Take Life By The Tongue

I got your Bible with you.

Why don't you just pick it up and wave it around and make Jesus glad and the devil mad?

So glad that you could tune in tonight.

It's great to be with you.

Let's say this together say Heavenly Father, I am so glad to have some place to go online to get taught the Word of God.

I'm hungry for more of the Word.

I realize that revelation is available for me.

If I hunger and thirst for righteousness, I shall be filled.

If I'm a lover of the truth, it will be revealed to me.

And so tonight I thank you for the truth of the Word of God that sets me free from all bondage, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, let's look at Matthew, chapter eight tonight, and also Proverbs 18, matthew, or very familiar series of verses.

Verse five, matthew eight five, and it says and when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion beseeching him and saying Lord, my servant life at home, sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.

And Jesus said unto him I will come and heal him.

The centurion answered and said Lord, I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof, but speak the Word only, and my servant shall be healed, for I'm a man under authority, having soldiers under me.

And I say to this man, go, and he goeth.

And to another, come and he cometh.

And to my servant, do this, and he doeth it.

When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to them that followed.

Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great a faith no, not in Israel.

And then in verse 13, jesus said unto the centurion Go thy way, and it shall.

And as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.

And his servant was healed in the self same hour.

And then in Proverbs, the 18th chapter, in verse 21,.

Proverbs 18, 21,.

It says death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

This version says it this way words kill the message.

Bible words kill, words give life.

They are either poison or fruit you choose.

Isn't that good?

And so I've got a title of this message tonight.

It's an unusual title and it's entitled Take Life by the Tongue, and it kinda is an old ram pickup commercial from probably 10 years ago, where they had, you know the ram is the curved horns, you know they go around and that's their hood ornament and that's the symbol of the ram Dodge, ram pickup.

And they had a commercial that says take life by the horns.

You know talking about by your ram pickup.

So I'm saying take life by the tongue.

Or you could say let your tongue do the heavy lifting.

That's another possible title to the message.

Let your tongue do the heavy lifting, your tongue has power.

Now you know we've been talking a lot about words.

We've been talking about things the last several weeks.

We started, you know, the.

We talked about demand, demand the word ask, and mark and mark chapter 14, and mark chapter 15,.

Mark 14 · chapter mention Mark 15 · chapter mention

The word ask actually means to make a demand, not to make a demand on God, but to make a demand because of our covenant.

We can, we don't have to pray and ask God for things that the covenant already has given us.

What we can do is make a demand because of our covenant.

And then we talked about the next week, about, you know, binding and loosening and all of that.

So those are words that you use.

We use those words tonight in prayer and really we weren't really even praying and asking, we were just binding and loosening.

You know there's a lot of things that we can do.

It's good to pray, but it's also good to know what belongs to you, so you can say.

And then I think last week we talked about the faith road, about our confession bills, road over which faith brings its precious cargo, and so a confession is so important.

Again, it's words, our words, or, we can say, our tongue.

And so it's amazing how much the Bible has to say about words.

It was just when I first got saved and discovered the word of faith message and I began to get taught about these things.

It was just like I had been and I had been born into a new world.

I just never saw things like that before.

And so the word, the Hebrew word for tongue, is yad, and it means an open hand indicating power, means and direction.

It means custody, dominion and charge.

Isn't that interesting, the Hebrew word for tongue.

I'm telling you, life and death are in the power of the tongue.

It's at your command.

You choose, and so take life by the tongue.

Let your tongue do the heavy lifting, don't you know?

It's so important what you say about things.

I think about all the wrong words that have been said about this coronavirus.

I mean, people have talked and talked and talked.

Such fear and panic it has pervaded the whole country and the church has not risen up and said the right things in most cases and we have.

But I can't speak for other churches, but I don't see a whole lot of right words being spoken.

I see a lot of excuses and a lot of oh.

We've got to be careful, we've got to just fear underneath all of these things and but know the Bible says that we can take life by the tongue and we can start speaking in a different way.

So this enturian there in Matthew, chapter eight, that we just read about, he understood the authority of the spoken word, the spoken command.

He said look, I realize that you're a, that you couldn't do what you're doing.

He didn't say it this way, but I'm saying it this way.

I realized that you couldn't do all these miracles unless you were in charge, unless you had authority.

You don't have to come to my house, you just issue a command.

That's all you need to do.

That's what I do.

When I need something, I issue a command.

And Jesus marveled at his revelation.

And he said I hadn't found this kind of revelation in Israel.

I was sent to Israel and they, they have not received me like this centurion has.

And he marveled only two times in the Bible where Jesus marveled.

This was one of them.

The other one was he marveled at his own hometowns unbelief.

He marveled at their, on the other side, marveled at their unbelief.

So the centurion said speak the word only.

And as you have believed.

Well, he spoke what he believed.

How did how?

Did Jesus know what he believed?

He spoke what he believed.

That's what he did.

He spoke.

You're going to speak what you believe.

Jesus said out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks it's.

You know, the tongue is like a dipstick.

You know, got a dipstick on your car.

You're supposed to check your oil every now and then and if you haven't checked your oil in a while, you'd be a good idea.

I checked my oil and there was no oil.

I got a brand new pickup.

I mean, it only had it only had 8,000, less, yeah, 7,000 miles on it.

I went out and I thought, well, I've never checked the oil, I think I'll check the oil.

I pulled the dipstick out and there's no oil on the end of it.

Oh my God.

And so I took it and I think when they changed the oil, they just didn't fill it up.

You know, when I first bought the truck, but it's okay.

But you know some people.

You can kind of check their oil, you can check their believing, you can check their faith by what comes out of their mouth.

You can locate people by what they're saying.

And in Acts chapter two remember we were speaking about the power of Pentecost on Sunday morning in Acts chapter two.

You know that's when the power of the Holy Spirit was poured out.

The Spirit of God came upon them and in verse three divided tongues of fire sat on each of them and then they spoke in tongues.

See that fire, that fire, their supernatural tongues, were proof of the power that Jesus said would come upon them in Acts 1.8.

He said you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you.

And so that fire was evidence of the power of God coming upon them.

See, it didn't come in, that fire didn't come inside of them.

The fire was sitting on top of their heads.

So that's a picture of the anointing, that's the picture of the power of God.

And the fire is released when they spoke in other tongues.

And then after that, after they spoke in other tongues and people thought they were drunk, peter gets up.

You know he's drunk.

In the Holy Ghost.

He has to get up off the ground.

Everybody else was drunk with him 120 people drunken at nine o'clock in the morning.

It was quite a sight.

And he said these are not drunken as you suppose, but this is that spoken by the prophet Joel.

He began to preach and 3,000 souls were saved that day.

Many of these same people were there at the crucifixion.

Many of these same people that got saved on the day of Pentecost were the same ones that said crucify him, crucify him.

That's the power of the Holy Ghost and the power of words.

You know the power of words.

I want you to see your words and your tongue speaking and how powerful your tongue is because of the words that you're speaking.

And then Peter and John spoke words at the gate, beautiful, to the lame man and he rose up and walked.

He said rise up, right on my feet and he pulled him up by the hand.

But he spoke words to the man and the man stood up and instantly strength came into his feet and ankle bones and he began walking and leaping and praising God into the temple and on that occasion 5,000 men got saved.

Again, peter speaking words.

Oh, how important words are If we don't speak if our tongue is not being used correctly.

Then brother Robert said Jesus told him there's a wasting of power in the church and I think a lot of the waste is the waste of language that we have.

We magnify the wrong thing we talk about the wrong thing we talk about.

We magnify problems, we magnify differences.

When we auto magnify the word, you auto magnify God, amen.

There's something about speaking in other tongues will train your tongue, amen.

Let's look at James chapter three.

You get anything out of this tonight?

Take life by the tongue, let the tongue do the heavy lifting.

James chapter three talks a lot about the tongue and says here in verse one we'll read a few verses here and the apostle James is writing to the church and he says my brother, and be not many masters, knowing that you receive the greater condemnation or the greater judgment.

In other words, when you're a leader or a master are in charge, you have more responsibility so that when you make a mistake, things can go wrong quickly.

You know, it's not that God is judging you, but it's people judge you.

The devil is here to cause you hurt.

That's why we shouldn't put novices in charge of things.

We ought to let them be proved and let them be matured, for in many things we offend all, if any man offend, not in word, the same as a perfect or mature man and also able to bridle the whole body.

Behold, we put bits in the horses mouths that they may obey us and we turn about their whole body.

Behold also the ships which, though they be so great and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whether so ever the governor listed.

Even so, the tongue is a little member and boasted great things.

Behold how great a matter.

A little fire kindled, and the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, so that the tongue among our members, that it defileeth the whole body and seteth on fire the course of nature and is set on fire of hell.

Does that sound familiar?

I think that's exactly what's going on in Minneapolis and all across the country.

This is exactly what's going on.

These Antifa and left-wing agitators are speaking words to inflame the crowds and they're cursing and swearing at the cops and throwing rocks and bricks and burning and looting and all of that kind of thing.

I mean, what does that have to do with trying to change anything?

There's nothing gonna change and nobody's gonna respond to that kind of thing.

It has to be put away, it has to be stopped.

It's lawlessness and this is a country of laws.

And so but notice, the fire is set on fire by words.

First, for every kind of beast and have birds and have serpents and have things in the sea is tamed and have been tamed of mankind.

But the tongue can no man tame.

It's an unruly evil full of deadly poison, where the Holy Ghost can tame your tongue.

That's why we ought to pray in tongues.

There with blessed we God, even the Father, there with the curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

Out of the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing my brethren.

These things ought not so to be.

And so does a fountain sin forth at the same place sweet water and bitter.

Can the fig tree, my brethren bear olive berries, can a vine figs?

So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh?

So the tongue, notice, is like a match to set a whole forest fire.

I mean, just a little match can burn an entire forest down.

One little tongue out of order can tear a church up.

I mean, I've had this church injured several times, where massive numbers of people believed lies and left the church because somebody had a wagging tongue filled with lies.

You know, you got to be careful what you say and they knew they were lying.

They knew that's the devil, all right.

Number two the tongue is like a bridal turning a horse.

I mean you can turn a whole horse around with just a little thing, a little bit in their mouths and it's attached to some leather strongs in the hands of the rider and they just pull one direction or the other and the horse is trained.

And if they're real well trained you just don't even have to hardly put any pressure at all.

They kind of know.

But if they're not well trained you've got to yank them kind of around and then their whole head turns like that and then their body will follow their head.

And it's also like a rudder steering a ship.

You know, here's the Titanic basically ran into the iceberg because it was designed with too small a rudder.

It was way too small for the size of ship and so when they saw the iceberg they started sounding the alarm and the helmsman started spinning that wheel.

He's trying to turn it starboard or I don't know which side, but anyway, to the left.

He's trying to start and it didn't turn.

Why?

Because it's a little bitty rudder, it didn't have enough force.

But our tongue can turn our lives.

You don't like the direction you're headed.

You might want to change your words.

You might want to consider what you're saying.

So thank God that we can be filled with the Holy Ghost speaking.

You know Ephesians 5, 18, be not drunk with wine where, as in excess, be filled or be being filled.

Be continually and habitually filled with the Holy Ghost speaking to yourself Songs, him spirits, the song singing and making melody in your arts of the Lord.

See words, tongue, giving thanks with your tongue in all things, submitting yourself one to another.

How do you submit to somebody With your mouth, with your words, with your tongue?

And so being filled with the Holy Ghost affects what your tongue.

That's why we ought to pray much in other tongues, because that will help keep our tongue hooked up to our spirit and we're less likely to speak unadvisedly with our lips.

You know, david one time spoke unadvisedly with his lips.

He said, oh, I wish I had a drink of water from the well of Bethlehem.

And those guys went and hazarded their lives and God him some water.

They could have died getting him that water.

They put their life at risk because he spoke unadvisedly with his lips.

And when they brought that water back, his eyes got big and he looked at those guys and basically said I can't believe y'all took me serious.

Well, of course they did.

He's their king.

And see, we got to understand.

When we speak, our angels are listening.

I mean, let's give them something to act on, take life by the tongue.

You know, when I was first saved, I started going to a Bible study and within three weeks, the lady that was teaching the Bible study, her and her husband were the ones instrumental in getting me saved, also the ones instrumental in getting me baptized in the Holy Ghost.

And then, after that, the Bible study started.

So we were going about three weeks and she said I think you Lord told me that you're supposed to teach the Bible study.

I just got saved.

Are you kidding?

I've got milk around my mouth.

I know that.

I mean I can't tell you.

Yeah, you can.

So I mean I was responsible about six or eight people in this Bible study.

I had the responsibility of bringing the Bible study each Thursday night.

So this young man I hadn't seen him before since came to the Bible study and he, at the end of the Bible I was teaching on faith, I was reading everything I could read.

I mean, I didn't know enough on my own.

I had to read Brother Hagin and Brother Charles Caps and I had to bone up, I had to study, I just you know.

And so it turned out to be to my benefit and nobody else I don't think anybody got hurt.

And so, anyway, this young man came and at the end we were praying for people and he said I've got a real problem.

He said you know, my wife is an assembly of God pastor's daughter, she's a preacher's kid and we go to such and such a church.

And he said she had a benign tumor in her brain and she had that brain surgery and everything turned out good.

They removed the tumor and she recovered.

But ever since then she's been cold.

I mean, she's just like I'm living with a different person and she never is affectionate, she never says she loves me.

And I noticed the other day she quit wearing our wedding ring and I looked at her hand and the wedding ring's not on there and I said, honey, where's the wedding ring?

Well, you know, sometimes I just don't know if I love you anymore, and it really hurt his feelings.

And he's saying that to strangers, you know, and I just said that's the devil.

Here's this baby Christian.

That's the devil.

I said you're the head of your house, I'm the head of my house.

Let's agree, matthew 18, 19.

Let's agree in prayer as the heads of our houses and let's bind the devil over her.

She picked up some demon in the hospital.

That's what I said.

I mean, I knew it wasn't.

You know, it was the Holy Ghost speaking through me.

I couldn't believe.

I said it, and so we grabbed hands right in front of everybody and we prayed.

I prayed a strong prayer and he just agreed with me.

So the next morning, it was like eight o'clock in the morning.

I hadn't left the house yet to go check on my jobs.

I was building houses at the time and the phone rang and it was this gentleman.

I said oh, wow, yeah, how'd you get my number?

Well, I called the lady down the street where we had the Bible study.

She gave me a number.

Hope it's okay.

I just had to call you.

I said yeah, what happened?

He said well, I got home.

You're not gonna believe it.

I said I believe, but I will believe it.

He said my wife was sitting on the couch and I walked in the room and she said honey, come here and sit by me.

And she padded the couch next to her and when I sat down she snuggled up to me and put her arms around me and says oh honey, I'm so sorry I haven't been myself.

And I said some things that are just not true.

I do love you.

And I looked down and she had my wedding ring on, she started kissing me and I'm not gonna say anymore.

I said well, you don't have to say another word, but anyway, god, that devil left her that night.

You know, isn't that?

I mean, that's words.

He spoke words.

I spoke words.

Words were spoken against something, hallelujah.

I think about Brother Hagin.

You know he used to use his faith for family members.

You know he would say oh, you can use your faith for family members one time, sometimes twice, but after that God expects them to use their own faith.

But Brother Hagin's uncle called Brother Hagin's mother, so that would be his mother.

His mother's brother called and said to the mother Brother Hagin's mother, oh, my daughter's dying, she's in a coma.

Please tell your son, ken, and have him pray.

And so she calls Ken and tells him the story.

He says tell Uncle So-and-so, tell him that my cousin So-and-so will live and not die.

And mother said oh, son, you heard from God.

Oh, wonderful, you had a word from God.

He said yeah, mom, I did.

I heard from God.

I heard from God in Mark 11, 23.

And she said oh, oh, do you suppose it'll work?

What do you mean?

Suppose it'll work?

Well, with a multiplication table?

Work, of course it'll work.

And so she called the brother back and told him you know, tell him.

And said that Ken said she'll live and not die.

Minutes later the nurse came out of the ICU.

She's out of the coma and she was fully recovered.

I mean, she walked out of the hospital and as it wasn't a gift of the spirit, it was just simply words, words got this lady healed.

Faith-filled words, not just empty words.

Another time Brother Hagin's sister, olita, called about her grandbaby and her grandbaby was born dead.

Then they revived it, but the doctors wouldn't let the family see the baby because it was malformed.

It had a.

The head was just kind of sunk in.

The face of the baby was just collapsed.

It was just horribly disfigured and they didn't expect the baby to make it.

And so they called.

And so Brother Hagin asked his sister.

Olita says well, where is Benny?

Benny was the baby's father and he said well, he's right outside the phone booth where I'm calling.

He said tell Benny that the baby will live and not die.

And do you think so?

His sister said do you think so?

He said, no, I know so.

See words, faith-filled words.

So just a few minutes later, here comes the nurse running out of the nursery and said oh, the baby.

You can see the baby now.

It's just fine.

We were watching it and all of a sudden the head just kind of blew up like a balloon and everything just popped out and it was normal.

And I'm talking about faith-filled words, our words, your words, not just Brother Hagin's words.

And he said whosoever.

He didn't say Brother Hagin, he didn't say preachers, he said whosoever, whosoever.

Remember what the Holy Spirit impressed Brother Hagin one time.

He said did you ever notice in Mark 11, 23, that it says say, or some form of saying three times and believe only once?

No, I never did notice that.

And you're going to have to teach people three times, as much on what to say as what to believe.

See, I tell you, the church needs to rise up and this is the theme of all these messages that I've been preaching now for quite a while, and they add up to.

You can see why our country's in trouble because the church is not speaking right.

We need to start speaking right.

Yeah, let's look at the trouble, but let's speak against the trouble and let's speak behind the trouble and know that there's something behind it that we have authority over.

We may not have authority over people's wills, but we have authority over the antichrist spirit that's driving all of this chaos and violence.

So, take life by the tongue.

You know I like good confessions, you know, and when we confess, it means to say the same thing as so you say the word.

That's one way to talk, but other ways to talk sometimes you can just talk and it doesn't have to sound like a scripture.

Sometimes you can just talk normal.

You don't have to quote the Bible to be effective.

My example, and I've told it many times for many years, but I had just moved back to Houston from Corpus Christi and I was unemployed, had no job, had to live with my, you know, my family moved in with my sister and her family, brother-in-law.

It was very humbling and very hard to deal with.

I just never experienced anything like that.

And so people would come up to me at my church, at Lakewood Church.

I'd be there and meet people, say, john, how you doing?

And the height of what I could say is, well, I'm plugging it, I'm plugging along.

Or they'd ask me you know how you doing today?

Oh, I'm hanging in there.

Those were my two highest things that I could say.

That was the height of what I could say.

I couldn't, somehow, I couldn't spit out.

I'm blessed of the Lord, thank you.

I couldn't say that.

I don't know why I was.

I knew not to say I'm miserable, I'm broke.

I didn't say the bad, I just said something kind of you know, pathetic.

And so finally, after about the thousandth time, I'd said you know, I said to this one man that I knew real well.

I said, well, I'm hanging in there.

And just as soon as I said it, he kind of turned to walk away and inside of me, just real loud In fact it was so loud I thought he heard it.

He said, yeah, and your fingernails are about to break, you know what I'm saying, I'm hanging in there and he didn't have to tell me twice.

I realized I'd been chastened and I realized that I had been corrected and I said wait a minute, better and better.

I'm doing better.

And what?

What do you know?

Yeah, I just said I'm plugging, I'm better and better, I'm hanging in there.

No, I'm better and better.

Yeah, you didn't know what I was talking about.

He didn't even, he didn't pay any attention, but it was for me.

And all these 33 years later, it's just been.

Anybody asked me how I'm doing better and better.

I'm just, it's not a scripture, it's not.

It's not, it's not King James, it's just.

It's just a positive way of saying you don't have to just sound like a preacher, you can.

You can turn your words into positive things that will shape and guide your life and will and will become to pass.

And things did get better and better and things have been getting better and better ever since.

So you know, replace like things, like I'm so sick with these symptoms, have to go, because by stripes I will see, and if you're around unbelievers, you don't have to go through the scripture, just so well, thank God, I'm healed.

You know just.

You know you don't have to preach, you know you don't have to have people look at you like you're crazy.

Sometimes they will.

I'm so tired.

Well, just just start rejoicing.

Joy of the Lord's my strength.

See, quit saying you're tired, I can't afford that.

I still.

I've got to.

I've got to crucify that tongue on me, because sometimes I'm caught myself saying, well, we can't afford that.

Yes, we can.

Our God supplies all our need according to his riches and glory, by Christ Jesus.

I don't deserve that.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, it's not about deserves, it's about God as a rewarder.

We don't deserve anything, we deserve hell, but we're not going there.

Jesus deserves everything and we get it because we're in him.

Amen, here's a good one.

I can't figure this out.

Instead of saying that, just stop saying I can't figure this out.

Well, that doesn't help.

In fact, it's going to cause more confusion.

What do you do?

I've got the mind of Christ.

The answer's coming, the answer.

So you're not bragging on you, you're bragging on him.

Well, I'm just at a disadvantage.

No, I'm more than a conqueror.

Here's some little phrases.

I know that this is not earth shaking.

You've heard it before, but we all need to realize that we can catch things on fire with our words.

We can steer our boat in the wrong direction with words, and so let's steer in the right direction.

Let's speak.

Grace to the hearers and the edification to the body of Christ, and God will bless you.

Please receive the word tonight.

I trust it to take life by the tongue.

Let your tongue do the heavy lifting.