Walking in faith requires a godly perspective. Like many faith heroes mentioned in the Bible (Hebrews 11, Hall of Faith), we can either say what we have or have what we say. The bottom line, our words are powerful, and our speech determines our outcomes.
If you don’t like the way your life is going, one of the first things to do is change what comes out of your mouth. Instead of settling with just our carnality, we need to understand that we are so much more. Our Spirit man is alive, endowed with limitless potential that we received when we became a Christian and asked Jesus to come and live inside of us. He replaced our old spirit man with His born-again Spirit. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. (Romans 8:11).
Instead of confessing negative words, speaking sickness and/or lack in our life, we need to guard our tongue. There are several scriptures that emphasize the importance of guarding one’s speech. Proverbs 21:21, “He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.”
Our born-again spirit-man gets left out of the equation if we only speak from our five senses. We do not walk in the fullness of the authority that we possess.
The story of the Centurion (Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10) is a great example of having what we say. The Centurion came to Jesus and asked him to heal his servant. Jesus asked him if he should go to his home and heal the servant. Picking up the story in Matthew 8:8b-9, the Centurion tells Jesus, “To just say the word and his servant shall be healed because he himself was a man under authority and he understood how powerfully speaking to the situation will change the outcome.”
This is one of those times that Jesus was highly impressed with another person’s faith. The Centurion got it, even though he was not under the covenant at that time, he was a Roman Soldier, a Gentile. In verse 13, Jesus told him that his servant was healed at that moment.
While speaking authority and faith over your present circumstances, it is not that you lie about what you see or pretend it doesn’t exist. As with the Centurion, he made it clear that his servant was sick, but he was not willing to allow the sickness to rule because he understood that the Word of Jesus held authority, and he chose that path instead of settling for sickness.
Every day we encounter negative forces, yet we get to decide if we are going to let them write our story or if we are going to take our God-given authority and deny them the right to dominate our life. We have been created to have dominion. Voice your Spirit-led perspective!
Rhonda L. Smart, rhondalsmart@gmail.com
