In Genesis 1, God created all things by speaking them into existence. Man is created in God’s same image and thus our words will also always carry power over creation. For most of its existence the church has forgotten this teaching, until the past century where it has come into greater awareness.
Revelation 19:15 “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations”
Ephesians 6:17 “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;”
The original Greek of the New Testament had two words translated “word.” The one is ‘logos’ which refers to a general message. The other is ‘rhema’ which refers specifically to spoken word. In the Ephesians passage the “word” is “rhema” which refers specifically to the spoken word as being the sword of the Spirit. We often think of bringing a Bible to church as “carrying your sword,” but really scripture is only a sword when we have it inside of us and can speak it. When Christ battled satan’s temptations on the mount, he combatted the devil with the spoken word. The word only becomes powerful when we can speak it. The more we meditate in scripture, the more passages we will know which we can speak into a situation with. The best kind of positive speech is when you have a Bible passage specifically related to the obstacle you are trying to overcome and can claim the promise and speak it over the situation, standing in faith.
Authority vs prayer:
Christ never prayed for God to heal someone, he always spoke to the situation and commanded the spirit or sickness to leave.
John 5:7-8 The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.
Notice he did not pray that God would bring the man healing. Instead, he used his authority to speak the creative miracle into existence. Jesus did not use any omnipotence in his healings. This is crucial to understand. He only worked as a man anointed with the same Holy Spirit that is available to you or me. This is why scripture teaches we can do the same or even greater things than Jesus did. Philippians 2:6 states that Christ “emptied himself” before coming to earth, meaning he left behind his divine qualities such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. He was not using any of these divine “cheats” to do miracles. Any power Christ manifested while on earth is available to us. Anything he did, we can do also if we are walking with God.
John 14:12 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.”
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The time for prayer in healing/deliverance:
James 5:14-15 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
This is one of the only passages that mentions “praying” over the individual rather than commanding the sickness to leave. We note that confession of sin is mentioned in this context. God desires the person in question to come forward and confess before receiving the healing. We oftentimes downplay confession due to its prominence in Catholicism, but the Bible mentions confession quite often and it is a mistake to ignore its importance.
Another time for manifesting power with prayer is in certian deliverance cases: Mark 9:28-29, And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”
We have to come to the conclusion that certian demons cannot simply be cast out with standard deliverance. It will take more time and effort to get rid of these. The Bible speaks of many different levels and classes of angels such as Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, and Principalities. As such, there will likewise be different levels of power among demonic beings, since they are really only fallen angels. The low-level "foot soldier" demon may be easy to cast out, but in certian cases we may encounter someone possessed with a higher-ranking class of demon which requires prayer and fasting to cast out.
Seated with him in heavenly places
God exists outside of time and space. We created beings on the other hand, are caught in the space/time matrix, unable to see past this trap. Note however, that our authority as believers is to be seated in heavenly places in authority with Christ:
Revelation 3:21 “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.”
Ephesians 2:6 “[he] raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”
Where is Christ the king seated? On the throne of course. To be seated with him, means we are also on a throne of heavenly authority as well. This means our authority operates outside of time as Christ’s does.
What does this mean?
Well, to exercise full authority you need to stop going into the present and future tense that is seen from our earth perspective and start seeing God’s fulfillment in PAST TENSE from heaven’s perspective. When Christ died on the cross he said “it is finished” even though he still had to descend to hell for three days to take the keys from satan. And even though we are still battling satan in our world even thousands of years later. He said “it is finished” because he saw outside of time, the completion from heaven’s perspective even when it did not seem this way on earth.
1 Peter 2:24 “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.”
Notice he did not say “you will be healed” or “you can be healed,” scripture says you WERE healed. It is past tense. When we are looking at something from our human perspective, we often pray for God to give it to us. When looking from God’s perspective though, he has already provided it. This means we can praise, thank, and worship him for the answer even if we have not seen the actual manifestation yet. Of course this takes huge faith and appears foolish. The faith of praising him for something that has not appeared yet, releases tremendous power. It is much more effective if we can truly muster the faith to rejoice, praise, and thank God for his provision being “already done,” versus praying for it to happen. Remember the story of Paul and Silas. They did not pray to be delivered from the dungeon, they instead praised and worshiped God with the mindset of faith in that he had already provided their deliverance. This large release of faith resulted in the earthquake which allowed them to escape.
Psalms 115:16 “The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s; But the earth He has given to the children of men.”
God has given us the earth and it is our responsibility to take authority over events, not just wait for God to do something. This is especially true for physical healing and deliverance from demonic forces. The earth is given to the children of men. It is our responsibility to take action and manifest positive things with our speaking. We can’t just wait on God to do everything for us.
Gossip and slander
James 3:6 “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.”
v10-11 “Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?”
We are usually far too careless in our speech. Rather than basing our words on what will create life, we react to events with negativity. Negative events cause us to complain and speak negative, thus generating more destructive events with our words, causing the vicious cycle to continue over and over in our lives. We speak in self-pity, complaints, and negativity, cancelling heaven’s blessings without realizing it. Maybe some coworkers begin to gossip about a person and we nod in agreement and throw in a few comments of our own, not wanting to stand out. Its easy to go into autopilot, taking the path of least resistance and joining in with the darkness. We read the Bible and its guidance of what to do, but without conscious effort there is no way we can live according to the standard. This results in a compartmentalization of our faith in its box of devotions and Sunday church, versus the rest of our live where we live and speak what we please. The only way to make a habit of speaking positive is to put a conscious effort into it. It is not going to happen on its own.
2 Kings 2:23-24 Then [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
In this passage we find a large crowd of youths mocking Elisha. He responds by muttering a curse against them. Two large bears then come out to attack the youths. What can we learn from this? Elisha was most likely not trying to actually destroy the youths. He simply muttered angry words under his breath, similar to how a person will swear in anger. Due to the level of his spiritual authority, his words carried power and produced a result he may not have intended. Like Elisha, we have to be careful that we do not accidentally curse someone we are angry with. As believers our words carry power and we cannot be careless. The best way to deal with this is to guard our heart and emotions, as this is the source of negative words that bubble to the surface. It is not always possible to get rid of negative emotions though, so we need to have the discipline to bite our tongue instead of speaking evil and giving authority to the devil to work in the world.