Are You Truly With Me?

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the podcast Student of Life. I pray that you hear something that will add value, shape, develop, and cultivate your faith in order to be the person that God desires you to be, as well as the application to see it through. Enjoy. What's up everybody? So this is another bonus episode that I told you, you know, we'll be doing many more of these because of the whole COVID-19 social distancing. Thing that's going on. And, you know, the fact that I'm able to spend more time in the presence of the Lord, dedicated time, due to like being able to, you know, work remote and things like that— it's like my father-in-law say, dedication and consecration— the Lord is allowing me to just share more things. You know, certain things I'm keeping for myself and certain things that I believe that he wants me to share to the audience that I do have. And I appreciate you all for rocking with me you know, sharing as I'm starting to see results, you know, in basically the engagement just through kind of the analytics and things like that. So I truly appreciate you all. I know I'm not for everybody, but I do believe that I've been called to reach somebody. And if it's just one at a time, hey, that's, that's fine. Because this is, like I tell my wife all the time, this is deeper than me sitting up here just doing this to try to reach the masses and grow a huge following. I want to really become one with it. That's the goal, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And like I say, you know, this one is titled Are You Truly With Me? So it's going to be extremely faith-based and, you know, scripture. But at the same time, even if you're not faith-based, because, you know, a lot of my content, I don't like to over-spiritualize it, meaning that it just sounds like a bunch of rules and, you know, religion and things like that, because it is about intimate personal relationship with God. And so that being said, if you're not a person of faith, this one might not necessarily— you know, you might not feel like it's for you. I still believe that it is, but you might not be feeling it. But I would ask you just to give me some room as we jump into it and, you know, just let it do the work that it needs. Because like I say, my mental is not to try to change anyone. Only the Holy Spirit can bring forth conviction and revelation. All I can do is convey and put it out there and leave the rest up to the Divine. And like I say, if you are a person of faith, share this. You know, it might be a reminder, it might be something that you can take and even expound on even deeper. I'm not in competition. All I'm doing is just being obedient to the Spirit of the Lord and, you know, moving forward in life. So that being said, let's jump into it. The title, bonus episode: Are You Truly With Me? Uh, foundational text for this one It's John 6:67-69, and it reads as, 'You do not want to leave too, do you?' Jesus asked the 12. Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.' So I'm changing up the format. I'm trying it with this bonus episode. Just kind of want to follow, you know, just a new routine in the preparation and things like that. As my dad always say, preparation is ongoing, it's essential. But I am following the format. But at the same time, the Lord say move from that format, I'll, you know, I'll do it. That being said, the core theme or the big idea of this particular episode that I want you to see this through the lens of is being A true disciple of Christ can't be obtained or sustained through human effort. So say that again: being a true disciple of Christ can't be obtained or sustained through human effort. And the application point— and you probably hear me touch on these things, to touch on these things again throughout the, uh, throughout the episode— is that we have to receive Jesus through faith and partake of him daily. We have to receive Jesus through faith and partake of him daily. So let's get into it. Let's give this— let's give this context, you know, basically bring context to this passage, because context is very important in anything that we do in life, especially when it comes to the scriptures. So why did Jesus say those words in the foundational text to the, to the 12 disciples, you know? And even as you're going on down and study that, yes, Judas is still amongst them, and he speaks to that about he knew that that deception would take place, but that's not what I want to focus on in this particular episode. Well, given the context, so Jesus had, you know, done the miracle and he was basically teaching about the bread of life, you know, if you may say, the eternal bread of life. And as he was teaching on it, he basically, you know, before we get to 67 through 69. In verse 60 of that same chapter, we see the— we read the verses. Oh, on hearing it, many of his disciples said, this is a hard teaching, who can accept it? So Jesus was basically teaching on eating of— eating his flesh and drinking his blood, but it was a metaphor for believing in him is essential to us being effective disciples. We can't be an effective disciple— just what we just said in the, the main theme of this episode— we cannot be an effective disciple without him. But he's eternal. Like, he was using that metaphor, and you can even say it's a rich— it was a rich metaphor, but it was a metaphor for believing in him, and that, that belief is essential to us being truly with him and being an effective disciple of him. So I can't give away what I don't have. I have to, you know, basically partake. Like I was just saying, you know, I have to basically receive him first through faith, and I have to partake of him daily. So that's like plugging in, diving into, and just my, like I say, dedication and consecration. So my prayer life, the communing with the Father, communing with, you know, the Father and the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. I— we have to do that, you know. And if we don't, then we're just not going to be effective and we just really out here talking. It's like my, you know, often my dad says is that it's just basically like you're just a conduit. Like, you're not, you're not even a true disciple yourself, but at the same time you're trying to make disciples. So it's false, it's a false sense of hope. And so when the people— when Jesus was like teaching this, yes, some of it might have been a misunderstanding, but I believe in my spirit too, it was just hard speech because he was talking to the spiritual need. Like even when you go up a little bit more up in scriptures, when he basically took the opportunity after that miracle, you know, they were searching and trying to find him, and Jesus basically told them that you know, you coming to me because of the miracles, not necessarily because of the, the spiritual oneness that you desire. So I'm paraphrasing, but Jesus was calling them out on that. But basically all Jesus was saying is that we eat physical food to survive, therefore we need spiritual food to survive and basically be like him, to do what he— to, to basically live like he wants us to live. That food is Jesus. We need that in order to basically be effective within the kingdom of God, to help advance it. And so, like I say, you know, we cannot be an effective disciple of Jesus without this. We need him. It's essential for our survival, spiritual, like just straight up. Like, like I said, right now, if I, you know, I understand fasting and things like that, but if I say from this day forward, for the rest of my life, I'm not gonna eat nor drink. I might go a while, but eventually you all that do subscribe to this and know of me or know me, you'll be reading my obituary soon. That's not speaking anything, that's just— it's common sense. Unless the Lord Almighty say no, you know, he tells me to do it and gives me specific instructions for everyone. But if I just say from my own strength that from this day forward I'm not, I'm not eating nor drinking water, nothing, eventually I'm gonna die. That's just the truth. And so that's what we're doing, like I say, when we are saying that we're disciples of Christ but we're not partaking of him daily. You know, we're not, we're not dedicated, we're not eating, we're not feeding, we're not nurturing on that food in order. So like I say, you cannot give away what you don't have. So that's very important, and that's what Jesus was teaching in this. So when you really think about it, Christian discipleship is the process by which disciples grow in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are equipped by the Holy Spirit who resides in our hearts. And the reason why he resides in our hearts is because it helps us overcome the pressures and trials of this present life. So like this flesh that we, you know, it's very much known as my delfin says, I'm in this flesh and I want to become more Christ-like. So I have to be equipped by the Holy Spirit and allow him to come in and it changes my heart. Because even if I have a good heart outside of the Holy Spirit, it's still deceitful. And we can go back to Jeremiah, you know, you can go back and listen to the I can't remember if I did an episode. I know I did a message on it, by the power of God, heart transplant, a divine heart transplant. But the heart is deceitful. No matter how good you think you are, like, it will deceive you. And so that heart has to be renewed, it has to be changed. And so this process, it requires believers to respond to the Holy Spirit promptly. Like, we have to. It's going to prompt, you know, we can quench the Spirit Like, we keep— we make it seem like the Holy Spirit is coming and going. No, once you accept Christ, truly accept him, and you decide to live and become a disciple of Jesus Christ, and you believe that he, he died for our sins, or really like gave up his life and was raised by God with all power, and you truly believe this in your heart and make that declaration, this Holy Spirit salvation comes. The Holy Spirit is now dwelling in you, but the filling of the Holy Spirit— that's the distinction that we have to make. The filling of the Holy Spirit is a different thing. We have to make that distinction. So this is where the process come of partaking daily. But if we don't partake daily, we end up quenching the Spirit. And so, like I say, the Holy Spirit never left, we just quenched it. And so we can't— it like the prompting is not the same. So I can often— thank you, Holy Ghost— like, I can often go back, like, in my life with just being raised up. And I believe that my salvation experience was real. I believe that I accepted Christ, and I believe— I know I believed it in my heart, but I would just be so inconsistent with my studies and just inconsistent with the way I was just, you know, and I was tied to religion and not the intimate personal relationship, and so on and so on. And so what started to take place was I started to quench the Spirit. But the Spirit of the Lord, I don't believe that it ever left me because it was conviction, you know. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was yielding to my flesh. So I was living in just basically my soul was in agreement with my flesh. And as my dad often says, that this flesh will never, never come under the righteous order of God, but by the Spirit of— by the power of the Living God, the Spirit of the Living God, we can put this flesh on— we can bring this flesh under rejection. So now I'm still the same person, I'm living in the same flesh, but I'm feeding my spirit. I'm partaking in Christ daily. I'm, you know, praying and communing with the Father. So this is where this prompting comes from and this process come from. And you can talk about the process of sanctification, all that, you can get into that. But at the end of the day, this is what allowing me to respond to the Holy Spirit. It's helping me examine my thoughts. My words and actions and compare them with the word of God. It's helping me. Basically, like the other day, you know, I was being told a story and I got upset and I was like, man, people like that, you know, I just want to slap the blank blank out of them. I said what I said and it's true, but it was wrong. And so that conviction came. Lord, forgive me. I had to repent and, you know, keep it moving. I don't have to start all the way over. I don't have to go through a bunch of rituals and routines if you know what I'm saying. Like, no, that's not— Lord, forgive me, the intent of my heart. I don't want to— I don't want to speak like that. I don't want to do that because you destroy the testimony. But at the same time, you know, in this humanity, it's our humanity, man, that it just— it wants to buck up. It wants to— like, it wants to be glorified. It wants to win this tug of war. But so you have our flesh, our spirit, and then in the middle our soul. So it's like a balance. And so every day I have to make sure— I mean, because we, we always gonna be bombarded with worldly things. I promise you, you can— I believe you can go through the day and just sit in your house or just whatever, and you're going to basically be bombarded with worldly, carnal, fleshly things. Somehow, some shape, form, or fashion, even if you decide to or not. But I believe that we can get up and do the same thing and not be bombarded with spiritual things. So what I'm basically saying is that it has to be a level of intentionality, because it's not the same because we're in this world, but we don't need to be of it. And so we have to be very intentional about feeding our spirit— not the Holy Spirit, but feeding our spirit. You feed the Holy Spirit. And so like I say, you know, it's about taking those thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ. It's almost like, you know, when we go fly, you know, I've traveled a lot professionally and personally, you know, my wife with my kids. And, you know, the first time my kids, uh, you know, seeing them, you know, get on the plane and stuff and go through TSA and how they screen these bags and stuff. And it's like TSA on the brain. So they're looking, and if they see something that doesn't supposed to be there, they have, they have to deal with it. Hey, you gotta screen this, gotta deal with this, you know. No, this can't go, this can't go. So in that same example, we have to be the same way with our thoughts, always screening. Like, no, this is not of God. Okay, this thought is of God, let that partake in, you know, deepen it, and I need to become one with this. And like I say, God has always just, he has always allow things to happen. You know, go back to, like I said, the trials and all the tribulations and things like that. We can say one thing, but he's going to make sure that basically what we're talking is paired with how we're living. You can go back and examine this throughout with the disciples. And so we have to make sure that we're doing that. This is very important. And like I say, this requires that we be in the word daily. Yeah, I know we sometimes we skip around, but man, we have— we eat daily, so we have to be in the word daily. And this is basically studying it. You can't do what God say if you don't know his word. You can't pray and commune with him the way you should if you don't know his word. And then most importantly, we have to obey it, because you don't want to just study just to be studying for intellect and praying because you want to sound like you can pray good. Show me the perfect prayer. It's from the heart. So all of this stuff, man, you know what I'm saying, it's just like what people— they get up here and they do these long-drawn prayers. You can go to the scriptures with the Pharisees and all that type of stuff. The perfect prayer is a prayer from the heart. But at the same time, if you're communing with the Father all the time, you won't be so nervous if you're called upon or asked to pray, and so on and so on. And so, like I said, in the last one is obeying it, truly becoming one with it. So think about it, all of that what I just said, think about it. When we truly continue with Christ in what I may say, if I may say, the school of discipleship, we will receive more understanding and a continuous filling of the Holy Spirit as we just talked about. But we have to continue in it. We have to continue in the school of discipleship, meaning that we have to continue to partake in him daily. I'm going to class, if I may say. Think about college, think about when you was in college, or even think about your high school, if you're in junior high or whatever, or just think about you training for something that you can relate to. And if you wasn't going to any of the classes or any of the training or whatever you wasn't studying the topic or studying whatever you're supposed to be studying, can you truly say that you will gain an understanding? No. I don't care how smart you are because you haven't applied, you haven't studied it. But it's vice versa. If you do do it, you study and you get into it and you started just learning and going to school and on and on and on, and really becoming one with it and doing the necessary work, you're going to gain an understanding. So that's from a carnal perspective, but spiritually, man, we have an advocate, we have the Holy Spirit. So, but we have to plug in. That's, that's, that's the point that I want to drive home with that illustration. So like I say, if you were in college or whatever type of school of training and you didn't go to nothing and do anything extra that was specifically tied to that degree or topic or class or whatever, you will not gain an understanding of what's going on or how to navigate or be successful or efficient within that profession that you're partaking in. So how do we think that we're going to do the same thing with God? Because the people that drop out, the people that truly don't basically take that time, we won't know it. It's all inclusive. And so what's some application? Like, you know, I want to make this applicable. What, like, what's some good application points? Of course you can probably dive into a list of 10, but I want to just talk about 3. We have to put Jesus first and obey his teaching. This meaning putting him before everything. Seeking the kingdom of God. And I'm telling you, man, when you put Jesus first and obey his teaching, truly live a life like that, I can just be a living witness that things, everything will start to fall in place. Not like you want it, but they will fall in the righteous order of God. But like I say, you have to put him first and obey his teaching, and it's not going to look like it all the time. But it will. Love. You have to love. I don't care how gifted in talent, how spiritual you say you are, if you don't have love, man, to me you don't exemplify the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So you have to love with the love of Christ. I'm not saying loving being used and all this type of stuff and manipulated, but I'm saying loving with the love of God and exemplifying the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And then third, you have to make disciples. It's cool, like, if you don't know the Bible from start to finish. It's a lot of people that know the Bible backwards, intellectual and everything, super smart, can read Hebrew and all of that, but they fake. They don't know it, they don't care, they're just very intellectual. You have people that's very intellectual and very spiritual, and they're becoming one with it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the constant thing is that become one with it. So if you know 3, 4, 5 scriptures and you're just starting out, you're saying, oh my God, like, man, I'm really being obedient these scriptures, and you know, I'm not trying to live them in my own might because that's filthy, but I'm living it because I have accepted Jesus Christ. I have received him, and I— the Spirit of the Lord has came into dwell in me, and I'm being filled. You're effective, man. You have just as much access and right as anybody. I don't care if they've been in the kingdom and been walking with the Lord for 30-some, 40 years in this natural carnal perspective. You have just as much right just as much access because our works, it don't— you know, I understand the faith to faith and different levels of anointing and all that type of stuff. I get all of that, but at the end of the day, man, God is no respecter of person. I'm telling you, you have just as much as right. So you are now equipped by the power of God and your calling to go out and make disciples and reach people. But I'm telling you that reaching is not so much the intellectual part of it's in your demonstration of your life, demonstration of power. How are you living? And that could be a whole nother episode. And the last thing I want to leave with you all is this. Matthew 28:20, it's the NIV: And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of age. Listen, God is going to be with you. The Spirit of the Living God, Jesus Christ. You know, God is so awesome. The same God that was with Adam and Eve and chose to be with them, he didn't turn his back on them. The same God that basically all throughout the Old Testament, that when people rejected him and he showed them grace and mercy, the same God that chose to clothe himself in flesh and come down here and save us and restore us. Through Jesus Christ. And the same God that gave up his life and basically rose up with the all-power, the authority that Adam relinquished, relinquished, that same God, man, it's the same God that basically said that, you know, all— it'll be— we'll have a helper, leave an advocate, that spirit, that, that's the Spirit of Living God. Basically what I'm saying is that that same God chooses to dwell in us, not just amongst us, but in us, when we rightly divide the scriptures. Listen to it again, Matthew 28:20: And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of age. So God is with you, brothers and sisters. I'm telling you, you can do this. You can't do it apart from him, but with him and through him and by him, you can do it. And I just want to encourage you, I just truly want to encourage you. And it's not us asking the question that is God truly with us, it's us asking the question, which is the title of this bonus episode, are you truly with me?