YOU ARE THE PROPHET OF YOUR LIFE
PART 4
BY KENNETH COPELAND
One of the most natural things we do in life is talk. In fact, long before most of us knew what we were doing, we were learning to talk. We started forming our first words, while we were still babies.
But there’s also something very supernatural about ability to talk. You and I are the only creatures of God made with the right to choose our own words and then speak them.
What is so supernatural about that?
Well, consider a parrot. A parrot has a tongue, as well as all the other equipment necessary to sound like a man. But a parrot’s tongue is hooked only to its body, therefore, it can only mimic sounds its hears. It cannot actually choose its own words and carry on a conversation.
You and I, however, being created in the image of God, were designed with our tongues connected to our spirits and souls, as well as our bodies. That means we have the ability to speak words that contain a creative, or supernatural, force that enables those same words to come to pass.
Consequently, each of us is the prophet of his own life. We set the course of our own future. Our health, our wealth, and our place in eternity is in our mouths. Everything about us has been, and will be; determined by the words we speak.
The challenge we face, then, is “What can we do to make sure our words are carving out a good life for us on the earth, and a future for us in heaven?”
YOU ARE THE CAPTAIN – YOU DECIDE!
To get an idea of just how powerful our words can be, let’s read James 3:2-8:
“If a man offends not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body. Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which tough they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm (rudder), whithersoever the (captain decides). Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasts great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity; so is the tongue among our members, that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tames, and has been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”
In verse 4 James talks about of great ship being turned by a small rudder. Now, this ship that James talked about is our earthly body. It is the vessel which contains our spirit. And while we all know how much trouble our bodies can give us, James explained that these five physical sense bodies of our can be turned, or guided, by our tongues.
James leaves no question as to the power we hold within our tongues, but that power can either work for us or it can work against us. Either way, we are the one who decide, because we are the captains of our own lives. Each of us stands at the helm and decides where his ship is going.
Jesus said in Matthew 12:37, “For by your words you shall be justified and by your words you shall be condemned.” So it is the tongue that sets the course for our lives.
There is no storm on life’s sea through which we cannot safely sail by proper use of the rudder that is in our mouths.
Our tongues can be a powerful tool used in our favor, they can also be an unruly and deadly force, causing our lives to be shipwrecked if we let them run out of control. Our only hope for taming them, and thereby charting a good course for our future, is the Word of God.
IT IS OUR WORD AGAINST GOD’S
As we have seen in this series, true success in life comes from putting God’s Word in our mouths and in our hearts. Matthew 12:34-35 says, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of the heart brings forth evil thing.”
If you and I are going to use the Word of God to navigate through this life, however, there are a couple of issues we need to settle first. To see what I mean, let’s look at James 3:13-16:
“Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descends not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.”
A key phrase that I want us to examine in this passage is “lie not against the truth.” (Verse 14)
Have you ever noticed we can wake up some mornings with every symptom of the flu, or maybe a head cold, and the first thing we want to do is tell someone all about it? We go looking for someone to get into agreement with us, “Yeah, you’re sick, all right.”
Or, how about those times when things are just not going our way? Maybe it a hairdo, or the family vacation or work at the office. Whatever it is, pressure just seems to keep building and building until we feel like we’re going to explode if we don’t say at least something about it.
Why do you think it’s so hard to keep our mouths shut in situations like that?
Jesus answered this in Mark 4. He warned that Satan comes to steal the Word of God from our hearts through persecutions, offense, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and list of other things. He uses anything and everything in this natural realm to stir up our flesh and get us to open our mouths.
So the issue comes down to: WHAT IS GOING TO COME OUT?
Only by getting hold of our tongues can the devil put anything on us or take anything from us. If he can get our tongues, then he can get the rest of us. All he has to do is get us to lie against the truth, which is God’s Word.
It is no surprise, then, that when we are under pressure from our flesh, being moved by what we see, or feel, or think, we tend to open our mouths and say things life, “I’m so unworthy!” “I’m so tired!” “I’m so broke!” “I’m so ugly!” “I’m never going anywhere in life!”
When the pressure is on, that’s when we really find out what’s on the inside of us, and it’s usually not the Word of God.
Yet, what we see, what we think and what we say does not change the truth of God’s Word. That’s why James called it lying against the truth, or lying against the Word.
The truth according to the Word says, “By (Jesus’) stripes you were healed.” (1 Peter 2:24) When we say, “I’m just so sick!” we are lying against the truth. We are giving the devil a foothold into our lives, and setting the course for a life of sickness.
If we say anything other than what the Word of God says about a situation, we are lying against the truth.
FACTS CHANGE - THE TRUTH DOES NOT
Another key phrase in James 3 that links our words to our success in life is found in verse 17, “without hypocrisy.” That is why it is not hypocrisy for us to have every flu symptom in the world, yet go around quoting God’s Word as our own and saying, “By His stripes I was healed. Healing is mine and I receive it now.”
Sure, people may look at us and say, “Well, that’s a lie, look at you, you’re sick. You are just a hypocrite!”
No. We are not going around declaring our physical health according to the Word in order to convince people there is nothing wrong with us. If were to do that, we would be lying.
We are confessing God’s Word and saying those things to change what’s wrong with our bodies. We are calling “those things that be not as though they were.” (Romans 4:17) God Almighty Himself does that.
Granted, the fact may be that we look sick, and that our bodies are showing symptoms of sickness. But that is not the truth of the matter. That’s not what God’s Word says about the situation.
What’s more, the truth, God’s Word, is eternal. It never changes. Facts, on the other hand, do change. And it’s the truth that changes them.
The symptoms of sickness are a fact. God’s Word is truth. Truth takes authority over facts and changes them.
HAVE YOU CONSIDERED JESUS?
I have seen it happen countless times in my own life. I get into a situation where God’s Word says one thing, but the facts that are staring me in the face say another.
How do we get those facts to change and line up with the truth of the Word?
Hebrews 2:18-3:1 (the Amplified Bible) tells us:
“For because He Himself (in His humanity) has suffered in being tempted (tested and tried) to run to the cry of (assist, relieve) those who are being tempted and tested and tried (and who therefore are being exposed to suffering). So then, brethren, consecrate and set apart for God, thoughtfully and attentively consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest Whom we confessed.”
When symptoms in your body scream, “You’re sick! You’re sick!” or when the figures in your checkbook scream, “You’re broke! You’re broke!” that is a good time to “consider Jesus.”
Thoughtfully and attentively consider Jesus, not the pain. Thoughtfully and attentively consider Jesus, not your bank account. Get your mind off your flesh, or the natural, and get it over on Him!
Consider Jesus, the One appointed and anointed by Almighty God to be High Priest of your confession, the One given full responsibility and all the resources of heaven to see that your words, His Word spoken out of your mouth, come to pass in the earth. CONSIDER HIM!
The Bible says Abraham “considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb” (Romans 4:19). That’s saying a lot when God promised that Abraham would have offspring as countless as the stars, and become the father of many nations.
How was Abraham able to believe God and consider not the natural circumstances that must have been screaming at him?
Romans 4:20-12 says, “He staggered not at the promise of God, being fully persuaded that, what God had promised, He was able to perform.”
Abraham had a promise. He had the Word of God. He had the wisdom of God. He had the truth of God on the matter.
Armed with the truth, Abraham changed the facts. He set his course. He went from Abram, a 100-year-old man with no descendants, to Abraham, father of many nations and offspring as numerous as the stars.
Today, you and I are among those descendants of Abraham. And like our father of faith, we have a promise from God. We have His Word. We have His wisdom. We have the truth, in every matter. With that truth we can set our course and change the facts. But those facts certainly won’t change until our tongues change.
So tame your tongue, fill your mouth with the Word of God, and then set your course for a life full of success.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
YOU ARE THE PROPHET OF YOUR LIFE
PART 3
BY KENNETH COPELAND
Ask any professional football player what he thinks about all the time, and he probably will say, “football!” That’s because most professional athletes devote their lives to their game. They eat, sleep and breathe what they do on the playing field. It is the primary focus of their lives.
The same could be said for just about any “professional.” The word “professional;” after all, usually refers to someone who had devoted his or her life to a particular career, whether it’s sports, music, medicine, law or whatever.
But have you ever thought of someone being a professional in terms of faith? Here’s what I mean.
As Christians, you and I should be readily recognized by people around us as “professional” believers. We should be so consumed with God and so devoted to God that everything we do is related to Him. Our daily walk in His Word and His Spirit should be what we think about and talk about all the time. It should be the primary focus of our lives.
What’s more, we should look to our faith as the source of our income, just as any “professional” looks at his or her “profession.”
Romans 1:17 tells us that “The just shall live by faith.” That means our faith is our very livelihood. It should be the source of our finances, the health of our bodies, the peace of our minds.
In short, our faith should be our profession, our focus in life.
WATCH WHAT YOU SAY
In Hebrews 3:1 we are instructed to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ (or the Anointed One) Jesus.”
The word translated as ‘profession” in that verse can also be translated as “confession.” God appointed and anointed Jesus to be High Priest over our confessions, or our words of faith. He is responsible for bringing our words to pass.
But if that were not enough, 1 Corinthians 1:4-5 also tells us that Jesus enriches our utterance. That is, He takes our words of faith and enriches them with His Anointing.
So no matter how we look at it, the words we speak carry the very creative force of Almighty God behind them. They will come to pass.
The question is, Do we want our words to come to pass?
You see, I’m not talking about those holy and inspiring words of faith and love we speak in church on Sunday mornings. No, the words I’m talking about are the ones that flow out of our mouths 24 hours a day.
It’s those words that slip out every time we step in front of a mirror and see a hairdo, or an extra 30 pounds of weight that we’re tired of dealing with. It’s ones that spew out when we’re driving in heavy traffic and someone cuts in front of us. Or those familiar ones that surface when we show the first symptoms of a cold or flu. It begins with those first words we speak!
Those are the words that have a major role in determining our future. And, most often, those are the ones we wish we had never said.
That’s why we need to focus on our heavenly calling as “professional” believers and consider Jesus, the Anointed Apostle and High Priest of our confession.
As we’ve already seen in this series of teachings, God created us to be the prophet of our own lives. Our destiny is in our mouths. It is our words, not anyone else’s, that determine our success or failure, in this life. (Romans 10:8-9) Our words either bring good things into our lives, or they bring evil things. (Matthew 12:34-37)
Either way, it is up to us to make the right confession.
WORDS THAT GIVE LIFE
Throughout the New Testament, we find teachings on four basic kinds of confessions. Understanding these confessions can help us be more effective as professional believers, by helping us to choose the right words in our day to day lives.
The first confession found in the New Testament is the confession of sin taught by John the Baptist and Jesus to the Jewish people in their day. This act of confession, however, is not what we know today as Christian repentance.
Actually, the confession of sin and water baptism that we read abut in Matthew 3 and Luke 3 was an act by the people of Israel under the Abrahamic, or Old Covenant.
Prior to Jesus going to the cross, the Jews knew what it was to confess their sins and repent, but their sins were only “covered” in atonement by the blood of an animal which was sacrificed once a year. It wasn’t until the sacrifice of Jesus’ blood that sin could actually be wiped out, and not just covered. (See Hebrews 10)
The second confession described in the New Testament, which applies to everyone, is the confession of a sinner. It is what we now know as the prayer of salvation.
In John 16, when Jesus told His disciples about the soon coming Holy Spirit, He explained that the Spirit would come to convict “the world “ of sin. But what were these sinners to do once convicted by the Spirit?
Romans 10:8-9 tells us, “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
Basically, the confession of a sinner under the New Covenant is “Jesus is Lord.” While that seems simple enough, man’s doctrines have crept in over the years and complicated the process of repentance and salvation.
When I was growing up, the church my parents and I attended was big on repenting and rededicating, repenting and rededicating. In some cases, as with myself, those people who were so busy repenting and rededicating had never been born again. They had never confessed Jesus as their Lord.
For example, as a teenager I would get around the other kids in that church who knew the Lord, particularly during church youth camps, and in that spiritual atmosphere I would feel like dirt. Before long, I’d get convicted and cry out, “Oh, God, I’m just a no good sinner. Oh, Lord, I’m such a sinner.”
I was sincere as I could be, but I still remained “a no good sinner.”
Why? Because all I had done was confess that I was nothing but a “no good sinner.”
So, must as soon as I got out of that atmosphere and onto the football field back at school, my “repentance” only lasted about 10 minutes, or until I got popped in the face with someone’s elbow.
Oh, I’d start feeling bad about it again. But, eventually, I would give up because I knew I couldn’t live like I should, and, or course, I couldn’t. I had never been born again. I had never confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior and didn’t until years later.
So the response of a sinner today is to believe in his or her heart and then confess, Jesus is Lord!
CONFESS YOUR SIN, AND THEN GO ON
As a child, I knew my dad loved the Lord, and to this day, I can still hear him, in my mind, praying, especially before our meals. But there was something interesting about the words he prayed, and the way he prayed them.
For years, every time my dad prayed out loud, he always ended with, “and forgive us of all our sins.” He always said it in a way that made you think, “Man, it’s going to take God most of the day to forgive us for what we’ve done.”
Well, when I was about 35 years old and had been in the ministry a few years, my dad and I were sitting at the breakfast table one morning, and he ended his prayer with, “and forgive us of all our sins.”
When he finished, I said, “daddy, what did you do?”
He said, ”What are you talking about?”
“You repented of sin,” I replied. “Is there something we need to talk about?”
By then, he knew I was kidding with him and he kind of laughed, but suddenly he saw for the first time how he had prayed those words for so long that he didn’t even realize what he had been saying.
Why did he think it necessary to pray those words to begin with?
Sin-consciousness.
Like my dad, generations of believers have been raised in the Church with a great awareness of sin. (See Hebrews 9:28 to 10:2) As a result of focusing more on its sin and less on the righteousness received by the blood of Jesus, the Church has lost sight of Scriptures such as 1 John 5-7:
“This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Today, the Church is full of Christians who have no idea how to confess their sins once they do step out of fellowship with the Father, which is our third New Testament confession.
Consequently, a lot of Christians have the mind-set that they have to spend a lot, or most, of their prayer time confessing and repenting of their sins. Many even believe they have to confess their sins and repent before they can pray.
Now, granted, if you have sin in your life, get it out, confess it, repent of it, and get rid of it. Once you do, stand on 1 John 1:9, which says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
In other words, don’t go around with sin-consciousness, confessing your sins with idle words.
According to 1 John 1 and 2, when we as believers are out of fellowship with the Father, that is, when we sin, we know it. That’s the time to get rid of it. Immediately! After all, 1 John 2:1 assures us that “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Don’t run from Him when you sin, run to Him.
“Yes, but brother Copeland, I just don’t feel forgiven. I don’t feel like the righteousness of God in Jesus.
It doesn’t matter how we feel!
The moment we confessed our sin is the moment we got rid of it. By faith, we spewed it out of our mouths and God was faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us.
So, now, as far as the feelings of guilt and condemnation are concerned, they are simply symptoms of the sin that was wiped away by the blood of Jesus. All we have to do is treat them as though they were wiped away, too, because they were. (Romans 8:1)
PUTTING WORDS TO FAITH
The fourth and final type of confession found in the New Testament is the confession of our faith in God’s Word, our faith in Christ, or His Anointing, our faith in the Father, and our faith in the faithfulness of Jesus as our High Priest.
All that may seem like a mouthful, but it basically comes down to this: Whatever you and I receive from God, we receive it by confession. And if you think about it, that’s what being the prophet of your own life is all about.
Our confession, the words we constantly speak day after day, determine all that we will ever receive from God, whether it’s salvation, physical healing, peace or financial prosperity.
What’s more, for the rest of our eternal existence, this principle of faith working hand in hand with our confession will never change.
In 32 years of ministry, I’ve watched many believers struggle with “trying” to have faith, “trying to believe,” “trying to receive from God.” There are even whole doctrines built around the idea that it’s hard to receive from God.
Yet, Jesus told His disciples in Mark 11:22, “Have faith in God.” Or, as one translation puts it, “Have the faith of God.” In verse 23, He went on to explain how that faith process works.
“Whosoever shall “say” to this mountain, be removed, and be cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he says shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he says.”
Do you see the process?
Faith operates by believing and saying, and saying, and saying. It is our confession, or words of faith, that brings possession. We saw in Romans 10:10, “With the heart man believes, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” And in Matthew 12:34-35, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Anything and everything we could ever need or want was bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus. And as far as God is concerned, it all belonged to us the day Jesus was raised from the dead. The new birth, healing, deliverance from every demonic oppression, all of it, belonged to us the day Jesus came out of the grave. It is all ours, if we will but believe in our hearts and around “confessing” something just because we want it.
Psalm 107:20 says, “He sent his word and healed them.”
To possess healing, or anything from God, we first have to lay hold of the Word as ours. And we lay hold of the Word by receiving it by faith, and then confessing it. That is the process that got us saved. It is the process that will get us anything else God has promised.
Remember, once we lay hold of the promises of God with our faith and our confession, that is when Jesus’ enriching Anointing and ministry come into play. That is why the Apostle Paul told Timothy that “words of faith” nourish, but idle words starve the spirit and make it weak. (1 Timothy 4:6-7)
Every time we confess God’s Word, every time we speak our faith, Jesus’ enrichment ministry adds another grain of faith; another bit of anointing, to our faith and to our words.
So let’s do what Hebrews 10:23 says, let’s “hold fast the profession of our faith.” It is our confession of faith, after all, that makes the difference between win or lose, gain or loss, life or death. It is our standard of living.
OUR CONFESSION IS OUR PROFESSION!
PART 3
BY KENNETH COPELAND
Ask any professional football player what he thinks about all the time, and he probably will say, “football!” That’s because most professional athletes devote their lives to their game. They eat, sleep and breathe what they do on the playing field. It is the primary focus of their lives.
The same could be said for just about any “professional.” The word “professional;” after all, usually refers to someone who had devoted his or her life to a particular career, whether it’s sports, music, medicine, law or whatever.
But have you ever thought of someone being a professional in terms of faith? Here’s what I mean.
As Christians, you and I should be readily recognized by people around us as “professional” believers. We should be so consumed with God and so devoted to God that everything we do is related to Him. Our daily walk in His Word and His Spirit should be what we think about and talk about all the time. It should be the primary focus of our lives.
What’s more, we should look to our faith as the source of our income, just as any “professional” looks at his or her “profession.”
Romans 1:17 tells us that “The just shall live by faith.” That means our faith is our very livelihood. It should be the source of our finances, the health of our bodies, the peace of our minds.
In short, our faith should be our profession, our focus in life.
WATCH WHAT YOU SAY
In Hebrews 3:1 we are instructed to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ (or the Anointed One) Jesus.”
The word translated as ‘profession” in that verse can also be translated as “confession.” God appointed and anointed Jesus to be High Priest over our confessions, or our words of faith. He is responsible for bringing our words to pass.
But if that were not enough, 1 Corinthians 1:4-5 also tells us that Jesus enriches our utterance. That is, He takes our words of faith and enriches them with His Anointing.
So no matter how we look at it, the words we speak carry the very creative force of Almighty God behind them. They will come to pass.
The question is, Do we want our words to come to pass?
You see, I’m not talking about those holy and inspiring words of faith and love we speak in church on Sunday mornings. No, the words I’m talking about are the ones that flow out of our mouths 24 hours a day.
It’s those words that slip out every time we step in front of a mirror and see a hairdo, or an extra 30 pounds of weight that we’re tired of dealing with. It’s ones that spew out when we’re driving in heavy traffic and someone cuts in front of us. Or those familiar ones that surface when we show the first symptoms of a cold or flu. It begins with those first words we speak!
Those are the words that have a major role in determining our future. And, most often, those are the ones we wish we had never said.
That’s why we need to focus on our heavenly calling as “professional” believers and consider Jesus, the Anointed Apostle and High Priest of our confession.
As we’ve already seen in this series of teachings, God created us to be the prophet of our own lives. Our destiny is in our mouths. It is our words, not anyone else’s, that determine our success or failure, in this life. (Romans 10:8-9) Our words either bring good things into our lives, or they bring evil things. (Matthew 12:34-37)
Either way, it is up to us to make the right confession.
WORDS THAT GIVE LIFE
Throughout the New Testament, we find teachings on four basic kinds of confessions. Understanding these confessions can help us be more effective as professional believers, by helping us to choose the right words in our day to day lives.
The first confession found in the New Testament is the confession of sin taught by John the Baptist and Jesus to the Jewish people in their day. This act of confession, however, is not what we know today as Christian repentance.
Actually, the confession of sin and water baptism that we read abut in Matthew 3 and Luke 3 was an act by the people of Israel under the Abrahamic, or Old Covenant.
Prior to Jesus going to the cross, the Jews knew what it was to confess their sins and repent, but their sins were only “covered” in atonement by the blood of an animal which was sacrificed once a year. It wasn’t until the sacrifice of Jesus’ blood that sin could actually be wiped out, and not just covered. (See Hebrews 10)
The second confession described in the New Testament, which applies to everyone, is the confession of a sinner. It is what we now know as the prayer of salvation.
In John 16, when Jesus told His disciples about the soon coming Holy Spirit, He explained that the Spirit would come to convict “the world “ of sin. But what were these sinners to do once convicted by the Spirit?
Romans 10:8-9 tells us, “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
Basically, the confession of a sinner under the New Covenant is “Jesus is Lord.” While that seems simple enough, man’s doctrines have crept in over the years and complicated the process of repentance and salvation.
When I was growing up, the church my parents and I attended was big on repenting and rededicating, repenting and rededicating. In some cases, as with myself, those people who were so busy repenting and rededicating had never been born again. They had never confessed Jesus as their Lord.
For example, as a teenager I would get around the other kids in that church who knew the Lord, particularly during church youth camps, and in that spiritual atmosphere I would feel like dirt. Before long, I’d get convicted and cry out, “Oh, God, I’m just a no good sinner. Oh, Lord, I’m such a sinner.”
I was sincere as I could be, but I still remained “a no good sinner.”
Why? Because all I had done was confess that I was nothing but a “no good sinner.”
So, must as soon as I got out of that atmosphere and onto the football field back at school, my “repentance” only lasted about 10 minutes, or until I got popped in the face with someone’s elbow.
Oh, I’d start feeling bad about it again. But, eventually, I would give up because I knew I couldn’t live like I should, and, or course, I couldn’t. I had never been born again. I had never confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior and didn’t until years later.
So the response of a sinner today is to believe in his or her heart and then confess, Jesus is Lord!
CONFESS YOUR SIN, AND THEN GO ON
As a child, I knew my dad loved the Lord, and to this day, I can still hear him, in my mind, praying, especially before our meals. But there was something interesting about the words he prayed, and the way he prayed them.
For years, every time my dad prayed out loud, he always ended with, “and forgive us of all our sins.” He always said it in a way that made you think, “Man, it’s going to take God most of the day to forgive us for what we’ve done.”
Well, when I was about 35 years old and had been in the ministry a few years, my dad and I were sitting at the breakfast table one morning, and he ended his prayer with, “and forgive us of all our sins.”
When he finished, I said, “daddy, what did you do?”
He said, ”What are you talking about?”
“You repented of sin,” I replied. “Is there something we need to talk about?”
By then, he knew I was kidding with him and he kind of laughed, but suddenly he saw for the first time how he had prayed those words for so long that he didn’t even realize what he had been saying.
Why did he think it necessary to pray those words to begin with?
Sin-consciousness.
Like my dad, generations of believers have been raised in the Church with a great awareness of sin. (See Hebrews 9:28 to 10:2) As a result of focusing more on its sin and less on the righteousness received by the blood of Jesus, the Church has lost sight of Scriptures such as 1 John 5-7:
“This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Today, the Church is full of Christians who have no idea how to confess their sins once they do step out of fellowship with the Father, which is our third New Testament confession.
Consequently, a lot of Christians have the mind-set that they have to spend a lot, or most, of their prayer time confessing and repenting of their sins. Many even believe they have to confess their sins and repent before they can pray.
Now, granted, if you have sin in your life, get it out, confess it, repent of it, and get rid of it. Once you do, stand on 1 John 1:9, which says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
In other words, don’t go around with sin-consciousness, confessing your sins with idle words.
According to 1 John 1 and 2, when we as believers are out of fellowship with the Father, that is, when we sin, we know it. That’s the time to get rid of it. Immediately! After all, 1 John 2:1 assures us that “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Don’t run from Him when you sin, run to Him.
“Yes, but brother Copeland, I just don’t feel forgiven. I don’t feel like the righteousness of God in Jesus.
It doesn’t matter how we feel!
The moment we confessed our sin is the moment we got rid of it. By faith, we spewed it out of our mouths and God was faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us.
So, now, as far as the feelings of guilt and condemnation are concerned, they are simply symptoms of the sin that was wiped away by the blood of Jesus. All we have to do is treat them as though they were wiped away, too, because they were. (Romans 8:1)
PUTTING WORDS TO FAITH
The fourth and final type of confession found in the New Testament is the confession of our faith in God’s Word, our faith in Christ, or His Anointing, our faith in the Father, and our faith in the faithfulness of Jesus as our High Priest.
All that may seem like a mouthful, but it basically comes down to this: Whatever you and I receive from God, we receive it by confession. And if you think about it, that’s what being the prophet of your own life is all about.
Our confession, the words we constantly speak day after day, determine all that we will ever receive from God, whether it’s salvation, physical healing, peace or financial prosperity.
What’s more, for the rest of our eternal existence, this principle of faith working hand in hand with our confession will never change.
In 32 years of ministry, I’ve watched many believers struggle with “trying” to have faith, “trying to believe,” “trying to receive from God.” There are even whole doctrines built around the idea that it’s hard to receive from God.
Yet, Jesus told His disciples in Mark 11:22, “Have faith in God.” Or, as one translation puts it, “Have the faith of God.” In verse 23, He went on to explain how that faith process works.
“Whosoever shall “say” to this mountain, be removed, and be cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he says shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he says.”
Do you see the process?
Faith operates by believing and saying, and saying, and saying. It is our confession, or words of faith, that brings possession. We saw in Romans 10:10, “With the heart man believes, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” And in Matthew 12:34-35, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Anything and everything we could ever need or want was bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus. And as far as God is concerned, it all belonged to us the day Jesus was raised from the dead. The new birth, healing, deliverance from every demonic oppression, all of it, belonged to us the day Jesus came out of the grave. It is all ours, if we will but believe in our hearts and around “confessing” something just because we want it.
Psalm 107:20 says, “He sent his word and healed them.”
To possess healing, or anything from God, we first have to lay hold of the Word as ours. And we lay hold of the Word by receiving it by faith, and then confessing it. That is the process that got us saved. It is the process that will get us anything else God has promised.
Remember, once we lay hold of the promises of God with our faith and our confession, that is when Jesus’ enriching Anointing and ministry come into play. That is why the Apostle Paul told Timothy that “words of faith” nourish, but idle words starve the spirit and make it weak. (1 Timothy 4:6-7)
Every time we confess God’s Word, every time we speak our faith, Jesus’ enrichment ministry adds another grain of faith; another bit of anointing, to our faith and to our words.
So let’s do what Hebrews 10:23 says, let’s “hold fast the profession of our faith.” It is our confession of faith, after all, that makes the difference between win or lose, gain or loss, life or death. It is our standard of living.
OUR CONFESSION IS OUR PROFESSION!
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