 through 11. It says, but if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. Thank you Lord. God has provided,

Yeah, we have life in us because of Jesus. Last word. What is that word?

Needed?

Needed. Do you ever feel like you’re not needed? Yes. There’s lot of, we wrote marriage after God because there’s lots of marriages that don’t see the need that God has for them. When

It comes to my parenting, I feel definitely reassured of being needed every day because our

Kids, one by one, go to our bedroom at night at all times. And yeah, they always need us. We are needed. And when I say we, I mean the royal. We all believers are needed. First Corinthians 1227, now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it, you’re an individual. True. You’re a unique true, but you are a part of one body, not separate from it. You are part of it. And that’s important for us to remember because there’s so many believers who are totally fine with living on islands, and I don’t think that’s how God desires us to live. The next first one, I read that

One. I mean, you have to bring up island. That sounds really refreshing right now.

Let’s go to an island.

It’s still cold here in central origin

Spiritual island.

Got it. Proverbs, I hope I’m not distracting anyone from the seriousness of this. Sorry, one Peter four 10, as each has received a gift use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.

So as each has received a gift, so I want to make a note that

This is, it doesn’t say,

Wait, you go ahead. No, you say

It to those whom or to this special group

As each has received a gift and that is an actual statement because the next verse we’re going to read actually proves that out. But every person who has the Holy Spirit has been given gifts

And I love that it says, use it to serve one another and there are so many opportunities when you recognize that you’re a part of a body and you’re immersed in it and you are fellowshiping together and you’re meeting together throughout the week and you’re invested and you see the needs you know how to serve. It’s true. You know how to use your gifts

And I love that this verse ends with as good stewards of God’s varied grace, which is an interesting, I want to do a words today on it probably, but varied grace. It’s saying that because there’s often we think like, well, what I have isn’t as good as what that person has. True,

Right? It’s true. It might not be

And it might not be, but it’s God’s varied grace, but it’s God’s grace and the fact that you have it, God still desires you to be a good steward of it, whatever it is. Next verse one Corinthians 12, four through seven. Now there are varieties, varied varieties of gifts, but the same spirit and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone,

Not in a select few.

If you’re listening to this and you believe in Jesus, you are a part of this.

You’re part of everyone to

Each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. Each one of us are a necessity in the body of Christ, and if we are not being used in the body of Christ, we’re actually walking in rebellion to God. We’re actually walking against what the Holy Spirit intends for us to be doing. He’s given us gifts, varied gifts. What

Would your encouragement be to someone who’s listening right now and they’re like, okay, I want to receive what you’re saying because it’s the Lord’s word, not just yours, but how do I know what that gift is? How do I know what I have to offer? What would you say? I

Would say pray. Say, God, what do you have for me? What is my gifts? What is my talents? What have you put in me that you desired me to use? I genuinely believe the moment you ask God to show you he will, someone’s going to come over and be like, I need your advice on something. You’re like, oh, I have advice on something. We talk about our book, the tool belt, your story, your resources, your talents. If you

Want something to take you a little bit deeper in the navigation of what we were just sharing, go check out marriage after God. It’s true. Do it together with your spouse.

Why don’t you read this last verse? Okay, and then

One Corinthians 12, 19 through 24, if all were a single member, where would the body be as it is? There are many parts, yet one body, the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again, the head to the feet. I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker, are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we be so greater honor and are unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which are more presentable parts do not require, but God has so composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it.

So if you are listening, you think like, oh, I’m not talented enough. I’m not presentable enough. Well, this just said that the Bible gives more honor to those parts and that they’re actually indispensable, that the weaker are, they’re indispensable. You can’t get rid of any of these parts. So if you are in that position, you should recognize that you’re actually an indispensable part and God wants to bestow more honor to raise you up, to make you more visible and people that have, so ours is a pretty public ministry. We constantly have to be reminded of our own humility and that just because we have this platform doesn’t make us any more special or any more in what’s the non vulnerable, what’s the word for that? But we are just as vulnerable. We often have to lower ourselves and we don’t get to raise ourselves up and look we’re the most important part. No, we actually get to be humbled.

I was going to use that word humility for everyone listening that when you believe this scripture and when you recognize that you are an individual member of an entire body, this is a humbling experience. This is a part of our character and mindset that we get to look at and say, okay, God, I see that there’s others here that have gifts and functions and parts of your body that matter, and it’s humbling for everybody no matter what you do, no matter what your ministry looks like. So

That was really good.

Well,

Okay, so those were our seven words. I want you guys to, I hope you wrote ’em down and you could find more. There’s so many verses on these same ideas that we could be filling our hearts and minds with.

I like that it was a unique list because you could just given the normal, normal verses be strong and courageous, which those are important verses, but we hear them all the time, and so hopefully you guys got a kind of different aspect and look into what words should we remember from scripture that we can speak over ourselves, that will better ourselves, that will encourage ourselves, that will get us out of those low places and be reminded of our place and our truth in the body, in our family, in our marriage, and just rely and trust in the Lord and how he’s moving and working in us, how he’s transforming us. I think that verse about being reminded that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power dwelling in us. I think that’s one of the best ones that we could remember because every day that we’re faced with our to-do list our tasks, our ministry to our children, no matter what it is, and we’re going to face hard circumstances. We need to be reminded that power dwells inside of us and enables us to be able to move forward, enables us to do the hard thing, enables us to tell the truth or confess or encourage, and those things need to be taking place.

Awesome. Why don’t you pray for us and our listeners,

Dear Lord, we just come before you right now, and we just thank you so much for your scripture. We thank you for your truth. That does encourage us, that does transform our minds and our hearts, and draws us closer to you and to each other. We just pray that these words would stick with us, Lord, that we would write them on our hearts and that we would just be super intentional every day to consider the ways that your word speaks to us and navigates our life, especially like I had just mentioned, that the power that raised Christ is dwelling within us, and we just thank you for that. We praise you for that, and we give you just praise and honor, and we just recognize that truth in us. Lord, we pray for things like feeling loved, especially by you and forgiven, and we just pray that those words would settle on our minds and our hearts and that we would truly believe them and walk in them every day and see how those testimonies become manifest in the way that we respond to others, the way that we forgive and love our spouse or our children or our friends, and we just pray, Lord, that we would also believe the gifts that you have given us and the ways that we can use them to serve others.

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We thank you for these words and we pray that as we believe them, they would transform us and help us to just live each day according to your will and not our own. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen.

Thanks for joining us for this episode. We look forward to having you next time.