Confessions: public validations of your faith or public rejections of your faith
*A word spoken is as an arrow let fly!
*Prov 25:11 “Like apples of gold in settings of silver Is a word spoken in right circumstances”
I. Words are important. Prov 18:21 “Death and Life are in the power of the tongue.”
A. Think about Genesis; God created by speaking it into being. “Let there be light!” He didn’t have to say it, but he did.
1. Jesus said, “Lazarus come forth!”
2. “Rise and walk.”
3. Jesus spoke to the fig tree
4. He spoke to demons
5. Prayer is speaking to God
B. How powerful are words? Can they do the supernatural, or only support a belief? Can we use these words, or are they only for God to use?
C. What we say can hurt us! We can speak curses on ourselves or others inadvertently if it is not rebuked. “You are gonna die from that someday” I don’t receive that! Psalms 91:16 says I will have long life!”
D. God isn’t moved because you said something; he is moved because you said something and believed it.
1. What if you just can’t believe it? I’d still rather say what God says than what the world says.
II. What does God say about you?
A. Phil 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ”
B. Phil 4:19 “My God supplies all my needs.”
C. Prov 28:20 “The faithful man shall abound with blessings”
D. Acts 16:31 says your whole house “will be saved.”
E. Isaiah 54:13 “Great shall be the peace of your children”
F. Psalm 91:16 says your will be “satisfied with long life”
G. Jer 30:17 “I will heal thee”
H. Isaiah 53:5 “By his stripes we are healed.”
I. 1 Cor. 2:16 “we have the mind of Christ”
J. Ps 37:4 “he will give you the desires of your heart.”
III. What do we say about ourselves? “I feel sick,” “My eyes don’t work too well anymore,” “I have a lousy job,” “I’m gonna flunk that test,” “I can’t,” “I have a bad back,” “My car is going to break down soon,” “My kids are brats,” etc.
A. What does God say about these things? What would Jesus say about them?
1. Jesus said, “It is written” when he was confronting a problem. He quoted scripture! What do I mean by that? I mean finding some place in the bible in which God promises you exactly what you are believing for, and say that instead of the words of doubt and unbelief that we have mentioned before.
aa. For example, when I found out that my 2 smallest boys needed glasses, I found a scripture that matched exactly what I believed, and so I confessed Ezra 9:8 that says our God will enlighten our eyes. I taped it on my refrigerator and on their bedroom doorframe. 1 Kings 8:58 states that “Not one word will fail,”so I believe that what He promised will happen.
2. This is our best weapon, quoting scripture. I hear the same thing when this is said: I can’t remember all those numbers and books and stuff. It all gets confused. I say that it doesn’t matter the book, chapter, or verse. It is the words of God that are the key element there. Look at the following examples from Christ himself.
aa. In Luke 3:4 “as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, `make ready the way of the lord, make his paths straight” Jesus quoted the scripture and book, but not the chapter and verse.
bb. In Luke 4:8 Jesus answered him, “It is written. `you shall worship the lord your god and serve him only.’ " Jesus only quoted the scripture, and not the book, chapter, or verse.
1. Remember, though, quoting scripture is not going to send you to heaven. Even the devil quoted scripture. Matt 4:6 the devil quotes the bible to Jesus as a weapon.
B. If we say what is opposite of God, is that right? Isaiah 8:20 says that “if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
1. If we are believing for healing from a cold, yet we say that we are sick, we are nullifying our faith. How can you really believe that you have the mind of Christ, if you keep saying “I forget everything.”
2. This is the key, don’t say things that are opposite of what you are believing for!
C. If we believe something other than what God says about you, is that right? Can you still be called a Christian?
D. When we say what God says about us, and claim that as a promise that we are given, it is called a confession.
1. What do I mean by “confession”? It is a statement of what you believe is happening. It is not what you hope might happen, or think could happen, but what you honestly believe and want to happen. Good examples of these were mentioned at the outset of this lesson.
aa. When you are faced with a circumstance that you have no answer for, you can quote Phil 4:19 “My God supplies all my needs.”
11. Your relatives and friends might ask “how are you going to afford driving 70 miles each day now that gas is almost 2 bucks a gallon.”
22. You shouldn’t respond that “I don’t know,” or “It is going to break my budget,” or etc, but quote Phil 4:19.
33. How God works it out is his business, not mine or yours.
44. And it is not in the bible that “God helps those who help themselves.” That was Ben Franklin, not scripture.
bb. Jesus used a confession in Matt 23-25 “23 When Jesus came into the official’s house, and saw the flute-players and the crowd in noisy disorder, 24 He said, "Leave; for the girl has not died, but is asleep." And they began laughing at Him. 25 But when the crowd had been sent out, He entered and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.”
11. He said that she was asleep before he even went into the room; He confessed it!
22. The results were immediate! But they are always not so quick to happen.
IV. Ways to mess up the faith talk
A. First, 2 Cor 5:7 “we walk by faith, not my sight.”
1. If you get your eyes on the circumstances, you are very likely to say a bad confession. “Looks like I’m getting sick again.” This is a bad confession, and we are signing up for a cold. We should say “I am healed.” Does Jesus ever say you are getting a cold?
2. You have to make the purposeful choice to believe that God will do what He said over what it looks like in the natural.
A. If we are confessing with our mouths, but living in sin, God is not going to honor it. Mark 7:6 “You honor me with your mouth, but your heart is far from me.”
1. If you trust God with your health, don’t take your pills, and pray for your children instead of going to the doctor, you had better not be living in sin. If so, it is not going to work and you will fail! You will get worse, we will look bad.
2. If you are in the “God can” phase of faith instead of the “God will” phase, then you’d better be careful.
B. Doing it just to fit in with your other Christians isn’t going to work with God; he knows your heart.
C. Finally, if we say what God’s word says, and believe it in our hearts, we cannot fail. Mark 11:23 "Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, `Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.”
1. However, if you do not believe it in your heart, you will most definitely fail, and that is what many unbelievers see, and scoff at.
2. Remember talking about growing faith? If you do not have the size faith to believe that what you pray for will happen, then you will struggle telling someone that you are healed when you do not feel or look that way.
a. You should take the advice of Luke 17:5 and ask God to increase your faith.
3. If we fail in our faith, and we confessed, did we have faith at all? God says he will do it? It can’t be his fault. What is there to be proud of? Are you a failure or a martyr?
V. What should we tell unbelievers?
A. There are really 2 camps on this.
1. First, some think that this is a great tool for evangelism. How many times have we been faced with unbelievers asking us if we are sick? What do you say? Are you embarrassed to tell what you are confessing? John 12:42 “Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue;” These men didn’t confess in front of others for fear of what they would do or think. “Confess me before men; I will confess you before my father.” This is the main reason you should keep your confession in front of nonbelievers. It is a great testimony….if you stick with it. If you give up, they will let you know! And laugh! This is another reason it is a good idea; it is motivation for you to keep believing—you represent the whole faith walk to these people.
a.. We always have someone who says: “Isn’t it lying to say you are healed even though you are not yet healed?”
11. My reply would be, “What makes you think I am not healed?” He would reply, “You look and feel sick, even though you say you are not.” My final reply, “Lying is trying to purposely trick someone into believing something that is not true, and I am only saying what God’s word says. John 1:1 says that the word is God, and Matt 5:48 says that God is perfect, therefore his word is perfect and true. By deduction then, Gods word is telling the truth. The circumstances are the liars, not the confessor.” What are circumstances, but situations of this world, of which the Devil has control.
2. Others, though, believe that we are casting our pearl before the swine. This is a gift from God, and the world just doesn’t understand, and can’t until they get saved. We would just be inviting scoffers and persecution. You’ll just start an argument that you may not be able to win, and may make the whole church look bad and foolish.
3. So which one? You decide. Pray about it; the Holy Ghost will guide you as to what to say.
IV. Finally:
A. We must confess with our voices that we have what we are believing for. This is a public acknowledgement of our faith, and lets both sides (God and devil) what we are believing and where we stand.
B. We must make sure that what we say matches what we are believing for.
C. We must hold fast and not give up, no matter the time it takes or the circumstances.
Heb 10:23 “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;”
