I have felt lately to revisit the whole area of our words, and how they influence our lives, both for good and bad. I would not consider myself to be a ‘name it and claim it, type of guy,’ but I have seen how my tongue influences my life. It can lead me into paths of righteousness and prosperity or bring me lots of problems. I do now try and speak out what I want to happen in my life, but don’t major on that all the time, for God has promised that if I seek first His Kingdom all the other ‘things’ will be added unto me. I still have to ask for my daily bread, but I don’t stress over it. I realise that the daily confession of my faith releases His life inside of me. What more could you want than to be controlled by His life?
I had a dream a few years ago that has helped to change the direction of my life for good: In the dream I was walking towards a meeting with a group of pastors, when I noticed that I had my shirt on back to front. It was a blue casual sports shirt. They were wearing more formal gear. I had always prided myself in the fact that I was not bound by tradition and enjoyed a sense of liberty. I was also known to be the funny guy and could be quite risque in my vocabulary. In the dream I told them all keep on going while I went to change in a ‘Restroom’ nearby. When I took my shirt off it suddenly fell into the toilet and thus became unwearable. What do I do? I decided to go home and put a new shirt on. The home in the dream was in Zimbabwe where I used to live. When I woke up I felt the Lord say to me, that I needed to repent of the path that I was travelling on and turn around. The shirt I was wearing symbolised my attitude which was far too casual and even if I turned it around the right way I was still wrong in God’s eyes. I needed to go back to Africa. It was in Zimbabwe that the Lord visited me in 1993 and told me many things which I wrote down. I had a revelation of His holiness back then and stopped watching worldly movies and tidied up my life and fell in love with Jesus, but I had since drifted away from all that God had shown me. I needed to go back to what He had shown me, to repent and turn my life around again, for I had lost my ‘first love.’ I was heading in the wrong direction.
I took this dream seriously, repented, and since dismantled my life and allowed the Holy Spirit to rebuild me again. I have been in a ‘Rest Room’ where He has been able to teach me. It has been hard, for as the saying goes; “its hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” What I am now sharing isn’t just a new fad I have picked up from a book. It’s not one of the latest Christian theories I’ve come across which I am experimenting with to see what results it produces. What the Lord has asked me to do is change every area of my life, my signature tune, my ministry, in fact change me.
I had another dream many years ago that I didn’t follow through with then that explains more about how I need to clean up my words now.
In the dream I went to a Kenneth Copeland Meeting. I am not into the Prosperity Gospel that he majors on, but I do agree with what he teaches on how we need to be careful about the words that we speak. After he spoke I went forward for prayer and he stuck a stick of incense in my mouth and when I left the meeting my whole world had changed for the better. I felt the Lord was saying to me back then, that I needed to change my words as they you can change my world. I now see that this is so true.
God wants us to realise how we need to repent and change our words and our ways. It has really cost me because I have always been one who has loved to play around with words and liked to make people laugh. When I wasn’t a Christian at High School, I was really skinny so instead of using physical strength as a weapon to defend myself, I used words and my cartoons. I was the comic everywhere I went. Humour can sometimes be a mask to hide pain. Notice some of the greatest comedians’ battle with depression? A few years ago we lost the funny man Robyn Williams to suicide. You might say what is wrong with being humorous? Isn’t it good to make people laugh? Yes it is but in moderation. I would be constantly trying to please people and not caring what God thought.
It’s great to be an ‘encourager’ – yes, but I have always felt that God had something more for me. I had a thought come to me recently of the Church being in a prison of war camp. We can be like the prison chaplain encouraging the troops. “Keep hanging in there folks, be strong, but we were still in the prison. God wants us out of there. God wants us to be more than ‘Encouragers,’ He wants us to be ‘Deliverers.’ Being an encourager doesn’t necessarily heal you, it can make you happy even while you sit in a wheelchair.
I have always felt that there is something more for the Church. In looking at what the bible has to say, I can see there is something wrong with the Church today. I personally have felt like I was knitting a jersey and someone was unravelling it at the other end. In other words I was getting nowhere with so much effort. I asked God often, “what am I doing wrong?” “Where is the power that we as the Church are meant to have?” “The God of Miracles isn’t dead.”
Eventually I could see that the power we lack is in our words so we need to be careful with what we say. We need to repent and have more confidence in our words.
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” Proverbs 18:21
Much to the annoyance of my wife I have always had the tendency to joke about everything, to make people laugh and I did it all the time. I couldn’t watch TV without making a silly comment or a quip. I am like the critic, the cynic, the spectator, judging the performance of the actors, giving them a ‘5’ or a ‘10’. The bible tells us to be careful not to sit in the seat of mockers.
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,” Psalm1:1
The Bible is full of verses about words, and it says we will be judged by them one day. It warns us about crooked speech, deceptive words, foolish jesting and lying. Our words do far more than just getting us into trouble with man and God. Our words are the rudder for our lives and will also bring forth a harvest in the heart. They can bring healing and prosperity into our lives or a harvest of trouble.
I have learned so much since I’ve been changing my words and I am feeling so much stronger in every area of my life. The Bible says if we can tame our tongues we can actually tame our body. It says that man can’t tame his tongue, but glory to God, the Holy Spirit can. The Devil will say to you that it can’t be done but he’s a liar. It’s true that man can’t do it in his own strength, but God says it can be done with His help, in fact you can have what you say.
“For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.” James 3:2
“But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” James 3:8
If Jesus came to each one of us today and laid His hand on us saying; “from this day forward you can have whatever you say.” How would that effect the words that came out of your mouth? Many would say. “Oh I’m tickled to death by that,” or “I’m dying to see what happens.”
When we were on the plane coming back from the UK a few years back, everyone around us was coughing, I have never seen anything like it before. Because of what my wife and I had learnt from God's word, we declared out loud that we would not get that cough, and made a stand against it straight away. The Devil tried to put it on us but we are starting to believe in our words and God's word worked for us and we didn’t get that cough.
Every area of your life can be turned around by your tongue. Your tongue is like the rudder that steers a ship. Mark 11:23-24 tells us to have the faith of God, or the God kind of faith, and it says you can have what you say.
"Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:23-24
That is not just the positive things either, but the negative things as well. Your tongue has the power of life and death. What you are saying is affecting your life. Whether you like it or not, you today are a product of your words. It says in the bible that what a man sows, so shall he reap.
I have realised that many Christians have started along this ‘confession’ journey before, but because of a lack of knowledge it hasn’t worked, and we have ended up saying, “it’s not God's will,” or “God is sovereign” or “we will just have to accept that God doesn’t answer most of my prayers.” Because we have only started on the 1st phase of the process and not followed through, we have ended up living in a spiritual fog; powerless and discouraged, thinking that the days of miracles are over.
Regardless of your lack of success, God still says, “you can have what you say,” “you can turn your ship around.” It’s not going to happen overnight though, it may have taken you 30 years to get where you are today, so there’s a lot of unravelling to do.
God told the man of God, “My people can have what they say, but they are saying what they have.” Think about that, if it’s true that you can have what you say, then saying what you have leaves you in a stalemate or even makes things worse. If you are sick and you say I am sick and it’s getting worse etc, then you are getting what you say and it will get worse. But if you say what you want and God has already said that it’s His will. “By the stripes of Jesus I am healed.” You will have what you say and rise above your situation. It also says in the word “as you believe so be it unto you.” That’s not just the good things you say but the bad things as well.
If you go back to the beginning, you will notice that God created everything by His words. Then He made man in His own image, so we too have an ability to have dominion with the words we speak, just like God did. The trouble is Adam sold out to the Devil who then became the God of this world. Man lost his authority and gave it to Satan, but at the cross Christ destroyed the Devil’s grip and took the authority back. This authority was taken off Satan and given to the Church. Some would say, “if that’s so, then how come there is still so much havoc in the world?” It’s a big subject which I hope to explain more about in the following 3 messages. The Church can now enforce this victory that Jesus won for us at the cross. We have the right to do it. The Devil has to let go when we enforce what Christ has done on the cross for us.
“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7
When you understand that the Devil is a spirit and he needs a body to fulfil his purposes on earth, it becomes a lot clearer. Even in the Garden of Eden he needed the body of a snake to trick Eve. Even today he needs to get into a man or put his thoughts into a man’s mind to make him say them, so as to do all his damage. He doesn’t have his own authority so he has to use yours. He can’t make us do anything that he wants, so he gets us to destroy ourselves through our lack of understanding. As his words of death are spoken through man so he manages to display his power. On the other hand, God is also a spirit. He too needs the body of a man to complete His will. If he wanted to save people in Africa, He needs to get into somebody to complete His will. He has to put his words into people’s mouths and then they have them speak them out, to bring forth a harvest of good in the earth. Jesus had to come to earth in a human body and speak His words in order to save us for this has always been His way. He wants to use us and our words, not only to save us from destruction but to bless others.