Check Your Mouth!
by Kenneth Copeland
A lot of people in this world don’t know how to fly airplanes. I’m not one of them. I’ve been a pilot for more than 40 years. And quite frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to sit in the back of an airplane when they could sit up front.
Yet, when you compare the number of people who know how to fly to those who don’t, there are not many of us.
There’s something else a lot of people in this world don’t know how to do, and that is…control their mouth.
Getting control of your mouth is like flying an airplane. Anyone can do it. It’s just a matter of learning how. But I dare say the vast majority of people—and I’m talking about believers—don’t know how to control the words that come out of their mouths. They just let them fly.
“Oh but, Brother Copeland, I don’t have the time it takes to study the Bible in order to get control over my mouth.”
I see. You don’t have that kind of time for the Word, but you do have time to be sick six months out of the year, or broke most or all of your life, or beaten down by the devil day in and day out, right? With flying, it’s pretty obvious the pilot is the one who has the power to crash or land the plane.
Controlling your tongue is no different. Your mouth determines your success or failure in life—but only you can be the pilot. No one else can do your talking for you. It’s up to you whether you crash or land. If you want 2016 to be the year something changes, you should put your mouth in check.
Life Doesn’t “Just” Happen
Some time ago, the Spirit of God made a statement to me that just burned into my consciousness. This is what He said:
Most people go along day after day hoping nothing bad happens that they cannot handle. Then, when something does happen, they try to change things in a few moments of prayers and tears, not realizing that they actually caused what happened by putting certain spiritual laws into motion.
Years of exercising the law of sin and death will produce the curse in one’s life. Meditating continually on the lies of the devil, which is worry, will build doubt and unbelief in one’s spirit until it overflows in abundance into the mouth. Then it is released in words of fear. Those words are then acted upon. And acting on words of fear brings worry to pass.
So, don’t wait. Start now. Build a new future by exercising the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus with words of faith, love, joy and hope, thereby producing acts of faith, acts of love, acts of joy and a continual hope, expecting God’s favor and His very best all the time.
Notice the Spirit of God said that we—you and I—cause what happens to us in life by putting spiritual laws into motion.
How do we put those laws into motion?
Through our mouths. Through the words we speak day after day.
Jesus, in explaining the power of our words to His disciples said, “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).
Jesus was telling them—You have what you say.
And it’s no different for us today.
Hebrews 3:1 says it like this: “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”
The word apostle literally means “one sent” or “sent one.” And the word profession also can be translated as “confession.”
Jesus was sent by God—anointed and appointed—to be the High Priest of our confession. In other words, it’s His job to see to it when we speak the Word of God out our mouths that it comes to pass.
But notice what Jesus said in Matthew 12:34-37:
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.
Each one of us will stand judgment for every idle word we speak. We will be condemned by our words, and we will be justified—or made righteous—by our words. And that covers just about everything.
So it does matter what we say.
A New Law to Live By
To go a step further in understanding just exactly how our mouths direct the course of our lives, we need to examine the “spiritual laws” we put into motion through the words we speak daily.
In Romans 8:1-3, the Apostle Paul tells us this:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.
Here Paul describes two spiritual laws: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and the law of sin and death.
If you have received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then as a born-again believer you have been made free from the law of sin and death by the law of the Spirit of life in the Anointed Jesus.
But notice that first verse says there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
In 1967, when I was studying this passage of scripture, the Spirit of God said this to me: The word “flesh” there is talking about the five physical-sense gates.
Obviously He was referring to the means through which we gather information from the natural world around us—the eye gate, ear gate, touch gate, smell gate and taste gate.
But then He went on to say this: When you see the word “Spirit” in these verses, replace it with the phrase “Word of God” or “the Word.”
Well when I did as He instructed, here’s what I came up with:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the five physical senses, but after the Word of God. For the law of the Word of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the physical senses, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful senses, and for sin, condemned sin in the five-physical-sense realm.
Our confessions, spoken in faith, are the foundation from which God operates in our lives. But to put an end to worry, to fear-based words, to fear-based results in our lives, we must control the flesh. We must control the five physical-sense gates of our being.
When I saw that revelation for the first time 36 years ago, it changed the way I saw everything in life. It literally opened up the rest of the New Testament to me.
Faith-Based Living
When we walk in the laws of the Spirit—and we operate in them according to the Word of God, by faith—those laws will control our circumstances in our favor every time.
What most believers fail to understand, however, is that unless we stay in the Word and walk in the laws of the Spirit on a continual basis, we will fall back into all that is going on around us. We will fall back into the laws of sin and death. We will get caught in the current of the world’s negative flow, which is the death flow.
You see, in the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, there is faith, courage and prayer. In the law of sin and death there is fear, confusion and pressure.
Faith, courage and prayer are all based on the living Word of God.
We know that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). But having courage is also a commandment found in the Word.
To be courageous simply means we do what we know is right, according to the Word, not the world.
After Moses died, God commanded Joshua:
Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid (Joshua 1:7-9).
What was God saying?
Don’t say anything that My Word does not say. Don’t think anything other than what My Word says!
Why?
Because anything other than faith is fear. And without fear, the devil has nothing to work with.
Now to understand the way prayer figures into this faith equation, we need to go back to Mark 11 where Jesus told His disciples, You will have what you say (verse 23).
But notice what He goes on to tell them in verses 24-25: “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any….”
Prayer requires that we believe we receive when we pray—not believe we receive after our answer shows up. What’s more, prayer requires that we have an open line of communication with God, which means there can be no unforgiveness clogging it up.
This is all part of the law of faith—faith, courage and prayer. And we cannot leave out any part of that law without causing it either to weaken, or to stop functioning altogether.
Fear-Based Living
Fear, like faith, is a spiritual force. It works under the same rules as faith. Consequently, if faith “cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” then fear “cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word [or lies] of the devil.”
Fear is actually twisted faith. It is faith in the ability of something to harm you. Ultimately fear is faith in death.
So, tying this back to what the Spirit of God said earlier about not living according to the “flesh”—or the five physical senses—we see that fear comes from false evidence based on what we can see, feel, hear and so forth.
Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
If you only judge situations around you by what you see and what you feel, then you will always end up in a ditch because you will be judging after the facts—instead of judging after the truth. And eventually that will lead you down the path to death.
Once you get ahold of God’s Word, however, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free (John 8:32). Suddenly, fear will have no hold on you and the devil will have nothing to work with in your life.
Before He went to the cross, Jesus prayed that the Father would show us that He loves us as much as He loves Jesus (John 17:23).
Why did Jesus pray for us to know that?
Because “there is no fear in love; but perfect [developed] love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18).
There is no room for fear when Love, Himself, begins to move and tells you: All your needs are supplied according to My riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19). Jesus bore all your sins in His own body on the tree, that you, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, and by His stripes you were healed (1 Peter 2:24).
When we find ourselves in a “pressure situation,” that’s the time to separate the real problem from the pressure, which is trying to drive us to act out of fear—fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed, fear of going broke, fear of not getting the deal, fear of dying.
Remember Jesus said, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He has overcome every problem we could possibly face. So stop dwelling on “how things look.” Turn your flesh away from what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, what it smells like, what it tastes like. Because that’s the source of your pressure.
The pressure you feel in the heat of a problem comes from looking, feeling, seeing, acknowledging everything this world is telling you, then thinking and worrying about it. In the end, that’s what will get you to move in the world’s direction, instead of God’s.
Head Upstream
Faith, courage and prayer are all faith-based and depend on one another.
Likewise fear, confusion and pressure are all fear-based and they depend on one another.
That leaves you in the middle…with a choice to make:
Do I just coast downstream in the world’s flow of fear—which eventually ends with death? Or, do I turn and head upstream in faith, God’s way—which leads to life?
Because, know this: If you take the way of faith, courage and prayer—that is, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—you will be going crosswise to the world. And you will face a lot of resistance in doing that.
Confessing what God says about you and your life instead of what the world thinks is not always easy. But it’s worth it!
Under the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus comes healing, all forms of prosperity, peace, goodness and so forth. And under the law of sin and death comes fear, doubt, unbelief, death, sickness, disease, poverty and every evil work.
The point is, healing and prosperity are not a reward for “being good.” “Good” people get sick, go broke and die.
No. Healing and prosperity come from exercising the healing laws and prosperity laws, and then receiving from God.
Like everyone else on this earth, you live under the spiritual law of words. You cannot change that. But you can change the words under which you live.
Your mouth can either be a faith instrument, or a fear instrument—faith leading you in the flow of life, fear leading you in the flow of death.
Either way, the choice is yours.
Remember, the devil can do nothing to you apart from fear, the same as God does nothing for you apart from faith.
The next time you start feeling symptoms of sickness coming against your flesh, resist them. Deny their right to exist in your body.
How? By basing your words on God’s Word, instead of on how you feel. Set your course of healing by confessing: I am not moved by what I see. I am not moved by what I feel. How I feel about a situation does not change a thing. I am only moved by what I believe—and I believe the Word of God. I believe God’s Word over and above everything else. And He says that by Jesus’ stripes I was healed.
How you feel may be a fact. But God’s Word is truth. And truth changes fact.
Declare the Word and attack your “feelings” with the higher authority, and get control of your mouth—and your future—today!
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