"I Speak Jesus," an Honest Look at Spiritual Power
- cjoywarner
- Feb 17
- 11 min read
Updated: Jun 4
Introduction:
Without a doubt, the wildly popular song, "I Speak Jesus," has commanded a prominent place on the stage of modern worship music. Having never heard of it until two years ago, I now seem to hear it everywhere. Yet, despite the song's powerful instrumentation and emotional appeal, it continues to unsettle my spirit as intensely as it did the night I first heard it. Researching the context behind the lyrics, in addition to studying the lyrics themselves, has only served to deepen my misgiving and concern. My fear is not only that songs like this contain more emotion than substance but that they equate God's Presence with sensationalism instead of with the "still, small Voice" of Truth.
Problems with the Text of the Song:
My first complaint about this song is that it seems to give me powers I don't have. Its opening line says, "I just wanna speak the name of Jesus over every heart and every mind." Why? The sentence continues, "'Cause I know there is peace within Your Presence. I speak Jesus." If we take these words at face value, the reason I want to speak Jesus over you is because doing so will bring you the peace of His Presence. If we don't take these words at face value, what do they mean? But I can't bring you the peace of Jesus' Presence even if I wanted to and certainly not just by speaking His Name over you. If this claim were true, the whole world would be converted in a short matter of time, given both the sweeping claims of this song and the popularity of the song. The truth is, Jesus Himself will not bring peace to your heart without your own volition.
Why would a song begin like this, unless it is tapping into the practice of positive confession? This practice teaches that my power to speak gives Jesus power to act, and that's just not true. It also teaches that there is a quick fix to all my problems: I can call down a miracle to banish them instantaneously. But this is a dangerous misconception if not an intentional deception. The truth is, it is Jesus who gives me power--not to love Him in "word or tongue" but to love Him "in deed and in truth" (I John 3:18). This love will demonstrate to a lost world the quiet, persistent power of salt and light, so that men may see my good works and glorify my Father in heaven. Neither salt nor light "speaks." Neither salt nor light is sensational. Neither salt nor light is miraculous, but both salt and light are transformational, and both represent my true power in Christ.
And yet this song implies that all I need to do to bring change into this dark world is to "speak Jesus"--sometimes multiple times--and even to shout His Name from the mountains, if need be. And the force of this claim seems to defy contradiction without diminishing the power of Jesus' Name. As such, it creates an implied if/then fallacy: if I speak Jesus' Name, then all these things I speak using His Name will happen--addictions and strongholds will start to break, healing will occur, darkness will flee--the list is as endless as I want it to be. Or, if you don't think we have unlimited power in speaking Jesus' Name, then you don't believe in the power of Jesus' Name. So, these things won't happen if you don't have enough faith. And down the slippery slope we go. But as they always do, if/then fallacies oversimplify the real issue, while also often begging the question. The real issue involves the true power of Jesus Himself, not my power to speak of the power of His Name.
Claiming that "I speak Jesus" is symbolic doesn't fix a thing. First of all, intending the Name of Jesus symbolically doesn't give it any more meaning than isolating it literally because Jesus isn't a symbol! He is a Person! But what might someone mean symbolically by saying, "I speak Jesus"?
Does that mean I speak everything there is to know about Jesus? But that isn't the meaning of the song. This is not "I Love to Tell the Story" of three generations ago. The central claim of the text indeed is my power to speak the power of Jesus' Name. This claim means one of two things, if not both: either Jesus will hear me and indeed break every stronghold as I speak, or the unbeliever who overhears me and who does not know Jesus will, just by hearing His Name, understand the Gospel and find Him. But nothing like this ever happens in Scripture. Conversions always happen by the presentation of truth, as we see with Peter and Stephen and all the recorded acts of the early church. "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Romans 10:17).
Something else I find meaningless is the fact that the song never makes clear whether the commands the speaker issues even come to pass. Contrast all this "speaking" with the results of Peter's preaching to an audience of Jews from every nation under heaven, when 3000 souls were saved (Acts 2:41). Peter did not shout "Jesus" over them; he preached a three-minute sermon of about 1000 words, ending with a call to repentance and baptism in the Name of Jesus (Acts 2:38). The simple fact remains that no amount of my speaking or shouting "Jesus" is either going to convict the unsaved themselves or to make Jesus convert them against their will. Implying I have such power is a false claim.
Not only does this song give me powers I do not have, it appears to do so while strangely ignoring the power that sin has. You will find no mention of sin anywhere in the song. Rather than speaking of depression, "dark addiction," or anxiety as "sin" binding a life outside of Christ, this song implies that these "strongholds" are mere illnesses requiring healing. And this healing doesn't appear to come from salvation through repentance and faith in the shed blood of Christ on the Cross--for, as we have already seen, the song makes no reference whatsoever to this truth. The only claim the song makes consistently is that the "healing" comes directly from Jesus' Name. Rather, the "healing" comes from my "speaking" Jesus' Name "over" all of these problems. Apparently, I am not even doing this in prolonged intercessory prayer but in the duration of the song itself intended as prophetic worship.
But not only does this song ignore the power that sin has by giving me powers I do not have, it also ignores the power of personal faith in the Blood of Christ to appropriate the very grace through which I am saved. No one "speaking over" me can save me, but the song implies a false assurance of "peace within your Presence" as conferred secondhand. The text never once tells me the truth--that this peace comes only from reconciliation with God through my own personal faith in Christ's death on the Cross. The song misses this fact entirely. Oh, but we know what they mean, someone will say. But do we? How? The truth is that I do not know what the words of this song mean if they do not mean what they are actually saying. This song makes me think I am a victim almost like the paralytic who waited in vain beside the pool of Bethesda for 38 years, in hopes that someone would place him first into the troubled "healing" waters. After Jesus healed him, He cut to the chase, commanding him to "sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon [him]" (John 5:14).
My most serious complaint about this song is not that it gives me powers I do not have while ignoring the power that sin has or the power that personal faith has when placed in Christ's shed blood on the Cross. The most alarming fact about this song is that it creates a mere illusion of power in Jesus' Name while never once alluding to the Person behind the Name. Why do I say this is true? The truth is always hiding in the facts. What am I to make of the fact that Jesus Himself is entirely absent from the song? If I needed no other proof of the song's assumption of the power of positive confession, I would find it here. Read the lyrics carefully and see that the only use of "Jesus" anywhere in the song is to invoke "His Name" as a word. To be sure, it is "the magic word."
Without exception, Jesus is either the object of the preposition as a word--"the Name of Jesus"--or Jesus is the direct object in a sentence as a word--"I speak Jesus; shout Jesus." The fact that using Jesus' Name this way isn't even grammatical means that I don't know what it means! My best guess is that it means, "I shout the word 'Jesus.'" But why are you shouting the word? Clearly, because you believe in the power of the word! You might argue, then how is the "word" just a word? Isn't that the point--that the "word" isn't just a word? That's almost the point. The point is that Jesus isn't just a word! But the grammar and syntax within the text have restricted the function of "Jesus" to a word!
Jesus is never the direct object as a person, such as saying, "I love Jesus." We are not adoring Jesus for Himself; we are always using His Name for something and distancing His Name from Himself! Watch Charity Gayle as she "prophesies" before performing this song in the video below and notice how she references Jesus' Name as an "it." In speaking of Jesus' Name, she says "it" has "all the things," without ever once saying, "Jesus," the Great I Am, is all these things. Now notice the lyrics of the song to this effect. Singing "'Cause Your name is power, Your name is healing, Your name is life" makes me ask, is Jesus' Name "power, healing, and life" or is Jesus Himself all these things? If Jesus has the power we say His Name has, can't we let Him be doing something in the song? "He breaks the power of canceled sin; He sets the prisoner free; His Blood can make the foulest clean; His Blood availed for me!" a thousand tongues should be crying! But when Jesus' Name becomes a "word" I manipulate, who is in control here, Jesus or me?
This sleight of hand is subtle, but exposing this subtilty is not a technicality; it is the detective's clue that unravels the whole mystery. The entire meaning of the song rests on the use of Jesus' Name as a word. Some will call this nitpicky, but I say if we think pointing out the omission of Jesus Himself in a song about His power is nitpicky, then we have proven the point entirely. Deception has won. This is how the song creates the illusion of power without alluding to the true power of Jesus Himself. Where is Jesus? He isn't there. But even if the song used any other direct reference to Jesus' identity, we might sense the song being a little more grounded in Biblical truth. But it doesn't. Christ or Lord or Savior isn't there. Salvation isn't there. The Blood of Christ isn't there. The Atonement isn't there. The Cross of Calvary isn't there.
I can't even imagine singing a song about the power of Jesus' Name without ever once referring to Jesus Himself or to His Blood or to the Cross. Doing so puts me in company with those who have a form of godliness but who deny the power thereof (II Timothy 3:5). The truth is, when I do sing about the Cross and the Blood of Christ--the power of the Gospel through which Christ Himself is known--I don't have to keep shouting the word "power" because the power is in the truth itself--or rather, in the Truth Himself. Not only did Jesus say of Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), which is also missing from the song, He said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This He said, signifying what death He should die" (John 12:32-33).
What makes me so infinitely sad, aside from the insult this song is to our Lord, is that people are so desperate in their daily lives for deliverance from evil that they will latch onto any promise in hopes of relief. We owe it to our despairing friends and neighbors and even to ourselves to confront error with truth. We cannot rest our hopes in sweeping claims that are nevertheless notoriously vague--claims which make it possible to reinvent the song's meaning every time it is sung. Unless the Name of Jesus is connected with the incontrovertible truth of His power to save, the song is powerless. And yet somehow the magic of this song creates the illusion of the very thing it lacks. At least for the duration of the song, its power of positive confession seems to work. Suppose we think that when we sing this song, we are not partaking in positive confession, but how can we sing this song with these words by their very nature designed to do this and not do this?
Problems with the Context of the Song:
And how is it that we know positive confession is indeed the intent of this song? Delving into the composition of this song reveals that it was written out of a background of Oneness Pentecostalism, a very different stripe of Pentecostalism than that which has a long-time association with the conservative holiness movement. Oneness Pentecostalism, among other things, teaches the heresy of modalism that denies the Trinity--thus, the word "oneness." Popular Elevation Church preacher Steven Furtick says that when Jesus ascended to heaven, He changed forms. Apparently now, He doesn't have a body. Surely, singing about the Name of Jesus in isolation of His Person fails to give Him a body! Both Here Be Lions, who composed "I Speak Jesus," and Charity Gayle, who has popularized it, are grounded in Oneness Pentecostalism and are at least associated with the heresy of modalism, if not openly promoting it. This fact may indeed account for the song's emphasis on the Name of Jesus rather than on Jesus Himself.
Drawing Conclusions:
When all is quite literally said, if not done, this song seems to be the epitome of wishful thinking. Just speaking the Name of Jesus accomplishes none of the things promised in the song, and certainly not when the Name of Jesus invoked is not identified with any aspects of His actual identity. The Apostle John makes clear that both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit give witness to Christ the Son of God, Who came, not by water only (baptism) but by blood (crucifixion). Not only does this Scripture in I John 5:6-8 give unequivocal reference to the Trinity, it makes clear that the Blood of Christ will receive the witness of the Holy Spirit. We have no assurance from Scripture that a song omitting all reference to Christ's Blood will invite the witness of the Holy Spirit. But without this witness of the Holy Spirit Himself, no song--and certainly no speaker--can make any claim to spiritual power.
It is my belief that false teaching is not only behind this song; it is embedded within it. Whether falsely addressing the Lord Jesus or deceptively addressing a false Jesus, this song depends upon the power of words instead of upon the power of truth. For all its sweeping claims, "I Speak Jesus" fails to check any of the Biblical boxes for a song about the power of Jesus' Name. Failing to do so, it doesn't fit anywhere on the Scriptural landscape.
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Outstanding article:
Charity Gayle performing "I Speak Jesus" live, proclaiming healing; timestamp 25:15 minutes
In this concert, Charity highlights the "Name" of Jesus and all the things "it" can do before singing, "I Speak Jesus." She says, "It has power to heal, save, set free, deliver--we claim; I proclaim healing in this place." Why doesn't she say the LORD has power to heal, save, set free, deliver? Isn't her language a subtle but strange shift away from any normal reference to the power of the Lord Himself?
Mackenzie Morgan, The Godly Whistleblower video, critiquing "I Speak Jesus"
Steven Furtick on Modalism
Scroll down to the section on Modalism and see how Furtick interprets Jesus' body now
The Power of Jesus' Name
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