THE POWER OF WORDS

A YEAR FOR CHANGE 

Jesus taught that in order to live a successful life people have to repent, change the way they think, and align their thoughts with the Lord’s.
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Not only do right beliefs matter, but what comes out of the mouth is also important. Words have power:

From the fruit of their mouth a person's stomach is filled;
with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied.
[Proverbs 18:20]
 
The tongue has the power of life and death,
and those who love it will eat its fruit.
[Proverbs 18:21]

God gets things done through His Word: He spoke and the world came into being. Jesus gave commands and people were healed, delivered, and the dead were raised. His Word has creative power to change people and situations.

God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, meaning ‘Father of Nations’, before he had any offspring. Jesus gave the name ‘Peter’, which means ‘rock’ to His disciple, Simon, which means ‘reed’, long before any rock-like characteristics had emerged.

God… gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.
[Romans 4:17]

He also looks at us and calls us according to what we can be, not what we are.
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Many of us have had experience of negative declarations made over us in our youth which cling like limpets:

‘You’ll never amount to anything… She’s so quiet… He has no sense of rhythm…’
 
And we continually speak negatives over ourselves:
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‘I have no sense of direction… I'm sick and tired of… I’m really clumsy… I’m no good at maths...
This really stresses me out... I'm really worried that...'
 
I'm not suggesting we ignore, or gloss over difficulties, pretending they don't exist, but rather that we look at them with the eyes of faith. We can take our lead from Abraham:
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Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations,
just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be."
Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead--
since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah's womb was also dead.
Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God,
but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,
being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.
[Romans 4:18-21 (underlining, mine)]
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​What if we started declaring God's eternal truth rather than our temporal reality? What if we started speaking words of faith and hope over ourselves and our circumstances? What if 2023 was the year when we chose to take hold of the life He paid for, the abundant life He promised?
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For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
[2 Corinthians 10:3-5]

RESOURCES

Unsure where to start?
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This topic is also addressed in  The Power of the Spoken Word  webpage.

​In addition the following daily meditations will help with renewing the mind, together with accompanying declarations:

REFLECTIONS ON THE CROSS
REFLECTIONS ON THE RESURRECTION
REFLECTIONS ON THE HOLY SPIRIT
31 DAYS IN PROVERBS
THE BLESSING OF HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS

THIS WEEK’S GRACE RHYTHM:

This week, pay attention to what comes out of your mouth. Ask the Lord to alert you to negative expressions, or statements which are not aligned with His perspective.

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[Photo credits:  Johannes Krupinski (girl); John Schnobrich (laptop) @ Unsplash, with thanks]