Proverbs 13:20, who you listen to, who you follow, who you allow to influence your faith, will shape you, the people in your life, are they leading you closer to Jesus or are they pulling you away. Pastors and teachers you support, are they preaching the true gospel or are they distorting it, are they pointing people to Jesus or are they pointing people to themselves, because alignment is agreement. Galatians 5:22-23, these aren’t aspirational goals, they’re evidence of someone in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, the litmus test, look at that list honestly, do those qualities describe your life.
Not on Sundays during worship, not when you’re with other Christians, at home with your family, at work, in traffic, when nobody important is watching. Are you patient when things don’t go as you want, are you kind to the person who serves you poorly. Are you good to those who can’t give you anything in return, are you faithful when faithfulness is costly. Are you humble when you’re right, do you have self-control over your tongue, your thoughts, your appetites or do you simply have theoretical knowledge that these things are important, while living exactly the opposite.
James chapter 3, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body and sets on fire the course of our life, your tongue is small, but it steers your entire life, like a rudder steers a massive ship. One sentence can destroy a career. One rumor can end a marriage. What have you been saying about yourself? Not to other people, to yourself, in your head, out loud, in moments of frustration, in moments of fear, have you been declaring, I’m not good enough or I’ll never change or I always fail or nobody respects me or I can’t do this, because according to the principle of daver, those aren’t just thoughts. According to the principe of daver, their creative declarations, they’re establishing spiritual realities, they’re signing covenants with failure, with fear, with defeat and the invisible realm is listening.
Proverbs 18:21, death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who live it will eat its fruit. You will eat the fruit of your own words, good or bad, blessing or curse, faith or fear. If you’ve been declaring poverty, you’ll harvest poverty. If you’ve been declaring sickness, you’ll harvest sickness. If you’ve been declaring that your children are rebellious, guess what covenant you just made with rebellion, but if death is in the power of the tongue, so is life. If your mouth has been signing contracts with defeat, your mouth can cancel them. If your tongue has been a weapon of destruction, your tongue can become an altar of covenant, because every word you speak is a form of “barrett,” the Hebrew word for covenant. Right now, you are signing invisible covenants every single day without you even realizing it.
The invisible war between the flesh and the spirit, every human being lives in the middle of a hidden battlefield, it influences every decision, every emotion and every action, Galatians 5:17, this conflict is not occasional, it is constant. What’s dangerous is being tempted and pretending you’re not, because the longer you act like it’s not there, the more room it takes up. But the moment you name it, confront it, starve it and drag it into the light, that’s when it loses power, because temptation only has strength in the shadows, once exposed, it dies gasping. You don’t fight temptation with shame, you fight it with truth, with sobriety, with the word of God burning in your bones so hot, that sin smells like smoke, not sweetness, with the conviction that every yes to temptation, is a no to intimacy with God and that no temporary thrill is worth trading the abiding presence of the one who bled for your purity.
Not on Sundays during worship, not when you’re with other Christians, at home with your family, at work, in traffic, when nobody important is watching. Are you patient when things don’t go as you want, are you kind to the person who serves you poorly. Are you good to those who can’t give you anything in return, are you faithful when faithfulness is costly. Are you humble when you’re right, do you have self-control over your tongue, your thoughts, your appetites or do you simply have theoretical knowledge that these things are important, while living exactly the opposite.
James chapter 3, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body and sets on fire the course of our life, your tongue is small, but it steers your entire life, like a rudder steers a massive ship. One sentence can destroy a career. One rumor can end a marriage. What have you been saying about yourself? Not to other people, to yourself, in your head, out loud, in moments of frustration, in moments of fear, have you been declaring, I’m not good enough or I’ll never change or I always fail or nobody respects me or I can’t do this, because according to the principle of daver, those aren’t just thoughts. According to the principe of daver, their creative declarations, they’re establishing spiritual realities, they’re signing covenants with failure, with fear, with defeat and the invisible realm is listening.
Proverbs 18:21, death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who live it will eat its fruit. You will eat the fruit of your own words, good or bad, blessing or curse, faith or fear. If you’ve been declaring poverty, you’ll harvest poverty. If you’ve been declaring sickness, you’ll harvest sickness. If you’ve been declaring that your children are rebellious, guess what covenant you just made with rebellion, but if death is in the power of the tongue, so is life. If your mouth has been signing contracts with defeat, your mouth can cancel them. If your tongue has been a weapon of destruction, your tongue can become an altar of covenant, because every word you speak is a form of “barrett,” the Hebrew word for covenant. Right now, you are signing invisible covenants every single day without you even realizing it.
The invisible war between the flesh and the spirit, every human being lives in the middle of a hidden battlefield, it influences every decision, every emotion and every action, Galatians 5:17, this conflict is not occasional, it is constant. What’s dangerous is being tempted and pretending you’re not, because the longer you act like it’s not there, the more room it takes up. But the moment you name it, confront it, starve it and drag it into the light, that’s when it loses power, because temptation only has strength in the shadows, once exposed, it dies gasping. You don’t fight temptation with shame, you fight it with truth, with sobriety, with the word of God burning in your bones so hot, that sin smells like smoke, not sweetness, with the conviction that every yes to temptation, is a no to intimacy with God and that no temporary thrill is worth trading the abiding presence of the one who bled for your purity.