Paul told believers to imitate Christ, who imitates God the Father. God spoke creation into existence, and you can shape your life the same way through your words. The speaker warns against imitating human leaders instead, and reminds you that God gave you power, love, and a sound mind, not fear.
Chapters
Alright, it's me again. I'm back. I want to continue our talk on the power of words, and we're going to talk about imitation today. And it's not, it's not what, it's not an imitation, like not the, not the real thing, but what I want to, what I want to talk about is imitating Christ. And in the example, if you have a little child— and we've talked about this a couple, a couple lessons ago— but he will follow you, or she will follow you, and she'll start imitating the way you walk through life. They learn how to become bigger people, the little people do, by watching the bigger people, and mostly moms and dads. Or the caregivers. But I want you to read what Paul said, 'cause he had new believers. He had people that had just accepted Christ. You know, they'd come out of the world, and most of them were Gentiles. So they were all jacked up, much like myself. I went 29 years without accepting Christ. But anyway, Paul said, imitate me as I imitate Christ, and that's in 1 Corinthians 11:1. And so what Paul was doing is he was, he was looking at, you know, he was being taught by what Christ— he was listening to the Holy Spirit and was doing his thing. But the problem when you start imitating someone, you know, it loses— like if Paul's imitating Christ and then someone starts imitating Paul and then that person imitates that person, you know, it kind of, it waters it down. As, as so the closer you can get to the source the better. And so Paul was really close to the source, but I want you to read what Jesus said in John 5:19. He was telling the people around him, he said, look, I can do nothing of myself, but what I see the Father do, that's what I do also, or in like manner. But in John 5:19, Jesus points to God, Father God, and says, look, I'm imitating him. So if you want to— I mean, Paul was trying to get these believers up, and I'm praying, I'm telling you, don't imitate me. I've said this 100 times, I make a horrible Holy Spirit. My job is to help you get into the word, get into the Bible and imitate Christ, and Christ was imitating God. And so that brings us all the way back around to Genesis 1:1. And the whole reason for this lesson was Genesis 1:1, God said, and then he saw. Remember, he said, let there be light. And when God was speaking it, he spoke the animals into existence. He spoke the heavens and, you know, there's the heavens been to be separated from the waters. I mean, if you read Genesis 1:1, it's fascinating how God created things. So we can create the same things. We create— you create your world and have created your world by the words that come out of your mouth. I know that most people don't want to talk about that, but I mean, really, the position that you're in right now probably has a lot to do with the things that you've said. I mean, I know it's a little more than that, but if you want to start changing your world, change how you speak. And And this isn't gonna be no self-help, any kind of thing, but words really do have power. And if we get into the Word and we start looking at how God does, and use God's words, 'cause they're the most powerful. And if you can say them, and you know, there is a catch, and we're gonna talk about that tomorrow, but I want you to concentrate on God's Word, how he created things. He said it. And then he saw it. He said it and he saw it all through Genesis. So God was showing you how things get done here on earth. And so if we can imitate God— now he said it with faith, but you know, I mean, and he's God, but I mean, you, you can, you can be just like him. We have the mind of Christ. We've got so much power that we're not using, and that's why I'm here. I mean, God did not— and I mean, in 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul says, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind. We have got so much power, so much love, and a sound mind. We've got so much stuff that we've been given, and our enemy, the punk Satan, wants to just drag us into the fear side. So we're going to try to move over into this power side, but first we got to learn how to operate. Again, I appreciate you stopping by. Take care, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.
