For the month of February, we, I have the honor of being able to
do a series and they're dead in the middle of it right now.
It is called the Voice in the Voyage.
We started with it last week. And this is a series on
confession. And the, my heart and my intent
and my goal here is that we would have a deeper
understanding of this subject, but not only just a revelation
on the inside in our spirit, but also have some practical
application tonight, some practical understanding of how
our confession works. So as, as we get into it, I know
that last week we laid quite a foundation about how the word of
God, our words matter. The value of not just the word
of God, but the value of your words as a whole.
I'm not going to spend too much time in review, but it's
important for me to go back and remind you of a couple key
concepts #1 God said, let there be.
So in the beginning of all things, we know God is a creator
and he's also somebody that speaks.
He's a speaking spirit. Then when He made man, that's
you and me, He made us to be in His image and in His likeness.
That means He made us to operate like Him.
So if God is a speaking, a speaking spirit, what does that
make us speaking spirit? The same way that God is the
King of heaven. He established man to be the
ruler of this earth. When He gave man dominion, gave
him the Kingdom. That means we have the right to
say and the dominion we carry on this planet just as He does in
heaven through our voice. So in the garden, whenever Adam
and Eve fell, they ate the fruit.
They they aligned their speaking with another voice.
So last week we said whenever he, the enemy came to attack, he
came to attack the most powerful thing in the universe.
He did not come to attack the woman directly.
He came to attack the word. His first question was, what did
God say? Why?
Because he recognizes the enemy, recognizes, even God recognizes,
and you should too, that the most powerful thing in the
universe is the word of God. There's nothing else in the in
the whole universe that is more potent, more powerful, more
precious of a commodity than the word of the king.
So even when the devil first showed up, what his goal was is
to get you to doubt or to manipulate the King's word.
So this should lay a pretty good foundation for us.
If you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it.
We've got it on podcast. But again, the word of the king
is what God values most, his own word.
He says he exalts his his word above his own name.
And again, if we don't think words matter, why in the world
is there such a, a, a, a battle throughout the entire Old
Testament, through the New Testament and even in your daily
life, a battle of words. We we come into, you know, a
men's discipleship course that we have.
And I can't tell you how many times I've sat down and been
speaking with, you know, men over the years that words their
parents spoke over them when they were children have dictated
how they think about themselves 50 years later.
We want to act like, oh, it's OK for me to flippantly say what I
want. That's why it's dangerous when
somebody's comes to me and they're like, oh, you know, I
just say what comes to my mind? Danger.
Oh, you know, I don't really have a filter.
You know me get one fast, please.
You're going to hurt yourself. You're going to hurt people
around you because again, if the word of God places such a heavy
value on words, why would it not be a a trick of the enemy to get
you to devalue that? So the the voice in the voyage
that we have, we gave an example of in our key text for this,
this whole series is going to come from James chapter 3, James
chapter 3, verses four and five. And James gives us insight into
the value of words. James starts out by telling us
he's like, listen, a person who controls their mouth is a
perfect person. A person who controls their
mouth is a perfect person. Whose responsibility is it to
control the mouth? OK, So right away we can tell
when somebody makes the statement, the religious
statements that God's in control.
Well, I can add something to the list that he's not in control of
your mouth. If he wasn't controlling mouth,
you wouldn't be saying the stuff you're saying.
We wouldn't be having half the conversations.
You haven't. He's not in control of your
mouth. So whenever James tells us in
verse four and five, he says, look at the ships also that they
are so great and they are driven by strong winds, but they are
still directed by a very small rudder wherever the inclination
of the pilot desires. So even though we have these
massive ships, and if you've ever studied history, you've
seen some of these things that came out of, you know, Great
Britain in the time of their Royal Navy, these massive, huge
ships that they would get in the current of the water.
The water would be dragging them along.
The wind would come in these massive sails and be moving
them. But what determined their
direction was not the current of the ocean and it was not the
wind that was in the sails. What determined the direction
was the small piece of wood at the back of that ship called a
rudder. So even though the captain, even
though the king could decree that they go out on this voyage
and say here's where I want you to go, the captain could get on
the boat and say everybody turn this many degrees east, but
nothing would happen until the pilot turned that wheel that
controlled that rudder. So I love to do what Jesus did
right when he was here. He gave natural examples and
said this is how the Kingdom operates.
These are things that the Kingdom does.
In the same way, God is the captain.
He's, he has laid out a destiny, a destination, a purpose for
every beating heart in this place.
But whether you reach that or not is not determined on him.
By him. He's giving you the compass,
He's giving you his word, He's giving you waypoints along the
way. He's giving you a final
destination. He hasn't given you the whole
map, but what he can do is as the captain, call out and say
turn E, turn W, turn starboard, turn portside.
He can give you those small directions.
And as he does that, you now have the obligation to make the
adjustments you hear from his voice.
So when we talk about the voice in the voyage, there's two
voices happening in the voyage of your destiny.
One is the voice of the captain telling you where you should go,
and one is your voice that determines where you do go
because your mouth determines your destination.
Remember last week we talked about how if you, if you're
looking at degrees right, and you set out on a straight path
and you just get 1° off in your judgment of where you're
steering, your final destination becomes wildly different.
And if you've ever driven a car, which most of you probably did,
is that if you're, when you're going in a straight line, you're
not sitting there. Just hope, just sitting the
wheel and saying I'm not going to touch it.
The rest of my, no, you're even on a straight line, making small
minor adjustments along the way to make sure you're staying the
right course. In the same way.
That's how it's going to be with your destiny.
If you find yourself shipwrecked on foreign shores.
Who got you there? It was the Lord's will.
No, it wasn't. He told you where to go.
You steered it somewhere else. If you find yourself.
Oh wait, you know I know what God wants me to do.
I know what He's called me to be.
But it just seems like I keep falling short.
Why then it's not His perfect plan.
His perfect plan isn't that you fail and go from failure to
failure to failure to failure. His perfect plan is that you
would follow His direction. You would heed His voice and
then use your voice to direct your destiny.
But this is important because a lot of times when we talk about
confession, I, you know, I went back over.
I love the, the wealth of teaching that we have at Anchor
Vague Church. I'm telling you right now, we,
we get fed well by our apostles, by the pastoral staff.
I mean, if you, if you're here and you're like, man, I don't
really get fed at Anchor Vague Church.
You're a liar. You're an absolute liar.
We, it means you're sitting in service with your mouth shut.
So I've got children. We feed our children good at our
house. We eat organic.
We just got a bunch of venison deer meat that my brother
killed. We brought it in.
You know what? My kids have the choice.
They can sit at the table and go.
I find some believers have done that over the years.
They come in, there is a great meal here.
They said they're going, I don't want that.
It's good for you. You'll grow.
You'll be healthy. Anyway, that's like the pastoral
thing coming out, right? See, nobody's safe in this place
because I've grown up here with you.
All my stories are just y'all, At least half of you had a meal
in my home. It's like I can give an
allegory. Oh, you know, so and so one time
and you're like, wait, he's talking about me.
Probably, I don't know. We're not sure we'll get we'll
cross that bridge when we come to it.
But when we look at the destiny that God has for each and every
one of us, the goal is that we hear his voice and that we
follow that. But also we want to say what
he's saying about our identity. We want to say what he's saying
in our circumstance. Because remember, even though
the winds and the waves can be tough, they can be trying to
push you in a direction still where that rudder points is
where you'll go. The Bible's full of ocean
analogies with people on a ship. Remember we talked about how
Jesus was on this ship, man. And these guys were professional
sailors. They knew how boats operated.
Yet there's this storm happening in such a way that they're like,
we're going to die. And Jesus is sleeping on the
boat. Then when he gets up, he comes
out and says, listen, peace, be still.
And with his voice commands the ocean to obey.
And they were blown away. And he's able to look at him and
say, where's your faith? Well, had he ever told them to
speak to the winds and ways before?
No, apparently as a good teacher, see, Jesus is a good
teacher. Can we agree about that?
You know what a bad teacher is? A bad teacher, somebody that
comes in and just slides a test in front of you with no
instruction on, says take the test and then when you fail,
they go you're a failure. That's a bad teacher.
A good teacher instructs you and prepares you and gives you
examples of how to accomplish passing the test.
So if Jesus came in and said you didn't have faith, that means
through his example, through his constant conversation, through
his words that he gave them, he apparently had equipped them to
pass that test. When he said you didn't have
faith, it wasn't because they didn't know.
Same thing is going to be with you whenever trials come.
We are equipped through the word just like the disciples were to
accomplish victory in that trial.
In that test. Proverbs chapter 18 verse 21.
Let's look at this Proverbs chapter 18 verse 21.
It says that death and life are in the power of the what are in
the power of the tongue? Whose tongue?
OK, those who love it will eat its fruit.
Now, it's not saying those who love, you know, just speaking.
OK, those who value the words that come out of their mouth.
Now I'll also say you'll eat the fruit of life, but you can also
eat the fruit of death. And then going over, you know,
listening to some some messages from last year, I came across
one where Apostle Earl had this phenomenal quote.
And I'm going to quote him tonight and he's sitting right
here and I love it. But he said, you know, your life
can manifest in just one syllable.
You may have confessed your way into the mess that you're in.
You may have declared a lot of negativity in your life, but in
one moment you can get a word from the Lord and just with one
word begin to declare life and set yourself in the right
direction. See what I think we do sometimes
with our confession? And I'm going to talk a lot
tonight to not just believers that have been born and raised
in church like me, but there's some people in here you may not
have ever heard this before. And I'm aware of what the Word
of God does, right? Let me just say this real quick.
The Word of God, every time it's ministered, every time we read
it, every time we hear it, it does one of two things.
It either forms a brand new belief in US that sets us on a
course of victory if we would hear it, apply it, believe it,
do what it says. But also the second thing that
it does is it strengthens the foundation of what you already
know. It doesn't matter if we get up
here and read. Life and death are in the power
of a tongue again. I'm telling you, if everybody
already had it, we wouldn't have to get up here.
You're like, oh, I already know that.
I can tell by that sentence. You said you don't got it, but
every time we hear the word, it strengthens something in US.
It builds us a a deeper foundation.
God's wanted to prepare us, especially whenever somebody
gets up here and ministers. We're not in here just to just
to hear our own voice. I truly believe that every time
Pastor Mike and Angie, Apostles, Earl and Marcy, Pastor Chase,
Pastor Bradley, Pastor Danny, me, whoever comes up here, we
have spent time with the King. We have heard.
What do you have for your people?
And that should never go unnoticed by any of us, that
when we're sitting in here, we want to be people that receive.
What is God saying to me? I don't have to go to YouTube
and hear a bunch of other preachers.
They're not responsible for my soul.
There may be good information out there, but I'm telling you,
the number one source of revelation for me is going to be
at my house. I'm going to let my pastors, the
five full minutes against that God called me to submit to and
be with and run with and do life with.
Those are the ones that are going to minister to me the most
in the deepest. But life and death are in the
power of the tongue, which means how you speak, what you say, is
going to dictate where you wind up.
Just like we said, when the ship is in motion, everybody's life
is in motion. Nobody is in stagnant waters.
You're going a direction whether you like it or not.
So whenever we begin to confess or decree something in our life,
it's going to change the direction and the course that
we're going, which then tells us that's how we wind up at our
final checkpoint. But what I think a lot of people
try to do, especially, you know, the religious believers want to
want to, they want to teleport and not actually voyage
somewhere. They, they, they find a
circumstance that hits them and they're like, I'm going to just
say words that'll change my location immediately.
I mean, I've seen it, you know, there's been times where we come
and visit people in the hospital and, and I've, I've seen time
and time again where people will want to be believing God for
their healing, but the way that they're going about their
confession makes them seem wacky.
You understand, you can be a believer and you can be a man or
woman of God and you can be a little weird.
And it's not the goal is to be weird.
The word of God comes in and helps remove your weirdness.
And that's a, that's a miracle in itself.
Don't tell me God ain't moving when he's making the weirdos not
weird. But but what happens sometimes
is I think in our religious mindset, we think that that our
confession is like waving a magic wand.
Then all of a sudden somebody will be in the hospital room and
the doctor will walk in and say, you know what?
We did the biopsy and you, you have cancer.
And they go, I do not have cancer.
I do not have cancer. I do not have it.
And you're like, just because the reality is presently you do
have it doesn't mean that the in the future you got to keep it.
Confession doesn't teleport you from all of a sudden, Oh, oh,
it's not there actually. Oh, everybody psych everybody.
God didn't do that in the garden.
Whenever Adam and Eve ate the fruit, God didn't look and go,
they didn't eat the fruit. They didn't eat the fruit.
The fruit wasn't eaten. He he embraced reality and said,
no, but I'm going to declare something about the future of
this situation. He said, I will send my seed.
See that word was more powerful. So what we're doing with
confession is not denying reality.
What we're doing is we are shifting reality to become what
God says about it. See, I think sometimes we read
the Abraham he says he called things that be not as though
they were and felt like he was just some kind of blind.
You know, I have no idea what's going on.
You can know what's happening in life and then begin to decree
something that along the path it changes the reality.
You know I grew up in a church where you sing this song.
It's like whose report will you believe we will believe the
report of the Lord. But if you apply that to an
immediate present circumstance that the report can be, I got a
sore throat. I'm telling you, I've been a
weird Christian before. I've been through it.
There's been times where I'm like, my throat is not sore in
the name of Jesus. My throat is not sore.
It's not sore when I thought what I'm trying to do with my,
with my voice is trying to immediately change something
when what I'm doing is I'm directing the course of my life.
That's good. I'm telling you, somebody can
come in. There's there was a time I
prayed with somebody that got a negative report about diabetes,
diabetes. They came in and said you've
got, you've got type 1 diabetes. And the person goes, I do not
have it. I'm like, the doctor thinks
we're weird. I'm here representing the doctor
thinks we're weirdo. He's looking at the paper.
The fact is you got it. And the fact is a lot of life
choices LED us to this moment. Somewhere along the way, your
mouth dictated it may not have just been what was coming out.
But just because you have a present report doesn't mean this
is your final report. The goal as believers is not to
say, oh, whatever the doctor tells me, that's what I have to
believe forever. No, God has a reality that he's
trying to get you to. What you have to do is align
your mouth with saying, I'm going to get there.
Because again, this is the issue that I got with Alcoholics
Anonymous. They come in and they want to
assign you an identity in your present circumstance.
I am this when the truth of the matter is you could have just
taken a drink, but the direction you're heading is going to be
determined. Do you identify with this is me?
I'm an alcoholic. That's all I'll ever be.
And then that's all you are. And you wonder why?
But if we can get God's word on the matter and say, what do you
say about me? What are what?
What is the reality? See, there is no victory in
denying reality. There's only victory in
declaring His word. That's it.
So we don't get to just come in and wave a magic wand of oh, I,
I all my debts are paid off in the name of Jesus.
You may as well well say Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo.
You don't get to just say words and they just happen.
No, we got to find what words are have already been said.
See, faith is a firm persuasion based on the word God has said.
But we got believers walking around disappointed because all
of a sudden they hear the principle of, oh, I could, you
know you, I can have what I say when?
Let's get in the word and really define what that means.
You can't just have whatever you want to say.
What you can have is what were God's promises?
What has God declared? And you say that same thing.
The original Greek word for confession literally means to
say the same thing. So it doesn't mean just declare
whatever you want. I have a Lamborghini Bibbidi
Bobbidi Boo. That's what you're saying.
You're trying to use magic. See, there's there's not
authority in a wish. There's authority only in the
word. So if I attach my mouth to my
wishes, then I'm going to find myself disappointed and wonder
why didn't got working when he was never in that.
What he's in is in the word. So I know if I do get a report
that somebody says, hey, you've got this diagnosis.
I don't have to sit there and go this is the end.
This is how I go out and see, we think that's funny because we
get good teaching, right? We think that's funny because
we, there's a bunch of people in here that have overcome, but
this is the hot tape for the world.
See, what we don't want to do is go in and be like, oh, I'm just
going to say a bunch of words. No, I have to find, Lord, what
do you want me to declare over my situation?
Life and death are in the power of the tongue.
That's why Jesus makes such an emphasis about a false tongue or
a lying tongue, because he wants to make sure that what you're
saying aligns with his example as a good teacher.
He not only told us what to do, he also showed us how to live.
I mean, again, he made the statement.
He said I don't say anything of my own initiatives, but I only
say what the Father tells me to say.
He didn't say that. So we'd all clap our hands and
go, good job, you're a great guy.
He did that so that we could know the pattern of how life and
victory work. You're like, oh, I'll give you a
piece of my mind. I don't want a piece of your
mind. I don't want a piece of my mind.
My mind can take me a bunch of different directions.
Let me get a piece of his mind. Somebody's like, what do you
think about this? You don't want to know what I
think about this. We got to find out what does he
think about this? And let's just say that because
I've seen too often where people will just declare something.
I mean, the, the world has this idea of this manifesting, right?
They want to just go out there and decree something that they
want. And then you know what?
Some people have some things to happen for them.
You're like, there is still a law of sowing and reaping and
your words are seeds. Whether you're a believer or
unbeliever, when you speak those words get planted and then begin
to bear a harvest. That's how we know even with
parenting. We gave an example last week.
It was just bears repeating again that with parenting, what
you declare over your kids will determine the direction of your
home, especially when they're minors growing up in your home,
that they're not just here to rest on their own faith.
So whenever parents come, they're like, oh, you know, you
know how it goes. You know, we're getting ready to
enter into the terrible twos and then your little terrible 2 year
olds running around like a jerk. This is your problem.
This is your fault. It's not because every terror A2
year old has to be terrible. It's not because it's just God's
will. God's testing me.
He's not testing you. You failed the test when you
declared death over your family about to have a kid.
You know, we're not going to have any sleep just because the
rest of the world and every movie and TV show you've ever
watched, everybody's like, oh, we're tired.
We're parents, we're so tired. Doesn't mean your life has to be
miserable. You don't have to declare that
and accept it and receive it in your life and say this is what
I'm going to be. It's OK, we'll keep going.
We'll keep going. Speaking alone doesn't get the
result. You have to attach it from the
word of God. This is again another quote from
our apostle that he said confession is a firm persuasion.
It doesn't just produce of itself in its words, it produces
when it's attached to faith. If you want the direction of
your life to go God's way, find out what He's saying and then
declare that over yourself. I mean, think about how Jesus
was about to leave the planet and the last thing that he
wanted to leave us with. I mean, you would think that's
the most, one of the most important moments.
You know, if I knew I was going to, you know, have to go
somewhere, be taken away. And I and my kids were here and
they were hearing what I was saying.
The last few things I would say to them would really be
important and heavy. And so Jesus, whenever he was
raised from the dead and walked around before he left his
disciples and ascended, he had a heavy emphasis on two things.
One was walking in love with each other, and two was the
ministry of the Holy Spirit. But I find it interesting that
he defines the Holy Spirit as the spirit of what?
The Spirit of truth. He said in his job.
His job description is not to remind you where you left your
keys. I grew up, I was Christian in
the 90s, OK, We prayed for a lot of stuff.
We had a lot of spirits of stuff.
The spirit of neglect. We got to what is that spirit of
lost keys? No, it's not what we have.
He can help you, but his job description from the mouth of
Jesus is He will lead you and guide you into what not so you
can just know truth. And I want you to get this
tonight. The goal is not that you just
know truth. It's that you believe, live and
declare truth. For us to just have the
knowledge of what the word says or just have the knowledge of it
does us no good. If you keep your mouth shut, you
can know God is the healer. You can know God wants you whole
and healthy and you can sit there with your mouth completely
shut and never declare it and wonder why it didn't happen.
We got to be people that apply the truth.
That's why the Holy Ghost Job is way more than just letting you
know something. He's here to tell you how what
to declare. Remember, we're kings.
I mean we always say here at Anchor Faith Church, you know,
he is the king of kings. Who are those kings?
And when a king speaks, his word is.
And This is why I'm preaching tonight, next week, you better
have it down. When a king speaks, his word is
power. Where the word of a king is,
there is power. So whenever you speak, your
words have the power to carry your direction.
Your words have the power to carry your physical body.
Your words have the power to carry your relationships.
Now I need to interject the note.
You're not going to be just confessing over all your friends
and confessing over your family members and expecting that their
free will is going to be overridden like that should be a
disclaimer we give here because I love this point that in the
Bible we get the fruits of the Spirit, right?
These are the fruits of an individual believer.
Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness. I'm missing 1 and gentleness and
self-control, not others control, not just circumstance
control, self-control because you have the ability to control
what you say when a situation happens.
See when we begin to speak about confession, obviously the way we
get into confession and as as Christians as a whole is we have
the negative side right? Which is like confess your sins,
which means declare and and admit to your sins.
Admit there was a problem. But then on the other side, we
get into the benefits of confession, knowing that God
created us to speak out his will and have his will manifest in
the earth. That's what we also would go
through with prayer. Prayer is a form of confession.
I find a lot of people miss it in prayer because they just want
to talk about their problems all the time, and they miss that
your prayer life is also meant to declare God's will in the
planet. If all you're doing in prayer is
just talking to God about what's wrong, then you're missing half
of the equation. You can take your problems to
Him, and you can give your weights to Him, but the other
half of your prayer should be victory that you come out on the
other side. No one.
I'm going to decree the opposite of my situation.
Again, just because someone gives you a negative report
doesn't mean you have to deny that it exists.
That's weird, but what you do need to do is acknowledge it
doesn't end here. I'm going to direct it with what
I say next. There's a few things that that
confession does in our life. When we speak and declare
things, there's three things that I want to go over tonight.
I'm going to get real teachy. I'm going to give you 3 points,
three things that confession will produce in your life.
The first thing is identity. Not only this confession and
what comes out of your mouth reveal your identity, but it
also will shape your identity. This is important to note
because a lot of times whenever we get into a situation, we want
to say, oh, here's just what I am.
Be careful with that statement because if you're saying
something other than what God says, you're actually damaging
your course. Well, you know, I've always been
like this change. Yeah, it's good.
You know, this is my, you know, it seems like I knew a woman.
I knew a woman that every time we got in a conversation, she
always go, I'm so confused. I'm confused.
What do you say? I'm confused.
And you know what? She was confused every time I
talked to her, she was confused. And at some point I was like,
stop saying that, please. It's like every time I walk up
to you. I'm sorry.
Oh my God. I know what she's going to say.
I get up there. Hold on, hold on.
I'm confused. But it was just this knee jerk
reaction of a statement that she just flippantly said on a
regular basis that all of a sudden what she continually,
perpetually confessed, she all began to actually reap a harvest
of. So sometimes we're just letting
things come out of our mouth without recognizing the value of
what it is and it, we inadvertently create a whole
crop of a mess that we we weren't watching diligently what
came out of our mouth. I mean, there was a time when
they, the Pharisees came to Jesus and they had an issue.
They're like, look at your disciples.
Look at they're eating and they, you know, washing their hands
and they're nasty and whatever their complaint was.
And Jesus said, listen, it's not what's going into the man that
defiles him, What's coming out. He wasn't talking about vomit.
He was talking about words. He was talking about, yeah, word
vomit. He was talking about what's
coming out of your mouth is shaping who you are, whether you
like it or not. You know, I've always, I've
always just had, you know, I've always just had this problem.
Stop, stop saying that. It's like in the Kingdom.
And again, all of us in here are like, yeah, obviously this is
what we do. But that's because we have a
culture and a way of talking. It's not just a language that we
have in the Kingdom. We've got speaking in tongues.
We've got the evidence of the Holy Ghost that comes upon us.
That's great. But you understand there's a way
of talking that also goes along with our Kingdom culture that
you get you come to anchor faith for a time.
You get around believers at a time that have that have been
mature, that know how to control their mouths.
And all of a sudden you'll start talking and saying something to
go, hey, hey, don't say that. Has anybody ever heard one of
their brothers and sisters that say that to them?
Hey, don't talk like that. Why?
Because we know truly the value of the Kingdom word.
We know the value of you. Whenever you open your mouth and
you begin to declare something, I want you to speak life over
yourself. I don't want to hear you saying
crazy stuff over yourself. I don't want to see that
manifest in your life. I want to hear you say something
right? And I know we're on the same
page. I mean, the same way with my
children. If I came in and I was like,
listen, hey, we love you. You're valued.
And they're like, I'm not valued.
I'm the worst. That'd make me mad.
Who said that? Did God not do that in the
garden? He's goes in there and he's
like, listen, eat from anything. He gives them this whole great
pitch. He gives them the pregame speech
that we give our kids before we go to somebody's house.
God gave them the whole pregame speech.
I look at my kids, I'm like, listen, we're grown.
You're not grown. You're not going to run your
mouth. You're going to sit there,
you're going to be quiet. You're not going to run around
like a spazz in their house. God did the same thing with
Adam. Adam is born into the planet.
And God goes, listen, eat anything you want over here.
But there's this one tree. You do not touch that tree.
He's a good dad. But then from there, all of a
sudden, Adam and Eve were in the garden.
God didn't say. And also what?
Just know you're naked. He didn't say that.
He told them what they needed to know to accomplish their
assignment. Then all the sudden they show up
and they're hiding and God comes in and he goes, they said, well,
we realized we were naked. And God said, who told you that
you just spoke something out of your mouth that I never said,
that you had to have heard from somewhere.
So let me find the source who said it.
And God went and dealt with the source of words.
He didn't just look at them and say, I'm going to punish.
I'm going to no, he said, no, I need to find the source of words
because words are the most valuable, potent thing in the
universe. I'm going to find who said it,
then I'm going to deal with that.
So in the same way I could go and sit down with you and find
out what the situation you're in.
What have we been saying? What have we been declaring?
Whose voice have we been listening to?
Because what we don't talk about sometimes with confession is
this word gossip. Gossip is a form of confession.
If it's in the same category, then all of a sudden you've got
problems in your relationships you got with your with with the
people that God's assigned you to do life with, and you've got
little bitterness and little frustrations.
And all of a sudden, what does this come out of?
Somebody's been having conversation that you've been
listening to and then regurgitating out of your mouth,
and you wonder why the direction of your life is the way that it
is. The words you hear, whether
they're from the enemy, from God, or from one of their
vessels, because they both have vessels.
Maybe you don't believe me. Everybody's not saying Amen.
Let's look at Matthew 16. Let's look at Matthew 16 because
this is an important source of confession because confession
gives you your identity. It forms who you are if, if you
know who God is. But what another thing that
confession also does is that it also forms allegiance.
The second point would be that confession, it, it forms in you
an allegiance to something what you confess you're committed to.
Why do you think in the United States of America, in our own
government, if you've ever been to a sporting event or if you've
ever been to a government assembly, we start out with the
Pledge of Allegiance. Every time you open your mouth,
you're pledging allegiance to one or the other.
There's a domain of darkness and there's a Kingdom government of
God's beloved Son. And when you open your mouth,
that every time is a Pledge of Allegiance to which Kingdom or
which dominion you want to participate in.
There's not an in between. Again, a lot of believers think
there's three options. There's I could do what the
devil wants. That's bad.
No, I could do what God wants. That's best.
But sometimes it's hard. So I'm just going to do what I
want. There's not three options.
Your flesh and what you want and your selfish desire is part of
the enemy's plan. When you're like, I just need a
little bit of me, you're choosing him.
But if you do what John 330 says, I must decrease, he must
increase, and the end result of the increase and decrease, if we
have scales, is all him, none of me.
But is that what comes out in your conversation?
See, that's why we're here, because there's this
conversation that happens with Jesus and his disciples.
He pulls them all together. These guys should know stuff.
They've been with the Son of God, the living embodiment of
the word of God for three years and they still say dumb stuff.
And you've been Anchor Faith Church for like 3 years and
you're like, why are we still talking about this?
Because you, this is how it goes.
We got to keep growing. We haven't arrived yet.
But he looks at me and says, who do you say that I am?
What he's doing is calling on them words he wants to hear
their declaration He want because he realizes the identity
that you have, the identity you ascribe to things comes out of
your mouth and is revealed to your mouth.
They were like, well, some say you're this and some say this
and he looks at Peter and say, who do you say that I am?
He says, I say that you are the Son of the living God.
You are the Christ. And Jesus says you got it.
Blessed are you Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not
revealed this to you. But my Father who is in heaven
directly gave you revelation that you just declared out of
your mouth. And upon this rock, this
revelation, I will build my church.
And then like seconds later he goes, I'm going to die.
I'm going to be buried, I'm going to rise again.
He literally quotes like the majority of the creeds of the
Christian faith right there, the foundation of what we believe in
Christianity, his death, burial and resurrection.
And Peter goes, no, I won't let it happen.
May that not happen because I love Jesus.
And then Jesus looks at him and says, same guy, exact same
person that Jesus went blessed are you.
What you just declared out of your mouth is divine revelation.
Jesus looks at him and he goes, get behind me, Satan.
And this is Peter. This is one of his closest
disciples. This is the second most
mentioned man in this in the New Testament, Peter, Simon Peter.
And Jesus looks and he goes, get behind me, Satan.
People don't like when their leaders correct them.
You would have hated Jesus's correction.
Like you mean make an adjustment in your life.
Jesus, look, hey, Satan, quit talking.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, this pastor thinks he's the Good Shepherd,
Not so great in this moment. Come on, give Jesus a little
more credit. No, Jesus tells him.
He says, listen, you set your mind on man's interests and not
on God's, and it just came out of your mouth.
You have aligned yourself with the enemy's plan based on what
you just said. Now, the problem is we got a
bunch of people that want to Riddle their whole conversation
with disclaimers. Well, that's not what I meant.
That's not what I meant. Jesus, Hey, hey, nobody cares
what you meant. God, That's how confession
works. That's why it matters.
It doesn't matter what you just meant.
What did you say in that moment, Peter?
It doesn't say he said anything else.
Good job. Because I have found when it
comes to our mouths, listen, we need boldness.
The Holy Spirit can come upon us and do us with power from on
high to give us boldness to what Witness.
Boldness helps you open your mouth.
But I found there's this other thing called maturity that helps
you keep it shut. Second tale, when somebody's
like, oh, you know, I just say what I want.
Amateur, your baby, little baby, Wham, Wham, That's all I'm
hearing. Wham, Wham.
There's a time when you just come in and you say, Lord, what
do you want me to say? And if he doesn't say anything,
you don't either. Don't just say what you said
before. Don't just say what you think.
The old manner was that, oh, last time they'll find out.
What is the King saying about this right now?
That's one thing that I always pray before I get up here.
I said Lord, I want I know what the subject is.
I've heard about confession my whole life, but my prayer is
always Lord, I don't want to just get up and say what I know.
I want divine revelation from your spirit.
I want my tongue to be the pen of a ready writer that speak
forth the unction and oracles of God.
I don't want just old man of something I already studied.
I want to come in here and give fresh word.
Then the goal is that all of us, every time somebody ministers to
us and opens their mouth, that we would receive it.
Not as just the words of a man, not as just the words of a
pastor or an apostle, but we would receive it for what it
truly is. The Word of God that it says is
able to perform its work in US who believe, think about.
We all want miracles, we want signs, we want wonders.
But what do they follow? Preaching of the what?
So even miracle signs and wonders.
Whether it's in a corporate environment or in your personal
life, they're waiting first to follow something.
And it's the word. We got to value what comes out
of our mouth. Just because you get a
impossible diagnosis doesn't mean it ends there.
Tony, if you could see into the spirit, there's, there's times
when people get bad news, they go, oh, well, this is going to
happen to you. Or this is, this is taking place
in your family or this is taking place in.
If you could see into the spirit, the spirit world sets
and waits not for what the diagnosis was or not for what
the report was. The spirit world's waiting to
say, what are you going to say about it?
What are you going to say about it?
Now, this is tough. If you don't want personal
responsibility because I'm just sorry, you know, I've got to
apparently apologize, you got to find a different book.
Because if you want somebody else to do everything for you,
you want God to be in control of everything and you don't have
any responsibility, you won't find it in this Bible.
You won't find it with this Holy Spirit because He's going to
point you back to here's how you can fix your problem.
Here's how you can live victorious.
God's not fighting it for us, but He sure is with us because
He didn't leave us without His Word.
A lot of times we're like, man, if God could just show up.
He does. Every time you speak the Word,
that is God in John 11, in the beginning was the Word.
So in the beginning of all things, it was the Word.
Sometimes we just got to go back to the beginning, the very, very
beginning. What existed before your
problem? What existed before your
mistake? Let's just go back and say what
was in the beginning? In the beginning was the Word.
The word was with God. The Word was God.
If I could just have a touch from God, you can right here,
right here. But we got some people that call
themselves Christians that don't even read their Bible.
They don't even go to the very source of life itself and power
itself. They think just some action of
just declaring something is going to get them victory when
no, you hearing a word and then decreeing that word is what
brings the victory. But the second thing that
confession does obviously is it brings it aligns you and shows
your allegiance. James chapter 3, if we go back
to the the the 3rd chapter of James and look at verses 9 and
10, James has a lot to say about your mouth, but he says listen
with James chapter 3 verse nine. With it we bless talking about
our mouth. With it we bless our Lord and
Father and then with it we curse people and some from the from
the same mouth come blessings and cursings.
It ought not be this way. James is also the one who tells
us about being a double minded person.
So which tells me that the way you speak reveals the way you
think. And if your thinking is double
and your thinking is scattered, then your mouth is also going to
be the same. That means you're going to hang
out with a certain group of people and you'll talk one way,
then you'll get with a certain other group of people and also
you'll be saying something completely different, confusing
everybody all along the way. And then God says in the very
end, you'll have to give an account for every idol word,
every word you flippantly said, every word that you didn't
actually value knowing that you were creating something with
God's like that's what I'm going to account for.
Notice he doesn't say that every deed you've done.
I mean, that's that's other religions.
If you're acquainting, God's going to weigh all the good and
bad. You did wrong.
Religion. We're not even part of a
religion. What our king does in his
Kingdom is causes you to give an account for what have you said?
What have you said about me? What have you said in my name?
See, a lot of times we talk about, you know, don't take the
Lord's name in vain. And we think that means just
saying a certain little phrase that is cursing.
When in the end, taking the Lord's name in vain would have
more to do with you declaring God said something that never he
never said, or you mocking something that he did say
because you didn't believe what He said would come to pass.
Both are dangerous. Do not do either of them.
See, I've heard a lot of people say in Jesus name that he would
never attach his name to. So don't use the Lord's name
flippantly and don't ascribe it to something he didn't say.
People want to come to you and be like, oh you know, God's
telling me to do this. Hey, he better be saying it.
There better be a word from the king.
But if it doesn't line up with his written word, then I come in
and say call a foul. Flag on the play.
It's the only sports reference you'll get out of me.
Flag on the play. You just said the Lord said
something that he does not say in his word.
See, that's why other religions were able to dupe entire
generations and nations full of people.
They said I heard from God. Trust me by myself I did.
And here's what he said only to me.
Nope. No, God was smarter than that.
When He put the value of words spoken, He put value on it.
He had His Word written and documented like every other
solid real Kingdom government. This isn't about religion.
It's about this government that God has established.
And any functioning true government that actually has
authority on this planet has written down their decrees.
And I'm telling you, God wrote His Word so that you could then
repeat it. It was written to be repeated.
That's why thank you, Lord, for your word.
What, what more could he give you?
I mean, sometimes I'm just like, the Lord's got to remind me,
right? Like I'm, I'm not perfect, you
know, in any way. I've got to be reminded by the
Holy Ghost and some stuff that's really simple sometimes like,
well, what does the word say about this?
Like I said before, I've had a sore throat before and here's
here's the, here's the, here's a shift that had to happen to me
as I grew and matured with just getting symptoms on me.
And I think this will be good for some people because
sometimes you're like, if you get a symptom, you feel bad
because like, oh, I'm a believer.
I shouldn't be sick. Listen, just because the symptom
comes on you doesn't mean this is it.
It's over WebMD. The Bible's not WebMD.
And again, we gave the example last week.
Words matter because listen, if you come in and say, I've got a
sore throat and then somebody anointed in the medical field,
like Miss Cassie or, or, or, you know, Doctor Fatty or something
comes and goes, listen, well, let's pray over it.
And then, you know, just drink some hot tea.
You'll be all right. Those words matter.
You can meditate on that and go, I'm going to be all right.
But all of a sudden, if you go search on the Internet and you
say, I've got a sore throat, Web MD is like definitely cancer.
You're definitely, you got a good six to nine months and
that's all you got. And but and we laugh, but people
will stir on that and meditate on that.
Then they'll go tell their friends I looked up my symptoms
on boy MP. You're declare you're repeating
what the what the what the Internet said.
We live in a crazy time when people repeat repeating the
Internet all the time and it's coming out of their royal mouth.
Watch it. Just because you read it doesn't
mean it's worth repeating. Just because you heard so and so
say it doesn't mean it's a word for you anyway.
But in the in my walk with my illness, I realized there was a
time when I would get a symptom to come on me.
And I would say, you know, I mean, I don't feel great.
Lord, I know you're my healer. I'll feel better in the morning
and then felt like crap all night.
Why? I decreed it.
And when I woke up, I felt better.
But then I had a shift in me. I was like, well, wait, if I'm
decreeing this thing, I'm going to, why would I wait till
tomorrow? So if I seem to come out and
say, Lord, I'm thank you, I'm getting better right now.
I'm, I'm going to progress. I didn't say I feel fine now I'm
fine. God, no, I'm, I'm healed and
that, listen, the reality is I have the symptom.
It may take a few seconds or a few minutes or whatever to get
off. I'm not trying to teleport my,
my circumstance to a different circumstance, but I am guiding
where this thing will go and this thing's going to get off me
quicker than it's going to get off anybody else.
And there's more faith in that than there is in just believing
in a wish. But also you got to have a word
from the Lord. There's been times where I say,
Hey, Danny, come pray for me. Put lay hands on me, says
believers, lay hands on the sick.
There's been times where I'm just like, you know what, I'm
going to speak this thing off of me.
Lord, in the name of Jesus, I declare right now my body's
whole. I'll speak what the just like
Abraham did the things that be not as though they were in the
name of Jesus. My body's whole right now it's
it's beginning to mend in this moment.
And I don't go didn't work. Faith doesn't work.
I'm the worst. I'm have no faith.
That's not what I do. I direct my course with my mouth
and then I expect that my destination will be victory
saves us from disappointment when we understand that.
This is why I'm so thankful for our church.
We don't just expect everybody's all read the Bible figured out
for yourself. There is some explanation that
can come in with the teaching of the Word and what the Bible
calls the foolishness of preaching.
How crazy is it that we have to get up here and convince people
the trust in a God who's never ever failed?
That is wild. Trust in the Lord.
You're like, it's so hard. He's never ever failed.
Not one word he's ever said didn't happen.
But we got to get up here and go.
I promise it'll happen. Why am I having to say that?
He says you can have what you say and then you can.
You're like, maybe, maybe it's here in the Word.
What's written in the Word is finite.
It is final, it is official. It is not changing.
Heaven and earth will pass away. There's only one thing that
remains forever and ever. What is it?
Why would you not attach your life to the word?
Oh, Jesus help us. That's why we have to understand
who Jesus is in our life in the 1st place, who is Jesus?
He's not just a, a guy that came and walked around and said good
things and then died so that you wouldn't have to have a bad
punishment. That's not just, that's not the
summary of who he is. The summary of who he is is
found in the same passage of John.
What it says in the beginning was the word and the word was
with God. The word was God.
Verse 14 tells us the identity of Jesus says the word became
flesh. So whenever you tell somebody
you need Jesus, that's true. But what you don't need is just
have an emotional relationship with a human that's not actually
present on the planet His. He's seated, seated at the
Father's right hand. For you to try to introduce
somebody to just a fleshly friendship relationship, you're
going to fall short. What you need to do is introduce
Him to the relationship of who He is and who He always has
been. The man Jesus that walked this
planet did that for 33 years in the span of time, but He always
was the Word. So if you're to say you need
Jesus, that's right, what you need is the Word.
What did He say? You need the Word in your life
so I can worship Jesus and honor Jesus as the King because He is
the Word. It's just as much Jesus speaking
to your circumstance as it is when you read it in the
Scripture. There's just as much power and
you repeating that Scripture or that promise of God that there
is when Jesus first declared it in the first place.
We said last week, if you could think in your mind, man, if
Jesus spoke the Word of God, how powerful was that coming out of
his mouth? When it's the exact same potency
coming out of your mouth, it's no different.
The only difference is do you, have you heard a word and do you
believe it? Because faith is I'm convinced
that what God said is true. And then when you repeat that
thing that you're convinced of that God said, nothing can stop
you. No report can stop you, no
financial hardship, no no gossip about you, no slander, no
physical threat. The purpose of the Lord will
prevail. We have to know then His purpose
at all times. What have you declared over me?
The third and final thing that the the confession will produce
that we'll cover tonight, is it produces permission.
What you confess you will permit in your life.
Now this word is specific because you are allowing and
permitting what you confess to manifest in your life, in your
home, in your circumstance. The Bible's pretty clear that it
says whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
Whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
And how does that happen though your mouth?
It's your words that permit what happens in heaven to happen on
earth. See, we can whenever the
disciples looked at Jesus again, if we take this back to the
principle of words, they looked at Jesus and saw all the
miracles and great things that he did, and they went to him and
said, Master, teach us how to do miracles.
It's not what they said and I hate it whenever I do that
because it's such a Christian preacher thing that I you quote
the Scripture the wrong way, but I do it anyway.
It's OK. He didn't say that.
What he said was teach us how to pray, teach us what to declare
out of our mouth. And then Jesus gave them this
pattern. He says, our Father who art in
heaven, holy is your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. The way you permit heaven to
interact in earth is through your prayer life.
Your prayer life is a direct connection to your confession.
See, that's why whenever we begin to pray and permit God's
will to happen in this earth, you're like, well, that sounds
arrogant, brother. You're permitting God to do
something. Hey, just go back and read the
Bible, but start at the first book.
Start there. Don't come to me with like, oh,
I've read enough to understand. No, no, no, no, no.
Read the whole thing because from the very beginning, God
established man to have final say of what was happening in the
planet and then allowed mankind to dictate what happened.
He didn't slap the fruit out of his hand.
He allowed her to bring sin into the earth because she had a free
will and He honored free will. So the same way that he did that
is whenever he looked and said, my children, the you know, the
his covenant kids in were captive in Egypt.
God didn't come down and just move everybody away with some
big heavenly Angel legion. No, that's not what he did.
He came and found an obedient person that would do his will in
the earth and use them in a mighty way to deliver the
people. The way God operates in earth is
he finds an obedient man or woman to bring heaven to earth.
So his will is done. So when we say we our prayer
life permits God to work in the earth, that's because that's the
authority structure he gave in Genesis.
I want to permit him in every area of my life.
If I'm struggling financially, I got to find out, God, you got to
get in here. But the only way for me to do
that is find out what does your word say about it?
And let me declare it here. If I've got issues in my
marriage or issues in my parenting, I've got to get with
the Lord and say, hey, I want to permit you into my parenting.
I need your help parenting my kids.
I need your help in my relationship with my spouse.
I need your help in doing my assignment.
And whenever I pray, that is the power of us confessing and
releasing God's will in our life and in our planet.
Amen. So again, the three things that
your confession is producing, it's going to reveal and produce
identity in your life. If the band wants to come, it's
going to reveal who you think you are and who you actually
are. It's also going to reveal the
allegiance that you have. What comes out of your mouth
defines whether you're submitted to the king or you serve a
different master. The third thing that it does is
it is the permission source in your life.
What you confess is what you permit to operate in your
everyday life. So again, tonight I'm not, I'm
not going to give some kind of altar call of like, hey, you
know, let me cast the the negative confession out of your
mouth. I can't do that.
A prophet of God can't show up here.
No 5 fold minutes. You can come up here and lay
hands on you and cast out your your your bad talking.
But what I also want to say is that in this place, these
principles of speaking life only apply to believers.
See with life and death are in the power of the tongue.
An unbeliever or somebody outside the Kingdom can't begin
to decree life outside of this one declaration, which is, I
confess, Jesus is my Lord. That's the beginning of
declaring life and setting your life in the direction that the
rudder is now guiding you towards your destiny in the
Kingdom.