Say What
The words that come out of your mouth control your destiny. They affect the realm of the spirit. They bring life or bring death. They can bring healing to your body or keep you sick. In fact, your confession of Christ or your failure to confess Christ out of your mouth determines whether you see heaven or hell when you die!
Proverbs 18:21:
Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
Jesus said that what you speak, believing, you will get. His statement in Mark 11:23 is not restricted to good things. Jesus did not say that you would receive whatever you said believing as long as it was something good. Like a car, this principle also runs in reverse! If you believe the wrong thing and speak the wrong thing, you are guaranteed to receive the wrong thing. You can have faith in God, believe His words, and get what He wants you to have, but you can also have faith in the devil, believe his words, and get what he wants you to have.
There are two principles here. The first, in Mark 11:23, is that you can speak to your obstacles in faith and make them leave. If you can speak to a mountain, it is surely easier to speak to cancer, heart trouble, etc., and command it to leave your body. You have the authority in Christ to do exactly that. If you believe this, you will speak to your bodily trouble, and it will have to obey your words.
We have usually emphasized death being in the power of your tongue as something negative that you use to hurt yourself. However, you should be glad that death is in the power of your tongue! You can speak DEATH to cancer or any other disease and kill it with faith-filled words!
Few Christians walk in the light of this fact, but we should raise our walk to meet the Bible standard rather than lowering the Bible standard to match our walk.
The second principle, in Mark 11:24, involves receiving from God in prayer. This is another way to be healed. You believe that Jesus has paid the price for your healing and that healing is rightfully yours as a Christian. God doesn’t have to do anything new; He already did all He needed to do when He sacrificed His Son. Now you receive this gift just as you received the gift of salvation from hell. If you believe that you receive it when you pray, you will have it, regardless of whether you notice any difference immediately.
The angels of heaven stand ready to back your words. In Psalm 103:20 we see that angels obey God’s words. If you speak God’s words out of your mouth, the angels go to work to make sure that they come to pass. However, if you speak something else out of your mouth, the angels are handcuffed, and you can license Satan’s forces to work against you!
In Jeremiah 1:12, God says, “I will hasten my word to perform it.” The Hebrew word translated hasten in the King James means to watch out for, not just to hasten. In other words, God is watching over His word to make sure that it comes to pass quickly. But where will that word come from? Out of your mouth! God’s words are in the earth, but they do not benefit you until you speak them in faith.
You could not be saved until you confessed Jesus with your mouth. Romans 10:9-10 says that you believe with your heart and confess with your mouth unto salvation. It works the same way with healing. You believe in your heart that God bought your body with the same atonement that saved you from sin (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Then you speak that with your mouth, and healing manifests in your body.
Note that Luke 12:8-9 says that your words decide whether or not Jesus confesses you before the angels! Your words determine your eternal fate! You are justified or condemned by your words (Matthew 12:37). Your words also determine your fate in this life.
How powerful can words be? Words made everything there is! Hebrews 11:3 says, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Just as God’s words framed this world, your words frame your world. So it is important not to get careless with your words. Proverbs 13:3 warns, “He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction.”
It is important that your words line up with God’s Word. According to God, you were healed by the stripes of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24). So it is always correct to say, “I am healed by Jesus’ stripes.” You agree with God when you say that. You do not agree with God if you say, “I am sick and it doesn’t look as if things will get any better.” You do not even agree with God if you say, “I believe that God is going to heal me.” (That puts off into the future something that God has already provided for you!) You want to agree with God!
You are not lying when you say that you were healed by the stripes of Jesus, even though your body may not bear witness with this yet! You would be lying if you denied being sick. There is a difference. You are not denying that there is a problem in your body. You are simply stating a higher truth (your redemption) that will overrule the current physical facts about your body.
You may sometimes act like an unbeliever. You are still correct to state that you are dead to sin and living unto righteousness (1 Peter 2:24) even when you just acted like the devil incarnate. You can’t deny that you sinned and that the physical evidence would seem to indicate that you are not even saved. But there is a higher truth that gives you victory over sin, and you are correct to say so. The more you affirm to yourself what you have in Christ and who you are in Christ, the more you will believe it and act like it. (If you want a good spiritual exercise, read Who You Are and What You Have and continually confess those things. It will improve your life. It certainly improved mine.)
It’s easy to say, “I have received my healing” around church people of like precious faith. The real test is what you say outside of church! If you don’t dare say that you have received your healing by faith, you really haven’t received it. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34-35). If you won’t say it, you don’t really have it.
2 Corinthians 4:13 is a good indicator of who is and isn’t in faith for healing. If you believe something, you will say it. If you won’t say it, you don’t really believe it yet. Listen to what someone says and you will soon find out what is in his heart, as he will speak out of the abundance of his heart. If you are “hedging your bets” by waiting until you see the manifestation of your healing before you will tell anyone that you have it so that you won’t be embarrassed if it doesn’t work, you really haven’t believed that you received anything yet. Faith is being sure that you have something you can’t yet see.
Answer this question as quickly as you can if you’re a believer: Are you saved? I’m betting it didn’t take you any thought to answer that and that you just said, “Yes.” It’s real to you. You know that you know. That’s real faith. It’s real faith if you can answer “Are you healed?” the same way. If you can’t, you are really not in faith yet.
A person who has truly received something that redemption has paid for will be in “praise mode” rather than “request mode.” In general, it is good for you to live a life of praise and thanksgiving, as this is God’s explicit will for you. (“Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.) You may not have a full revelation of God’s will for you in every area of your life, but you have a plain revelation of His will when it comes to this! I want to be in His will, don’t you? Living in praise and thanksgiving mode will help you live a victorious life.
Psalm 107:1-2 says, “O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;”. So here’s a quick quiz that almost everyone in Word circles will flunk. If you are the redeemed of the Lord, what should you be saying? (a) The word “so,” (b) That you are the redeemed of the Lord, (c) That God is good and His mercy endures forever. Most faith people “know” that the redeemed are to SAY that they are redeemed (choice b), but that isn’t the context. Choice (c) is correct within the context when you read both the verses in this passage. In other words, you are not just to confess that you are redeemed (which is not praise to God, though it’s still beneficial to do that), you are to praise God for His goodness and mercy.
Your words can corrupt not only your success in life, but also your physical body! In fact, the words that come out of your mouth will defile you more than the food that you put into your mouth (Matthew 15:11). Speaking bad things about others will eventually make you sicker than living on soda, potato chips and chocolate bars. James 3:2-6 contains a strong warning about the way that your words can set on fire the very course of nature in your life. But James also says that if you can control your tongue, you can rule your entire body. Don’t let anyone talk you out of this glorious fact – you can rule your entire body with your mouth! In other words, you can make it obey you.
Think of it! If you speak right things with your tongue, you can stop yourself from getting sick. Kind words can even promote health in others. (See Proverbs 12:18.) If you speak evil with your tongue, you can make yourself sick! This is no great revelation to most modern doctors, who have documented the links between bad attitudes and illness, but this point seems to be lost on many Christians today. (They wouldn’t say some of the things they say if they really believed James!)
James also said that no man can tame the tongue. Does this mean we give up and let our tongue become the local sewer? No! There is a way to tame your tongue, but you cannot do it in your own natural strength. It’s simple. You lay up God’s Word in your heart. Jesus explained this principle in Luke 6:45. Whatever is in your heart will come out. So the idea is to put the right things into your heart so that the right things will come out of your mouth.
I consider it significant that Jesus has a sword in His mouth, not in His hands (Revelation 1:16, Revelation 19:21).
We are to hold fast our profession (what we say that agrees with God – the Greek word is homologeo, to say the same thing) without wavering (Hebrews 10:23). Many people forfeit their healing by speaking against it. (“Shucks, it doesn’t look like that prayer worked after all!”) It must be possible to waver because we are commanded not to do it. If we hold fast to God’s Word, allowing only what agrees with it to escape our lips, we will have whatever we are speaking. Many people throw away their healings by wavering.
You may have THOUGHTS that disagree with the Word, and that alone won’t stop anything from happening. Jesus had thoughts that didn’t agree with the Word when the devil spoke those thoughts to Him, but He allowed only what was written in the Word to be His answers. Jesus didn’t say that you would have what you THINK; He said you would have what you SAY (Mark 11:23). Thoughts that remain unspoken have no power. Death and life are in the power of your tongue, not your neurons (Proverbs 18:21).
This is not strictly a New Testament idea. Joshua 1:7-8 makes it clear that this was an Old Testament practice as well – at least it was supposed to be!
This takes time. There is no shortcut. You must study God’s Word and reflect upon it. Only then will it fill your heart and come out of your mouth.
The good news is that this works automatically. Try it and see! The more you put God’s Word in your heart, the more it will just come out of your mouth naturally in the face of adversity. You won’t have to “work it up.”
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