IT’S EITHER ALL ABOUT JESUS, OR IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU!
We have been teaching a series about the King of Hearts. The Holy Spirit asked us this question:
“Who is the King of your heart?” The answer is either
King Jesus or yourself. Either we are in charge of our hearts and minds, or He is.
The battle is constant; moment by moment combat no matter how close we become to God, we will never achieve perfect surrender,
but the more we work at surrendering, the better we get.
The more we eat Jesus’s flesh and drink His blood, the better we live. His flesh (His Words) are life when we make them the most important things in our lives and learn them and live them, the more life we have in us. Drinking His blood means to make a moment by moment decision to believe without a doubt that He guaranteed His promises and His words with His blood. His Words are Spirit and life. Our flesh mind conveys no benefit what so ever.
(Mark 4:24-John 6:63)
WHY SHOULD WE MAKE JESUS THE KING OF OUR HEARTS? BECAUSE HE LOVES US BEYOND OUR CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND, JUST AS WE ARE.
The old christian hymn states: “Oh how I love Jesus, oh how I love Jesus, oh how I love Jesus, because He first loved me!”
Jesus loves you so much as an individual that He left all His Glory in Heaven and came to earth and became a human just as we are so that He could be tempted with every temptation we are, yet He did not sin, so that He knows every pain and temptation that we have, then He was executed in the most painful way possible while suffering the punishment for all of our sins, past, present and future and dying from every disease known and unknown to man, because He loves you that much.
(John 3:16-17, Hebrews 10:10-18, Isaiah 53:3-4, Matthew8:16-17 Hebrews 4:15)
We should love Jesus and make Him the King of our hearts because HE IS GOD!
Despite the imaginations of men, there is only one God, and His name is Jesus. Yeshua, Joshua, Jesus is the one and only God. All others are pretenders.
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God; the Lord is one the only God! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and with all your soul and with all your strength!”
(Deuteronomy 6:4)
How are the folks who believe that we are under a works-based relationship with God, which includes keeping the commandments given to the children of Israel and no one else doing on, keeping the first of them?
(Ephesians 2:8-12)
“In the beginning before all time was the Word (Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.”
(John 1:1)
“Do not let your heart be troubled (afraid, cowardly). Believe in God and trust in Him; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again, and I will take you to Myself, so that where I am you may also be. And where I am going, you know the way.”
Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, I am the Only Way to God and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. If you had known Me, you would also have known My Father. From now on, you know Him and have seen Him.”
(John 14:1-7)
Regardless of what Oprah or the rest of the entertainment world or those who consider themselves intellectual or atheist or followers of other “religions” state, there is only one GOD, His name is Jesus!
God, Jesus, not wanting His creation to come to Him out of obligation or fear, but cheerfully out of love, gave us all the free will to choose what we believe and do, including whether or not we choose to believe and believe in Him.
Read God’s declaration of free will to the Children of Israel.
“Listen closely, I have set before you today life and prosperity (good), and death and adversity (evil); in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk that is, to live each and every day in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, so that you will live and multiply, and that the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you will not hear and obey but are drawn out and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you will certainly perish.”
(Deuteronomy 30:15-16)
That declaration from the Great I Am, Father God, is unambiguous. We get to choose life and or death, to believe in and believe Him or not. We choose whether to give control of our lives to Him or to ourselves.
The freedom to choose is the answer to all of the questions about why people kill, steal and destroy, why illness exists, and all of the murmurer’s charges against God who only does good. It also is the WORD from God’s own mouth that states beyond doubt that HE IS NOT IN CONTROL!
If God were in control, the earth would be heaven.
So, either we surrender our hearts to the King of Love, Light, Peace, Hope, Kindness, Forgiveness, Grace, Mercy, Energy, Power, Courage, and infinite incomprehensible gifts, or we are on our own to survive in this world and in the world to come.
WE CAN CHOOSE TO MAKE JESUS THE KING OF OUR HEARTS OR NOT.
My youth was all about the great pilots of the world wars. One of them was a man from Macon, Georgia, named Robert Scott. Colonel Scott was an ace (shot down at least five enemy planes) in the American Volunteer Group known as the Flying Tigers. He wrote
a book about his adventures titled: “God Is My Co-Pilot.”
That title became a famous bumper sticker.
One day while flying with my flight instructor, that bumper came to my mind. I was seated in the right seat.
The Pilot In-Charge is always in the left seat. So immediately, the Holy Spirit taught me that if God is my co-pilot, He is in the wrong seat.
Isn’t that the essence of our moment-to-moment struggle against the voices of negativity that spring from the evil one and our flesh minds?
We get to decide who is flying in the left seat. The ride is much more comfortable, and the navigation is infinitely accurate when God is in the left seat.
THE WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE
Of course, becoming willing to change is much easier said than done. It takes constant practice to shed our old selves like a snake’s skin. Our human minds are easily polluted with evil and negativity.
It often takes becoming weary of trying to create the outcomes we desire by controlling and manipulating, to finally give up.
How do we surrender our hearts to the King of Kings?
WE ACCEPT THE FREE GIFT OF WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE!
The willingness to change is one of the many gifts that Jesus purchased for us with His blood on the cross. Accepting the willingness to change is the key to changing.
The willingness to change is essential to the process of being born again. Jesus taught us that we could not see the Kingdom of Heaven unless we are born anew of the Spirit.
When we open the door to our hearts by surrendering our hearts to Jesus and making Him the King of our hearts, we allow the process of change to begin so that Jesus and the Holy Spirit may mold us into New Creations in Jesus.
Conversely, if we refuse to change, we are like the definition of insanity: “doing the same things repeatedly and expecting different results.”
When Jesus is the King of our Hearts, He holds our hands and gently leads us to become the person he wants us to be. So Paul taught us that the Holy Spirit leads us to take off our old unregenerated selves and put on our new selves made righteous by the righteousness of Jesus, not by any behavior or lack thereof by ourselves.
HERE IS A MESSAGE FOR US FROM THE HOLY SPIRIT,
THROUGH OUR EARTHLY GUIDE, PAUL:
This message is not a list of requirements for blessings or salvation. Instead, it is a guide, a goal, a how-to instruction manual from our creator. It is the Way to peace in this life and the life to come. It is how surrender of our hearts and minds looks.
“So this I say, and solemnly affirm together with the Lord as in His presence, that you must no longer live as the unbelieving live, in the futility of their minds.
Their moral understanding is darkened, their reasoning is clouded, alienated and self-banished from the life of God with no share in it; because of the willful ignorance and spiritual blindness that is deep seated within them, because of the hardness and insensitivity of their heart.
And they, the ungodly in their spiritual apathy, having become callous and unfeeling, have given themselves over to unbridled sensuality, eagerly craving the practice of every kind of impurity that their desires may demand.
But you did not learn Jesus in this way! If, in fact, you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, just as truth is in Jesus that, regarding your previous way of life, you put off your old self completely discard your former nature, which is being corrupted through deceitful desires, and be continually renewed in the Spirit of your mind and put on the new self the regenerated and renewed nature created in God’s image, godlike in the righteousness and holiness of the truth living in a way that expresses to God your gratitude for your salvation.
Be angry at sin—at immorality, at injustice, at ungodly behavior, yet do not sin; do not let your anger cause you shame, nor allow it to last until the sun goes down. And do not allow the devil to lead you into sin by holding a grudge, or nurturing anger, or harboring resentment, or cultivating bitterness.
The thief who has become a believer must no longer steal. Still, instead, he must work hard making an honest living, producing that which is good with his own hands so that he will have something to share with those in need.
Do not let unwholesome foul, profane, worthless, vulgar words ever come out of your mouth, but only such speech as is good for building up others, according to the need and the occasion, so that it will be a blessing to those who hear you speak. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God but seek to please Him, by whom you were sealed and marked branded as God’s own, for the day of redemption, the final deliverance from the consequences of sin.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor perpetual hate, resentment, strife, fault-finding, and slander be put away from you, along with every kind of malice, all spitefulness, verbal abuse, malevolence. Be kind and helpful to one another, tender-hearted, compassionate, understanding, forgiving one another readily and freely, just as God in Christ also forgave you.”
To accomplish this separation from our “Old un-regenerated selves” to our new “Regenerated selves.”Requires the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit. To become the new regenerated self, as Jesus called it “being born anew,” We only need to ask the Holy Spirit to guide us and allow Him to do just that.
When we become willing to change and have an honest desire to become a new person, our Teacher, the Holy
Spirit will come to us and hold our hands and walk us through the change.
(Ephesians 4:17-32)
As the good folks of Alcoholics Anonymous wrote: “We strive for progress, not perfection.”
ARE YOU SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED?
If so, try becoming willing to change and surrender your heart to Jesus. First, ask Him to change you. Then, when you are tempted to act in the way of your old un-regenerated self, ask Jesus to help you do the opposite. Although growing and changing requires willingness and work, the payoff is a peace beyond anything you have ever experienced.
Thank you for reading this teaching to the end! My prayer is that it blessed you and touched your heart. You can help Jesus and become a disciple of His by passing it along to your friends and social media friends. There are hundreds more of these teachings that are available at no charge to you on our website:
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Our book fictitiously titled :
“WHY JESUS AIN’T GONNA DO NOTHIN!”
Is all about all of the great and precious promises that Jesus freely gave us and guaranteed us with His blood.
It is available on the website also.
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IF YOU DO NOT FEEL LED TO GIVE OR CAN NOT GIVE, WE LOVE YOU JUST THE SAME.
LOVE,
Pastor Allen Fleming
Throne of Grace Ministries, Inc.
P.O.BOX 669153
Marietta, Georgia 30066
