Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer. Psalm 19:14.
In the transgression of the lips is an evil snare, but the righteous will escape from trouble. Proverbs 12:13.
The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright will deliver them. Proverbs 12:6.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
Obedience starts with your tongue. Death and life are in the power (hand) of your tongue. It is your tongue that is the steering wheel of your life. The mouth speaks from the heart’s abundance, but it is not your heart that actually determines the course of your life, it is your tongue, i.e., the words that YOU speak. You are not really committed to something, such as marriage, until you speak it. What you say writes on the tablet of your heart, and not only on your heart, but on the hearts of your hearers. Your tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Psalm 45:1.
There is great power in words. People will still remember what their first grade teacher said to them at seventy years old and beyond. Be careful what you say to yourself and to others. It will implant in your memory.
Today we continue the series “Watch Your Words!” with Life Lesson No. 4: “Obedience Starts with Your Tongue.”
Obedience starts in your mouth, by the words of your lips, and goes down into your heart. What you hear and what you speak causes either faith or fear, peace or anxiety, strength or weakness, joy or sadness to take root in your heart, as well as in the hearts of others. I instructed Joshua when he was about to step into his assignment which was beyond, humanly speaking, any one man, I told him he would only have the strength and the courage to carry it out if he observed and did not depart from My Words as I had delivered them to Moses. Joshua 1:7. And I instructed him how to do that, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:8-9.
I am love and for that reason I hate lying lips, false witnesses who utter lies, a heart that devises wicked plans, and the spread of strife among brethren. Proverbs 6:16-19. These cause divisions, hatred, and hurt the speaker and the hearer. They keep you hiding in the dark for fear your words will be exposed to the light and others know your lies. A worthless person, a wicked man, is the one who walks with a perverse mouth. Proverbs 6:12.
I give the Holy Spirit to those who obey Me, Acts 5:32, and I give Him without measure to those who speak My Words. John 3:34. When your thoughts and words are contrary to Mine, that is, you speak words of anger, bitterness, shame, condemnation, impurity, offense, depression, fear, anxiety, strife, wickedness, jealousy, envy, degradation, failure, and the like you grieve the Holy Spirit, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption and thus quench His input and your connection with Me is weak, not because of My doing but yours. Ephesians 4:29-31.
I want you to be aware of how important it is to make sure that you are speaking in agreement with My Words, which, simply put, is obedience. Obedience is agreement with the one under whose authority you have taken refuge. If you submit to My authority, you are agreeing with what I say and are of like mind in what you permit yourself to say. I watch over My Word to perform it, and I am love and light, there is no evil or darkness in Me. You cannot walk in darkness and light and be an overcomer.
I hate lies because they are evil and work evil. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 2 Timothy 3:13. “Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who deal faithfully are His delight.” Proverbs 12:22. “Truthful lips will be established forever, but a lying tongue is only for a moment.” Proverbs 12:19. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for you are members of one another. Ephesians 4:25.
Lies are not from Me, My Word is truth and My Word cleanses and sanctifies you in the truth. My Word sets you apart as holy. The devil was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44. The devil comes to steal, kill and destroy and was a murderer from the beginning, you see this in what he did to Adam so that Adam’s spirit died to Me and became alive to sin. He is roaming about looking for someone to devour, so why has he not been able to just murder the entire human race, which he hates with such avid hatred from his jealous wrath against man? Because he cannot touch you UNLESS he ensnares you by the words of your own mouth. He can only cause your destruction if you speak it yourself. Otherwise, he has no authority to touch you. Your words can put you in his power or they can deliver you. “The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright will deliver them.” Proverbs 12:6.
That is why YOUR words are a matter of death or life for you and your household. You are either taken captive by Satan to do his will, or you are walking with Me in truth, the truth that will set you free. That is why the first thing the devil does is try to steal My Word from your heart and mouth by making you doubt it, scorn it, or just have no interest in it because of the worldly pleasures and prestige he dangles deceptively before your eyes. He tried it with Adam and Eve and succeeded, he tried it with Jesus and failed. He could get no part in My Son. “In the transgression of the lips is an evil snare, but the righteous will escape from trouble.” Proverbs 12:13.
Jesus described Himself as meek and humble of heart. A humble person agrees with the greater one that they have aligned with, a proud person thinks they know better and speaks contrary to authority. Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth and put devious speech far from you. Proverbs 4:23-24.
When the Israelites arrived at the boundary of the promised land and could have entered, they first sent twelve men into the land to scout it out. These men came back agreeing with Me that it was a land of abundance and overflow but ten of them spoke contrary to My Words about the conquest of the land and put fear in the heart of the people. And they gave a vision to the people of themselves that destroyed their confidence. In telling that there were giants in the land they added, “we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” Numbers 13:33. And yet, I had told them I was redeeming them out of Egypt to give them this land I had promised Abraham and his descendants and that they would drive out the evil inhabitants and conquer the land. I told them that My angel would go before them and I would give them the land and all the treasures in it, including cities already established, fine houses already built and ready for occupancy, vineyards and wells. But the people took in the evil report of the ten men and spoke words stout against Mine. They spoke defeat and death and asked for it. The devil ensnared them by the words of their mouths and swallowed up their destiny. They had declared their destruction and there was nothing I could do to counter that. You choose. Death and life are in the power (hand) of the tongue, YOUR tongue.
But two of the men were of a different spirit, not the evil spirit but the Holy Spirit, and they had in them the spirit of faith and not the spirit of fear. Joshua and Caleb refused to speak anything contrary to My Words.
Let us consider Caleb for a moment. When the ten men put fear in the hearts of the Israelites and they started to cry out and murmur complaints, Caleb quieted the people toward Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.” Numbers 13:30-31. And the people went with the negative report, moaning and grumbling, saying, “Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword?” Numbers 14:3. Instead of standing in victory on My Word and declaring it, they were questioning My integrity and truthfulness, they were questioning My motives in redeeming them out of Egypt with signs and wonders beyond anything ever seen by man. Perhaps this is what you do when you hear a report or face a situation contrary to My Word. Be careful about this, you are being ensnared by the words of your mouth to lose your healing, your provision, your very life and reward.
But Caleb and Joshua kept up the good fight of faith to persuade the people, saying, “do not rebel against the LORD; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey (bread). Their protection (shadow, covering) has been removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.” Numbers 14:9. But the people responded by trying to stone them.
Do you know what I then said to Moses as he interceded on behalf of the people who were speaking against Me? I answered Moses, “I have pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, him I will bring into the land where he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.” Numbers 14:20-24.
I called those who just thought they were speaking things as they were as those who spurned Me. By faith you do not speak things as they are, you call in the promise in My Word to change things so that those things that be not come to be. You have the material to change things in My Word. What I say and what I give you in the Spirit you can speak into the flesh and bring about the result in My Word. But that is obedience to saying only what I say.
What I want you to note here primarily is what I said about Caleb. He had not gone in and fought any battles or overcome any giants, all he did was agree with Me that since I said it, he could have it and do it. And what did I call that? I said that Caleb had FOLLOWED ME FULLY. By your words you are judged righteous, and by your words you are judged condemned. Jesus told you, “If anyone hears My Words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects Me and does not receive My Words, has one who judges him; the Word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.” John 12:47-48. Selah.
And forty-five years later, when all the generation who spoke contrary to My Words had died in the desert as they foretold, ensnared by their own lips, Caleb went in and did fight the giants and win. But listen to what he remembered all those long years in the wilderness as he spoke with Joshua, “You know the word which the LORD spoke to Moses the man of God concerning me and concerning you in Kadesh-barnea. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought word back to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt with fear; but I followed the LORD my God fully. So Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden will be an inheritance to you and to your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God fully.’” Joshua 14:6-9. And the result when you speak nothing but My Word and allow no contrary words out of your mouth? Listen to Caleb, “Now behold, the Lord has let me live, just as He spoke, these forty-five years, from the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, when Israel walked in the wilderness; and now behold, I am eighty-five years old today. I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken.” Joshua 14:10-12. And as he declared so it came to pass. Your miracle is in My Word spoken with faith by your mouth.
You see from this too that what you say about yourself is determinative of your destiny. The Israelites called themselves “grasshoppers” before the enemy and so they became in their hearts. Caleb and Joshua said they were well able to conquer for I was with them. What do you say about yourself? Are you in agreement with what I say about you in the mirror of My Word? When the Pharisees and scribes asked John the Baptist what he had to say about himself, he did not tell them how he felt, what he looked like to himself, or anything about how much wealth or power he had or he did not have, instead he only spoke what I had said about him in My written Word. He said, “I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.” John 1:23. And that was it but it was enough to draw crowds to come to hear him and be baptized.
Be like John the Baptist in that you only say about yourself what I say. And what do I say? I say that you are forgiven, healed, redeemed, favored, crowned with love and compassion, filled with good things, and renewed in strength and youthful vigor. Psalm 103:3-5, Job 33:24-25. I say you are redeemed from the curse of the law. I say that you are a new creation in Christ, that old things have passed away and all is new. I say that your sins and offenses I remember no more and you are holy, blameless, and beyond reproach in My sight. I say I have rescued you from the power of darkness and translated you to the Kingdom of My Beloved Son, in whom you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, by His blood. I tell you that I am pleased to give you the Kingdom. And I tell you so MUCH MORE. All good. For I have called you out of darkness into My own marvelous light. And I call you My child and My friend.
Do you say the same things about yourself I do? If not it is time you obeyed. Nothing pleases Me more than seeing My children walking in the truth.
I love you. Watch your words! It pays to obey. My Words are not idle words, they are your very life. As David sang about My Words, “In keeping them there is great reward.” Psalm 19:11. He knew it well in his life, just read the psalms. And obedience starts with your tongue. Speak the truth in love.
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Ephesians 4:14-16.