John 7:16

John 7:16 - Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from Him who sent me.”

You would think that Jesus, being the Son of God, would be qualified to give His own message, but that is not how He worked. Jesus wanted to give us an example of how we are to live and how we are to teach. Also, Jesus has a human nature, just like we do, and just like us, if He allowed that nature to take over He would mess up. But we know that Jesus never messed up.

Jesus knew that the only way to keep your human nature in check was to live in total reliance to God. So, Jesus, who was God’s Son still had to rely on God for everything. What makes us think we can do any different.

God is our source. He gives us life; He gives us direction; and He gives us everything we need to follow His plan for our lives. We must never reach a point where we  think we can do it on our own. If we do, that is when we will fail.

If Jesus knew that He could not do it without God, then we can rest assured that we will never be able to either. But that is the great thing about God: He never asks us too. In fact, He does exactly the opposite. He tells us to come to Him and rely on Him. When God tells us what He wants us to do He comes right alongside of us to help us do it.

Jesus gave us the model of how we can live a godly life. He showed us what true reliance on God is. We see multiple times throughout the scriptures where Jesus reminds us that He is not acting on His own, but only doing what His Father tells Him. Even in His teaching we see that He only teaches what God gives Him to teach.

That should be our goal as well. The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit will guide us in what to say and when we need to speak. Let us surrender to God in all we do and trust Him to give us the words to say when we teach and preach.