I was at work one day and I had a realization that I wasn't using my words as well as I could be. In fact, I wasn't controlling my tongue at all. As I was talking to my friend I said, "It's a good thing that I'm not God because there would be a pile of things reaching beyond heaven that were all damned, or body parts just randomly lying on the ground." We laughed and both agreed that it's a good thing we didn't have that kind of power.
While I thought it was an entertaining idea, I had no idea what I was about to have revealed to me regarding the use of my words.
Think about that last paragraph you just read. Jesus said that the power of life and death is in the tongue. We hear that so often as believers, yet do we believe it? If we truly understood that, if we truly believed that, then there would be no Christian that ever said an unkind word, or agreed with unkind words that were spoken over any person.
Here's what God has shown me. This may offend some of you or it may not. Check your heart right now and if you are offended by what you are about to read then go get right with God and come back with an open heart. God told me that when I speak about a person and call them something, like saying they are hopeless, call someone dumb or stupid, call someone an idiot, or get mad and say something derogatory about someone, speak ill of myself, talk down to myself, or any way, shape, or form say something about anyone including myself, that I am lining up with the accuser of the brethren and I am calling God a liar.
You may have just been convicted about what you are saying, or you may have just been offended and stated, 'I am not calling God a liar just because I said that person was being dumb when they clearly were." Yes, you were, and what's worse is that you were saying it about God. Don't get mad at me because I'm preaching good (to quote Jessie Duplantis).
Let's start with you were talking about God when called so and so a so and so... From the very beginning we were made in the image of God. You will see this in 1 Genesis 25 when God said let us make man in our image... An interesting side note I would like to point out is that Moses referred to God as Elohim in that verse. The 'im' at the end of a word denotes that the word is plural in the Hebraic language. Moses had the revelation of the trinity from the very beginning. All three aspects of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all in agreement with each other during the creation process. When I see creation in this light, I know that God was speaking about me in the same manner when he spoke me into being.
All aspects of God were in agreement and they made me in their exact image. I heard someone say once that when God was writing our books about us, He wrote as though we were never going to sin, as though we would accomplish everything that he had said we would. God did not write our books ever saying we would fail. If he had, then sin would be his fault and not the result of enemy influence and poor decisions. The reason that we don't look exactly like what God said we would is that sin has a way of deforming us and twisting our perception of reality.
Also, being made in the likeness of God means that we are facsimiles of God. when you make a copy of an original it will look very much like the original at first, maybe a few defects here and there. Then when you start making copies of the copies you will start seeing more and more defects until the image is just a mere resemblance sharing a similar form of the original but baring no striking resemblance to the master copy.
Jesus says in Matthew 25: 40 that if you did anything to anyone, then you have done it to God. " “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ And John says in 1 John 4:20, "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." Both Jesus and John liken how you treat someone to how you treat God. Even if you were to try to justify this by saying, "they're talking about Christians, not non-believers." I would have to point out that before Christ was born mankind was still made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, anything you say about a person you are saying to an image of God.
Look at it this way. The only statue that God ever made was an image of himself out of Clay. Unlike all the idols that men create, God breathed life into this man which was His Holy Spirit. This image of God has produced billions of images of God since the first day of creation. That means that everything you say about someone is the same as holding up a picture or statue of God (or Jesus) and you are saying that directly to him. When God told me that I was doing that it broke me. I felt horribly ashamed because I thought I would never call God a blankity blank, or bleeping blip...I was calling God a liar and I didn't know it.
This leads us into how we are lying when we are speaking things over people. First of all, just calling someone an a-hole is a lie. They are a human being, not that. Most of us lie about ourselves and don't even know it. Anytime we say something that doesn't line up with the word of God we are lying about ourselves, others, or our situations. It's so easy to do. For instance, people commonly say something like, I am so dumb, I am crazy, or you say I am just a sinner, or I'm nothing special. These all seem fairly harmless, but they are contrary to the word of God.
The truth is that you are the head and not the tail (Deut 28:13), above and not below. You have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16). Think about that for a second. Christ is not an idiot. He thinks the father's thoughts and speaks his words. He is God made flesh. His mind is perfect and sound. You are not crazy. You have been given the spirit of power and of love and of SOUND (meaning not crazy) MIND (2 Tim 1:7). You are not a sinner because Christ has paid the price to forgive us of sin (1 John 2:12). You are something special! You are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14).
Since all scripture is God-breathed as we learn from 2 Timothy 3:16, then we know that it is Holy Spirit who manifested it. The breath of God, the Breath of Heaven is the Holy Spirit. If something is God-breathed (theopnuestos in Greek) then we know that the Holy Spirit and Jesus were in it. God spoke it through Jesus, Holy spirit carried the words and made it manifest as reality. John 16:13 calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth. The word for truth he uses there is aletheos which means truth, but not merely truth as spoken; truth of idea, reality, sincerity, truth in the moral sphere, divine truth revealed to man, straightforwardness. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of reality. By this train of logic, we can conclude that what the scripture says since it is God-breathed and manifested through the word as the reality of God in the form of scripture, is the absolute truth that we need to be speaking over ourselves.
When you are saying things about yourself or the people you encounter that don't line up with God wants them to be, who He has made them to be, and who He says they are in his word, then you are coming into agreement with the accuser of the brethren. He is a liar. Jesus declares that he is the father of lies in John 8:44. I am a child of God and a bride of Christ. I do not want to be and am not going to be in league with, tied up, or yoked up with the devil.
We wrote this to draw as many as we could out of alignment with the enemy. It's up to you to take this and make the necessary changes to your life. If you have been careless with your words, I know I have been in the past, then take a moment to repent and ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom and supernatural ability to control your tongue. Pray over yourself with the model of prayer that Paul prayed over the Ephesians in Books 1 and 3. (Please don't use this as a vain repetition. You don't have to say it exactly the same, or you can. It's the model I'm trying to point out and the things that are important to pray for to help you). Judge yourself properly here and now so you will not be judged -1 Cor 11:31.
Ephesians 1:17-20
"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms...
Ephesians 3:14-21
14 For this reason, I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.