I want to talk about the power of words. Ephesians 4:29-30 says this: "Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment. That it may give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God for whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." It says here, do not let any unwholesome words come out of your mouth except for what is for building up and encouraging people. This is a good principle to live by. It really is, because whenever you do, you give grace to people, you become an avenue of grace. And of course, there's an implication of that if verse 29 and verse 30 are connected that whenever you are doing unwholesome communication, you are grieving the Spirit of the Lord.
I've kind of spent a little extra time talking about this because we need to understand the power of words because we sometimes really discount the power that words have over people. First of all, the spoken word has substance. And this is what the Hebrew thought. The Hebrew thought that if you spoke a word, it was sent out with a purpose and would accomplish the purpose for which it was sent to do. The Hebrew believed that there was actual substance with those words.
An illustration would be in Genesis chapter 27. Here Jacob and Esau had this little competition to see who is going to get the birthright. And, of course, Jacob had his mamma on his side so he would be the one who would get it. Isaac sent Esau out and told him to go hunt something. "Fix it for me, fix the favorite stew, come on in and I'll give you the blessing. " Of course, while Esau was out hunting, Jacob and his mom fixed things so that Jacob went in and he got the blessing. Esau came in a little bit later and said, "OK, Dad, here's the stew. I'm ready for the blessing." And Isaac said, "Hold it, wait a minute. You were just in here and I gave it to you." Esau said, "No, no. No, it wasn't me. It must have been my brother." Isaac said, "Well, I gave it to your brother." Esau said, "Ah, that's OK. Just go ahead and give it to me now," and Isaac said, "I can't. I've already spoken it."
Isaac's problem was that he waited until he was really old before he did that. He couldn't tell them apart. His eyesight was really bad. But, here again, that's the biblical perspective of it. Once the blessing had been spoken, an empowerment had gone out and it could not be taken back and given to the other son.
But yet, in our culture we don't embrace the biblical perspective of the power of words. In our Western culture when somebody pronounces a curse or a blessing, we think it is not a big deal. We just demean and degrade each other. But, in reality, there is so much that is going on in the spirit realm.
So we dismiss things in Africa and other parts of the world as superstition, as if there is nothing to it and it has no substance. We act as if people don't really experience anything when somebody puts a curse on them. We call it superstition and assume that it is just a phony belief system. We do this because we're all cranial, we're intellectual, we think with our brains. When we don't understand spirit realm activity, we put that upon that culture and say, "Well, that can't be real, so therefore it is simply superstition on their part and they are just bound by this silly superstition."
I believe the devil has blinded us because there is great, great power with words that are spoken. Words have power to accomplish that which they were sent to do.
Another illustration would be found in the book of Numbers chapter 22, starting at verse 23. This is where King Balak, who wanted to curse Israel, hired Balaam to do it. "The king sent messengers to Balaam, the son of Viar, who was living in his native land of Pethar near the Euphrates River. He sent this message to request that Balaam come and help him. 'A vast hoard of people have arrived from Egypt and they cover the face of the earth and are threatening me. Please come and curse them for me because they are so numerous. Then, perhaps, I will be able to conquer them and drive them from the land. I know that blessings fall on the people you bless. I also know that the people you curse are doomed.' "
This was a very real reality that was being experienced. It is still a very real reality . Take a look at James chapter 3. Some of the verses talk about the power of words because there is nothing more powerful than the words that you speak. They become a great vehicle for either blessing or for cursing. Words have supernatural powers to accomplish that for which they were sent. Laughter happens to be invoked by words; weeping is caused by words; sadness is caused by words; emotions are stirred up by words. You can build up a person or tear a person down based upon the words that you speak.
Jesus said, "And I say to you that every careless word that men shall speak they shall render an account for in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified and by your words you shall be condemned." Now, does that tell you how powerful words are? One day you're going to be standing before God and He's going to hold you accountable for the words that you speak.
Your tongue determines the direction of your life, James 3:2 says, "For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man able to bridle the whole body as well." The word stumble there means, it's like a slippage. For example if you were to slip on a banana peel, that would be like the word that is used there. It is simply saying that if a person can control his tongue, he can control his passions. He can control his body. And, at that point he is very self-disciplined and self-controlled.
Now, perfect here doesn't mean that you are sinless; it is just talking about moving toward maturity. If you can bridle the tongue you can bridle the whole body as well, in verse 3. "You can control your tongue, you can control the direction that it takes. It's like breaking a horse there. The bit within a horse's mouth is able to determine the direction of the horse. The rudder on the ship is able to determine the direction of the ship. It is a very small piece, but it is able to determine the direction and that is the way your tongue is." It determines direction. "Behold the ships. They are so great and they're driven by strong winds. They are still directed by a very small rudder whenever the inclination of the pilot desires. Just a small portion of your body determines the direction of your life."
Now I'm not referring to what some call "positive confessionism." Some of you may not even know what that means. But positive confessionism means I simply confess it and that makes it so. Positive confessionism, what we call the "name-it-and-claim-it" crowd. I know a friend of mine who calls it "blab it and grab it." But I'm not talking about that.
There is a measure of truth to it, but it's a perverted truth. A friend of mine was in a car with a friend of his one time who was really into that. They were driving together and his friend looked at his gas gauge and said, "Oh, man. We've got to get some gas. I'm about to run out of gas." The guy says, "Don't say that. If you say it, we'll run out of gas." He said, "Well, it does say empty." Like, when you run out, you do run out. Now, I know God's not beyond and I've heard stories of how God filled gas tanks and keeps gas tanks going. I know God does that and He has done that and He will continue to do that kind of stuff. But usually God has given them a word that they're not going to run out of gas. That's the difference. Saying it and claiming it, if God hasn't spoken it, is powerless. But if God has said it, then you can stand on it and you can claim it.
Positive confessionism and its abuse would say, "Whatever you say and whatever you believe, God will bring it about. So think Cadillac, think, whatever you want to dream, just dream it and begin to put it out there." That is in its extreme and that is in its abuse. But in balance, when God begins to speak something to you, then you can begin to claim it and you can begin to speak it into being as God has spoken it to you. So there is power whenever you begin to come into an agreement verbally with what God has spoken to you in your spirit, not what you have conjured up on your own.
Do words have enough power to bring destruction? Yes, they do. Look at James 3:5. "So also the tongue is a very small part of the body and yet it boasts of great things. Behold how great a force to set a flame by such a small fire." It's talking about the power that the tongue has and that when it gets out of control it begins to spread, you can't control it and you can't contain it. Let me read verse 6 from a different translation. We have been using the New American Standard. Let me switch to the New Living translation. It says, "And the tongue is a flame of fire. It is full of wickedness that can ruin your whole life. It can turn the entire course of your life into a blazing flame of destruction for it is set on fire by hell itself."
Your tongue can be an avenue of blessing or cursing and what happens is that whenever it becomes an avenue of cursing, you're the one who gets destroyed. You're the one who gets burned. You're the one who reaps the effects of that whenever you speak those words.
Word Curses
One of the enemy's objectives to entrap you is simply that you will begin speaking curses of words against other people so that you can be the one who is entrapped. You can be the one who is burned and you're the one who gets scorched. I will tell you this, if you find a person who is bitter, who is simply angry at other people and is cursing other people, you will see a life that has been scorched and a life that has been burned. And, most of that I would call self-destruction because they have reaped it back upon themselves the results and the effects of the words they have spoken. The word hell there, is the word "ghiana." It is the dump that was outside of Jerusalem. It was constantly on fire, constantly burning and consuming.
James 3:7-8 says, "For every species of beasts and birds and reptiles and creatures of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by the human race, but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil and full of deadly poison." Now nobody would sit down to drink poison -- at least nobody with any common sense or a brain. But yet some people don't even think twice about sitting down at a meal and murdering another person's reputation with their tongue.
Your words have enough power to bring blessing. Verse 9 says, "And with it we bless our Lord and Father and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God." So on the positive side, it can be used for blessing. It can be on God's construction team to build other people up, to affirm them, to encourage them, to exhort them, but on the other hand it can be something that brings people down.
In regard to building people up, Hebrews 3:13 states, "But encourage one another day after day as long as it is still called today lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." So it can encourage. Acts 14:2 says, "Strengthening the souls of disciples encouraging them to continue in the faith." It's saying through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God. So souls are strengthened that are encouraged by the words.
Number 5:12-28 demonstrates that the curse of words can carry the power to fulfill its mission for what it was set to do. So just as there is power to bring a blessing, there is power to bring a curse.
Here is an illustration of this point from the life of Jesus in Mark 11. He noticed the fig tree a little way off that was in full leaf, so He went over to see if He could find any figs on it. But there were only leaves because it was too early in the season for fruit. Then Jesus said to the tree, "May no one ever eat your fruit again." And the disciples heard him say it. Here's the result a few verses later. The next morning as they passed by the fig tree he had cursed, the disciples noticed it was withered form the roots. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said to the tree on the previous day and exclaimed, "Look, teacher. The fig tree you cursed has withered."
All Jesus did was to give a few words. When God speaks a few words everything listens. When God says a few words all of nature and everything follows it immediately.
The truth is that from our tongue is the power to bless or the power to curse. We need to realize there is great power. In our culture we kind of downplay it, we kind of say it's not that big of a deal. Don't you know, you're overemphasizing it. You've heard people say the words, "Sticks and stones shall break my bones, but names shall never harm me." The person who said that lied. That's right. He was dead wrong when he said that. "I'm rubber, you're glue, what you say bounces off me and sticks on you." You know, we learned those little phrases as we were kids, but that's not really true.
The words that people speak over or speak to us have great power and we can accept those words or we can reject those words. It's like the parent who tells the child that he's stupid. A child can accept those words or reject those words. What happens to the child who receives those words and believes those words because somebody in authority spoke those words over him and carried authority to him? Some people actually become stupid because they've accepted those words -- they have received those words, they have believed those words, and therefore they said I am and I must be, and they will become those words that were spoken over them.
"You'll never amount to much." What happens when a person receives those words? No doubt there is a volitional choice that a child could say, "No, I will reject those words," and he can be pushed toward the opposite way and that does happen as well. But, what happens to the one who accepts, receives and embraces those words?
Others don't have to curse you -- you can do it to yourself! The most common instance of that is the phrase, "I can't." You're putting a curse on yourself when you say that. The Bible has a "can-do" verse, remember? Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And yet, we have cursed ourselves with "I can't and I can't and I can't." But that "I can't" doesn't come into an agreement with the Bible that says, "I can."
There are a lot of inner vows that we can make from those two little words:
- I can't change.
- I can't ever win.
- I can't ever find victory.
- This is hopeless.
We speak those types of words like that over ourselves. And at that moment we may actually feel that way. But if we continue to speak those types of words over ourselves -- I just want to remind you that our adversary does not play by fair rules. If you're putting curses upon yourself, the enemy decides he has a right to attach himself to this area and to feed that curse. When you find somebody who is always cursing himself, always speaking, doubting himself, degrading himself and beating himself up like this, those thoughts are being fed into his mind. And it very well could be that some demonic spirit has been assigned to those curses that a person has spoken over himself.
We have to break off the words that are spoken over our people. A lot of us are the product of the words that are spoken over us, either the words of blessing or the words of cursing. We are who we are because of the words that are spoken over us. Ephesians 4, where it says, "Do not give the devil a foothold," you know, don't give him a place. There's a crack that this thing gets in and it can be with the power of words that we have simply received or they could even be words that were spoken over us that we have not broken, that somebody spoke over us that we may not even have heard.
A man by the name of Ross was a member of a church I was pastoring in Washington state. When he came to our church he was living a life of sin. He had been very active in a church, had been a leader in a church, felt like God had called him into ministry and then was preaching. But all of a sudden things went south with his other church. They went sour on him and he left and for a couple of years he wasn't walking with God and he wasn't attending church. He came to our church and we began to work him through the restoration process.
After about a year he came up to me and said, "Pastor Rodney, I think I'm going to have to go back to my old church." And I said, "I don't have any problem with you doing that if God is in that." And as we began to engage in this conversation as to why he felt that way, I was trying to help him to discern if God really was calling him back. Because I know he didn't leave in such a good way. It was kind of a bad situation when he left and if he needed to go back to set things straight and right those relationships that had gone wrong, then I was all in favor of that. So, I asked him, "Why do you feel like you need to go?" As he began to talk about it, what it boiled down to is this. He had a disagreement with the pastor over certain things and they began to get so severe that he and the pastor didn't feel like they could work well anymore and so he said he was leaving. The pastor said these words as he was leaving: "God will never use you apart from this church." When he left, he embraced those words and quit going to church altogether because God would never use him apart from that church.
So now he had begun to get his life with God back, he had begun to recover his life with the Lord and now he said I've got to fulfill that. So, I said, "Let me tell you what I see here. What I see is a curse of words that's been put upon you." So, we laid hands on him and we broke the power of those words on his life and you know what? He didn't feel like he had to go back to that church. I tell you what, there are some people who have come to my church wounded and hurting. And I've had to pray that same prayer -- because when they left their previous church, they were cursed by their pastor. And as a result of that curse, they are not productive and working with the Lord. So we have had to simply break the power of those words off their life that has been upon them. See, people have these words that have been put upon them and we need to break them free of those words that are there. There are some of you who can relate to this; there are some words that are probably upon you.
If you are a leader and are concerned that you may have done that to somebody, then your responsibility is to ask God to break the power of those words that they were sent to do. Ask Him to cast those to the ground and to replace them with a blessing. If you have access to that person, I would write him a card and bless them. Call them up and bless them. If you don't have access to them, then the prayer is all that you can do. Now that doesn't mean that every effect of having reaped that curse is gone. It just means that you're just stopping any further damage that the curse would have on their life.
Breaking the Power of Words
I have a friend who is a pastor in Southern California. He told me how he was ministering to somebody who had Tourette Syndrome. That is where somebody has an involuntary movement or twitching a lot of the time. They may even yell or scream and a lot of times they yell and scream profanities. Personally, I have a little problem with somebody who is always doing profanity when they yell something. Why aren't they yelling something like, "Crackers!" or "Peanut butter!"? Why is it profanity and taking the name of God? When that comes up, I become very suspicious. I'm not saying that everybody who has Tourette Syndrome is demonized. I believe that is a very legitimate situation that somebody has, but I'm just real suspicious of it whenever they're always using it to curse and profane God.
This person had Tourette Syndrome really bad. This person is in church and all of a sudden he'll just start screaming profanities and cussing God. It was real irritating. My friend said they would try to show grace to this person as much as they could. But one day they were in there and he was ministering to him and they found that there was a curse of words on him from his parents. His father had Tourette Syndrome. His grandfather had Tourette Syndrome. His great-grandfather had Tourette Syndrome. Now we're looking at this ancestor thing. We could probably pretty much figure that one out. But then the words that were put upon him, the breaking words were: "Well, you're going to be just like your father," which he was.
They broke the power of the words off of him and he lost his Tourette Syndrome. So they thought, "Why don't we go pray for the father?" They went and prayed for the father. Sure enough, the words had been spoken that he was going to be like his father who had Tourette Syndrome. They broke the power of the words off him. He got free of Tourette Syndrome. They realized the grandfather was still living. So they went to the grandfather, and same thing, same effect.
Now the vehicle appeared to be the generational things that came from one generation to the next. But the vehicle that they ended up breaking to really set these people free was the power of words that were spoken over them that they would be like this. They accepted and they received those words rather than rejecting those words and they became that very same thing.
Here's some curses. Check it out. Are you living under a curse like this? You know, you're just like your father. Usually when these are given, they're not given to be a blessing. When they say you're just like your father, they're not giving that to say, "Oh, bless you. You're so wonderful. You have just his characteristics." Usually when that's given, it's not given in that way. It's given as a curse.
Here are some others: "You're just like your mother." "Why can't you be as smart as your brother or sister?" Some of you got these words in yourself there. And these become arrows. They just pierce our heart. You'll never make it in life. "You're doomed to be a failure." These are arrows. They just sink in. You know church members can be a part of the devil's demolition team. Do you know that?
I tell you most of the people we deal with have been church wounded. The church is the only army that shoots its wounded. Well isn't that the truth? Here they come. "I knew that pastor couldn't be trusted." "She isn't good enough to lead that ministry." "Yeah, she isn't good enough to lead that committee, or that thing."
You know what I do? I make it my habit to break the words that people speak over me and I realize that as the pastor of a church I have arrows coming at me all the time. I don't make everybody happy, for one thing, and so there are some sheep who curse. I give grace. I understand that's where they're at. I will always understand, I guess, but I try to be understanding as much as I can, but I understand that the sheep curse. So what I do is, I bless and I ask the Lord to remove every arrow that has been sent against me this week. I ask Him to remove every curse of words that has come against me and I pray this for the leadership of our church and I pray it for our church.
Every Sunday morning the elders get together and we pray. One of the things we do in that prayer is to break the power of words that are spoken and the curses that have come against us for the week. If you are in any leadership position at all, and most of you are, I would recommend that you begin your prayer time at least on Sunday morning or the day in which you are ministering with breaking the power of words that have been spoken against you.
Whenever those words are broken off you, there is a literal change that takes place in your life and you can feel the change. When I do deliverance ministry, I find I break a lot of words that were spoken over people that they had embraced. Remember, the devil doesn't play by fair rules. Any time he can get an inroad into somebody's life he will and words are one of the major powerful ways the enemy gains an inroad. It's a road, it's an avenue and we've got to break those off. I just break them off me every Sunday.
This is what I do. I say, "In Jesus' name, I take authority over every word that has been spoken over me to curse me. I render powerless its assignment. I cast it down. No weapon formed against me will prosper and I speak the blessing of God to cover me instead. In Jesus' name. Amen." It's an easy prayer to pray.
Parents, you are in a position of authority over your children. You can pray this over your children. But keep in mind that God has also given your children a free will and they will choose a lot of things and they may even curse themselves, especially if they're living under your home. There's great authority in that. Later on we'll talk about how to do deliverance in children. Like your older children, there are a lot of things that they're going to be held accountable for because they did it.
Let me give you another example of a self-curse. It is a very common one, the words "I can't." Here are some more that we frequently say, not realizing we are cursing ourselves: "I'll never change." "Over my dead body." "I knew he or she was going to leave me some day." By the way, on the positive side, the word of God says they overcame him because of the blood of the lamb, because of the word of the testimony and they did not love their life even to death. On the positive side, your words have power to overcome the enemy. Your words have great power to overcome the enemy.
What you send out of your mouth will come back to you. So, here's the question. What sort of harvest do you want? Do you want a harvest of blessing or do you want a harvest of cursing? In Luke 6:27 it says, "I say to you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." Luke 6:35, "Love your enemies, do good and lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great and you will be the sons of the Most High for He himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful just as your Father is merciful and do not judge and you will not be judged and do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Pardon and you will be pardoned, give and it shall be given unto you, good measure pressed down, shaken together running over they will pour into your lap for by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return."
Do you see this? We quote verse 38, "Give and it shall be given unto you," a lot during a tithing sermon, and it is a legitimate use because it's the principle that's involved. That is simply a biblical principle regardless in what area -- whether it's finances or whether it's a ministry. Anytime that you give for the Lord, it will be returned to you. That's a biblical principle.
This principle applies to the words that you speak -- giving a blessing or giving a curse. The context of it is there. So here it is. Whenever I choose to bless somebody, what's going to come back to me? Blessing. Whenever I curse, what's coming back to me?
Based upon that, we let the Lord curse who the Lord wants to curse and we just bless. When we bless them, that turns people over to God. We release these people into the hands of God. It's not ever our job to curse. We just simply bless.
Now there are certain things that God may lead you to curse in the sense that He wants to kill or to snuff out. For example, if you're praying for the sick or something like this, God may just have you curse the sickness as Jesus cursed the fig tree. But you should do that type of cursing only when God leads you into to. You need to follow the leading of the Lord because that's what God is doing. That's what God is about, so you come into an agreement with that.
But when it comes to people, you don't curse them. You simply bless people. You turn them into the hands of God and God will take care of them. God doesn't need your help in that area. You just need to make sure you're not sending something up that's going to come back on you. And if you're sending out curses and you're cursing people like that, and that's why some people just can't seem to get out from underneath it because they're always cursing everybody else. So guess what's coming back to them -- a curse. Some people think that if I just curse them then I am hurting them. Well, there's some truth to that. Your cursing does hurt them. But who does it hurt worse? It hurts you worse than it hurts them, because you reap what you sow.
Let me give you an example. Pharaoh cursed the Jews when he was killing the firstborn. And it came back and took them all out. That's right, it got worse for them. The firstborn of all of them were killed.
It is your birthright to be free from the bondage of the curse of words. Galatians 3:13 says: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. Having become a curse for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree.' " He took your place. So it is your birthright to be free of all the power of the curses of words that others have spoken over you and that you have spoken over yourself. It is your birthright to be free.
Secret Societies/Oaths
People ask me about secret societies. We're talking about the Masons and things of that nature. So, let me comment publicly on this. Those involved in the Masonic Lodge and its affiliates are usually good people with good intentions who are very benevolent and very giving. You can just look at the fruit and the evidence. Look at the Shriner's Hospitals and what they have done for people so far as benevolent, good things. First of all I simply want to affirm and to bless the work that they have done for good in our society. I have relatives and close family members who are in those particular organizations. And everybody I know who has had an affiliation with them are good people. They are not evil people.
However, if you spend some time investigating these organizations, you'll find they are so secret nobody knows what's going on within them. I'm always suspicious of anybody who is that secret. There are some vows of self-destruction people take going into those organizations. There are plenty of books that will tell you the vows. I'm not going to give them to you. I know it's a secret organization, but they have enough people who are mad at them that they write and tell just about everything that's going on in those organizations. And their vows are vows of self-destruction. The devil doesn't need much room to gain a foothold.
Anything that has vows of self-destruction can't have its origin in God regardless of how much it may quote the Bible. Some of these organizations have you take oaths on the Bible -- and the Bible talks about that, doesn't it? (It says not to do that, but to let your yes be yes and your no be no. See James 5:12)
There are certain oaths (and all these things are given for self-destruction) that contain curses -- horrible things that would happen to you should you betray the organization. It's very interesting that hardly anything happens to that particular generation. But most of the time when I'm ministering to people who suffer the effects of this, it's not to those who actually joined it, but it's in the succeeding generations. And I think that is where some of the seduction will come in because they will think "nothing happened to me," but they have also opened the door, an avenue of the kingdom of darkness in the following generation.
Based upon that, I always discourage people from coming to an alignment with any of those organizations. We have several people who are part of our church who have been a party to that, and they will defend it to their death. So I simply just say, "Well we just have to agree to disagree on this area because that is my opinion." And I base mine upon what I see in the Word of God where it comes to the power of words and most of them base theirs upon the works that they view in seeing good things.
I have also had to minister to enough people in that area to know that there is great power that gets released. I don't understand why some people suffer the effects of this and some people don't. Some people seem to receive no effect upon them personally at all, and even some succeeding generations do not suffer negative effects. And I don't understand that. But, there are some other people who have had bad things happen to them. And as we broke some of this stuff off, they have found some freedom. So that's my opinion and why I discourage people's involvement with that. I discourage joining any society or organization that makes you take an oath with a self-curse in it because of the effects that it has upon their spiritual life and their descendants based upon the power of words.
Let's enter into a ministry mode for a moment. I know as we have talked there may have been curses that have come to your mind, things that you've spoken against yourself and things people have spoken against you. Now, we're going to break these off. Please pray with me:
Lord Jesus, in your name I just come against the power of the words that have been spoken against us. I break the power of the word that our parents have spoken over us, the curses, Lord, that have come down. Father, regardless of the situation of why they spoke them, Lord, they are still spoken and we break the power of those words in the name of the Lord. In Jesus' name we render inoperative every assignment of darkness that has come through the words that have been spoken over us and the words that we have spoken over ourselves. We break their power and we cancel the assignment that the enemy has attached to them. In your name, Lord, free us of that. Jesus, you became our curse. You stood in our behalf. You hung on the tree and you became our curse in our behalf and we thank you and we bless you for that. We have received, Lord, your perfect sacrifice and we claim your freedom in Jesus' name.
I recommend you pause in reading this for a moment and let the Holy Spirit speak to you. The Lord, the Holy Spirit, will bring specific words to your mind that you need to break. He may not do it all today. You may be lying in bed tonight and words will come. You may be in church next Sunday and all of a sudden something comes to your mind. You need to break the power of those words. If nothing comes to you right now, it doesn't mean it's not going to come to you this next week. You're going to hear words that you can actually hear the voice of your mother, your father or that school mate or that teacher. You're going to see a situation in which you were involved and the words that you spoke. And then there are going to be some words that have no source -- you don't know where they came from. You just feel like those words were spoken over you and you take authority just as we did now. You take authority over those words, you throw them to the ground, you cast them down to the ground and say, God, return a blessing in return.
So, I'm confident the Holy Spirit might have just started something with many of you that He is going to complete. As God breaks the power of these words off your life, He's going to free you up. But He usually does it a little bit at a time. It's not just come, get fixed and leave. This lesson is kind of introducing you, immersing you into a process of getting free. That's so you can be a channel to bless others. In fact some of you probably even think of other people right now who could use a little breaking of words off them.