Part 1: On my own?!?

I have not spoken on My own, but the Father who sent Me has commanded Me what to say and how to say it. And I know that His command leads to eternal life. So I speak exactly what the Father has told Me to say.”

John 12:49-50 Berean Study Bible

First thing’s first: Jesus spoke what God said.

Logically speaking spiritually (as in the Spirit of God), since Jesus is our God example of what a human being should be in the earth, it would then follow that we should also do what Jesus has done.

Cuz, you know. Example or whatever.

Let’s start at the beginning of this example found in John 12.

“I have not spoken on My own.”

How many words have you spoken on your own? How many of your words have flowed out of the abundance of your heart (a deceitful, desperately wicked abundance at that) but not from the heart of the Father? Listen. You ain’t gotta count cuz you ain’t got tahm, fam. And neither do I. We got mad issues.

Jesus didn’t have this problem because Jesus never had the issue of knowing sin nature or sin. All He knew was what God wanted because all He listened to was what God said. He never did the Patty LaBelle outchea like we do, talmbout “On my owwwwwwwn, once again Iiiiiiiii ONE MORE TIIIIIIIIIIME…” Nah. Jesus’s earthly default was “NEVERTHELESS. Whatever you say, Father! Otherwise I gots NOTHING.”

Jesus was so sincere about this posture that out the gate He got baptized, the Holy Spirit said, “Hi friend!”, and Jesus immediately walked off into the dessert for 40 days and 40 nights of prayer and fasting. You never saw Him speak sideways; Jesus’s conversations were intentional to get God’s purpose, plan, and point across PERIODT. Every statement. Every question. Every silence.

Lord, be it unto me.

Nah see despite the fact that we have KNOWN sin nature and baby! Lived these lives of sin full out, we (hopefully cuz you reading this and if not… we need to work that out) consider ourselves followers of THE WAY. If we then be risen with Christ, and Christ is in us, our hope of glory, then we too ought to be some real Gs outchea moving in lockstep with Jesus, doing what Pastor Bill Winston always said: SPEAK THE WORD ONLY.

Yet here we are, talmbout what that mouth do. Why? Cuz we choose not to bridle that bad boy, the tongue! We just say whatever whenever wherever howsoinever to whosoever without counting the cost. Instead of the INTENTIONAL TALKING of Christ, we outchea EMOTIONALLY ARTICULATING our own will, own mind, own flesh.

Let’s just repent and fix that, shall we?

How we fix it Kisha?

Sooooo glad you asked! Not that I can give you any steps or whatever. More like…

okay, so! In the classroom, when we want to go to clarify what we are saying as a group, we do an activity called “Looks like, Sounds like.” We use this tool to describe some specific indicators we want to look for. I’m going to do that for you here. Give you some indicators of the submission Jesus our Lord and Savior just stated He did and that we must also do.

Silence. I won’t even… sigh. The number of scriptures that tell you in a dozen ways to “shut your face” astounds me still. Just. Shut. Your. Mouth. Hold. Them. Lips. Together. Zip it. Lock it. Put it in your pocket. Shhhhh. Because if you shut your mouth you can

Listen. Faith comes because you hear, and hearing comes through the word of God (Romans 10:17 for reference). Not just regular “hear” like birds and airplanes and babies crying withcho natural nosy ears but the hearing that means discerning God’s voice. Discerning! Yes! Sussing out, grasping the difference between God’s voice and:

• the voice of your flesh
• and the voice of the accuser
• and the voice of culture
• and the voice of religious tradition void of The Spirit
• and the voice of your family’s bad habits
• and what you read in some philosophy books
• and what you saw on the history channel
• and the voice of your need

and… yeah. Allodat. That’s junk competing with the voice of God.

Not that God has any competition, mind you. It’s just that, like I said in my post about Warring with your own mind, your mind is a terrible, terrible place sometimes and will CHOOSE to not hear God. Just be real disobedient. And you will fool around and think you got options that you don’t have cuz you ascribing your thoughts and people’s opinions to God’s voice and God looking atchoo like, “When I say that? That’s not in the plans I have for you!”

So shhh. Shut up and LISTEN.

Stop being out here jaw jacking all Willy nilly. Mouths attached to unsubmitted minds tend to get folks in trouble they ain’t anticipate. Once words go out? They out. You can’t call em back; they go and don’t return until they’ve finished the job you sent them to do.

Now pause and think on that. Okurrrrt!

The words that Jesus spoke? They are spirit and they are life, cuz they came from our Heavenly Father. Whatcho mouth do? Whose words are you speaking?

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While you thinking on that and waiting for Part 2, if you have not given your life to Christ please consider doing so now. Giving your life to Christ has nothing to do with your church affiliation or denomination. Many attend churches everywhere but have never truly encountered Christ—or tradition has usurped the love of Gods in the hearts of those around you and you’ve never really believed because you were working for the religious institution and not receiving right relationship with the Father. It doesn’t have anything to do with how “good” you’ve been either. Salvation is a work freely given as a gift to us from God in the form of Jesus Christ, God’s demonstrated Love as Forgiveness, made manifest in the Cross. No one escaped the enduring ravages of sin nature except Jesus who was not of the seed of man. The rest of us are the seed of Adam and his legacy to us was to be born with the nature of sin.

God loves you. I love you. We love you. Won’t you come?

To that end: We believe that Christ is the way, the truth, and the light; that no one can go to the Father except that person goes through Christ. Christ came that we might have eternal life through Him by the shedding of His blood. And it is written that if you believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is who the Word says He is and confess with your mouth that He came, died for us, and is risen again! You shall be saved. This is literally THE best thing your mouth could do (I mean that and praise ye the Lord for His mighty acts and His power to save, of course.)

And that’s all there is to it. Those who call on the name of the Lord (the name conferred on Jesus Christ) shall be saved. Everything else is to help you be submitted and stay committed to your submission to our Lord and Savior daily.