Gregory Ebanks

Advice to my younger self: The Devil is so crafty that he can even turn your virtues into idols of worship. Take self-discipline, for example: do you have compassion towards those you perceive to be lazy or treat them with contempt? Which is most true of those you look up to?

Advice to my younger self: You would find ample time to better understand Jesus had your favourite influencers not become idols of worship. Before trusting them over Him, remember “they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (John 12:43).

Advice to my younger self: Pride’s lethality as a sin lies in its imperceptibility. The world says, “want your goals as badly as you want to breathe.” Jesus says, “love the Lord your God with all your heart … soul and … mind,” for “the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

Advice to my younger self: Self-belief is one of the most subtle yet God-offending expressions of pride. The world says, “Become so obsessed with winning that doubters only strengthen your resolve to prove all disbelievers wrong.” Christ says, “Disbelievers in who, my guy?”

Advice to my younger self: Want fearlessness? Live biblically. Want confidence? Live biblically. Want discipline? Live biblically. Want fortitude? Live biblically. Want freedom? Live biblically. Want strength? Live biblically. Want humility? Live biblically. Daily.

Advice to my younger self: Practicing what you preach doesn’t mean you aren’t spreading a false gospel. The world celebrates those who embody this phrase because they appeal to man’s sinful desire to be perceived as an authority figure possessing seemingly superhuman abilities.

Advice to my younger self: Behind every worldly desire is a false gospel ready to convince you that God’s will is for you to have it. Beware of the belief that the Spirit’s desire is to shower you with material blessings. Human beings do nothing better than lie to themselves.

Advice to my younger self: Get off the New Age “God is the universe” wave. The universe is a creation separate from God. Only God creates life—not the universe. Intuition is not God speaking to you. Jesus is the only means of relating with God. As He is the Only True God.

Advice to my younger self: The only thing infringing on your freedom is the belief that ungodly living costs you nothing—either now or in the life to come. “But now that you have been set free from sin… the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life”

Advice to my younger self: There’s no influencer who should be getting more of your attention than Jesus Christ of Nazareth. None of them have a more urgent message for you to hear, nor do they have a better strategy for how to live than Him. Who you follow is who you worship.

Advice to my younger self: Get ready for untold suffering if you think there’s anything you need more than to “abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). Discontentment is a spiritual privation the physical world can’t fill.

Advice to my younger self: You know Jesus is God because when you think, speak, and live according to His standard, everyone around you feels judged—not by you, but by the holiness of the standard itself. “The world…hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.”

Advice to my younger self: The reason you know Jesus is God is because only by living according to His example can a person change their entire nature. But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

Advice to my younger self: The reason the Bible is trustworthy is because it was written by ~40 authors—most of whom never met—over ~1,500 years from nearly 25,000 complete or partial early manuscripts, Even atheist scholars consider it the best-attested text of antiquity.

Advice to my younger self: The reason you know Jesus is God is because His morality is alien to the world. The command to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” is without condition, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” —Mt. 5:44,46

Advice to my younger self: Imagine ending up in hell because you thought you were a good enough person to avoid being sent there, but that assumption was wrong? “Jesus[:]…‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6).

Advice to my younger self: God the Father sent His Son to die for humanity’s sins because man’s “heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5) since the fall. All failed to keep God’s law because “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23). Jesus, sharing God’s nature, obeyed what man can’t.

Advice to my younger self: That Jesus is anything less than God is wrong. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” —John 1:3 The purpose of life is reconciling with God to be resurrected from among those spiritually dead in sin.

Advice to my younger self: Don’t be surprised if listening to another podcast between atheists convinces you that a lack of reason better explains the world’s growing immorality than its rejection of the God of the Bible. Sin has been humanity’s first true love since Creation.

Advice to my younger self: How many more self-improvement books will you need to read before realizing that an undisciplined mind is only a symptom of heart corrupted by a love of sin? There’s no psychological fix for a spiritual ailment because your impulses are captured.