Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!
This series is about the POWER that is resident within the Word of God. Resident means that the WORD has its own POWER residing inside it. The Bible says that the Word is ALIVE (Hebrews 4:12) and so the inherent, resident POWER lives within the WORD and is available to create life wherever it's mixed with FAITH. The WORD of God is alive, not dead. It creates LIFE, not death. When the WORD and FAITH come together they ALWAYS produce LIFE. The production of LIFE always causes increase, expansion, super sufficiency, abundance, overflowing, healing, salvation, and redemption; and all of these things can happen when the WORD of God is mixed with FAITH. The POWER that is in the Word is there because of Jesus who IS the Word (John 1:1).
It is God's intention that His adopted children learn the WORD and mix their UNDERSTANDING of it with FAITH in order to enjoy OVERCOMING lives and be a constructive part of building the Kingdom of God. There's no other way to achieve true VICTORY in Christian life except by mixing the WORD with FAITH. It is your FAITH that pleases God and He REWARDS those who seek Him in FAITH (Hebrews 11:6). Let it be clear that the Bible-word FAITH means to BELIEVE that the WORD is the TRUTH and that you can always be CERTAIN that the WORD will perform exactly as spoken, both the written word and personal words spoken by God to individual Believers. In order to mix FAITH with the WORD, you must know and UNDERSTAND what the WORD is saying so you know what you're TRUSTING it to do. And must also know what you're supposed to DO after you've HEARD it.
In recent weeks I have been making the point that Believers have the POWER to speak both death and life over themselves (Proverbs 18:20-21). If your speaking is negative then it serves to diminish the POWER of the Word in your life. But you can speak in agreement with the Word and release its Power over yourself for increase. If you're NOT happy with where you are in some area of your life, there's the distinct probability that over the years your speaking has on balance been disagreeing with the Word. For example, if you frequently take possession of sickness and disease with the words of your speaking instead of resisting the symptoms by agreeing with the WORDS OF GOD'S SPEAKING which says you're ALREADY healed (1 Peter 2:24), what would you expect the result to be? It would likely be a tendency toward sickness and disease instead of divine healing. By the way, there is NO sickness and disease in the Kingdom of God.
This week I have on my heart to discuss the importance of knowing who our various audiences are and how they might react to the words we speak. If you think about it, there are five possible external audiences for our speaking that we need to take note of:
People
Jesus/God
Angels
Satan
All Other
People
Definitely your speaking can affect other people positively or negatively. You can encourage with your words or discourage; you can build up or tear down; you can bring peace or anger and you can create love or resentment. We try to watch what we say to other people because hopefully we're tuned in to their feelings. Usually we prefer not to hurt the feelings of others if we can avoid it. We don't want to cause broken relationships because they make us uncomfortable and cause us to feel rejected. But, we tend to govern our speech with other people by cultural instead of biblical guidelines. Everything we say should be said in LOVE but we break that rule frequently.
On a spiritual level we can change the lives of people, particularly the ones closest to us like our children if we speak negatively to them all the time. If you tell your children repeatedly that they're stupid, they will begin to believe it and operate accordingly. People carry around with them the memories of hurtful words they may have heard 50 years ago because words are powerful and should ALWAYS be spoken in LOVE so you can agree with the WORD.
Jesus/God
The Lord likes to hear from you as long as you speak according to His will (1 John 5:14-15). I'm not making this up: please take a look at this scripture for yourself. We need to pray in accordance with His will if we want Him to HEAR us. The Scripture shows that God is not going to HEAR every little complaint we want to throw His way but He WILL hear if we speak according to His Will. How many of our prayers are lifted up according to our will instead of His? How do we know what His will is? We know what it is from reading and understanding His Word. If we ask Him to heal us of some sickness, why wouldn't He say in response: "Did I not already take care of that request on the Cross? Now mix your faith with the Word and receive what I've already done for you." Or He might not answer you at all if He didn't HEAR a prayer that disagreed with His Word or that wasn't mixed with faith. I think God would be answering a lot more prayers if they agreed with His Word and were mixed with faith.
Now I know from past experience that Believers have a hard time changing their beliefs when they find out what they're believing doesn't agree with what the Word says. Please look this scripture up for yourself and meditate on it until you reach your own conclusion. Perhaps my discussion of it is off the mark somehow even though to me it seems pretty straight forward. But you need to understand it for yourself. And also by the way, take note of the fact that this scripture is in the New Testament and was written by Jesus' best friend.
Angels
Now this one is probably also going to shock some of our readers because it isn't understood all that well around the Body of Christ. I am just going to give you a few of scripture summaries and then you judge for yourself.
Isaiah 55:11 = The Words of God never return void meaning they always accomplish the purposes
they were sent for.
Hebrews 1:14 = Angels are ministering spirits, sent out to render service for Believers.
Psalm 91:11 = Angels have been dispatched by God to watch over Believers.
Psalm 103:20 = Angels obey the voice of the WORD.
How many of us speak regularly to the Angels whom God has charged with the responsibility to guard us and to render service? Most have never done it but the Bible, the Word of God is encouraging us to make use of every capability at our disposal. Put these scriptures together and consider the conclusion that Angels assigned to you (as a Believer) are standing by waiting for you to direct them to service by speaking the Word of God in Faith. Send them out for example to do something or bring back something that is promised in the Word. You SPEAK to them what the Word says. You can't tell them to do just anything because they only respond to the Word. You have to know what's in the Word so you know what to tell the Angels to do and how to tell them. Read the scriptures and judge for yourself. Then, once you dispatch your Angels, start thinking God that your Faith is strong enough to receive what you have requested and keep on thanking Him until your request has been fulfilled.
Satan
Satan is a fallen angel, a spirit being but he isn't omnipresent. He DOES though employ a whole bunch of demonic spirits that have been charged by him to cause you to experience trials and tribulations and difficulties and any other negative things they can come up with. Their objectives are to separate you from the Word, to break down your relationship with God and to cause you to sin so you will open a door to let them come into your life more fully. The demonic spirits are listening to everything you say and they are agreeing with everything you say that's in disagreement with the Word. Speaking in disagreement with the Word then gives them permission to bring whatever anti-Word thing you said into your life. You said it, you get it! You will have what you say (Mark 11:22-24).
We don't have space this week to go into much detail on this part but the point to be made tonight is that New Testament believers have been given authority over Satan by the Name of Jesus. It is Jesus who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18) but you have been given His Name and His Word and the armor of God (Ephesians 6:11-17) to RESIST the devil with just like Jesus did when He was on the earth. When Jesus faced Satan, He SPOKE to Him from the Word and Satan was forced by the Word to leave Him alone (Matthew 4:11). Likewise, we're instructed in several places to RESIST the enemy and he will have to flee and leave us alone (James 4:7, 1 Peter 5:9). How do we make him flee? By SPEAKING the Word to him just like Jesus did. Of course, you have to know some verses to say to him or he won't flee. You also have to believe that those scriptures have the power when spoken by you to actually cause the enemy to flee. And if by some sin, you have opened a door to demonic influence, simply SPEAK directly to the demonic influences and command them to flee. Speak out your repentance by expressing your determination by FAITH to go in the opposite direction from whatever you did to open doors to Satan. And then SPEAK to the doors you opened and command them to close. Tell the devil to get away from you and stay away.
All Other
Most people forget that Jesus on occasion also spoke directly to objects and non-living things to take authority over them and cause them to do His bidding. For example, He spoke to the sea (Mark 4:39) in order to calm a storm. He spoke to a fig tree and caused it to die (Mark 11:14). He encouraged us to speak directly to mountains in faith to cause them to be moved (Mark 11:22-24). Are we not to emulate the examples of Christ? Have we not been empowered by the Holy Spirit to do even greater works than Jesus (John 14:12)? As long as our speaking is mixed with Faith, we can do what He did, BECAUSE HE TOLD US WE COULD.
How could this manifest in modern life? Here are some examples: Instead of saying, "I have the flu," which disagrees with the Word, why not speak TO the symptoms of the flu that are attacking your body commanding them to depart from you. If there's a storm outside your house coming in your direction, how about speaking directly to the storm and commanding it to get away from your house? How about regularly speaking to your body and commanding it to line up with the Word of God in perfect harmony and good health? How about speaking to your finances and commanding the money to come into your bank accounts?
By the way, your angels will be happy to go and get the finances for you if you mix your faith with Scripture and speak it to them. How about 2 Corinthians 8:9 and 9:8 for that purpose. Send them out with the authority of those verses and see what happens.
Some Concluding Comments
It's important to keep in mind that we have several audiences that will hear what we say and be affected by it. They can respond negatively or positively accordingly. But in addition, WE ALSO HEAR WHAT WE SAY and affect ourselves by what we say. If we continually say negative, "out-of-agreement-with-the-Word" things about ourselves, we're going to eventually believe it. There is a strong connection between speaking and believing. We ARE who we say we are. We have what we say we have. Our lives flow according to what we SAY about things. If we speak in agreement with the Word, we will come to believe that what we SAY is true even if our present circumstances are different. I can rise above my circumstances by what I SAY. I am determined to be who the Word says I am and I accomplish that by agreeing with what the Word says. My circumstances NEVER dictate my speech; the Word of God dictates what I SAY. And I NEVER agree with any circumstances that contradict the Word of God.
All of us have a tendency to minimize the importance of our speaking. Some people will read this article and conclude that I'm being overly sensitive to mere speaking and just continue on with what they've been doing. Maybe their church doesn't teach this way, yet. But friend, I am just quoting Scripture to you and if you believe the Word, you may want to adjust your thinking. Just saying...
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on May 3. 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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