Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome!! This podcast is about "dividing the word one episode at a time" A real, relatable, and refreshing space for young and older adults seeking to grow in everyday life with Christ. Each episode dives into honest biblical teaching and conversations with life experiences that connect generations and deepen our walk with Christ. Whether you’re navigating adulthood or seasoned in your faith journey, there’s something here for you, thanks for being here!!
Welcome everyone to the Christ in Me podcast with your host Jamir where we rightly divide
the word one episode at a time.
Today's episode is going to be a little different from what I last said it was going to
be.
It's going to be about Lordship.
I know you're probably wondering what shifted the change.
The change was not really a matter of myself, but the Lord kind of pulling me towards this
topic.
And it's so funny because how else to apply Lordship.
by actually yielding to what the Lord tells me to do.
So instead of us talking about abiding in prayer, which God willing, we may be able to do
next episode.
This episode, we're going to be talking about Lordship and kind of drawing back to the
story of how, you know, he changed, my course on this is Lordship.
The moment I finished recording the first episode for our podcast, the Lord kind of
directed towards me
doing something different.
And you know, when I had, when, this spring break right now and with spring break kind of
hitting, I was able to be blessed to serve at a couple of churches with a lot of great
friends.
We served churches and it was awesome.
And I even got a chance to be reminded of some of the aspects of Lordship that could
prepare me for recording this podcast episode.
which was even more of a great blessing that the Lord has blessed us with, right?
So one of the first questions I want us to really reflect on throughout the entire podcast
episode is what do you struggle making Jesus the Lord of?
Now in our hearts, we have a lot of circumstances where it's like, there are these things
that we let the Lord touch and there are these things that we let the Lord touch, but
there's the Lord touching everything.
Is he being with you in everything?
One of the things that we want to focus on is firstly, what is Lordship?
Romans 10 verse 9, says, you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
To kind of extend that, would then following say, it is with your mouth that you confess
with your faith and it is with your heart that you believe.
I want you to understand that it is great to confess, but it's another thing to have a
foundation that your heart truly believes, that your heart is shifted by your belief,
right?
And when we make Jesus our Lord, notice how it doesn't say if you confess that Jesus is
your savior, but rather your Lord.
Oftentimes we tend to struggle as followers of Jesus.
that we so magnify him being our savior that we tend to struggle submitting to his
lordship.
Jesus isn't just our Savior.
He is our King.
He is our Master.
He is our ultimate authority in our lives y'all.
Jesus must be our Lord of all or nothing at all.
We must remember that Jesus is the Lord and creator of all things who has been and has
always been.
From the time that stuff was created prior to things created and when we get to the chance
where he destroys this earth, he will still be the Lord of all.
To kind of transfer into a little analogy here, the driver's seat.
Lordship means letting Jesus sit at the driver's seat, not just being a helpful GPS from
the passenger side, right?
The Lord is our driver, not our passenger.
I know we tend to have a phrase that says Jesus take the wheel, but...
When we start to really magnify that phrase, that means you've had it in your hand, which
should not have been happening.
Jesus should be the Lord of your life, which means he should be the one in control, not
you.
You would not have to give him the wheel if you never had it to begin with.
So to kind of magnify the driver's seat here for a minute, I want to magnify this.
So some of the things that we want to magnify here about the driver's seat analogy is
firstly, the position of control.
From a passenger perspective, you don't really have much control.
You know where you're going.
You mainly know the destination.
For a driver, they mainly know, okay, how we're getting there, how long it's gonna take,
the GPS, yada yada.
Now, in this world, In this world that we have right now, GPSs are more out loud about
where you're going.
So now everyone in the car knows.
But the reality is oftentimes back then only the driver knew what exits to make and what
turns to do and how long things were going to take.
This was usually the position of the driver.
The driver has all the control.
A lord has the ultimate authority over their domain, calling the shots and setting the
course for others.
Secondly, the part of that driver's seat is a matter of responsibility.
Drivers aren't just in control, but they are responsible for the safety and success of
that trip.
Is the lord not responsible for the safety and success of you and who you are?
Has the Lord not kept you and make sure that you can breathe and that you had all your
needs?
These are the things that the Lord blesses us with.
Third thing, now this pertains to us.
A driver's seat, passengers, who we are, rely on the driver's decisions.
They go where the driver chooses.
Understand that subjects or followers of the Lord.
yield to his judgment and his leadership.
The disciples yielded to when the Lord said, we will not go to help Lazarus while he is
sick.
We will stay here.
And we saw the aftermath of that when he would end up being resurrected.
There are times where we must realize that we yield to the decisions that the Lord makes.
Our life no longer becomes our own.
We submit to Him and who He is.
And then the fourth point, which I had kind of verbalized already, is a submission to the
driver.
When you're not in the seat of a driver, you surrender your control.
You must trust where the driver is going to get you.
We know that the Lord is going to get us into heaven.
We stand firm on the fact that His blood has washed us clean.
But we also know that the Lord, that the Lord blesses us with heaven, not us bless him
with being with him.
He blesses us by being with him.
He blesses us by giving us heaven.
So we should also stand on the promise that he will get us there when we lean on him, we
keep our eyes on him, when we focus on him, when we do for him, not for ourselves but for
him and because he's told us to, not because, well, I think, well, I think so, or, you
know, I think he would like it.
No, we yield to his authority and his leadership.
You don't feel like forgiving?
Too bad.
The Lord has clarified that you should forgive.
You don't feel like loving?
Too bad.
The Lord has clarified that we should love.
These are the things that the Lord calls us to do as his followers.
And lastly, alignment with the journey.
We as followers of Jesus can only stay on the course that the driver has agreed on.
We trust in the driver.
But something that we must also remember is when we get into that car with the Lord, we
have chosen to know that we are going somewhere that is not gonna be easy.
True Lordship involves subjects aligning their lives and choices and values under the
Lord's rule, which means how long the ride is gonna be is something that you have to keep
in mind.
The Lord emphasizes
that the walk with him is a lifestyle, not a period of time.
So let us keep these things in mind as we yield to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Some biblical examples are Peter being called to follow Jesus and Paul's conversion to the
faith after going after a lot of
going after and jailing a lot of Christians.
So Acts 9, a great reflection of that is let's yield to that for a second.
So we're gonna go to Acts 9, the very beginning of Acts 9, and we're gonna kind of magnify
this.
To a lot of you guys, like Acts 9 is like one of my favorite chapters in Acts because of
we see how a man who once used to kill has such a wonderful transformation because of the
Lord's hand.
So it says this, meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the
Lord's disciples.
He went to the high priests and asked them for the letter to the synagogues in Damascus so
that they would be find any, I'm sorry.
So if they found any there who belonged to the way, whether men or women, he might take
them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.
He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?
Who are you, Lord?
Saul asked.
I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, he replied.
Now get up and go into the city and you will be told.
what you must do.
The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless.
They heard the sound but did not see anyone.
Saul got up from the ground but when he opened his eyes he could not see anything.
So they led him by the hand into Damascus.
For three days he was blind and did not eat or drink anything." So I kind of want to
magnify that.
Something that you would notice is
It says he got a Lord said why are you persecuting me?
Notice the moment he heard that he said Lord.
he automatically began to yield to the authority of what he was coming against.
Then the Lord gave an instruction.
He said,
Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.
He was given a following instruction.
And what does it say?
He got up, opened his eyes, realized he was blind.
He didn't eat or drink anything.
He had to be led back and he had to be led into Damascus.
So a man who went in with such bold murderous intent had to be stopped by the realization
that he has really come across the Lord God Almighty.
Peter is an example in this reason.
When you read Peter, when you read Luke five, Peter's called to follow Jesus.
He's like, Hey sir, we've been fishing all day.
You're sitting here talking about, though you're cast your nets out.
But the moment he realized that he's being sarcastic and coming against the wrong person,
he yields to the authority and yields his life, not just who he is, but yields.
his life to Jesus, not just his work, but his life.
I want you to notice how there's a shift in both of these men that there is a yielding of
their entire lives to Jesus Christ.
We would end up seeing the fruit of Paul yielding his life to Christ because of the fact
that he would end up writing majority of the New Testament with many, many letters.
So allow yourself to realize that these people just as well as you yourself still have to
submit to leadership and the lordship of who God is.
Segment two, why lordship changes everything?
It affects your identity.
Understand that while I was away also, for some of you, this may sound pretty similar,
right?
you would have heard that it was becoming a love slave for Christ.
Now, when we were taught this or when I was taught this, he emphasized the matter of love
slaves were affected by the way they were treated so much that in the midst of how they
were treated, they would mark themselves in such a way that says, have taken care of my
family, you have treated me well.
Wherever you go, I will follow you.
And that's what we're called to be.
Men and women of God who are love slaves yielding to the authority of Jesus, running after
Jesus with everything that we have, with a heart that submits to him, that goes after him,
that runs after him.
Jesus wants all of you.
He is easily pleased, but he is not easily satisfied.
And that is a reality that we must uphold.
We must remember that taking on the yoke of Jesus is not easy, but it is still quite
beneficial, quite joyful.
It is better than the yoke that you will ever carry.
When you decide to fully surrender to the Lord, it will change your life.
It affects how you view yourself.
1 Corinthians chapter 6, 19 to 20 says, you are not your own.
You were bought at a price.
The price was the blood of Christ.
You cannot sit there and believe that the way you speak, the way you act, the way you
think should not be yielded to Christ after you give your life to him.
You have been bought at a price.
It is with his blood.
So we should surrender.
who we are for the sake of who he is.
A better life is found in submission to the King and the Lord Jesus Christ.
When becoming a slave of Christ, you must remember that losing all rights to your life in
any regard, you are not your own.
You are no longer your own, your future.
I'm not even gonna lie, like a calling that I have, I was not so joyful to receive because
I did not really want it.
But I yield to what Jesus wants.
I yield to what God wants because He knows that it will be the betterment for the kingdom
and He knows it will be the betterment for me that when I yield to His calling, His
authority, His surrender, whatever He wants me to do, I surrender to that and not to what
I desire.
Your worth is now rooted in who Jesus says you are, not in what the world labels you as.
You...
should now be filling yourself with the word of God instead of filling yourselves up with
the word of the world.
There must be total surrender in lordship.
This is what changes everything, allowing lordship to be a shifting of surrender of your
own life.
worry, fear and control shows a lack of surrender.
When we decide to shift and surrender everything to Jesus, we will see a greater
reflection of His fruit being bared in our lives.
If you want the fruit of the Spirit, you gotta yield to the things you gotta get through
to get that fruit.
A heart that you have is either filled with pleasing Jesus or pleasing yourself.
Jesus challenges us to live as his love slaves, dying to our old flesh and living the new
life that he calls for us.
Colossians 3 talks about setting our minds on the life of Christ and fixing our eyes on
who he is and not on who we are.
Christian freedom is found when we give everything over to Jesus and allow him to break
the shackles that we once put on when we yielded to the sin that so easily ensnared us.
Human slavery brings nothing but sadness, brings nothing but drought, brings nothing but
mental and emotional destruction compared to the freedom that can come with Jesus Christ.
Something to remember within lordship and especially with the aspects of how the Lord
affects our identity is understanding that no man can change the world unless they have
been changed.
To even change that, I would say this, no man can show that Jesus has changed them unless
they have been changed by Jesus.
Another aspect of how lordship changes everything is it impacts the way we decide to do
things.
When Jesus is Lord, it affects your calendar, your wallet and your dreams.
Like I said, sometimes the way we live our lives shift.
The things we wanna do in our future shift.
How much money we get to our church shifts.
These things shift because we no longer are under the calendar of ourselves, but we're
under the calendar of Christ and what he wants for us.
He guides our relationships.
Lordship teaches us to love, forgive and serve others just like Jesus did.
The scripture says what?
The greatest among you must be a servant, right?
And with the fact that it tells you that the greatest among you must be a servant, you
must understand that the relationship you wanna get into.
Ask the Lord, that something, is that something he's okay with you getting into?
That friendship, is he okay with you getting into that?
You're saying yes to that friend, but you, because you think that's you being a servant,
but the reality is that is going to be something that makes you stumble.
Are you making sure that the Lord is in what you're doing?
Be mindful to understand that when the Lord steps in, our relationships will shift because
not everyone will like you for being a follower of Christ.
Not everybody wants a person that may not do what they do.
That's also the difference between what it means to be under the Lordship of Christ than
under the Lordship of the world.
We must understand that we no longer are yielding to the evil that the world yields to.
getting drunk and going to have premarital sex and doing this and doing that.
It's understandable that it's hard.
And if you yourself is an unbeliever and you're hearing this, bro, I'm not trying to bash
you either.
But the reality also is too, that if you claim to be a follower of Christ, but you're
doing things that don't reflect his character, don't be shocked if people don't know
you're Christian.
I'm just saying and I don't want to say that to make you feel bad but I am saying that
because I want to create that reality that helps you understand that you cannot expect
people to see your fruit of the spirit if you're still chewing eating and bearing fruit of
the flesh
The third point I want to make.
is living under Christ's leadership, Lordship, right?
What does that look like?
Daily prayer.
Lord Jesus, in the midst of how I'm living my life, today I want you to help me surrender
to who you are.
Romans 12, verse one to two says what?
I'm gonna read it out.
Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as
a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.
This is your true and proper worship.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and
perfect will.
And something that we want to really magnify here is
viewing, being urged in view of God's mercy to offer our lives and our bodies as living
sacrifices.
When Jesus did what he did on the cross, it broke the covenant of us having to constantly
give animals.
Rather now we are the sacrifice.
We kill our flesh, we die to our flesh, we destroy our flesh and bring down our flesh so
that the Lord may be magnified in the way that we live our lives.
The Lord should get all the glory for the way we live our lives, not ourselves.
Now if someone compliments you and says, wow, you're really, really nice.
And you're like, yeah, that's really the Lord.
He just changed my life.
That's what he's been doing.
going back to living under his lordship is like I said, Luke nine chapter 23 to 24.
Let's read that together.
It says the following, then he said to them all, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny
themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my
sake shall save it.
There we go.
That's even Lordship right there saying this life that I have is no longer my own and I
yield to the Lordship of my Jesus.
that the life that we have now is no longer ours, but now that we're leaning on the
Lordship of Christ.
So we pray that out.
We pray, Lord, let me live as a living sacrifice to you today.
Help my mind be covered by things of your word and not of things of this world.
Set my mind on things above where you are seated, Lord Jesus, at the right hand of God.
Next thing is obedience to scripture.
James 1.22 says this.
Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says.
Let's break that down.
Do not a command.
Listen to the word.
Let's continue.
And so deceive yourselves.
So James is saying here, don't lose yourself.
thinking that you were just gonna, thinking that you were just gonna, I've read the word,
praise God, I'm a follower of Jesus, because I read the word and guess what?
Pharisees read the word too.
It's okay, they knew some of those, the Torah from cover to cover, they could tell you the
Psalms clear as day, they know, but yet they crucified him.
Rather, this is what shifts us, us doing what he tells us to do, loving our neighbor and
loving our enemy, giving to the poor, taking care of people, being of being of unity with
everyone if we can.
These are the things that help us reflect him and who he is.
He says, you call me Lord, yet you don't do what I say.
You call me Lord, yet do not do what I say.
Isn't that crazy?
Matthew 7, he finishes off his sermon, his sermon on the mount, and he says this, those
who listen to my words are like building their house on the rock.
The rain came, the wind blew and beat against that house, and it did not fall because the
house was built on the rock.
When we allow our lives to be built on the rock of God's word, we will prevail in the way
we live our lives.
I'm close to closing up.
Here's the next thing.
Being led by the Spirit, listening for God's voice in prayer and scripture and through
community.
Having community is awesome.
It is a blessing.
We see that in Acts 2.42.
But something that we should also remember is the importance of His word.
2 Timothy, chapter three, verse 16 says this, all scriptures, God breathed and is useful
for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that every servant of
God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
We're here to uphold one another.
This word is here to uphold us.
And in the midst of community, we are led where it says what?
As iron sharpens iron, one helps sharpen another.
be of one mind and of one spirit.
This is the things that are written in scripture to help us understand the importance of
walking in our walks with Christ.
Surround yourself with people whom encourage surrender and obedience to Jesus.
that remind you to pick up your cross daily in the midst of your struggle to want to do
so.
To help you make sure that you're cutting out any sin, not just that specific sin you
struggle with, but any sin that you struggle with.
And you know, I'm no different from that.
I have friends that are my accountability partners and sometimes you get a little sad that
you have to come to them and say, bro, I messed up again.
But it's better for them to encourage you to pick up your cross.
than for you to be in isolation, separating yourself even further from God because you
were not willing to just yield to any rebukes.
So have people be there with you so that you can understand the importance and the power
that lordship has.
Something that we also need to remember in lordship is lordship also stems from the fear
of the Lord.
Having that reverence for God, that understanding of who God is.
In a book called Crazy Love, he talks about like how God is omniscient and how God has all
these great powers like.
We gotta understand that when we're before the Lord, we're coming before the Lord who
created every laugh, every mindset.
He created the brain of every function.
He created animals that have their own different mindsets and roars and walks and looks.
This is the God we're coming before.
Why can't we verbalize the God who viewed us enough to make us in his own image?
Last and final point is just a quick story.
To kind of connect back and you know this is a little early I'll probably do an episode
like I said last episode about you know my testimony but an actual reflection of lordship
is
Before I gave my, excuse me, okay, so I was a bisexual person before I gave my life to
Christ.
And when I gave my life to Christ, I struggled a lot wanting to give up bisexuality for
him.
And it wasn't easy because, know, a lot, I just wanted to be bisexual and Christian so
bad.
I'm like, Lord, can I be bisexual?
Can I be Christian?
Lord, just help me.
And I'm over here praying for a boyfriend.
I'm praying for a girlfriend, whichever one came.
And you know, I'm noticing oftentimes I don't even be on my TikTok for you page, but I'm
looking at my TikTok for you page.
And all of a sudden I'm seeing a bunch of these people saying, Oh, I'm a former gay person
that was transformed and did it.
I'm ignoring these cause I'm like, I don't want to.
And I'm ignoring them about a week or two later.
I'm on my For You page again and this is the same thing, same thing.
It's this feminine gay guy and this masculine gay woman who came on my thing and they have
just a picture slide show, like, you know, they have a little picture slide show and it
shows when both of them before they gave their life to Christ, it shows when they met and
when they started dating.
In their caption, it says, we did not come to God to be straight.
We came to God to be holy.
And that's what changed my life.
I yielded to the lordship because the reality was I was not coming to God so that I can be
fixed to being back to being straight, but rather that I can yield to the lordship of what
it means to be holy.
These people who changed their lives yielded to be holy.
There are some people who are still like, who still have those homosexual urges that just
do not act on them because they rather glorify God.
then fulfill their flesh.
So I tell you this as an experience because that aspect of lordship was hard for me.
Doing that was hard for me.
But God was so good enough that he sent me time and time again, even when I ignored it, to
be able to say, this is a story I could truly tell.
So to close out, what part of your life are you still holding back?
What are you still holding the keys to in your own life?
that Jesus needs to take over that area.
Your heart is like a house.
What part of that house does he need to start cleaning out and saying this needs to go
there?
And what part does he need to, that you need to start yielding to him?
And for those who are not believers,
Are you ready to yield your whole life to him?
Jesus says this, I come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.
The life that you have and the way that you're living your life cannot be even as close as
great as the Lord can make it if you let him.
Following Jesus, like I said, throughout this entire podcast is not easy, yet it is a
blessing.
And I genuinely think that the Lord can change your life.
So back to what Romans 10 verse nine says, it says, if you declare with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be
saved.
There is no other way to heaven for the Bible tells us what I am the way, the truth and
the life.
No one comes to the father except through me.
You want a relationship with God that can only come through Jesus Christ.
You want joy, you want peace, want love that can only come from Jesus Christ.
So this is my practical challenge for you guys.
As you reflect on your lives, I want you to at least surrender one area of figure out one
area in your life that you are struggling to give to Jesus and pray over it quite often
and constantly.
When you in your prayer time yield it before him, Lord, I just want to remind myself right
now to yield this before you.
and to leave it at your altar.
All right, so let's pray.
Let's pray us out.
Father God, right now in this moment, Jesus, we want to thank you for the blessing of
being able to do another episode.
In this moment, Lord Jesus, I pray that anyone who has not will make you their Lord and
their God, that they may yield to to your leadership, Lord Jesus, and that they would die
to their flesh, Lord God.
Lord Jesus, in this moment,
I pray for any unbeliever who has not gotten the chance to yield to your Lordship, to
decide that when now that they've come face to face with who you are Lord Jesus and what
you entail, that they yield to the majesty of who you are.
For you've loved them so much that you've died on the cross for them.
And for the glory of who you are that you have shown yourself God by raising yourself up
again.
Lord Jesus, you are worthy to be praised and there is no God other than you.
I pray that we as followers of Jesus continue daily to lead, be led by your Lordship,
yield to your leadership and continue to pick up our crosses because you picked up your
cross.
In Jesus name we pray, amen.
All right, everyone.
I just want to say that Lordship is not always easy.
But from experience, I can tell you that it is truly worth it.
Last time I told y'all that we would be talking about a specific topic, but to honor the
Lord in this moment where I'm not going to say that because I don't want me to tell you
another thing and then not mean it.
God willing, we'll talk about abiding in prayer next episode, but.
Like I said, it is God who All right.
Everyone, Lordship is not always easy.
But from experience, can totally tell you it's truly worth it.
Last time I told you all that we would be having a specific topic and to honor the Lord,
I'm not gonna do that.
God willing, we can talk about abiding in prayer next week.
I mean, two weeks from this point, but hey, it is the Lord who wills, so let's see.
I love you all.
Till next time, where we divide the word one episode at a time.
Peace and blessings to you all.