I once saw a little poster in one of the control rooms at a company I worked at in the past. It said, "If you say "I can't" you won't, If you say "I can" you will." This is a psychologist's way of saying that whatever you confess regarding anything facing you will result in either your success or failure depending on your personal faith in whatever it is that you are doing or overcoming any challenge that faces you.
Every person without, exception lives by faith. If you consistently declare with conviction that you have no faith, you have used your God given faith to sabotage yourself and you will ultimately fail in life. If you would remember from my previous post the source of our words resides in our central core, what the Scripture calls the heart or the spirit of man. You should also remember that our words affect the world around us and the direction of our lives.
Moses had the following to say to the Israelites, after presenting the nation of Israel with the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience to the Law (Torah) that God gave to Israel at Mount Sinai, regarding the given word of God,
"For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it."
Deuteronomy 30:11 - 14 (ESV)
Paul has this to say using this Scripture as a base,
"For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith say, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."
Romans 10:5 - 10 (ESV)
So here we can see once we extract the general principle from these two passages is that:
Jesus said to his disciples at one point:
"And Jesus answered them, "Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
Mark 11:22 - 24 (ESV)
Here Jesus makes explicit the connection between our faith and our words. If we believe something without doubting when we give utterance to that belief we will have whatever we say. Even things that may seem to be impossible. Now the problem becomes this, we have been trained into speaking negative things by our society. Worse, we are taught to believe these same negative things, which we then speak. Are we then surprised when on the scale of a nation that has a negative overall speaking pattern, that evil things then become prevalent in our society? Because we have what we say.
Should we not then, Christian and non-Christian, look to start speaking that which is positive and good consistently and start to believe that good things will take the place of evil?
How do we rewire our brain's neural paths to change our belief system and speech patterns? This is how:
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
Philippians 4:8 (ESV)
Our faith confession is not necessarily limited to the Church Creeds (the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, etc), but encompasses anything and everything that we say that is driven by faith, whether we realise that that is what we have done or not. Whenever we speak, that is an opportunity for a faith confession. That is why we are counselled by Scripture not to speak in haste, nor to allow our emotions to dictate what we say, but to be considerate in speech. So that we may train ourselves by meditative repetition, and continued considered speech content to speak only that which comes from a heart that seeks only the good for both ourselves and for others.
We are continuously confessing. Are we confessing good or evil?
The power of life and death is in the tongue.
Every person without, exception lives by faith. If you consistently declare with conviction that you have no faith, you have used your God given faith to sabotage yourself and you will ultimately fail in life. If you would remember from my previous post the source of our words resides in our central core, what the Scripture calls the heart or the spirit of man. You should also remember that our words affect the world around us and the direction of our lives.
Moses had the following to say to the Israelites, after presenting the nation of Israel with the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience to the Law (Torah) that God gave to Israel at Mount Sinai, regarding the given word of God,
"For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it."
Deuteronomy 30:11 - 14 (ESV)
Paul has this to say using this Scripture as a base,
"For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith say, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."
Romans 10:5 - 10 (ESV)
So here we can see once we extract the general principle from these two passages is that:
- We believe with our heart. Faith then resides in our spirit and is not a function of reason or cognitive agreement. Cognitive agreement alone holds no power to change.
- We confess with our mouth. Faith finds its expression by what we say.
- Deeds then follow after confessed faith has found its full expression in us.
Jesus said to his disciples at one point:
"And Jesus answered them, "Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
Mark 11:22 - 24 (ESV)
Here Jesus makes explicit the connection between our faith and our words. If we believe something without doubting when we give utterance to that belief we will have whatever we say. Even things that may seem to be impossible. Now the problem becomes this, we have been trained into speaking negative things by our society. Worse, we are taught to believe these same negative things, which we then speak. Are we then surprised when on the scale of a nation that has a negative overall speaking pattern, that evil things then become prevalent in our society? Because we have what we say.
Should we not then, Christian and non-Christian, look to start speaking that which is positive and good consistently and start to believe that good things will take the place of evil?
How do we rewire our brain's neural paths to change our belief system and speech patterns? This is how:
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
Philippians 4:8 (ESV)
Our faith confession is not necessarily limited to the Church Creeds (the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, etc), but encompasses anything and everything that we say that is driven by faith, whether we realise that that is what we have done or not. Whenever we speak, that is an opportunity for a faith confession. That is why we are counselled by Scripture not to speak in haste, nor to allow our emotions to dictate what we say, but to be considerate in speech. So that we may train ourselves by meditative repetition, and continued considered speech content to speak only that which comes from a heart that seeks only the good for both ourselves and for others.
We are continuously confessing. Are we confessing good or evil?
The power of life and death is in the tongue.