We, as Christians, underestimate the power of the tongue. Scripture tells us that our words have the power to bring life and death. Scripture says that what we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and what we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered and died. But we are so careless with our words and what we say. How many times have we said things such as "he will never be healed" or "I will always have this disease."
How can we expect for God to heal us when we accept our current condition. I can't expect God to heal my knees if I declare over myself that I have bad knees just as my father does. This is accepting my condition. Or what about when we declare things about people's spiritual condition? I had someone tell me, when I was a teenager and pushing my boundaries, that I didn't have discernment and needed to listen to her as she did have the gift of discernment. Those words remained stuck in my spirit for years until I was in college and started going to a church where my gift of discernment was recognized and I finally started to listen to it. I now move in the discernment of spirits as one of my primary giftings as I was able to break off that curse that had been carelessly spoken over me in a time of frustration.
I have caught myself doing the same thing but not to people's faces. How many times have I said "that person isn't prophetic" as a reason why they shouldn't be on a ministry team. I have started to change my language. I will say something like "I don't think they are ready for a prophetic team as I don't see that as a gift of theirs." I'm not declaring things over them. And I've had to repent for times when I've said things like "that person doesn't have a prophetic bone in their body" out of frustration over the misguided individual who is more miss than hit when it comes to prophecy.
We also do this kind of dismissive curse with entire ministries and even cities. A biblical example of this is the expression "what good can come out of Nazareth?" that was so prevalent during the days of Jesus. How many times do we dismiss entire denominations as being inconsequential in the Kingdom of God because we disagree with their theology? One dear person in my life asked me why would God send me to do ministry in a "cesspool" like Hollywood. When we declare these kinds of things we shouldn't be surprised when thats all we see.
When we speak condemnation over a region, organization, ministry, or person we should expect to see more of that come forth. What would we see if instead we spoke blessing? Make a covenant with God to speak life and not death. Ask God to show you His heart so that you can speak that instead. For example, God has called Hollywood to be a beacon of purity and hope to the nations. The enemy has hijacked this calling but we can remind God of His heart for Hollywood just as Moses did before God when He was angry against the nation of Israel. When we speak blessing into the atmosphere our words will shift the attitudes of God's people and even the lost.
Christians are known as people who are quick to condemn and slow to love. This is a tragedy. We can fix this if we make a covenant to speak the heart of God and not speak out of frustration. Don't speak anything that you don't want to come true. Speak as you would wish for things to be. If God's people, especially those of us who consider ourselves prophetic, started to live our lives this way then we would see a radical shift in how the world views the Church. We would see a healing a division and a new unity within the body. We would see a greater Kingdom expression and a greater measure of freedom with God's people.
We have the power to speak life and we have the power to speak death. What will you choose to speak?
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