Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!

This series of articles is about the awesome POWER that resides in the Word of God. It's a supernatural POWER that can change lives and circumstances on its own without any help from anybody. If you are a born-again Believer, it was the Word of God that made it happen (1 Peter 1:23). All you did was open yourself to receive the seed that contains the POWER and your life was changed for eternity. After you became a Believer, God has used the Word to transform you by an ongoing process of renewing your mind (your thinking) from where you used to be to where He wants you to be in the future (Romans 12:2). And you can use this POWER yourself to change your circumstances in life just by reading the Word and putting forth your best effort to UNDERSTAND it so you put yourself in position to RECEIVE everything that God has for you.

In recent articles I have pointed out that there are several HINDRANCES to watch for in life that will block the flow of this POWER and slow down our transformation. One of the main HINDRANCES is HARDNESS OF HEART which we've already discussed and you can find the various articles on that topic by clicking on the Archives link at the top left of this page. Then last week we started a discussion on a second HINDRANCE which has to do with the way we SPEAK. As we found out, the words we speak also have POWER and we can diminish the POWER of God's Word by continually speaking words that DISAGREE with He has said.

The Power of Life and Death

Keep in mind that God does mostly everything with words. He's a speaking Spirit and He can create or destroy with His Words. He created the universe in six days with His Words (Genesis 1:1-31). And, the miracles of Christ often came in response to Words that were spoken (Examples - Mark 6:41, 8:6, John 11:43). On the other hand, those first Israelites in the wilderness were barred from the Promised Land and condemned to death by Words that God spoke in response to their words of complaining, disobedience and unbelief (Numbers 14:23, Psalm 95:11, Hebrews 3:11, 18). And, there are many examples throughout the Scripture where the Words of God produced life and at times death. Indeed, the Word is ALIVE (Hebrews 4:12) but it also pronounces eventual spiritual death on the ones who reject Christ.

Now it may come as a surprise to some folks that Believers have a measure of the same speaking characteristics that God has. We're speaking spirit-beings, although unlike God we reside temporarily in physical bodies; and we also have the POWER to SPEAK death and life. We know this because the WORD of God says so:

Proverbs 18:20-21 - "With the fruit of a man's mouth his stomach will be satisfied; he will be satisfied with the product of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit."

When most people first read these verses they tend to gloss over them with a thought like, "surely they're not talking about real life and real death, are they?" Then they think, "wait a minute, this is the Bible; it's speaking TRUTH, isn't it? It doesn't joke around. So okay, I know that by what I SAY I can cause someone to either feel hurt or encouraged, angry or happy, despised or loved. I can see that my speaking has power over OTHER people." But what MOST people fail to see here, as I pointed out last week, is that the death and life this scripture is talking about are options to be realized by the PERSON DOING THE SPEAKING, not the one who's hearing.

In other words, I have the ability to bring death or life to the things I myself am going through, to the things I am having to experience and deal with in my life: I bring failure or success, insufficiency or abundance, defeat or victory, bad or good, cursing or blessing into my own life by what I SAY with my mouth. And the TRUTH is: most Christians have NOT understood this biblical principle and so pay little attention to what they say even though we can't find any scriptures anywhere that tell us there are neutral words we can use.

And so, based on Scripture I have to conclude that ALL WORDS ALWAYS PRODUCE A CORRESPONDING REACTION: directionally they ALWAYS produce either death or life. And, it's the tongue that contains such great power, the smallest part of our bodies. We can ruin our lives with our tongues as we discussed last week (James 3:6) or we can produce life and blessing (James 3:10) and power and victory. Those who learn this will "eat its fruit" instead of failure, death and decay.

Choose to Agree

When I started studying this subject some years ago I didn't understand what I needed to do to clean up my conversation. And by the way, I'm still working on it and I've learned that it's not easy to take control of our tongues because we're surrounded by the World that doesn't really try all that much to control what they say. Intellectually they've figured out that things would be better for them if they would speak "positively" about themselves and about their lives. But they haven't quite figured out that there are no neutral words and that for most people in the World their words are generally profoundly negative. So, like everything else in the Kingdom of God, we have to step out of the World and do things God's way.

His ways of doing things are explained by His Words. Indeed, our job is to take note of what He says and then do our best to follow His instructions with the objective of helping Him build the Kingdom of God on the earth. Since the Word is alive I want to AGREE with it at every opportunity especially if the Words concern the New Covenant. The Words of God NEVER return without accomplishing the purposes they were spoken for (Isaiah 55:11) so I want to focus on saying with my mouth the same things God has said with His. If I AGREE with His Words by believing they are Truth and then repeating them for my own life, the purposes they were originally spoken for will emerge for me. If God's Words produced life when He spoke them, they will produce life for me when I speak them. If God's Words produced blessing, sufficiency, healing and victory when He spoke them, they will do the same for me and for you when we speak them because they're alive and will NEVER return void. All we have to do is speak in AGREEMENT with the Word and then release our FAITH over the idea that we can get the same results.

Now invariably when we speak in agreement with the Word of God, there will be many occasions when what we speak does NOT agree with what we're experiencing in the natural. For example, the Word says that we have ALREADY been healed (1 Peter 2:24) because Jesus took our pains and sicknesses on Him. So when I feel symptoms trying to attack my body, what I say needs to agree with the Word instead of with what I'm feeling in the natural. People who don't understand this principle will say that I am denying reality if I say something that disagrees with what I'm feeling in the natural. But friend, the Bible INSTRUCTS me to NOT look at the things which are seen but the things that are NOT seen (2 Corinthians 4:18) because the former things are temporal and the latter are eternal. I need to AGREE with the things that are eternal and the Word of God is eternal (John 1:1-2); my feelings are temporal and they often, quite often in fact, DISAGREE with what the Word of God clearly says.

In short, I have a decision to make with my speaking: I can either say words that agree with my feelings and the temporal OR I can AGREE with the Word of God and the eternal. My words will not return void. I will either bring to my life the temporal which is subject to death and decay or the eternal which has overcome death. It's my choice to make and I choose to agree with the WORD even if those around me think I'm in denial. I choose to control my tongue so I can learn to control my whole body and bring blessing to it instead of fire (James 3:6). I'm not always successful; and yes, speaking in disagreement with the WORD hinders its POWER in my life as we discussed last week. But at the same time I want to learn to increasingly speak in AGREEMENT with the Word so that I not only overcome the hindrance but release the full POWER of the Word to change my life for the better. It has been said that where we presently are in life is the accumulated result of all the words we've ever spoken especially in recent months and years. If you're not happy with the result so far, how about trying to speak some NEW words, some AGREEABLE words and see what happens.

Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on April 19. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), compelling you to PROSPER in every area of life!

Sinners' Prayer

If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life, you need to and you can do it today just by saying out loud the following simple prayer:

Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.

If you were sincere as you prayed this prayer, God has already come into your life and you are a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.

And, when you get a chance have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer today and believing what you said:

Romans 10:9

2 Corinthians 5:17

Ephesians 2:8

Prayer Requests

If you have a Prayer Request, please connect to the Link below and follow the promptings. The PLN staff members pray over Prayer Requests every Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM eastern time. Agree with us for God to answer your petition.

http://www.creditcounseling.net/prayer-request.aspx 

Donations

If you've been edified by Prosperous Life Newsletter, you may want to consider making a SEED FAITH offering to support the Ministry (Galatians 6:6-7). God has instructed us to simply provide folks with an opportunity to sow seed into good ground so in due season you'll be eligible to reap a harvest and the rest is up to you as the Spirit leads. For your information PLN is a nonprofit gift to the Body of Christ so your financial offerings will usually be tax deductible (consult your tax advisor). Just go to the secure Shopping Cart on the Cornerstone web site by connecting through the following link. We appreciate your support and generosity.

http://www.creditcounseling.net/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1 

About Prosperous Life Newsletter

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