109 - Understanding the Core Beliefs of Christianity & the Bible

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Welcome everybody. Welcome back to the Motivate Grind Succeed, where our goal is to help you improve your life in the Four Foundational cornerstones of Faith fellowship, fitness and finance through practical and helpful tips and takeaways with every single episode. If you like what you hear, don't be afraid to leave a rating and review, as it really does help to go a long way. Also sign up for my email list where you can get access to new episodes, merch drops, upcoming events, and much, much, much more. And finally, if you are so inclined to want to support the show, I greatly, greatly appreciate you and you can check me out on fourth wall.

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All the links will be down in this episode description, so be sure to check that out for more information. Guys, let's get started with today's episode. And today you'll see based on the title of today's episode, it is Introduction to Christianity and the Bible. Why? Because we just finished our fitness series last week.

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That was episode 108. Here we are, episode 109. We're going to be starting off on the Faith series. If you don't remember fully. That's all right, let me remind you, we are going to be going through all four Foundational Cornerstones.

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That's going to be the idea for this year. And every single cornerstone is going to have different topics. And we're going to be going through a certain framework of introductory knowledge that we're going to be going through debunking myths and then we go in to go into general topics where those topics include some solo episodes, obviously, as well as potentially some guests, which we are going to have two guests this season. So I'm super excited to have that. There one is going to be a re upload because it was such a fantastic jampacked episode full of knowledge.

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And we're going to have a second guest, brand new. You all probably not heard of him before, but I don't want to spoil the surprise for who it's going to be. Just know you're going to want to stay tuned for this series because with this season here, we are going to be diving into the Faith portion of the Four Foundational Cornerstones. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get started with this week's episode. And like I said before, it's going to be an introductory episode.

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This one's going to be focused on just introductory information so we can get our baseline and we can get our grounds before we actually start with that too. I will also again reiterate the plan for the series a little bit later on what's especially with a couple of extra little tidbits. So be sure to stay to the end of the episode as they're going to be a little bit different of a thing for this series. Some extra little bits and pieces that are going to be towards the end of the series. So be sure to stay tuned to the end of this episode as I'm going to mention those as well.

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Now let's get started. So, introduction to Christianity in the Bible. What is Christianity? Well, Christianity is a religion that's centered on the life and of the teachings of well, Jesus Christ, hence Christ Christianity, right? Jesus taught about love, he taught about compassion, he taught about forgiveness.

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And his message continues to inspire millions and millions of people around the world. As of right now, it is one of the most, if not the most popular religions in the world. So what do Christians believe? Right? Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God?

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He came to earth to save humanity from sin by dying on the cross, which represented Him taking all of our sins on Himself and then covering all Christians past, present and future from all of their sins. This means literally every single sin, whether it was committed already, whether they were planning to commit it, or ones that you didn't even know you were going to commit, or ones that are going to be committed that people already know. Whatever it is, it is all encapsulated under that big umbrella of just sin. And then because Jesus came and died on the cross, therefore that covered all of that. So what about the Bible, the thing that pretty much governs everything, right?

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The Bible is a holy book. It was written by God himself, right? People wrote it, but it is God's word. And so it is split up into two main parts. Old Testament, New Testament.

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The Old Testament tells the story of God's relationship with the Jewish people and the history and things of that nature. While the New Testament focuses a lot more heavily on the life of Christ and the early Christian church, the Bible also teaches of the only way to become a Christian. There's only one way, but even though there's only one way, it is a very, very simple thing to do. And again, throughout this series, you're also going to hear that we're going to be referencing a lot of scripture as well. Whenever I reference Scripture, I'm going to tell you the scriptural reference and we're usually going to be taking it out of the New Living Translation or NLT simply because it's one of the easiest for people to read and to understand.

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So that's the main reason why so common verse that many people know about and if you don't it's first time hearing it. Well, here you go, you learned something new today. The verse that I'm going to be referencing is Romans Ten nine. It's going to say if you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That's it.

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That's quite literally it. Again, I'll read it one more time to show you how simple it really is. If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That's literally it. People want to overcomplicate things and say it's that plus it is not that plus.

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It is literally that simple. Why is it that simple? Well, let's move on to Ephesians two eight and nine again. NLT god saved you by his grace when you believed and you can't take credit for this. It is a gift from God.

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Salvation is not a reward for good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. So that means that salvation I'll read verse nine a one more time, salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done. OOH yes, that means your good works, while they are good, while they are admirable, it does not save you. You have to accept that Jesus is Lord. It's very simple.

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And that's also what trips a lot of people up. But we will discuss that in a further episode. But it's literally that simple. And even to break it down even more so I wrote down one more Bible verse here in my notes and it's John 14 and six. It says I am the way, the truth and the life.

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No one can come to the Father except through me, which correlates back to our Romans Ten Nine, right? Because if it says I am the way, the truth and life, no one can come to the Father except through me. That also correlates with Romans Ten nine saying that you have to openly declare that Jesus is Lord, so you have to go through Jesus in order to become saved. So you see, all these things kind of merge together. Fantastically.

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It's very simple. You accept that Jesus is Lord, which means you then get access to the Father and therefore because of that, you're done that's quite literally it. Now, another quick point about Christianity as well. If you ask a lot of Christians like, oh, what religion are you? Like oh, I'm Baptist.

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Oh, I'm Methodist. Oh, I'm Lutheran. There are many different denominations of Christianity, right? There's many, many different ones. I don't even know them all because there's just that many.

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But generally speaking, the core belief is that Jesus went, he died on the cross for our sins. He rose again after three days and he's coming back again. That is the core belief, right? That is the core belief of what Christians believe. As long as someone who professes to be a Christian has that core belief there, they cover pretty much most of their bases.

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Now, there are bits and pieces that you may agree with and you may not agree with. Like some might emphasize communion and others might emphasize doing good works as long as they have that key piece of just saying, Jesus is Lord, he died on the cross for our sins, rose again after three days, and he's coming back again. And they fully believe that unadulteratedly. And that's it. We're usually good to go.

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Now, being a Christian, very important to note this as well, is also about having a personal relationship with Jesus and living a life that reflects his teachings, meaning that you personally need to have a relationship with Jesus. You cannot rely on Mama and Papa. You can't rely on Grandma and Granddad, can't rely on your uncle across the street. You can't rely on your cousin who goes to church every Sunday. You can't do that.

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It's got to be your own. You can't piggyback off of somebody else's. It's got to be your own. Okay? And so overall, Christians strive to love God and love their neighbors, which we're going to talk about in next week's episode where we debunk some myths, but stay tuned for that one next week.

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That's going to be a very fun episode. But overall, Christians strive to love God and love their neighbors, and also, more importantly, to forgive others as they have been forgiven. That's also going to be part of our myths, too. But again, that's what I wanted to lay as the foundation here. Again, like I said, baseline understanding.

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So as long as we have this baseline understanding of what Christianity is, we understand that it is a religion centered around the life and teachings of Jesus. We understand that the Bible is a holy book written by God that has two main parts that focus on early days of interactions with the Jewish people and the life of Christ. In the latter half. We also understand that there's only one way to become a Christian, and you can't piggyback off of anybody else's. We're good as long as you understand that we can work with that for this series.

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Okay, now disclaimer, you might not agree with some of the things that I say during this series, and that's perfectly fine. I am up for discussion here. Send me a DM, send me a message on the Motivate Grind Succeed website and let me know. We can have a wonderfully, respectful discussion. I'm open to hearing what you all have to say about these things.

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So by all means, if you have any thoughts, any kind of dispute with what I'm saying at all, again, respectfully, come in. We'll have a conversation, and that's pretty much it for this episode, guys. But before we go, let me lay out the plan one more time for this whole entire series. The plan is we're going to have at least seven more solo episodes, and those episodes are going to cover things such as, but not limited to, as I said before, debunking myths. That's going to be next week.

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We're going to be talking about forgiveness and letting go. We're going to be talking about financial sense, and we're going to be talking about overcoming fear and anxiety and what the Bible has to say about all these. Now, I promise to you as well with this entire series is that I'm not going to shove Jesus down your throat. I'm just going to simply lay out what the Bible says about these things. And I'm even going to bring in some quote unquote, unbiblical, or non biblical quotes and messages just to show the fact that a lot of what we say nowadays actually has some biblical references to it, whether you realize it or not.

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As I said before, we're also going to be releasing two guest episodes, at least there's going to be one that's going to be a re upload. I really enjoyed that conversation. It was really informative and I really, really enjoyed it. There's also going to be one new guest, which we're currently working on, getting him on the show and recording and everything. And the one thing that I was alluding to before is that at the end of this series, we're going to try something new, okay?

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I'll be promoting it throughout this series. However, at the end of this series, I plan to do a live stream. So I plan to go live on YouTube at the end of this series to answer some questions that you may have that might have not gotten answered rather at the end of this series. So if you have a question at any time during this series, whether it be, let's say we're on episode like 112, but you had a question about episode 110, that's fine, you can submit the question. I went ahead and opened up a new page on the Motivate Grind Succeed website.

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It's a tab on the very top called Leave a Question. You can click on that. It'll redirect you straight to a form that you can fill out. It's a very simple form, it's only a couple of questions. You fill out the form and then once you submit it, I'll get notified.

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If it's something I can answer right then on the spot I'll go ahead and send you a reply with however, means I can send you a reply but if not, then we'll go ahead and I'll let you know. Like hey, we'll save that question for the live stream. Okay? So that is that. That is the plan for the rest of the series.

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And then before we end off this episode, I'm going to again put some ending reminders and ending notes here. Remember, on top of that, leave a question tab that I opened up. Also know on the website, in a more general form, I'm always accepting questions for the show go as well as voicemails. If you go on the Motivate Grind Succeed and See website, you're going to see a tab on the right hand of your screen. It's going to say Open me.

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As I also said before, the fourth wall site is still under construction. So at the time this episode drops, it's most likely still under construction. You're going to see a Coming Soon page if you go to that website. The website is Mgsclub Club. I really wanted to name it MGS Club, so it'd be a really cool thing.

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Go check that out, sign up with your email so that way you know instantly once we're going to be going live. And that's what I have for you this week guys. So thank you so much for listening. But before you go, don't forget that if you like what you hear, don't be afraid to leave a rating and review as it really does help to go a long, long way. As I said many, many times, there's an email list as well where you can join to get access to the new episode releases, merch, drops, upcoming events, and so, so much more.

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