Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
I was amazed one day reading Genesis 1:1-3 where it tells us the earth was void and without form and the Holy Spirit was right there brooding like a mother hen. “Wait a minute,” I thought. The presence of the Lord was manifest and nothing was happening! How can that be? It was only when God spoke that something happened.
I believe that nothing happens in the kingdom until something is spoken. That is how God designed it from the very beginning and so it is. I love how Eugene Peterson says it, “Words are not just saying something; they are making something.”
The reason our words can be so powerful is because our words are spiritual forces. They are not simply sound waves. Sound waves are not powerful, but the spirit is powerful. Jesus said, “Every word I’ve spoken to you is a Spirit-word, and so it is life-making.” (John 6:63). Our words are spirit, but they are not always life-giving as Jesus’ words are. Our words are powerful forces for good or evil.
Have you tried speaking creatively or to a sickness or problem and nothing happened? I have and sometimes I would get the opposite of what I speaking. Something is wrong with that.
We need to face the fact that overall our words suffer a serious lack of real power when it comes to releasing life. The reason for this goes back to the garden when Adam ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He ate from that tree with his mouth and because of this his tongue was poisoned (James 3:9). When the Bible speaks of the tongue, it is not referring to the organ in your mouth. It is referring to the words that the tongue speaks.
So when Adam sinned, he died spiritually. His spirit was no longer alive and his words lost the power to give life. Since Adam was dead spiritually his words were tainted with death. The tree of knowledge causes the tongue to speak both good and evil. This is why we can use the tongue for good and evil (Prov. 18:21).
James tells us the tongue is now like an untamed beast (James 3:7-8). We would never trust an untamed beast. We can never trust our tongue. One minute we could speak good and the very next evil.
At the end of the day how can we expect to say something that creates, heals or destroys the works of the devil that does not have the breath of God on it? We shouldn’t expect that. However, Proverbs 15:4 tells us, “The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life.” The tree of life was the other tree in the garden and this tree heals our spirit and causes the tongue to bring forth life, health and wholeness. Only Jesus who is the tree of life can heal our words and breathe His Spirit into them.
Many Blessings, BW