“Decrees: Their Force & Power”

Several years ago I invested quite a large sum of money in a joint business venture.

I had put out a fleece before the Lord about this business deal. Well, all the fleeces turned out just the way I asked. But I really got fleeced. You see, Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” Paul said, Satan is the god of this physical world, and he knew the fleece I had put out.

Now I have found a better way to find the will of God. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come” ( John 16:13).

 I had sold a small farm and invested the money in this business. I lost nearly all the original investment plus $25,000 more.

Through the confusion the enemy caused, I lost faith and turned negative on life. I thought God had done this to me. That was what Satan had put in my mind. After several months, I realized that the negative thoughts in my mind did not agree with the Word of God.

Then the enemy tried to convince me that I had failed God and that was the reason I had lost the money, and God was mad at me.

 I know this story sounds familiar to many, because it is one of Satan’s favorite lies that he uses to bring condemnation and confusion to God’s people.

MY CONFESSIONS RULED

In that confused state of mind I turned negative. I began to say, “It doesn’t matter what I do, it won’t work out anyway.”

I was still farming about 800 acres of land at that time, so I turned my attention to the farming operation. I knew that was one thing I could do well because I had always been successful in it. But after I had turned negative, I would plant cotton and say, “Well, it doesn’t make any difference how deep I plant it, it will probably rain three inches and it won’t come up anyway.”

 It did rain and the cotton didn’t come up.

 I planted again, this time shallow, about one-half inch deep, and told almost everyone I saw, “Now it will turn off dry and won’t rain for three weeks.”

And it did just what I said.

The third time I planted that year, I made more negative statements. The more problems showed up the more negative I became (this is Satan’s cycle). The third planting I produced about two-thirds of a stand of cotton. I can, even now, still hear my words. “Now there will probably come an early freeze and kill it before it opens.’

 And it did.

 For two whole years I confessed the same thing and got just what I said. I farmed that 800 acres those two years and did not make enough money to buy my driver’s license. The farming practices that once worked for me did not work. The same ground that once produced bounteously now refused to respond.

 I was still giving. I still believed Luke 6:38, “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” But it was not working for me. I prayed, I repented, I begged God to prosper me, but nothing worked. I was still negative. My confession destroyed my prayer. I saw failure everywhere I looked. I believed it and confessed it daily. I was a failure. I was at the end of the rope so to speak, financially. I had just borrowed $100,000 to pay my back bills. I was so poor I couldn’t pay attention. That’s the truth. I would go to church, but I couldn’t get anything out of the service because I was worrying about my finances.

Then a Baptist man came to my house one day. He had some books with him. I remember thumbing through one of the books and reading a few paragraphs here and there.

 The title of the book was Right and Wrong Thinking, by Kenneth Hagin. It was different from any book I had ever read. Every paragraph said something, and it was straight to the point. I remember to this day one of the first statements I read. “People that think wrong believe wrong, and when they believe wrong, they act wrong.”

It went off inside me like a bombshell. It just seemed like someone turned a light on inside me. “The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple” (Ps. 119:130). I knew instantly that this was truth.

 I ordered that book and another one on “Confessions.” I began to dig into the Word of God to see where I was missing it. I had never heard anyone preach on Mark 11:23-24, “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. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

 I am sure I had read it but it meant nothing to me. It was not in me. I had no idea you could have what you say. But as I began to prayerfully study what Jesus said about WORDS, the mouth, and prayer, God began to reveal these things to me.

 I remember one morning I was praying and I said, “Father, I have prayed and it is not working out.” He spoke inside my spirit just as plain, “What are you doing?”

 I said, “I am praying.”

He said, “No, you’re not, you are complaining.” Then He said, “Who told you it is not working out?”

 Now that shook me. I thought for a minute, then I said, “Well, I guess the devil said that.”

 Then He spoke into my spirit some things that totally transformed my life. He said, “I would appreciate it if you would quit telling Me what the devil said. Now you have been praying for Me to prosper you and get the devil off of you. I am not the One who is causing your problems. You are under an attack of the evil one and I can’t do anything about it. You have bound Me by the words of your own mouth. And it is not going to get any better until you change your confessions and begin to agree with My Word. You are operating in fear and unbelief. You have established the words of the evil one in your behalf. By your own mouth you have released the ability of the enemy; and if I did anything about it, I would have to violate My Word, and I can’t do that.”

 You see, I had just gotten enough of His Word in me to where He could talk to me intelligently about the problem. Until then He had no basis on which to talk to me for I had cast out His Word and quoted the enemy. Over a period of the next few months He spoke many things into my spirit that totally upended my way of thinking, some of which I will share later.

 He said, “I am for you. I want you to prosper, but I want you to do it in a way that will work an eternal value in you, by using your faith and acting on the Word. The power of binding and loosing is not in heaven. It is on earth, and if you don’t do it, it won’t be done.”

Then He told me this, “Study and search my Word for promises that pertain to you as a believer. Make a list of these and confess them aloud daily. They will build into your spirit over a period of time. Then when these truths are established in your spirit they will become true in you.”

 SECRET OF FAITH

This is the secret of faith, continually saying what God said. So, for two and one-half years I studied the Word of God and made my confession list.

 Many people want to know why it won’t work for them when they have not meditated the Word and would not dare say anything contrary to their sense knowledge. They would not dare say, “My God has supplied all my need according to His riches by Christ Jesus,” when the rent is due and they don’t have the money. Sense knowledge would say that would be telling a lie.

 But how can you tell a lie when you say the truth?

GOD’S WORD IS TRUTH.

“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches...by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).

The Lord spoke to me about going on a Word fast for two weeks. I didn’t read anything but the Word of God or something pertaining to the Word. I didn’t watch any television, not even a news program for two weeks. I was so excited about the Word at the end of those two weeks that I haven’t really cared about reading a newspaper or watching T.V. since.

 I began a process of training my spirit with the Word of God.

 One day as I was confessing “the devil flees from me because I resist him in Jesus’ name,” I suddenly realized that the anointing of God was rising up in me. My spirit had received it and now it was being manifest in me. In an instant of time I knew the devil was fleeing from me and my words took on authority.

 God’s Words are filled with faith and that is how faith comes.

It didn’t come by watching the Doctors, or Gunsmoke, it came by the WORD of God. Understand — this process of training the human spirit did not work overnight. I didn’t say it one day and be full of faith the next. It was a process of weeding out religious tradition from the WORD.

TRAINING THE HUMAN SPIRIT

 Tradition says, “If you feel sick you are not healed.”

 But I chose the WORD.

Tradition says, “If you pray and it looks worse keep bombarding the gates of heaven.”

But the WORD says, “When you pray believe you receive them and you shall.”

So, I would go to the WORD to see what the WORD said about it. Then I would pray what the Word SAID, “My God supplieth all my need according to HIS RICHES.”

PRAYER became a challenging experience of forgetting circumstances. It was exciting to confess I have abundance and there is no lack, when the lack was very apparent.

 “The Lord is my shepherd, I do not want,” when want was all around.

 “No weapon formed against me will prosper,” when it looked like everything that came along was working against me and prospering very well.

One morning as I was confessing the WORD, I stopped and said, “Lord, You know I don’t believe all this I am saying is true in me.” (It was that tradition coming through that made me feel like I was lying.) I knew the Bible was true and it was in the Bible.

 The Lord said, “That’s all right, son. Just keep saying what the WORD says until it becomes a part of you, then it will be true in you.”

 So I kept confessing, “I have abundance and no lack; my God supplieth all my need,” until it was formed in my spirit and became a part of me. Then, I realized I had broken into a realm of faith that I never knew existed.

A NEW REALM OF FAITH

 “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” ( John 15:7). I could now make those statements with full assurance that God would honor His Word. It was a strange feeling on the inside of me. In my spirit I knew I had abundance, yet I could plainly see with the natural eyes it was not manifest.

I had prayed and asked the Father for some more land. I said, “I don’t know where there is any land available, but I know You do, and I ask You in the Name of Jesus to cause it to come to me. I see in Your Word where You said the angels were ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who are heirs of salvation. Therefore, I say the ministering spirits will begin to work and cause the land to come to me in Jesus’ name.”

 I was excited about positive prayer, and I never prayed about that again. I began to praise God for the answer.

About two weeks had passed and I had really not even thought about it. I had considered it done when I prayed. That morning the phone rang. When I answered, the party told me who she was and said, “We are going to sell our farm. Do you want to buy it?”

 It caught me by surprise because I knew many people had tried to buy small plots from them to no avail. I know I stuttered but finally said, “Yes, I would.”

 I made an appointment to meet with them that night.

 As I hung up the phone my wife said, “What are you going to do?”

I said, “I am going to buy the farm.”

 She kind of laughed and said, “What are you going to use for money?”

The next sentence came right out of my spirit. “Money is no problem.” I just stood there goggle-eyed at what I had said. It had to come out of my spirit because my head knew I didn’t have any money. But my spirit was programmed to abundance.

My oldest daughter was standing there, and we all three joined hands, agreed, and said with our mouths, “The farm is ours in the Name of Jesus.”

The day that followed proved to be very trying to that faith statement, but we would not negate that statement. Oh, I wanted to, sometimes very badly, but I would shut my mouth and not say it.

 This is where the fight of faith is lost so many times, just one inch below the nose (the mouth).

 In one of those trying hours I was driving home, and from all outward circumstances it looked as though the farm was going to another person. I was praying in the spirit (in tongues) and the Spirit of God spoke up on the inside of me and said, “Go speak to the mountain.”

I knew who the mountain was, another man bidding for the farm. I didn’t know what to say but I confessed, “The Spirit of truth abideth in me and teaches me all things and I have the mind of Christ.”

 I talked to the man and he said, “I don’t really need the farm. If you want it I will withdraw my bid.”

 He withdrew his bid and the mountain was removed! They sold me the farm.

( M A R K 4 :1 5 ) — Satan Came To Steal The Word

 I had made arrangements for the finances, but when I started to close the deal the lending agency said they had made a mistake and could not loan the money.

This was the enemy’s way of saying, “Will you accept defeat?”

Again — it looked as if all was lost. I didn’t have any money to pay down on the farm. I was operating on borrowed money. As I sat there, hearing the words that a few years before would have caused me to say, “Well, I knew it was too good to be true, nothing ever works out for me,” the Holy Spirit spoke up on the inside and said, “Go across the street to the bank.”

 Now that sounded silly to my head, because I had never done any banking at that bank. It was not in my hometown. However, I did know the president of the bank.

So I walked across to the bank. As I walked in the door the president of the bank said, “Hi, what can we do for you?”

I was direct to the point, “I need to borrow ‘X’ number of dollars.” It was a figure greater than I had ever borrowed at one time.

He said, “Well, bring the papers. I heard about that farm you bought. We will loan you the whole amount if you want it.”

 It seemed as though I could hear my words still hanging in the air, “MONEY IS NO PROBLEM. I will buy the farm,” spoken nearly a month before. But they had become creative power formed out of the image of the Word of God.

“...and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper” (Ps.1:3).

 “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper” (Isa. 54:17).

“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).

 “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1).

 The words I had spoken were images formed in me by constantly saying what God said about me!

By the time the abstracts were brought up to date for the final close, I had sold 40 acres to the school district to build a new school. It worked out to where at the final closing of the transaction, I had several thousand dollars equity in the farm, and I had not put one cent into it.

It was not what I had done.

 It was God honoring faith-filled words.

 Now, we come to the real reason I shared this story. At the final signing of the papers, they told me that they never intended to sell the farm. Some of the heirs wanted their money, so one of the family said, “Find out what it is worth, and I will buy it and keep it in the family.”

The farm had been in the family for nearly 100 years. They put it on the market, only to find out how much it was worth. They had no idea the farm was worth as much as I offered. They could take the money to the bank and draw twice as much interest as the farm was paying rent. They said, “We would be foolish not to sell it at that price.”

 It was a good deal for them and for me, for within two years the farm prices almost doubled. The thing that turned me on was when I realized that the farm really was not even for sale until the day that faith rose up in my spirit and caused my tongue to form the image the Word of God had painted on the inside of me. “I will buy the farm. The farm is mine.”

Oh, thank God for the power of His Word to produce faith. A prayer of faith set in motion had brought the opportunity before me. But it had no real substance until I was willing to mix faith-filled words with it. Then, and then only did it become a reality. Faith was the substance.

Sometimes people say, “I have tried that and it didn’t work for me. Why did it work for you?” The Word of God is the reason.

I CHOSE TO BELIEVE WHAT THE WORD SAYS ABOUT ME. Now it wasn’t because I was smart. A year before I would have blown the whole deal by the words of my mouth. It wasn’t because of my ability. It was simply because I programmed my heart with the Word and acted like it was true. Jesus said the good things of God come out of your heart.

 “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues (forces) of life” (Prov. 4:23).

 In Matthew 12:35 Jesus said, “...an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil things.” If you want to know the evil things He’s talking about, the 13th chapter of Numbers tells us what God called an evil report. The spies were sent in to spy out the land, and ten of them came back and gave an evil report. They told what they saw, what they heard, and what they felt.

Now what was so evil about that? The fact that what they heard, saw, and felt was exactly contrary to what God had said.

God said, “I’ve given you the land.” They were to go over there and plan their strategy; plan how they would take it.

They were not to go over there and see if they could take it. They were to go there and decide how they were going to do it.

They came back and said, “Whoo! There are giants over there. We were grasshoppers in their sight!”

Well, thank God! If faith will move a mountain, it’ll whittle a giant down to size.

God said the things they saw, the things they heard, and the things they felt were an evil report.

We have all done it. We have gone to God and given Him an evil report. We have said in our prayer, “It didn’t work, Lord. It’s getting worse. I prayed and it didn’t work out.”

What makes you think it didn’t work out?

 We will say, “Well, you see, it looks worse, and I feel like things are getting worse.”

That’s an evil report.

You are not to be moved by what you see or feel. Be moved by WHAT THE WORD SAYS. Say only WHAT THE WORD SAYS. THE WORD says IT WILL WORK OUT. Stand on that.

STAND

 The Bible says, “...and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore...” (Eph. 6:13,14).

It didn’t say turn and run. It didn’t say give up and say, “Dear Lord, it’s not working.”

 It says, “WHEN YOU’VE DONE ALL to stand — STAND!” JUST STAND THERE!

“You mean, don’t do anything?”

 Yeah! That’s what I mean. JUST STAND THERE.

 Somebody said, “What’ll I do? I prayed and it’s just not working out.”

Well, the first thing to do is SHUT YOUR MOUTH.

Second, just STAND THERE. If you can’t say something good, don’t say anything. It’ll work out, if you have believed God.