Learning to keep our mouths and power

The Word of Truth Ministries

Learning to keep our mouths and our power

     The Bible teaches us that saints must not give themselves to many words. A saint’s power is in his words, even as his life is indeed hid with God. Therefore, we must let our words be few and any more than few often comes to sin. [Eccl. 5:2; Mat. 5:37; James 5:12] Saints’ words are supposed to be words of power, just as Jesus’ words were words of power. When we speak devils move, mountains are cast into the sea, peace is stilled, bodies are to healed, etc. This is the way it is supposed to be for saints of the living God because they are children of the living God, and Jesus has left us an example of what we are to do and be. But if our words are many, they can never have the power God intended them to have.
     When our words are many, they usually have no import with man, spiritual beings and situations, and they certainly have no import with God. Paul knew this truth, so he told the church and saints generally to study to be quiet. [1Thes. 4:11] This study is the putting of one’s mind to an act until that act is understood totally—being quiet. Furthermore, we are to study being quiet until being quiet becomes a habit in our being. In so studying, we learn that as we are quiet, God will speak, we will hear from heaven, and we will hear things that others are saying to us that we may learn.
     Notice that this admonition to study is another of Paul’s admonitions that has study within it. He tells Timothy to study to show himself approved of God…. [2 Tim.2:15] In each instance, we must study to learn something that seems far from us. As we must study to learn the scriptures and we must study to be quiet, both instances are as Solomon said, a weariness of the flesh. [Eccl. 12:12] The flesh does not want to contour its behavior in study or any other disciplined ways.
     In the study of Transactional Analysis Psychology, we see several ego states that human beings inhabit: The Child, the Adult, and the Parental. Without lengthy discussion of these ego states and their ingredients, suffice it to say, that our correct, age-appropriate ego state as an adult is the Adult Ego. The Child Ego state is as the name suggests—that state that wants all the sweets but none of the essential food that is good for the body. Likewise, many saints prefer and are in the Child Ego state and will not discipline their bodies to study. Indeed, that is the cause for so much confusion in the church today—ministers and members of the body of Christ who will not honestly and properly study God’s word to apprehend truth and get an understanding of it. Truth bought, as Solomon said, is purchased at a great cost to the flesh; it taxes it, it disciplines it, it even tortures it. [Prov. 23:23] No carnal-minded saint will allow that. Instead, he/she will justify the flesh and its lack of discipline. Such a one is in the Child Ego state and uses spurious rationalizations to assuage his conscience until that conscience, untutored by God’s word, will accept lies and no longer torment him.
     Many have not tutored their consciences by the word of God, and those consciences allow them to do just about anything they want to do without self-condemnation. But the transformation of our minds, which I have already discussed, is suppose to teach our consciences and renew our consciences from the dead works of the world to faith toward God. But far too many saints have seared consciences that are now dead through the lies and deceptions that they have been fed. Those who kill their consciences become reprobates. [2 Cor. 13:5-7; 1Tim.1:19; 3:9; 4:2; Titus 1:15]
     One can always tell those ministers and saints who are given to carnality: they will not discipline their bodies unto study. Study wearies the flesh, and they are given to the fleshly things not to spiritual things. These can never reach the perfection of Christ; they do not have the mindset and discipline needed. Paul said for us to let the mind of Christ be in us. [Phil. 2:5] Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame to sit at the right hand of power. We are to arm ourselves with the same mind. [Heb. 12:2; 1 Pet. 4:1] This is the armor a believer who is moving from servant to son-ship must have to attain perfection.
     We must discipline ourselves to be quiet. Many saints want to talk all day and night and still have standing and power with God. We cannot have such power. God has plainly, and without equivocation, admonished us to be quiet—control our mouths and not be foolish women; take care of our own business and not be busybodies in other men’s affairs. But church people have violated God’s word not only of this admonition, but of just about all levels that are possible, yet we still feign being saved—far be it from God’s word!
     Some time ago, I had an associate in my employ who many labeled motor-mouth because he was always talking. There was never anything of import that came from him, but he was always talking nonetheless. This is the position of too many people who call themselves saints. Many talk on the phone all day long, about everything that one can imagine. This is not good. At lunchtime this young man offered to take me to lunch near UC Berkeley. As we were walking along the street, he was being himself—talking a mile a minute, as the expression is—and his words were of their usual negligible import. Matter of fact, they were loud, indeed too loud, crude, and they bordered on vulgar. I walked faster to get away from this embarrassment, and he walked faster to keep up with me and spew out the insignificant things he had to say. Finally, I asked him to tone down his rhetoric, since I was neither deaf nor hard of hearing and others could easily hear his conversation to me. He was overwhelming me with meaningless words. Needless to say, this was not one who claimed salvation, but even among many who claim salvation, there are motor-mouths among us.
     Since I walk in several worlds, one is a college professor and another is a respected community leader, and we were around a school that had ex-students of mine, and they could have heard him and thought that his level of confusing discourse was also mine, I shared that fact with him. He asked if I were ashamed of him, and I told him that the shame was his crude speech and subject content. It was only then that he was willing to harness himself somewhat—of course, his harness was limited because his deep called to his deep, and his deep was simple street wisdom that is not wisdom at all. There are many so-called Christians like this gentleman: souls who would prefer talking to breathing (I use hyperbole to emphasize a point). But such souls can never have standing with God; they can never perfect themselves because they cannot control their tongues. For royalty, there are certain protocols that are essential to their royal estate, and if they are going to abide harmoniously in royalty, certain principles and protocols must be adhered to. This is true for all royalty. We are children of God and are members of his family. That is royalty beyond all royalty. [Rom. 8:16-17] When God speaks, worlds were/are formed; when God speaks, peace is stilled; when God speaks light is formed. God’s words are with power to accomplish whatever he says they will accomplish, whatever they say they do.
     We must see who we are in Christ in order to behave appropriately. The Prodigal Son of Luke 15, came to a realization of who he was only after he had fallen from his first estate. Nevertheless, after recognition of his fall, he declared, “I will arise, and go to my father.” It was when he recognized his fallen state and who he once had been that he again assumed the dignity of his father’s royal protocols in going back to his father. Note what he said and what he did: he said tersely what he was going to do—“I will arise and go to my father…”—and he did exactly what he said, unlike many who say but not do as they have said. A child of God must say in his heart and do with his being those things that he said in order to get back to God. But first, he must recognize that he is fallen—which becomes a major problem for many backslidden saints who remain in the church, instead of exercising some degree of dignity and go out of the church to identify themselves among the sinners they are actually a part of. But instead, many stay among us and bring shame upon all of us by their sinful state and behavior.
     We often do not recognize our position when we are fallen and even when we are not; far too often we do not recognize our status in God, much as the senior son did not recognize who he really was and what his estate entitled him to. That son had stayed in his father’s house doing the things of his father, but he had not recognized his growth and that growth’s potential. That failure on his part limited his exercise of his father’s power and provoked his jealousy of his younger, backslidden brother who finally found his way home.
     But although he was blinded to his status, him blindness was far better than his brother’s blindness. The younger brother was beaten with many afflictions of the world, self induced; he had disgraced his father and himself; he needlessly learned the hard way. Many who are in the younger brother’s predicament never come to recognition of who they once were; instead, many become old in sin and die in their low estate, without God in their lives as they enter an uncertain eternity. And it is a horrible thing to enter into eternity without God!
     The older son had abided by his father’s commandments, lived his father’s words, and had never seen that to abide by his word, to live his word, to stay in his father’s house and to mingle his wealth/interests with his father’s wealth/interests was to identify so totally with his father that he and his father were indistinguishable, their wealth and interests were indistinguishable—he has grown up into his father. [Eph. 4:15] That behavior meant that he had so totally merged his desires and wants with father until his father’s desire was his own.
     The older son had done everything that his father wanted him to do and had not recognized that obedience grows a child of God from servant to sonship—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. He told his father, All these years I do serve thee, and thou never gave me a kid to make merry with my friends.That was the mindset of an obedient servant. He was still thinking of himself as a servant, rather than as a son of his father who possessed all that his son-ship entailed! But although he was slow in seeing his status, that slowness did not diminish his status; it blinded him to the great and precious promises of his position. This blindness was needless, but a far more preferable blindness than that of his brother’s.
     As we obey God and continue to obey, we move from servants to sons of God. This is one of the main reasons I teach so vigorously that after salvation (the born again experience) the next step is perfection—growing into him. In so doing, we move from mere servants who obey his word into patterning our very lives, thoughts, actions, and behaviors to that of God’s word--having our steps ordered by his word. These actions take us to son-ship, which is the intent of God.
     Doing his word constantly as a servant breeds and works within the servant the habit of doing; habits long practiced become normal behaviors of an individual. When we do the word of God habitually so that his word abides in us and we in his word, then are we no more servants but sons. Our nature has been transformed and we take on the nature of Christ. And as sons, we can ask whatever we will and it shall be done unto us. As sons, we can bind a thing on earth, and God will bind the same thing in heaven. We are no longer servants but sons capable of using the power of God that has been given to us as sons. [Job 22: 28; Matt. 16:19;18:18]
     Listen to Jesus as he talks to his disciples. He told them that he would call them servant no more but friends, if they did what he said; note the growth requirement of doing what he said. [John 15:13-15] God shows us in Luke 15 that we move up in status, unless we do those things that are unpleasing to God. The elder son had done all the father asked of him and did not comprehend his standing with his father. And as his younger brother came back to the house and his father made merry, jealousy arose and that son who was obedient to his father’s words would not go in and rejoice. But his father went out to him, and he showed him his elevated status. He said, “SON, all that I have is yours.” You are ever with me, and the riches of my house are your riches, and my house is your house. You have the power to speak, even as I speak, but your brother has been a fool; now he has come home, and we rejoice that he was dead but now is alive!
     We are sons of the living God, the works Jesus did are the works that we should be doing as well. We have the power to speak, to decree, to bind on earth and have it bound in heaven, we have the power to speak to mountains and they be cast into the sea—all that God has is ours: Ask and it shall be given, seek and we shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Indeed, anything we ask in the father’s name he will give it. It is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. We have the power of the spoken word of God. That is why our tongues and governance of our tongues are so important. But behaving as the foolish son, many have spent their power through idle chatter and their inability to control their tongues.
     The power of our Father/God is in us to do good, not for vain exhibition of spiritual powers. Jesus demonstrated that principle for us when he denied Satan’s request to cast himself down because the angels would bear him up. Saintly sensibility must be used in the exercise of the holy things of God that have been given unto his saints. [Mat. 4:6-7] God has given us the power of sons, to reach into the spiritual reality of God and bring down physical gifts and realities to us. The problem is that we often do not know who we are in Christ and how to accomplish these things. Second, when there is a glimmer of truth about this reality, many attempt to reach into spiritual things and pull needless and carnal things that are amiss as to consume them upon their lust, as James said. [James 4:3] Saintly sensibility must be exercised; the gifts of God must be used judiciously, as they are holy things not to be played with.
     Learning to properly use the powers of God are manners and behaviors we can and must learn. We must, however, as Paul has said, study to be quiet, for by our words we shall be justified and by our words we shall be condemned! [Mat. 12:37]

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