Bill Johnson - How to Hear What God Is Saying and Declare His Word Over Your Life
Here’s a scary phrase, but it’s 100% true: the word of the Father through the mouth of Jesus has no more power than the word of the Father through your mouth. I remind you of this because Jesus limited himself to the ability of a human being. Now, as God, obviously, He can do anything and everything, but He chose to live with self-imposed restrictions. When He spoke, He said this; He admitted, he declared to us, «The Son of Man can do nothing of Himself.» I’ve looked it up in the original language: nothing means nothing. He could do nothing of Himself, so He’s telling us that when He said what the Father was saying, He said to the centurion, «Go your way; your servant lives.» It wasn’t His ability, although, as God, He had that ability; He chose to live as a man dependent on the Father.
So when He said what the Father was saying in His situation, «Go your way; your servant lives,» He released power for deliverance because there was torment involved in the miracle of healing, and the servant was healed the moment He spoke. There’s no distance in decree; there’s no distance in confession. If that word is released through your lips, it has the same power. I hope that you get this. We’re not talking about dominating; we’re talking about surrendering, being yielded, being willing to obey.
Now, I want to shift a little bit and look at one of these days. I want to go through the entire book of Proverbs, particularly on speech. It is stunning, and we’ll read about five verses tonight. So, chapter 12, are you there? Verse 14: «A man will be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth; and the recompense of a man’s hands will be rendered to him.» Take the first half of that verse: «A man will be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth.» Fruit grows from seeds; words are seeds. What kind of seeds are being planted? Chapter 13, verse 2: «A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth; the soul of the unfaithful feeds on violence.»
First half of the verse again: «A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth.» Eating is for nourishment; eating is for pleasure. Eating food was God’s original medicine. So when we talk in Scripture about eating, feeding ourselves, we’re not just talking about grabbing an apple and eating it; we’re actually talking about something that has ramifications throughout our relationship with God, our relationship with people, and our relationship with ourselves. Nourishment—natural, spiritual nourishment—is for strength; it’s for health; it’s to release nutrients throughout my body to bring health to my organs, to my blood, every part of my brain, and to keep circulation healthy. All these things are a part of healthy nutrition.
Number two: it’s used for medicine. Biblically, the original medicine of Scripture is food. And third: it’s for pleasure. So our realm of delight and satisfaction in life—our realm of strength and health—comes from food. I used to love working out; I love lifting weights and such, and I remember my schedule in Weaverville where my workouts were always at the end of the workday. I could tell if I had eaten a healthy lunch or not. If I didn’t have a healthy lunch, my workout wasn’t as good. Like three or four hours later, my workout would follow my meal. I literally started because of my goals in working out, and I would keep a record of all my workouts. My goal was to eat for the workout. I started to think, «Okay, I have this goal, and since I’m doing this every day, I’ve got to eat now.» So I would actually eat for the workout. Nutrients bring strength, health, and pleasure. And here it says what you eat is determined by what you say.
All right, now I’m going to start meddling. It says, «A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth.» Go with me to chapter 15. It is all the way through the book of Proverbs, but I’m just going to pick out certain verses here for you. Verse 23: «A man has joy by the answer of his mouth, and a word spoken in due season—how good it is!» A man has joy by the answer of his mouth. If you’re lacking joy, you might want to examine your conversation. So often, we blame the environment; we blame the day we live in; we blame family; we blame the people we work with; we blame everyone but ourselves. And here it says, «You have joy according to your speech, according to the answer of your own tongue.»
Go with me to chapter 18; we’ll read just a couple more verses, and then I’ll just talk to you. Verse 20: «A man’s stomach shall be satisfied from the fruit of his mouth; from the produce of his lips, he shall be filled.» Death and life are in the power of the tongue; those who love it will eat its fruit. Okay, are you thinking? Ten of you are thinking that’s a little frightening. A man’s stomach shall be satisfied from the fruit of his mouth; from the produce of his lips, he shall be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Here’s the deal: I’ve done all this talking to come to this one point. I’ve watched a lot of people for many years go through horrible situations, very challenging moments. We just live on planet Earth and we have that. But here’s the great mystery: I’ve watched certain individuals; I’ve watched their language—I watch how they talk, how they speak of other people—and what they think is an attack of the enemy is only them having to eat the food they created with their own speech. Wow. They think it’s people ignoring their gift; they think they’re just not being recognized or valued; they think it’s just the enemy opposing their gift. They think any number of a thousand things, when really all it is is they are eating a meal that they created with their own words.
So what do you want to eat? It doesn’t mean you know—obviously, if you’re a parent, there are things we have to correct in church life. We correct, we confront, we do all those things, but there’s a huge difference between venting and serving with a corrective word. Venting punishment—if I punish you, it’s for my sake, not for yours. Correction is for yours. So nothing’s impossible as we co-labor with Him; we’re made in His image. He wants our words to be creative in nature. I don’t mean that we create planets, but you understand what I mean. I’ve seen it on a few occasions where I could say something, and it would be done. I wish I could say it happens all the time. Maybe you’ll be the ones that do that. But I’ve seen it where a simple phrase changes reality. Then you realize that that tool, which is so powerful and profound to bring life, can also bring death. Sometimes the struggles we face in life are just the result of having to eat the words we said a week ago, a month ago. When we speak out of turn and we realize it, we have to own up to it and confess—confess it quickly so the seeds don’t take root, because if they take root, they’ll bear fruit.
I’m not one to scare or shame anyone; I’m just trying to say, «Hey, be nice.» Speak knowing you’re about to have a meal. Proverbs speaks about the influence of a good word that brings such healing and refreshing to a person’s life, a person’s heart. Ephesians 4 says, «Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it might give grace to those who hear.» I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about that verse, but when you determine to speak encouraging words, you actually have the incredible privilege of imparting the grace of God into another person’s life.
But complaining does the opposite. Complaining towards people has the potential to damage their awareness of who God made them to be, causing them to question whether or not God has actually called them or forgiven them or healed them or whatever. The problem, the conflict, may be real; it may be legitimate. It’s just that complaining doesn’t fix it. And in this situation, Israel had fallen so deep as a nation that they lost awareness of the obvious—can we say the elephant in the room? They lost the awareness that God is there as a fire by night and a cloud by day. They lost the awareness of the most obvious thing about their life. From the beginning, the Lord designed our life to be literally wrapped around this engagement with His presence—not instead of people, because I’m seeing that the Lord has just made us rich with people, and He manifests so uniquely, differently, and personally through those people that I need so much.
But the quickest way to destroy the gift that God has given you is the finger of accusation and the spirit of complaining. Israel did that to the point they despised the creative miracle of daily provision, and they forgot all about the God who made Himself known among them. So what’s the solution? First of all, we guard our hearts, our minds. We guard ourselves from what? From fear, from anxiety, from the things that pull us away from what is to become the anchor of our soul, and that is this deep-rooted affection for the Holy Spirit Himself. I don’t know that there’s anything more important in my life than that—that affection for the Holy Spirit Himself. That’s due north on the compass for me. That’s the place that everything else is measured by. Sometimes, I’ve got stuff going on in my life like you do in yours, where there’s just so much anxiety, so much fear, and I walk around in my house; I walk back and forth, and I pray. Sometimes I just blurt out, «I trust you, Father; I trust you.»
I may need to say it 20 times, and I don’t say it out of inspiration. I’m saying it out of surrender. I’m acknowledging you’re the only one that’s trustworthy; you’re the only one that’s trustworthy. People say, «Well, I don’t know if I can trust God in this situation.» Who are you going to trust? Who do I think got me into most of the messes? You know, it is my stupidity that got me into that. I trust you.
And often times, an obedient confession paves the way for my heart to follow. An obedient confession says, «God, I trust you no matter what; you’re the only one trustworthy. I trust you. I don’t trust my reasoning; I don’t trust my insights apart from you; I only trust you.» Somehow that declaration starts making way, and my heart begins to follow. I don’t understand how this works; I don’t understand why it works this way, but that obedient confession, proclamation—can we just say a prophetic decree over our own hearts, our own lives? This prophetic decree: «God, I trust you no matter what; I trust you"—paves the way for my heart to follow. Suddenly, there’s a strength, an encouragement, a life; something begins to generate inside of me that I was in desperate need of ten minutes ago. Ten minutes ago I was really terrified, but I’m getting better; I’m getting better. The more I talk, the more I confess, the more I proclaim, «Father, I trust you no matter what; you’re the only one trustworthy.» I’ll take His word and read it to Him. It’s not that He forgot; it’s just that He needs me to remember before Him: this is what He said yesterday.
I took out a list of prophetic promises; I often do this. In bed, as I lay down last night, I took out my iPad, and I’ve got a list of about 20 or 30 things that the Lord has promised through the years, and I just read over them. «God, these are the things that you’ve said.» I have to have hope; I have to be hopeful. I have to have hope not as a last option but as a default, yes, amen, in any given situation. If there’s one chapter that I would say has had the greatest influence on my life in the last 50 years, honestly, it would be Joshua chapter one. It’s one that I return to fairly often just to read through, to provoke and stir my own heart. In a sense, I want to stir my own heart to what I just talked to you about—it’s the sacrifices that got us here. I want to make sure that I maintain those right values, and this is part of what He has in this particular chapter.
All right, so Joshua chapter 1:3: «Every place the sole of your foot will tread, I have given to you, as I said to Moses.» By the way, He gave that promise to Israel, the twelve spies when they went into the promised land, and they did not benefit from that promise because they didn’t join what God had promised them with faith. There was no action on their part with what God had given them. Verse 5 says, «No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage; for to this people, you will divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go.»
Verse 9 says, «Have I not commanded you? Be strong and very courageous.» How many of you think maybe we’re supposed to be strong and courageous? Here’s the part that I want to make sure that you catch, and we’ll take a few points out of this chapter and talk about them together. If spiritual strength, strength in the Lord, were only available through years of discipline/determination, it would be unkind to command you to be strong, amen? If the only way to strength is through years of discipline and determination—if that were the only way to strength—then Him commanding you to be strong is cruel, amen? Anytime a command like this comes to us, as unreasonable as it may sound, the fulfillment is within the reach of a choice. When He says, «Be strong,» He made it available in the command. Remember, no freshly spoken word will ever come to you that does not contain its own ability to perform itself. In humility, receive the word implanted; it’s able to save your soul. So He says, «Be strong in the 'yes.'»
Even the overwhelming sense: «I don’t know how I could ever pull this off, but I trust you. I know that you can do in me what I could never do for myself.» And in that «yes» is the pathway for strength to be imparted. Verse 8 says, «The book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you will meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.» Look at that verse again. I want this verse to really take root in our hearts this season: «This book of the law, this word of God, shall not depart from your mouth, but you will meditate on it.»
I would have thought it would have said, «This book, this word of God is not to depart from your heart, but you will speak it on a regular basis.» He does this in the opposite order; He says, «If you keep it in your confession, it will penetrate your heart.» There are times where a proclamation, a confession, creates a pathway for your heart to follow. I heard a phrase years ago: «You cannot change your heart; God will not change your mind. But if you change your thoughts, God will change your heart.» You cannot change your heart; God will not change your mind. But if you change your thoughts, God will change your heart. That statement was tons better than your response.
The book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you will meditate on it day and night so that you’ll be careful to observe all that He commanded you to do. Then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. The Lord gives this incredible word to Joshua: «This book of the law, this word of God will not depart from your mouth.» He’s given— forgive me, it’s almost like a formula, and I don’t want to make it that, but let’s pretend it is for a minute. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. So what is He saying? He’s saying when God speaks a word to you, memorize it; say it; confess it; driving down the street prophesy, declare it. When you pray, don’t ask God to do it; come into agreement with Him to do what He said. You know, your participation—my participation—yes, God, I agree with you; you will cause this to happen in my life, in my family, land, or whatever it might be. We take the word of the Lord; we aggressively proclaim it. What happens? It affects what we think about when nobody’s watching; what we think about as we go off to sleep at night. It starts affecting and infecting in a righteous way ambitions, dreams, and desires—things that the Lord wants to do—just like I don’t want to take away from what they offer; I want us to raise the water level and say, «You know what? The God of the impossible lives in me. He’s not just interested in getting me to heaven; He’s interested in getting heaven into me. He’s interested in getting something happening in and through my life that actually affects the world around me, that culture itself could change.»
This word shall not depart from your mouth but you’ll meditate on it day and night; you’ll do everything in it, and then you’ll make your own way prosperous. Then He follows it up by saying, «Be strong and very courageous. Do not fear; do not be dismayed.» Has anyone been dismayed this week at all besides me? Yeah. Do not fear; do not be dismayed. It’s a commandment; it’s not a suggestion. And in the commandment, yielding to what God is saying is the assurance of stepping more fully into what He has promised. A promised land exists; there are realms of breakthrough for everybody in this room that we’ve not yet even dreamed of, but it’s available to every person, and He invites us through His presence to come and explore, to find out what belongs to you.
«I believed, therefore I spoke.» Say that with me: «I believed, therefore I spoke.» Now I’m sure you’ve run into horror stories of people who tried to get their way by confessing whatever they want and announcing the power of their confession. You know, there’s a natural power in the confession of a person; you don’t even have to be born again. If you say the right things over time, it will have an effect on you. But the real power we’re interested in is the power of God, and that is released when we say what He is saying. Discovering what He is saying is the vital part of our life. Jesus set the standard for us: He said, «I only say what I hear my Father say.» So all the words that came out of His mouth were words He actually heard from the Father. When we partner with the Heavenly Father to declare what He is saying, all of Heaven waits to ride on that which came from the heart of the Father.
The way I describe it, my personal conviction is that the angelic realm—it’s going to sound a little strange—but they can smell the fragrance of the throne room when you say something that originated in the heart of the Father. I come to that analogy this way: we know that Satan is called Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. Flies are attracted to what? Death, decay. I had a freezer die once out in a shed; it was hell on earth. It was bad. I don’t know how flies got in there, but there were more than mankind could count inside this freezer. We didn’t empty the freezer; we just took the whole thing to the dump. And all the other freezers that were there just ran away. They just—I embellished a little on that part.
So, if Satan is likened unto Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies, flies are attracted by the fragrance of decay. Then the angelic realm, it would seem to me, would be attracted by life— the breath of Heaven, the very things that God speaks. And according to Psalms 103, angels carry out the voice of His word. There’s something that when we declare what God is saying, they are attracted to that; they might enforce it. It is true; it is true. It’s just learning to partner with God the way that He wants to be partnered with.
Here we have this statement: «I believe; therefore, I spoke.» And then He responds: «We also believe, and therefore, we speak.» This fascinates me because I’ve experimented with it through the years, and still, life for me is just one huge experiment. I remember being with Randy Clark in Colorado several years ago, and I had been running an experiment for a while there. Anytime I was in a meeting, if I said at the beginning—and the Lord would always prompt me; He’d remind me—if I said at the beginning, «It is normal for tumors to disappear in the presence of the Lord,» if I said that at the beginning of the meeting, at the end, we would check. I remember this one meeting where Randy and I were dialoguing on this subject in Denver. By the end of the meeting, there were nine people that had either completely lost tumors or had significantly diminished. Nine people. And yet, what I’ve noticed is if I don’t say that, chances are very high it won’t happen. Yes, now is it the power of my speech? No, no; it’s just me cooperating with what He’s saying, and then His breath is added where His angelic realm enforces the very thing declared.
So what are you saying about your life? If I spend more time watching the news than I do considering what God has said, then my depression is self-imposed. I’ve created my own problem. I can call it the burden; I can call it many other things, just the conditions of this world, but it was self-inflicted. In this moment, God is planting and depositing in us promises of hope and future, destiny, and His intentions to see the transformation of impossible situations all around us. They are so profound and so powerful.
But whenever I take that word and I add my own ideas to it, or I begin to ponder and think, «This is promised so many years ago; it’ll never happen,» what happens? I start undermining the very life of God. I hold my tradition of unbelief over and above the word of God. I actually render the word of God of no effect. We have areas of life that need constant promise affecting every area of our lives. Anything that’s significant needs a promise of God—your health, our health. What has God said to you about your health? You need to have a word. What about your ministry, the thing that you do that God would breathe upon, that would so testify to the goodness and nature of God to the people around you? What about your family, your relationships, and what about finances? All these areas need continuous life from promises that God has given us. And those promises aren’t just to be underlined in my Bible, with a date next to it; they are meant to influence my thinking, my praying, my confession, my proclamation. At the times where I feel the most, where this situation seems the most impossible for me, that’s the moment—I’m driving down the car; I get hit with that sense of impossibility. I begin to prophesy, «This will happen because the word of the Lord is this,» and we begin to declare what God is saying.
I remember so many years ago, a dear friend of ours was prophesied over. Actually, he was just a brand new believer; he had been saved maybe two weeks. This same prophet that introduced that song to us, Dick Joyce, called him out of the crowd two or three rows back and began to prophesy about him being an evangelist. It was just a matter of a few weeks later—he was a brand new believer; he stood up and prophesied over him. A few weeks later, he was in a horrible accident, and a branch from a tree on a logging piece of equipment cut off all oxygen to the brain. They pronounced him dead on arrival. At the hospital, they ended up from Weaverville driving him to a hospital here in Redding, keeping him on machines that maintain functioning but no brain waves. Everything’s gone. I remember not knowing all the details of what I just explained to you; I found out later. I remember going into the hospital room, the unit where the machines are hooked up to him. I remember there were no brain waves; they were able to keep the heart beating. I stood next to him and grabbed his arm, and I called out his name: «Larry, you’re going to be all right because God said you’re going to be an evangelist.»
Then, as best I could, I quoted the prophecy he had been given just a few weeks ago. This was a Saturday night, and they called me 6:00 Sunday morning: he’s sitting up in bed; he’s fine; everything’s fine. That was a Sunday. Two days later, he joined us. We had a Tuesday night men’s meeting every few weeks, and two days later, he joined us. So here’s a guy pronounced dead on arrival, no brain waves— why? Because God said, «What has God said?»
I remember when Brian and Jen, their oldest, Haley, was born, and there were some real challenging complications during her birth. There was this numbering system: ten is perfect; she was a two. Things weren’t looking good. Anytime you do something with our family, we just show up in mass. So the waiting room was overwhelmed with our family, and we’re sitting there, of course praying. Benny just steps aside from the prayer group, she goes over to the corner, and she gets before the Lord. She says, «Father, what are we doing? We have enough in here to know where to pray and contend for her breakthrough.» But my wife wanted specific direction for this very critical moment. You can pray generally, but you might as well go for the jugular and get specific about what God is saying.
So she separates herself while the rest of us are together just praying for a miracle. She separates herself and says, «Father, what are we doing?» In other words, she wanted to do what she saw the Father do. She asked, «Father, what are we doing?» He spoke softly to her heart. She did exactly what the Lord said, and within a very quick time, there was a complete turnaround in Haley’s health — a complete turnaround. Why? Because it’s what God is saying.
See, He holds it all together with the word of His power. He spoke things into being; He called you by name to Himself. He gave to us as an inheritance the mind of Christ. It’s in our account; we must make withdrawals. We must draw upon what God has promised. His voice is a voice of delight and affection aimed towards the human heart that will ponder, consider, and treasure what He has said. It will become the crystal goblet that you bring out and review, prophesy, pray over, and become encouraged that somebody would give you such a priceless treasure. There’s nothing more priceless than the very thing that God would speak so deeply and profoundly and give us His word and His presence.
We have areas of our life that I’ve already mentioned: ministry, health, finances, relationships. You know, you can continue the list. I would encourage you to ask the question: what am I carrying of the promise of God for this part of my life? And then it’s to be prayed, it’s to be confessed; it should be meditated on, which means to mull it over and over and over. Think about it. I’ve asked you this question before: how many of you have been kept awake at night by some troubling thought or experience? How many of you have? Yeah, okay, so we know how to meditate now. Now we just need to change the subject matter. All right? So that’s exactly what we do: we displace the lie and replace it with truth. We mull it over; we think it, we pray it, we sing it. We do all those things; we treasure what God has said.
What’s the outcome? He wants the word of God to become flesh again. He wants every place you look into my life to see the evidence of what God has said. His word reveals His will. This particular psalm is the confession of David. He says, «God, I’ve not withheld— I’ve not withheld what you’ve shown me about you; I’ve not withheld the story of your righteousness; I have boldly proclaimed; I have declared; I have confessed.» Now, he’s asking for the Lord to respond to his point of personal need.
The picture that works for me is almost like my proclamations are seeding the cloud of the rain that’s actually going to fall upon my own life. It’s the bold proclamation; it’s the bold confession. I am sorry that through the years, the subject of confession of faith has been twisted occasionally to be a self-serving tool to get God to do what we want. I get that; I know that. But it doesn’t cancel out the effect of the absolute truth of the gospel. The Bible teaches in Romans 10 that confession—salvation; confession is made unto salvation. In other words, we make this confession of our faith, and it seals the deal. It completes that which is in the heart. What is in the heart has to be proclaimed; it has to be declared, it must be confessed. Life and death are in the power of the tongue.
I think maybe one of the ways to look at it is that God made us in His image, and He spoke the worlds into being. Many of the problems that exist in our lives were given places of influence, power, and strength because of improper conversation. For many people, their goal in life is to vent when they have something going wrong, and all they do is add to the strength of that particular problem. I’ve tried to make it a practice in my own life: I will not talk about a problem with anyone who is not a part of the solution, which cuts down a lot of conversation. I’m not going to talk to someone just to vent; I’m only going to talk if I am looking for a redemptive solution, and I believe that they are part of it. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. It means that you and I have the ability with our speech to bring life to a dead situation or to kill a live situation.
Peter denied the Lord three times, and in the gospel of John, the 21st chapter, Jesus has the disciples together, and He asks Peter: «Do you love me?» Peter says, «I do.» Then he waits a moment and says, «Peter, do you love me?» He says, «Lord, you know I do; I love you.» He asks a third time, «Do you love me?» It’s interesting that for each denial, the Lord gave Peter an opportunity to reaffirm his place in Him through proclamation—through confession. And it needed to be not a happy thought; it needed to be not a warm buzz feeling; it had to be the proclamation of truth coming out of Peter’s own mouth. Life and death are in the power of the tongue.
I went through a pretty major struggle, a physical struggle, here three years ago right now. I remember when it was over and I was restored to health and at a place of full recovery, I remember pondering, looking back over the previous several months and the things that I had learned, the things that I had gone through. I would lay in bed and just read promises; I would watch videos of prophetic words; of course, in my own Bible reading, I’d read until He speaks. I was looking for—I found myself wanting some key, some great key that He would reveal to unlock everything. Maybe He did, but it came differently than I expected. At the end of maybe four or five months of a real challenge, I came to the conclusion that bold faith stands on the shoulders of quiet trust.
What He was working to build in me was the quiet trust, that anchor of the soul that says, regardless of circumstances, I know where my confidence is. The opportunity to make that proclamation, to make that confession—the most famous verse in this regard is out of Mark 11. If you’d turn there with me, that would be great. I know that there are times in recent church history where people have used this particular verse thinking they can use it to get God to do whatever they want. While I do apologize for that, I also want to say: don’t react to error and create another error. The abuse of a principle doesn’t give me an excuse for no use of a principle. My hands are not clean because I dropped the subject. If it says so in the word, then I have to find out how to apply what God has said to be true.
Mark 11 gives us a very profound lesson. To me, it’s a humorous chapter. Towards the beginning of the chapter, we find that Jesus curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season. I just think that’s the coolest thing ever—that Jesus cursed a fig tree when it didn’t bear fruit in the wrong season. What does it mean? I don’t know; I just think it’s cool. He cursed a fig tree because it wasn’t bearing fruit out of season. What I have concluded is that Jesus is the only one who has the right to expect the fruit of the impossible out of our lives. The resurrection factor makes nothing impossible and qualifies you and me as a participant in the unfolding of His conflict with the impossibilities of life.
You and I are instruments of the redemptive work of Jesus to see impossible situations bow. So He curses the fig tree as the disciples and Jesus walk upon the dead fig tree. Verse 20: «Now, in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.» Peter, remembering, said, «Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed has withered away.» Jesus answered and said to them, «Have faith in God.» Some translations—fact, say that phrase with me: «Have faith in God.» Say it with me: «Have faith in God.» Let’s say it together, come on: have faith in God. You did good! Some translations, including Young’s translation, say it should be translated, «Have the faith of God.» Have the faith of God—which is interesting because God has quite a bit of faith.
Verse 23: «Assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and cast into the sea, ' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.» Read it again: «Assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and cast into the sea, ' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.»
The emphasis, without question, is on the proclamation of truth. Now, I don’t think we have the luxury of just saying whatever we want, even though there is life and death in the power of the tongue. The heart of the believer is to find what God is saying. We find His word in a given situation, but once we’ve received the word of the Lord in that situation, it is up to us to make the proclamation that those things would come to pass. I can tell you from my own experience, and I’m right in the middle of the journey like everybody else, but out of my own experience, I’ve had a number of times where I heard from the Lord what His will was in a situation, I stood back waiting for it to unfold, and most of the time, it doesn’t until I step in and start enforcing, decreeing, declaring what the Lord has spoken to my own heart.
There is a role that you and I play, and for some reason, He has chosen to respond to the decree, the declaration of surrendered believers—those who say, «The will of God, God being glorified, is all I want. I’m going to take my own conversation and make sure that I proclaim that which You are saying, God.» In a given situation, making that decree—Joel chapter 3 says, I think it’s verse 10: «Let the weak say, 'I am strong.'» Say that with me: «Let the weak say, 'I am strong.'» The reason He had to say that is when you need to say it is when you’re least likely to say it. The reason it needed to be a command is because the times when it’s most effective in our life are when we’re not prone to make that kind of confession or declaration. It’s easy when you’ve had this miracle and that miracle to stand up and say, «I just feel so strong right now; I feel so mighty in God.»
And there are times where it seems like boom, boom, boom, miracles happen here, there, and there, and I feel so strong and powerful in the Lord. But there are other times when it’s just a fight going on, and it’s a struggle, and it’s the thing that I least feel like saying; and yet, that is when it is most necessary to be said: «Bold confession: I am strong.» My translation says, «Let the weak say, 'I am a mighty man'.» For women, of course, «I am a mighty woman.» But I’m not going to make that confession because of the power of confession. I don’t want anything to happen while I’m up here. No, I am a mighty man.
How about this: be a year that we work hard to embrace what the Lord has declared over our life and make that the only thing we say. I don’t mean you don’t seek counsel; I don’t mean you don’t bring a problem up and get advice. I don’t mean that living in denial is not a solution, but there are times where we actually fuel and feed conflicts and problems in life. We make them bigger than they are because they’re the topic of our complaint, the topic of our conversation.
I feel like the Lord wants to increase the use of a particular tool that He taught His own disciples—that whatever you say, you’ll have. The problem is we have much of what we’ve said.