This literary piece will not prove comprehensive to the subject of the power of the tongue and the part that confession makes in living by faith. However, I have included footnotes that reveal related Scriptures for personal study. I also have published a complementary web site you can access.[1] I only author this book to contribute to the body of knowledge that already exists on the importance of a disciplined and proactive use of Bible-based confessions of faith as part of your prayer life.
Other men and women of God have written on this subject with great skill. They have tapped incredible Bible-based wisdoms to help growing Christians make important changes in the use of the mouth and tongue in glorifying God with corresponding fruitfulness. I highly recommend that the readers access other literary works on the subject and submit their mouth and heart to the ways of God expressed clearly in the Scriptures.
It is true I make challenging comments about certain attitudes and theologically-sounding mentalities and acknowledge the debates that take place on related subjects. However, I do not desire or intend to color outside the lines of foundational doctrine. My main desire is to highlight, what seems to me, to be the clear message and the undeniable model in plants. I feel safe, in spite of the existence of complexities and abuses related to this book’s theme, that no contradictions exist between the God of the Bible and the God of botanical creation. God’s ways are often more clearly seen when we begin to understand the things that are made.[2]
Truly, death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.[3]
In light of the overall theme, I do have an extended message, however, to four kinds of people, people I know exist in the body of Christ. I have met them. They are the patronizer, the pretender, the undiscerning critic, and the habitual skeptic.
First, the patronizers would be those persons who passively, and sometimes actively, belittle Bible-based teaching on the tongue and the subject of faith and, therefore, do not take it seriously. They only tolerate these vital truths with shallow mental recognition, treating them like mere quotes from inspirational speeches at best. They acknowledge the general wisdom gleaned from their pastor or other spiritual leaders on the subject to be sure, but they do not actually reach out and embrace such truths. They might be along for the ride, but personal changes and empowerment for godly and fruitful living is probably not their priority and, therefore, is not their experience.
This book calls patronizers to an awakening.
The pretenders will agree with these truths but only make efforts to practice “positive confessions,” sometimes with great energy, especially when they are in church and others are watching. This hides them behind yet another mask, one more religious practice that makes them feel like they are jumping through all the right hoops. They find it convenient to make confession of God’s Word from their mouth, but difficult to make one from their very life. Their confessions are more like expressions of magic to address issues about which they are in denial anyway, instead of God’s words that proactively and genuinely tackle serious life issues and that abundantly proceed from a believing heart. Still present in pretenders are abuses of the tongue like gossip, exaggeration, name calling, and derivative profanity and little desire to get a better grip on this area of their life. They lack an authenticity generally and, if push came to shove, we would know where they stand.
This book calls pretenders to authenticity.
The undiscerning critics, sometimes, sadly enough, spiritual leaders, have taken swipes at the vital principles of the use of the mouth as it relates to faith and prayer and even made public efforts to bring it down altogether. They have made fun of the blab it and grab it gospel and the name it and claim it theologies (Are belittlements that rhyme more theologically convincing?), offering no real alternative anchored in Biblical principle. However, for all of this and more, they (and all critics) are to be thanked. Mostly, because their criticisms have pressured those who have loved and owned such Bible-based principles to dig deeper into the Scriptures and evaluate their motives. This delivers something authentic to people who are looking for principled ways to serve God with a genuine desire to be effective prayer contributors in their generation.
Being a critic of any kind is a heady thing in which to engage. I even take the risk in these paragraphs. But, honestly, it is not difficult to find things wrong in life, mostly because of the presence of human element, for we all see through a glass darkly. Being constructive with criticism where abuses and distortions have been apparent is acceptable, but espousing a criticism characterized by foolishness, cynicism, and void of Biblical alternative is ecclesiastically unacceptable. Throw out the bath water, but keep the baby.
This book calls all critics to Bible-driven discretion.
I am reminded of the man who gave the Christian doctor, a friend of mine, a hard time about spiritual issues of God’s supernatural dynamics. The medical doctor believed in the interventions of a loving God in the affairs of men and women and many times found the opportunity to pray for others. These two men conversed periodically during breaks on the job at the local medical clinic about various issues. The one man would always say something to the effect of, “Well, Doctor, I just don’t believe in that.” The dedicated Christian doctor, fed up with the ever present skepticism finally had enough and said, “Then what do you believe?”
The Christian doctor’s life abounded with numerous testimonials of God’s compassion toward various people whom the doctor told about the promises of God. As God led him, he ended up calling on the Lord on behalf of many, resulting in transformed lives.
On the other hand, the Christian skeptic, void of an engaging faith in the Word of God, had little or nothing to tell, pray, declare, or confess, and his world echoed the emptiness of his habitual skepticism.[4] He does not have to worry about things resulting in answered prayer; after all, it would violate his belief system. Or should I say his unbelief system.
Is he relieved by such fruitlessness?
This kind of skeptic can be pleased that interventions in the lives and affairs of human beings based on God’s Word will not so much as be a personal bother, for they will never be his experience outside of God’s mercy to awaken him from his offensive slumber. His mouth is glued shut by unbelief, and he can only find satisfaction in how much he knows about things intellectually connected to the Bible. He is this generation’s painted peony bush—full of the Word of God and dying.[5]
This book calls habitual skeptics to a change of heart and mind.
My challenge to the reader is to find out for yourself the truths relative to the theme of this book[6] and ask God to open your eyes so you might see what God has for you. Your own Bible will be your greatest resource for this endeavor. And then put it into practice. Enjoy a faith characterized by the presence of corresponding heartfelt and verbal activity.
I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of why certain prayers go seemingly unanswered or why struggle and suffering seem to characterize even the most faithful.
But listen closely.
I am not willing to concede that the complexities of life are a witness against God’s promises or God’s Word; just like I am not willing to concede that a severe storm pounding relentlessly on a field of soybeans should cause those plants to stop releasing water from their stomata and give up on this year’s harvest.
I am also not so cruel or foolish as to conclude that individuals who pray perseveringly for turnarounds in their lives—and yet seemingly fall short of obtaining intervening solutions—are always void of faith. My life and your life in Christ will always arrive at various challenge points demanding that our faith be evaluated and adjusted by Biblical infusions and Holy Spirit stirrings, which guide us toward the next steps to be taken.
I am also not without the knowledge of the incredible value of struggle that contributes to much needed personal character development. However, I am not one who believes that struggle automatically creates character. The main question will always be, “Do I have a grace about me which finds an overcoming value when struggling is my experience?” Only when one can answer yes to this question can we expect that God’s inner developments, by that grace, can become a reality.
And I do not deny the amazing grace I witness on those who face years and years of complex struggles.
However, in some circles, much of our teaching related to struggles is not about how near, but how far away God’s solutions are. There seems to still exist in much of our thinking and our theology a subtle presupposition of impossibility. I am much more motivated with the Bible-based notion that solutions for my real-world problems are not only in Christ and His wisdom but are so near me they are in my heart and my mouth through the presence of His Word and the faith that Word works in me.[7] We serve a great God with precious promises, so to turn His solutions and salvations for life into something impossible or far away relegates active faith in Him to a remote consideration instead of an embraceable joy.
The kind of faith I speak of and hope to encourage actually quenches the fiery darts of the wicked one.[8] This faith truly believes God rewards those who diligently seek Him.[9] This faith believes and therefore speaks.[10] This faith believes it has received.[11]
You and I, with an overcoming sense of Bible-based faith, are more likely to take on the struggles of life if we know just how near God and His salvations for life are, namely, in our hearts and our mouths, that is, the Word of faith.[12] But with the premise that God and His salvations are far away and rarely attainable, all our struggles can seem vain. Or we default to the perception that those struggles are goals that God must have had for us all along. It could be, in most cases, that’s just a religious excuse to disengage because we’re not comfortable with the process.
To be guilty of faithlessness in a compassionate and intervening God, all we have to do is omit talking about Him and His interventions. It would be akin to the fact that our culture demands that God not be talked about or honored in our public schools, and then we’re surprised things seem to be coming apart. Why are we surprised that intervention testimonials are non-existent in some of our churches, when in those places the subject is never talked about at a Biblical level of hope and anticipation in the first place?
We are much more likely to give ourselves to character building struggle—ever moving forward in an overcoming spirit—if we understand just how possible, even probable, solutions are in God. Believing that all things are possible with a loving God makes the probability of such things equally plausible.
If the church can successfully take God’s promises from possible to probable, then we can become contributors to building overcoming faith during times of struggle. We will then begin to see in all of us the authentic development of character—and listen to this—coupled with the testimony of equally authentic results of God’s power to answer the prayers of His people. This would make us cases in point of Jesus’ many audacious promises about prayer.
Are we really as comfortable as it seems with being exceptions to Jesus’ prayer promises instead of examples? That is a comfort zone from which we must all escape.
I like the daring Argentinean preacher who teaches on evangelism.[13] He encourages Christians to offer prayer for others. But he teaches that we should only promise to pray on one condition, that the person requesting the prayer promises to call us when things change. This is taking the audacious promises about answered prayer to the real world, to the marketplace, without the apologies we often cloak our prayer theologies in so as to make the promises of God more palatable for an unbelieving world, as if we should join them and not them us.
This discussion makes me wonder just how many prayers are abandoned because we have contented ourselves with only one side of the equation, namely, character development or inner growth. With risk of being misunderstood, I challenge us to simply quit with the either/or mentality. Our witness of Christ’s involvement in our lives can glorify God in both our personal development and the fact that we can give testimony to answered prayer. Both provide evidence of our discipleship, an evidence that indicates we are growing and developing, and an evidence characterized by supernatural interventions.
In almost all of life’s dynamics when the “either/or” mentality prevails, you can only count, in general, on two possibilities: either this or that. On the other hand, the visionary and broader mentality of “both/and” unleashes the exponential growth of numerous possibilities. God addresses and provides for His people through manifold wisdoms,[14] so there is no reason to abandon the Scriptures at any level.
When the struggle of seemingly unanswered prayer stares us in the face, we then claim personal growth and development, which I do not deny and will even encourage. But oftentimes, our natural inclination is to give up on the outer workings; after all, we have been measuring the results, and there just doesn’t seem to be any, so we will just believe that God is doing some inner workings and be satisfied with that.
And, of course, He is doing inner workings.
But do I give up on the outer fruit of answered prayer, which helps to serve as additional evidence of my discipleship, or do I stay engaged in all the processes of God, embracing all He has called me to honor believing that both inner and outer fruit are contributing factors to my ultimate conformity to Christ?
In those times when it looks like an extreme pruning[15] has taken place, is that God’s way to make life unbearable, or is that the time we start over again with drinking Him and His Word into our lives with renewed dedication and focus? We put so much attention on what has been cut back that we forget what new and exciting opportunities now exist for re-establishing our lives in His Word.
At this point, we once again offer to our world both new and developing character that reflects our Lord Jesus on the one hand, plus an influential life of victory-based faith that does effective damage to the kingdom of Satan on the other. It also brings with it testimony after testimony of God’s intervening activity in our lives and the lives of those we touch.
A pruning is the picture of a plant with only one thing left to do—to drink in large amounts of water with renewed vigor and intensity. Whatever that pruning is theologically or practically, it points to only one priority: drink in God’s Word, drink some more, and then drink some more. At the very least, it means we experience the grace of starting over, and all the vital processes begin again as new leaves are formed and the transpiration process of returning God’s Word to Him continues. God promises it will not return void but will accomplish that which pleases Him. That never changes.
We can always be assured that God’s work in a planting of the Lord inevitably results in growth, even when life’s climate is fogged with various perplexities that our human mind cannot navigate.
However, the bottom line here is, whatever the circumstances, your faithfulness to continually declare God’s Word in prayer is certainly not void in heaven nor voiced in vain on earth.
The voice said, “Cry out!”
And he said, “What shall I cry?”
“All flesh is grass,
And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.”
Isaiah 40:6-8
Abide in Me, and I in you,
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
unless it abides in the vine, neither can you,
unless you abide in Me.
John 15:4
For as the earth brings forth its bud,
As the garden causes the things that
are sown in it to spring forth,
So the Lord God will cause
righteousness and praise to spring
forth before all the nations.
Isaiah 61:11
[1] http://www.SoShallMyWordBe.com. (This website no longer exists. This blog contains the book in its entirety and this blog post represents the last chapter of the book)
[2] Romans 1:20
[3] Proverbs 18:21
[4] I use the term habitual to make a difference between those who have chosen over time to make skepticism their behavioral choice and those who have a natural struggle with skepticism but, with the help of God, are learning to overcome or navigate it with Biblical wisdom.
[5] Isaiah 1:30, an oak whose leaf fades; a garden without water
[6] One of my concerns is that various readers have pigeonholed or stereotyped this book solely on its subject matter, mostly because influential others have been overheard to say something derogatory over anything inclusive of the theme of this book. I don’t feel a need to defend leaders or movements who may need to shore up some of their theology, an exercise which would do all leaders and movements a great deal of good. Meanwhile, this book is what it is, and I hope you are driven to the Bible and to the botanical creation of its Author.
[7] Romans 10:17
[8] Ephesians 6:16
[9] Hebrews 11:6
[10] 2 Corinthians 4:13
[11] Mark 11:24
[12] Romans 10:8
[13] Ed Silvoso http://www.harvestevan.org.
[14] Ephesians 3:10
[15] John 15:2
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