Name a promise that God has made to You in His Word that You need to remember today. What promise do you cling to that will only make sense in eternity? This brings me to a critical question that is posed to every one of us: What are you saying?

According to scripture, the power of death and life is in our words. Our words produce effects in our lives, in the lives of others, and in our circumstances. Our words either justify us or condemn us. You get what you say. There are many scriptures that refer to the use and effects of words. Who are you in agreement with? There's your mouth, God's mouth, and the enemy's mouth. When you speak, whose mouth are your words bearing witness with?

It's safe to say that only a self-destructive person would agree with an enemy who is trying to steal from you, and to kill and to destroy you. Wouldn't you agree? Why would you say what your enemy wants you to say when you know beforehand that his intentions are to destroy you? God's intentions are to bless us, prosper us, make us well, make us whole, give us life, and many more wonderful things.

A challenge for us today, is that we start this very moment to agree with what God says in His Word concerning us: who we are in Him; what He says belongs to us; what He says we can and should do. Do you know it's possible for a person to speak a lie so long that he or she will start to believe it? You may know someone who is living proof of that fact. Well, the same can be said of the truth: if you speak the truth long enough, you'll start believing it. God's Word is the Truth-it is the reality. When we start believing His Word, when we speak it, it will become reality in us, for us and through us. That reality will produce effects in our lives, in the lives of others, and in our circumstances. God speaks by the word of His power. We can also speak by the Word of His power: that is a part of the creative power that He placed in us when He made us. Walk in the Word!

Only "you can speak life or death into your situation." What I mean by that is, what you speak is what it shall be. If you roll out of bed and say: This is going to be a messed up day; then guess what? Prepare to shovel S@#! However, if you sit up in the bed, thank the Lord for waking you up, and say: It's going to be a great day, then you've taken the first step to do just that.

What I am saying to you, no matter what people say, you have to be equipped, regardless of what your circumstances say. You gotta speak greatness into existence, walk in the greatness. When someone says How are you doing? You say, I walk in greatness. When someone asks how you doing? You say, life couldn't be greater. When people ask, What are you doing? Where are you going, brother or sister? You say, I'm going into deep waters, because big blessings don't come in shallow streams. See, sometimes the blessing God has in store for us, the streams or ponds or lakes we're fishing in won't accommodate them. That's why big fish don't stay in shallow waters.

Stay away from relationships with shallow folks doing shallow things, talking shallow stuff. God is waiting for us to take that first step of faith, and the closer you get to the prize, the farther away you move from where you started. Before you know it, you are swimming in deeper waters and you can't see any land and the ships you are passing are getting bigger and bigger and the blessings......well, they're getting bigger and bigger too, because you have launched into deeper water. You can't get deep blessings in shallow waters.

This explains why Faith does not originate in Missouri, the "Show Me" state. In the realm of faith, seeing is not believing; faith is not based on what you see (Hebrews 11:1). If you don't believe and expect to see the things that you say, you will never see them come to fruition. Faith does not originate in the "Show Me" state. If you wait to see it to believe it, you'll never see it, and if you change what you're saying to match what you're seeing, you'll only have what you see and nothing more.

We have the ability to shape our lives and circumstances through the words that we speak. How? First by agreeing with God and to say the things that He says in agreement with the blessing, benefits and promises that His Word says are ours. Have you been putting these things into practice? Have you become discouraged because you have not yet seen those things which you have been saying?

Changing the way you speak requires training and disciplining of your spirit - the real you - your innermost being. Many of us have spent most of our lives saying negative things and as a result we have reaped the harvest of those negative words. As we make the shift to agreeing with what God's Word says, we may be tempted to give up and resort to negative words when we don't see the positive things we are now saying coming to pass. Don't cancel out your positive confession by declaring that what you're saying in agreement with the Word is not working!

You may be thinking, I have been changing the way I speak, but I just don't believe what I'm saying. Keep saying it. As you speak, something is happening in your spirit/heart. As you keep saying it, the words you say will begin to take root in your spirit/heart and you will come to a point where you know that what you're saying is true. It will become reality in your spirit. When you know that what you're saying is true, when you speak, it will not just be from your mouth, but from your spirit/heart and that is the place from which life comes. That is why we are instructed to guard and keep our spirit/heart with all vigilance, for out of it springs the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23).

If you've never put these things into practice, or if you got discouraged because you had not seen any results yet, you may be wondering how you can get started or restarted. Here's how: get a promise from the Word of God that pertains to a need in your life and begin to meditate on it. Start speaking that promise to yourself. Every time that need comes to mind, speak the promise. In your prayer time, instead of asking God to provide the answer to this need, pray the promise back to the Father in faith-not as a request, but as a statement of assurance- believing that God does not lie and whatever He says He will do and He will personally back up every word He has spoken (Numbers 23:19). He tells us to remind Him of what He has said and to plead our case (Isaiah 43:26). The only way His Word will return to Him is if you speak it and He has promised that as you speak it, His Word will not return to Him without producing results (Isaiah 55:10, 11).

Keep saying it, in spite of what you see or how you feel... keep saying it! Don't wait to see it until you believe it. Keep saying it until it takes root and you can say it from your spirit. The Holy Spirit will bear witness with your spirit when this shift has taken place and you will know that it has become reality to you. When it does, you will speak as He speaks, and you will be able to proclaim as Christ did, the words that I speak they are spirit and they are life (John 6:63) and your life and circumstances will change.

God, forgive us for thinking that everything must make sense today in the economy of our human satisfaction. Give us faith to believe that we're here for a purpose that is greater than ourselves, greater than our personal enjoyment, even greater than our participation in building Your kingdom. Our lives are about a legacy-Your glory. In the name of Jesus, Amen.