The Sword of Your Confession

                                      Romans 10:8-11 (NKJV)

⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. ¹¹ For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”

There are many reasons why we must open our mouths to confess the word of God over our lives, our loved ones, and everything else that pertains to us. The first reason being that this is the way we enter the family of God—by confessing that Jesus is the Lord of our lives as we invite Him to take that place. God created the earth this way. For example, in Genesis 1:3 He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and He continued to speak what He wanted to see until creation was completed. Thus, creation was made through the spoken word. He didn’t just think, He spoke what He wanted to see. We are made into His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26), therefore must operate this way as well.

Another important reason why we must confess (speak) the word of God over our lives is that when we read the Bible and receive rhema words (words that seem to leap off the pages and catch our attention as God speaks directly about us, our circumstances, or His promises and direction for our lives), these words then become seeds that we need to water and allow the soil of our hearts to be plowed in order to receive the word, so we can turn into good soil (Mark 4:1-20). This is another form of warfare over God’s promises to us because the enemy will come to steal, kill and destroy (John10:10) those seeds with circumstances in a relentless effort to derail us from the promises by focusing instead on the attacks. But by continually seeking, asking, and knocking (Matthew 7:7-8) in prayer for the fulfillment of those promises and by confessing those words with our mouths, we are letting the enemy know we have not forgotten about them and are yielding to God to work in our hearts and circumstances to prepare and position us to receive the manifestation of those promises no matter how long it takes.

The third reason is that the Bible says to desire that we may prophesy (1 Corinthians 14:1). When we speak the word of God we are giving ourselves to prophesying what we want to see fulfilled in our immediate or distant future. Too many times people speak negative things and then don’t like the results of living the very words they spoke over themselves or their children (Proverbs 18:21). It then becomes a cumbersome cycle of speaking negative words and living them over and over again like a dog chasing its tail. The spiritual realm is voice and seed activated—voice activated when we speak words that bring either life or death into our circumstances, and seed activated because our actions also become seeds that will be harvested whether good or bad (Galatians 6:7; Genesis 8:22).

In addition, speaking the word increases our belief in what we speak. The word above says that with the heart one believes unto righteousness—an example of what that looks like is our forefather Abraham. God called him a righteous man and His friend (James 2:22). Romans 4:3 says that Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. What does this mean? It means that when we believe God for His promises and agree to partner with Him and yield to the process in which He will lead us to the manifestation of those promises and confess with our mouths what we believe, we are made righteous (in right standing with God). Furthermore, we are obeying His word in Isaiah 62:7 when we give Him no rest until He fulfills His promises. This is another way of using the two-edged sword of His word (metaphorically speaking, the word of God as given to us has one edge and we put the other edge as we confess it back to remind Him of what He spoke over our lives so He can perform it—Isaiah 55:11; Jeremiah 1:12). To Him alone be all the glory.