"The Power of the Tongue" - The Apostolic Connection

Proverbs 18 and 21 the Bible States this death and life are in the power of the tongue and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof death and life are in the power of the tongue I want to speak on that today the power of the tongue you may be seated this morning we know that fear is the opposite of faith and they refuse to coexist together as a matter in of fact faith is the forward gear and fear is the reverse gear and if you know like I have witnessed when your car is moving forward and you put it in the reverse bad things happen I remember at bible school one year I I had just Acquired and I do mean acquired a vehicle was very proud of that vehicle although it was old and didn't run all that well and it was a a snowy day in Indianapolis Indiana and I I remember driving forward but for some reason feeling the need to go in reverse at not a good time and as I shoved that car into reverse and it sounded like my engine fell out on the ground the sick feeling that I had I'm sure some of you have faced that sick feeling uh of trying to go revers when you're going forward they just don't coexist you either go forward or you go in reverse but you can't go both together just as you cannot have faith and fear at the same time Mark 4 and 40 says and he said unto them why are you so fearful how is it that you have no faith fear which is defined as an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger it's coincided by faith which is a firm belief in something for which there is no proof faith and fear eventually will Express themselves in our words and in our actions has anybody ever witnessed a friend who all they talked about was the negative all they talked about was how everything was going wrong and how nothing could go right I've had friends like that for a short period but over time you got to just leave them because you know you got to have faith spoken into your life something good is on its way something good is about to happen oh if we just keep on speaking words of encouragement to ourselves and to other people over time it's going to happen it's going to happen I'm preaching about the power of the tongue job 3 and2 says for the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me and that which I was afraid of is come unto me you see job's lack of faith produced fear and in the middle of his greatest trial he witnessed his largest fear come true if you keep talking about your fears and thinking about your fears we tie God's hand God is saying I want to help you but you got to have just a little bit of faith for me to help you the Bible speaks as of Faith as just as small as the grain of a mustard seed one of the very smallest grains there are the smallest seeds there are if you can just have a little bit of faith I can help you but you got to speak words of encouragement to yourself you can't be thinking about fearful things and everything's going to go wrong and and this is how my life is going to end and this is how everything my day is going to go but instead God said if you'll just speak positive words I can help you preaching about the power of the tongue Faith doesn't mean pretending that obstacles are not there it means you realize that God is in control regardless of the obstacle Joel 3 and 10 says beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into Spears let the weak say I am strong the children of God were held in captivity with no weapons of warfare they were hopess their situations seemed Bak they were just Farmers they were not allowed to have swords and and Spears and bows and arrows but the man of God said I want you to take and I want you to take action and I want you to beat your pruning shears and I want you to beat your farming tools into weapons and I want you to say to yourself I am strong I want you to speak these words we are strong we can do it we can overcome we can be victorious even though all the odds say that we cannot defeat the the enemy if you will just do whatever it takes and say whatever you have to say to tell yourself right here that I can be victorious it didn't say that the weapons are going to make you strong he said say I am strong add a little bit of Faith with your actions 2 Corinthians 12:10 says therefore I take pleasure in infirmities in reproaches in Necessities in persecutions in distresses for Christ's sake for when I am weak then am I strong let me say it again Faith doesn't mean that we're not pretending that our obstacles are not there faith is just saying that I know my God is in control and no matter what the circumstance is I know my God can make me have Victory you can have faith for something until it occurs or you can have fear until something occurs Psalms 34 and3 says oh magnify the Lord with me let us exalt his name together I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears you see faith faith is like a pair of barnoculars it's the barnoculars of life and faith you're looking in the larger end and fear you're looking in the smaller end and what faith does is Faith causes you things that should be big in your life it causes them to be small because you understand how big your God is but then there's those who everything they're looking through the smaller end of the binoculars and everything that should be small in their life is now big and it's in their face and it's closed up and it's all they see if we could just understand if we could just use this if we could use this analogy and we look at life's barnoculars and we say God I'm always going to put you beside everything I look at because as long as I put God beside everything I look at everything's going to look small but if you take God out of the situation everything in your life seems big everything seems big your marriage seems out of control your family seems out of control finances seem like they're out of control but if you bring God into the picture all a sudden all that stuff doesn't matter and you see that if God has brought you through before he can bring you through again if you put food on your table before he can put food on your table again there's no credit car bill there's no house mortgage there's nothing that God cannot make away for you to pay if you just make sure that God remains in your view 12 Spies in Numbers Chapter 13 you see fear caused 10 of the spies to magnify their problems yet there were two spies that said our God is so much bigger than any of the Giants one set of spies says we are as grasshoppers the other set a spies said hey our God is bigger our God is greater our God is mightier we don't need to have the weapons of warfare as long as we have god Jehovah on our side we can take the land always keep God in view Psalms 101 says Make a Joyful Noise unto the Lord All Ye Lands serve the Lord with gladness come before his presence with singing know ye that the Lord he is God it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves we are his people we are the Sheep of his pasture enter into his gates with Thanksgiving and into his courts with praise be thankful unto him and bless his name for the Lord is good his Mercy is Everlasting his truth endureth to all generations you see praise is different than Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is connected to what he has done where praise is connected to what you know he can do listen to this listen to this in The Message Bible Psalms 104 we just read it in the King James version but in The Message Bible the Bible says enter with the password thank you and make yourselves at home talking praise I like that because I'm preaching about the power of the tongue you see you come into the house of God and you enter into his Gates and you thank him for what he's done for you this past week but then you've got to walk in and you got to begin to talk about the goodness of God and what he's going to do for you next week we can't get into the past week we got to thank him for the trials and for the rivers we've crossed but we've got to look into our future and say God I give you praise not because of what you've done in my life but because of what you're going to do in my life not for who you have been but who for who you will be because the Bible states that he is the same yesterday today and forever if there's somebody in your Bible that you read upon that has been given a miracle or a blessing you can say God you're the same God of him and you're the same God of me