Leon Fontaine - Declaring Your Future
As a young man I remember in my teens, for the first time getting this in my head that my future was not in God's hands as a believer. It was in my hands in relationship with God. I've heard different speakers talked about things like, "You know, you just go through life and you hope for the best". And much of the preaching that I hear when I travel in many of the conferences around the world has lowered the bar of the Christian life. So that we can learn to sense His presence to bring peace through your hell, comfort through your pain, to bring just a peace when nothing is working out. But it just stops there. We know God does that.
But did you know that His Word goes way beyond that? And it says you can speak to problems and they've got to obey you. It says there that you can declare your future and the boundaries of your life. It says there that the words that are spoken from your mouth when connected to your heart can actually bring about healing in your physical body, can actually cause things on this planet to begin to move in your direction. The Word is so great about this topic of faith. And when I heard the first time I really begin to pay attention because I probably heard it multiple times. But all of a sudden, something in my life made me pay attention to faith. So I can believe. What does that mean? What do you mean I can declare my future? Well, I thought it was fixed, doesn't God, if I'm a Christian and God is in control and He's got the whole world in His hands.
Then I found out there's no verse in the Bible that says that. We know that God is in control of the overall time frame of the earth. That Satan's time is going to be up and He's going to go. We know that we win. That on this planet all these time frames, God's in control of the overall time frame. But in my personal life, He wasn't controlling me. I could lie, cheat, swear, cuss, punch, or love, hug, hold, touching, and carry. My choice. That all my choices had consequences. But to really begin to explain to people that we can live a life that is beyond anything we can imagine is to make people begin to recognize that although you aren't responsible for much of the pain and the heartache in your life, because we don't know who raised you, where, and what people have done to you as a child and a baby and a kid, etcetera.
But you're the only one who can take responsibility from where you are now and decide where you're going to go in life. So God has placed your future in your hands. You are powerful. You are amazing. You are potent. And the enemy is scared, ridiculously scared about one thing. One thing about believers. He doesn't want you to learn to use your faith, because if you use your faith, you'll speak to mountains. If you use your faith, you'll believe ahead of time and things will happen. If you use your faith, you can touch nations. You can touch entire kingdoms for the presence of God.
Just read Hebrews 11 and all the men and women of the Old Testament who did stunning things with their lives. And today, people are a little bit confused just trying to believe a way a headache. They're still arguing about faith. I don't know if I believe that, pastor. Why is that sir? Well, try that doesn't work for me. So I just don't believe it. You know, you get to believe whatever you want. That's why, you know, so many people will try to engage me after conferences or services. And if they have an open heart question, I'll try within just 30 seconds to stir them in the right direction. If someone's trying to correct me or tell me. Oh, I just say, "Hey, dude. Listen, you believe whatever you want, not a problem". They're shocked that I would say that, because I don't argue with people. You know, basically I love you. But dude, don't care. You can go believe whatever you want. And everything you believe is what begins to determine the boundaries of your life.
So if you don't want to believe God's Word, I'm not here to force you. I'm not going to put you in a headlock and give you one of those rubbies on your head and go, "You better believe". I just put it to practice in my life. And as a teenager, I discovered my words were so powerful. That even if I didn't believe they work, they work. And that my continual talking was determining my future. And that although it may be wasn't the cause of things. I was omitting a stunning phenomenal ability that is given to all believers and it's called faith. Faith is not positive thinking. Although I love positive people. Faith is a heart thing. I'm going to cut through a whole bunch of teaching and just give you some principles that I pray that you will look into and study on your own. But according to Romans 12:3, there, every person who gives their life to Christ is given something very special. They are given something called a unit of faith. And this measure of faith that is given to them is the God kind of faith.
We use the word faith very casually today. And, you know, hey, I got faith in that truck. It will go somewhere. I got faith in that coach. He'll see us through. And I understand it in a secular way. Yes. But that is nothing that the Bible is talking about. It's just words that we have reused in a different way. New Age has learned that you can be positive, and your business will go further. If you're positive, your body will get healthier. If you're positive, people will be attracted to you. There's a lot of positive New Age teaching which I actually like. I love all. Be positive. Be happy. Make a choice. But that has nothing to do with Bible faith and the faith that is delivered to born again believers. You've been given a measure of God's faith.
Now, what you do with that measure is up to you. You can laugh about it and say, "I don't know if I believe that stuff". You can just be lazy. Never study it. Never get into it. Or disobey all of the written rules. Did you know the Bible teaches that there is the law of works and there's the law of faith all through the New Testament. In other words, there are Principles of the Law that just never work. And so Jesus came and died so we can live this life of faith. Then when you look at prayer, if you are just chatting with God, I don't need to move my mouth. I can talk to Him from my heart. So can you.
You know that. He knows your thoughts. He knows your heart. I can sit in there and commune with God in the early morning or in my car just with my mouth close God and I talk, and I'll get ideas and things I'm thinking about. But if I ever want to pray to get things done, it must move out of my mind into spoken words because only spoken words have an effect on the worlds that are around us. The mental world, the spiritual world, the physical world. That it is the spoken Word of God that affects it. Which is why when we talk about prayer, it will talk about declaring it, supplicating it. It will talk about speaking it because to pray with your mouth close and say, "God knows what I'm saying".
You don't understand it is the spoken Word of God coming out of your mouth that causes all the forces of hell to back off, because they have to obey the spoken Word of God. It attracts the angelic host according to Psalm 103, because they listen for God's Word to be spoken. Your spoken words are crucial. They are powerful and they begin within you a faith life. This faith begins to rise up. Romans 10:17 says, faith cometh. He's talking to Christians. Well, if faith is coming, then could you be letting faith go? If faith needs to come on the scene in your own heart, can you be lazy and just let it go? Yes. You can. I know, done that, been there, got the T-shirt.
So many times in my life I just for some reason just slide off of operating in this God kind of faith like Mark 11:21-22 talks about. In 1 John 5:4, "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world". If you're born again, then you have been designed to win, to succeed, to rise above. And the word overcome doesn't mean a constant battle of, "It's such a fight". No, it means overcome. It means take it on and take it down. And you're the head and not the tail. Overcome. What is it that puts us over in this life? It says even our faith. Your faith. Your faith. I believe. When I begin to recognize that I had a choice. I can live my life on believing and know what faith is, or I can live my life in this passive, "Well, we're going to wait and see what God does". And then fear would just take over my life.
Fear is running this planet. I've never seen fear in my life! And I've been around a few decades. I've never seen fear like it is today. I remember growing up in the towns. I remember being in my dad's church. I remember as a young pastor in my twenties and going, but today, I've never seen fear take on countries, take on an entire families. Where we speak it. We believe it. We're stressed. We talk spread. It is all fear based. If you're grumpy, it's fear based. If you don't smile and laugh, it's fear based. If you don't have a joy that just flows out of you. It is only fear is the alternative. And that fear, who knows what that fear is. Some people don't even know what the fear is. It's just a spirit of fear that makes them negative about everything going on in their life. And that fear, you study some of the great psychologist and I have.
I've read my way through whole different thinking's and all kinds of psychology, just to see what have they discovered. It's so lean. Now, they can pigeonhole the whole thing. But some of their greatest thinkers have said we have discovered that what people believe, what their attitude is, is what their future begins to unfold. We have seen those who believed that life is nothing and I can't do anything, and they're filled with fear. It just seems to attract things in their life. And we believe that we see people who are positive and generally, begins to attract whatever is going on on the inside and this is before we even get the Bible faith.
In Hosea 4:6, it says, "My people". This is Hosea. The prophet Hosea under the inspiration of God saying, "My people perished for a lack of knowledge". At our church we can preach a few little happy ditties. Make you feel good about yourself while you lose, fail, depress, unhappy. And just, you know, because we don't want you to feel any pressure to change. No, we love you the way you are. But God loves you too much to leave you the way you are. His promises a life that's phenomenal. Jesus said in John 10:10, I am come that you can have life more abundantly. Which in the Greek means superior in quality. Do you have a life that is superior to the whole planet in quality? Do you have life that it says innumerable in quantity?
You start talking friends and finances and the blessings of God innumerable. You can't count the blessing of the Lord. We all use the word blessed and what is blessed mean? Happy, fortunate, and to be envied. That's what blessed means. And so we must make a decision. Do you want the knowledge of how to walk out of faith life? Or are you going to listen to all the negative people out there? You know, Job, the book of Job. I haven't got time to go through it for you. It's an easy book to understand. Everyone's messed it up. Job had a lot of hell coming to his life because he had so much fear. Tons of fear! Job 3:25 says, "What I fear befalls me. What I dread comes into my life". This man was deep sunk into fear and dread. And it just started happening all around him.
Then at some point as you read through the book of Job. He begins to, he's communicating with God. God's talking. Job's talking. God's talking. And all of a sudden, Job begins to realize, he needs to have this fear of the Lord. What am I worried about anyway when I got God. People no longer today have this fear. This incredible awe of God. They're in awe of depression. They're in awe of cancer. They're in awe of any disease the doctor can put a name on. And you know what, when doctors put a name on something, it doesn't mean they understand it.
I was praying for a lady the other day and I said, "What is it that you've got"? She says, "psychlo setuda detata" They know all these prefixes and suffixes this long. I said, "I've never even heard of that". Oh, she says, "That means that you are having this symptom because of chemotherapy but it also means they don't know what it is". See, just because they can name doesn't mean they can cure it. So what are we going to do? Are we going to just kind of give into this? Or are we going to recognize that there is a life. That even the cells of your body proven by medical science are influenced by what you believe. Whether you're in peace. Whether you're in fear. Whether you have an expectation of good or whether you're expecting death. That even the cells of your body are listening to you. Proven! I don't want to die for a lack of knowledge.
So then, well then, why doesn't God do something, Leon? He did do something. He sent Jesus to the cross. And He died for you and I, that whosoever. Now, listen close to this thought. In the Old Testament, people had faith when God spoke to them and gave them direction. He might give them a vision. He might give them a word like Moses. Like, you know, Samson. Like these men, they had visions. They had dreams, and God spoke to them specifically. And they got up and spent a lifetime like Abraham. Obeying and having faith in the words that God spoke to them. Then in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have Jesus physically walking the planet. And anything Jesus says and anything, everyone's put their faith in the historical, the physical Jesus. And they could get to Jesus.
You see, He was one man standing there with the presence of God all over Him. But then He said, "I've got to go so Holy Spirit can come because He's omnipresent". In Luke it says Jesus was sitting in the room one time and He says, "The presence of the Lord was present to heal". People take that to sorts of doctrine. No, the reason that God's presence to heal was present was because Jesus was present. Wherever Jesus was, was the presence of God there to heal. Anybody? Yeah. When Holy Spirit comes, He's everywhere. Anywhere you go. Everywhere you go. You can tap in to the presence of God, to assist you and help you with anything from relationships to protection, to health, to finances, to whatever you put your hand to.
And so I remember one time complaining to God. I say, "God, you know what, if You've appeared to me like you appeared to Moses. Man! Would it change my life. If You could just speak to me in a dream or vision like You did to Joseph and told them where to go and what to do. Oh, man! I would love that. I would just have faith in You". And then God began to speak me, and He said, "Jesus, My Son died for you. And He said, 'You have been given everything'". He said. I'm going, "What"? And The Bible says whosoever. Whosoever.
When Jesus died, it stopped being this special little, you know, only He talks to kings in the Old Testament. Only the priest in the Old Testament. Only the high priest. Oh, no. His Word is now whosoever. He died for everybody sins. He died for everybody's health, blessing, and protection. It's just that now, you have to believe His Word that comes through Jesus. That's why the Bible is so special. That's why the Bible is so stunning, so phenomenal, because it shows us how to begin to rise up and begin to walk in this thing called faith.
In Matthew 16:19, reading from the Amplified Bible. Jesus talking. He says, "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven". Now people think He means how to get to heaven. He did do that. But listen to what He says next. "And whatever you bind or declare to be improper and unlawful on earth must be what is already bound in heaven. And whatever you loose, declare lawful on earth must be what is already loosed in heaven". The word declare means to speak. I find very few people who declare over their lives, who speak over their lives in their prayer time.
Most prayers begging, bugging, pleading, rather than declaring, taking the promise and saying who they are and what's been prepared for them and what their life is going to be like. He's literally saying here, that you've got a life ahead of you. Now, you might not had been be able to do anything about the stuff that's happened to you. All of us were children. All of us had stuff. We live in a crazy world where there's a kingdom of darkness and bad stuff happens. But in the middle of that, if you decide to begin to use this thing called faith, that has been given to you when you got saved. And you begin to figure out what it means. You can live a life where faith becomes something that you'll believe in, and it will remove you from the fear of the anxiety, the depression, the double-mindedness. I can't make up my mind. I'm just not sure.
All of this when I began to practice as a teenage boy and began to just do the things that I'm not going to get to but as I began to do them, I found my mind getting decisive. I just found that I would look at situations, I just know what to do. I'd find that when others would give in into stuff, I just keep my mouth close in front of them. But in my prayer time, I would declare where my life was going and what I was going to do and how things were going to go in my world. And I found that when I spoke these words, something stirred up on the inside of me.
You see, faith doesn't come out of the mind. In fact, the carnal mind is at war with faith. Did you know that? Romans chapter 8, the carnal mind is at war. You will never figure out faith with your head. This world is looking for sages to say, "Unique things". I've read some of these books with some of these guys who have written, who are considered by some of the most, you know, all this New Ager, "This man is brilliant". And I read through his sentence structure and go, "That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense".
The guy is saying nothing. But oh, it's deep. And they think it's deep because they don't understand it. The deepest man that ever walked the planet. The most brilliant mind that ever used words was Jesus. And He took the incredibly, complex, deep, and He brought it up to wheat seed and fields, to sheep, goats, pearls. He brought it up to the simplicity. God's Word is incredibly deep, but it is simple. And do not think for a minute that simple means that it's not brilliant wisdom. Oh, it's brilliant wisdom. And the world hasn't looked at the Bible because the Christians have never made it work in most cases. They just spouted it at people.
They're not interested in your doctrine. They're interested in your life. How did that work for you? Well, it saved my marriage. Really? What do you mean? How they work for you? When I had no way to get this business to where I wanted it to go. I began to take this faith that God gave me and declare it. And the things I could never do begin to open up, from my running into somebody on holidays and a line up in Starbucks. That open up our business to a whole another area.
Sitting their one day, an awesome guy gave me an idea. I didn't know where it came from. And just your life begins to have this incredible growth because faith is the substance. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Of things hoped for. It is the evidence of things not seen". Pray the Word. Pray the promises out loud. And as you do, you're going to discover that there is something on the inside of a born again believer that causes things to move aside. And every person that learn to use it read the Bible. Changed cities, changed countries, touched the world because in Hebrews 11 will go on and listed for a ton of verses, because they were people of faith.