“From the fruit of their mouth a person’s stomach is filled; with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied. The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit” Proverbs 18:20-21
What kind of fruit are you eating with the words that are daily coming out of your mouth? What are you filling your stomach with? What kind of actions are you taking throughout your day?
Words are powerful, either to the positive or to the negative. The words we speak are seeds, and they will provide results that will impact our own lives and the lives of others. I was reading a book the other day, and I saw a sentence that impacted me so much. It said: “if you could swallow your words, would you be poisoned?” It means that we can be sowing good seeds or poisoned seeds upon our own lives. Words that are full of blessings or words full of death, misery and suggestions from the devil. What kind of words are you speaking throughout your days? Good words or bad words? Life or death?
We have the power of declaring good things or negative about our lives, our future, our workplaces, our relationships, our marriages, our families and our friends. God created us with a creative power in our ability to speak. Every word that we speak comes out of us with power. In Genesis 1, we see God creating things on Earth with words. For example, we see in Genesis 1:3, God saying “Let there be light”. And there was light. The same pattern happens throughout the chapter.
Therefore, during the creation of the Earth, God would say what He wanted for each day. And it would happen as He would say. In Genesis 2, we see that mankind was originally created in the likeness of God. Therefore, we were created with this divine ability of creating realities with our words. That is our design. We should be careful about the things that are coming out of our mouths. In relation to that, Deuteronomy 30:14-15 says: “…the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction“.
Throughout the Bible, we see that heart and mouth work together. That is how faith works. The famous faith principle established in Mark 11:23 connects heart and mouth. “Truly, I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them”.
Faith is not just believing that God’s plans will happen. Faith is not just believing in your heart that good things will happen in our lives. Faith is expressed with words: you say to the mountain and you do not let doubt enter your heart. We speak what we believe. Whatever we believe in our hearts we say with our words – “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” Luke 6:45.
For that reason, we need to control the words that come out of our mouths. You may be facing a difficult situation. However, what kind of reality do you want to create around you? I am not telling you to pretend that a bad circumstance is not happening; however, you need to align your words with the Word of God. God did not promise us a fairytale in which everything would be perfect all the time. He promised us that, in the midst of adversities, there would be solutions – “… in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
The Bible tells us to be cheerful, even in the midst of chaos. We cannot remain cheerful speaking out every bad thought that comes to our minds, right? On the contrary, you should declare everyday: “My life is blessed”, even if there are things in your life that do not feel blessed. The situation may not change overnight, but you are activating your faith by saying that. You are shaping your thoughts and your actions by the words you are speaking. You are aligning your thoughts and your actions to your faith with the words that you are declaring. We need to intentionally speak words that reflect God’s wisdom in us.
I have a simple example to illustrate how our words shape our actions. There are days in which my husband has to work long hours; on those days, I am solo parenting our children. On one of those occasions, I woke up very tired and I was unsatisfied that my husband would return home much later. As I was getting ready to start my day, and he was getting ready to leave home, I told him that my day would be hard because our daughter was throwing tantrums quite often (she was two years old at the time). Sure enough, I had a very tiring and challenging day. By the time my husband arrived home, I was exhausted.
When he saw me in that state, he told me something I will never forget. He said: “Right before I left the house, you told me that your day was about to get difficult. Not only you said that, but you declared that twice. You just had what you had sowed with your words”. Ouch! I had just harvested the results of my declarations. By saying those things, I was saying that nothing better could be done, because my day for sure was about to be very hard. The way I acted throughout my day was shaped by this declaration. And, I have learned my lesson. Nowadays, I am much more vigilant on what I say about my day. When I am feeling tired, I take a deep breath and praise God. This seems very irrelevant at first, but that brief pause helps me put my emotions and thoughts in check.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Do you want to have an abundant life? So, you must start believing and acting like a child of God. Throughout the Gospels, we do not see Jesus making declarations that are aligned to the devil. He only said good things. He only said things that were full of Life. Therefore, as children of God, we should do the same. God promised that He was with us forever. What else do you need to start believing that you can enjoy a good life, that you can be prosperous and that you can be blessed in every aspect of your life.
Maybe there are some areas of your life in which you still are not seeing God’s abundance; however, you must keep believing and keep declaring what you want for those areas. This consistency will shape your actions towards victory. We have the wisdom that comes from God to declare His Word upon our lives. We can declare God’s health inside our bodies, we can declare a sound mind in us. We can declare prosperity in our finances, because Jesus came for us to have an abundant life. You got to be careful about what you are declaring in order to enjoy God’s blessings on your life.