Ridiculous Healing Confession Bondage
One of the greatest truths you can learn from Scripture is the importance of speaking things that agree with the Bible. This is sometimes referred to as “positive confession,” but there is a subtle difference. You can make a “confession” that seems “positive” but isn’t biblical and gets no results. You can make your mouth agree with God’s Word and get outstanding results. For example, you could say, “Every day for me is a happy day.” That is certainly a positive confession, but not really in line with Scripture, since happiness refers to an emotional state, and even great faith men like the apostle Paul were not “happy” every day. On the other hand, you could say, “I rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory,” and that would be agreeing with the Bible (1 Peter 1:8). God’s Word is His power unto salvation (Romans 1:16). It produces results. Even when you don’t have emotional happiness, you can still rejoice gloriously because joy is a fruit of the Spirit, not a fruit of your human emotions. A good Bible verse to use to show this distinction is Hebrews 12:2. Jesus’ body did not want to go through the torture of the cross, and yours would not either. Someone “sweating blood” in emotional agony, as Jesus experienced in Gethsemane, could not be considered “happy.” Yet Jesus, for the JOY that was set before Him, endured the cross, seeing the shame of that horrific death as nothing compared to what He would accomplish by His sacrificial death for our sins. There was joy even when there was not happiness. Jesus looked past the temporary agony to see that His actions would produce the ability for us to be born again in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24) and to be able be called His brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2:11).
So the type of “positive confession” that is also an affirmation of God’s Word has a profoundly good impact on our lives, and every believer should speak what God says, not what situations seem to be saying. Remember the Israelites who would not agree with what God said about being able to conquer the giants in the Promised Land. You don’t want to be like them. Remember how Joshua agreed with what God had said in front of the whole nation of Israel. You want to be like him in that regard.
Word-confirming positive confession is a powerful tool, so if a little is good, more of it would be even better, right? To some degree, yes, but it is possible to take things of God that are a blessing and go to such extremes with them that they turn into bondage.
For example, Jesus commanded us to reach the lost. But if you make a goal for yourself that you will win one person to Christ every day for the rest of your life no matter what, you can get in bondage to soulwinning! What if the people where you’re witnessing are ornery sin-lovers who reject Christ? As far as God is concerned, you get credit for sharing the plan of salvation with them, and what they do with it is between them and God. Remember that even when Paul taught in the Book of Acts, some believed and some disbelieved (Acts 28:23-24)! They did their job by presenting the good news; they did not “fail” if they preached to certain people (Jews in particular back then) who rejected their message. Will you never take a true vacation day with your family because you must win a lost person every day? Will you never have time to play a game with your family because that time could be spent evangelizing? There will always be one more lost person you could reach, after all. You can put yourself into bondage in such cases even though what you’re doing is good. If Satan can’t lick you, he’ll join you by trying to get you to push something to such extremes that it becomes bondage instead of full of life.
Another example is prayer. We should all pray and not faint (Luke 18:1)! If Christians spent more time praying for their leaders (1 Timothy 2:1-2) than they do complaining about those leaders (which is nowhere commanded), things would probably be very different in our nations (and churches). But some people think they can’t have any fun because they must spend every spare minute praying. In that case, prayer, a good thing, becomes bondage because they push it to such extremes they don’t enjoy life anymore. (Such people usually feel superior to those of us who would dare just go have a good time with our spouses doing something completely unspiritual, but fun.) Anyone seeing their “driven” lifestyle of prayer would think, “I’m Glad I’m not a Christian like that person!” Is that a good witness?
And so it can be with confessing Scripture over yourself when it comes to healing. If you need to be healed, I wouldn’t put any limit on how often you could make your mouth agree with God’s Word about it. But in some circles, it’s advocated that you speak healing confessions over all kinds of different body parts every day to make sure that you stay in good health.
For example, “I declare that my liver is working properly today. My pancreas produces the correct amount of insulin today. My blood pressure is 120/80 today. I declare that my heart functions normally all day today and so do my lungs. My gall bladder is blessed, and my immune system functions at its fullest capacity. My knees, hips, and other joints are pain-free today. My thyroid gland produces the right amount of whatever it is that a thyroid gland produces. My kidneys function in the perfection God created them for. My skin is clear and my vertebrae all line up properly without having to pay a chiropractor a bunch of money. My appendix does not burst or cause me trouble. My tonsils remain uninfected. My blood vessels do not have cholesterol buildups and my hair does not get split ends. My intestines function normally and my esophagus is blessed. My ears will not ring and I will not see funny little floaters in my eyes when I look at a bright sky. My sinuses remain clear. My feet do not swell or get blisters.”
But then one day you break a tooth munching an ice cube, and you suddenly realize – you never confessed life over your teeth that day! Then you start thinking about what the dental procedure will cost, and your stomach starts to hurt. Oops, you did not confess for your stomach’s well-being either in the confessions above! Do you see how this sort of thing can easily lead to bondage instead of freedom? Nothing in the confessions above is bad to say, and if you have the time to do it, you’re certainly not sinning. But if you think that you must name every body part you can think of every day, lest it develop a problem, you are actually operating out of fear, not faith! You are operating in Ridiculous Healing Confession Bondage.
It is like making a new ritual confession before you turn the key in your ignition to go somewhere. “I will not be T-boned by an SUV today. I will not be rear-ended by a convertible. I will not slip on black ice and ram into the car ahead of me. I will not hit any animals today. No drunk driver will come nigh my vehicle. No driver who is ignoring the road because he’s texting or talking on the phone shall collide with me. My car will not have a flat tire that will make it veer into the wrong lane.” And so on. You can’t possibly think of every potential disaster that could happen, and you don’t need to. Just believe that Psalm 91 applies to you (assuming that you meet its conditions). Likewise, you can believe that the Spirit of God who raised Christ from the dead imparts gives life to your mortal body (Romans 8:11) without having to mention all your body parts and specific things that might go wrong with them.
God wants you to have abundant life, and that means having a right balance of things so that you don’t go overboard in any one particular area. Affirming God’s Word with your mouth is important, but you can trust God to take care of you rather than trusting yourself to “confess away” every potential problem that your head can think up.