Introduction
Faith never rises above its confession. (We do not refer to the confession of sin, but the confession of the Word.) If we confess weakness and failure and sickness, we destroy faith. When we boldly make our confession that our diseases were laid on Jesus and we hold fast to that confession, we bring God on the scene. Sometimes lack of knowledge will hinder us from making a bold confession. We cannot act on the Word beyond our knowledge. Faith grows with understanding of the Word. Lack of knowledge of our Redemption and of our redemptive rights is ofttimes the reason for unbelief.
Lack of Understanding
Lack of understanding of what the New Creation means and what it actually is, hinders our faith life.
Many people do not know that they have Eternal Life. They think of themselves as being “saved from sin”. Many people are not God-Inside-Minded. Lack of understanding of their place in Christ and of Christ’s place in their lives, lack of understanding of Righteousness, what it is and what it gives, holds more people in bondage than perhaps anything else. When we know that we are the Righteousness of God in Christ, we step out of the narrow place of failure and weakness in which we have lived, into the boundless fullness of God.
Lack of understanding of our legal right to the use of the Name of Jesus holds us in bondage and gives us a sense of weakness. But when we know what the Name will do, we can defeat Satan and enjoy victory. Many are failures because of a lack of understanding about confession. Our faith keeps pace with our confession. We are held in bondage because we lack understanding about acting on the Word.
We try to believe. All that is necessary is for us to act on what God says. If we know that Word is true, we act as though it were true and it becomes a reality in our lives. Real faith is the child of knowledge of the Word.
The Two Confessions
Our faith is measured by our confessions. Our usefulness in the Lord’s work is measured by our confessions. Sooner or later, we become what we confess. There is the confession of our heart, and the confession of our lips. When the confession of our lips perfectly harmonizes with the confession of our hearts, and these two confessions confirm God’s Word, then we become mighty in our prayer life.
Many people have a negative confession. They are always telling what they are not, telling of their weakness, of their failings, of their lack of money, their lack of ability, and their lack of health.
Invariably they go to the level of their confession. A spiritual law that few of us have recognized is that our confessions rule us. When we confess His Lordship and our hearts fully agree, then we turn our lives over into His care. That is the end of worry, the end of fear, the beginning of faith.
When we believe that He arose from the dead for us, and that by His Resurrection He conquered the Adversary and put him to nought for us, when this becomes the confession of our lips and our hearts, we become a power for God. If we have accepted Him as our Savior and confessed Him as our Lord, we are New Creations; we have Eternal Life; we have the position of sons; we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
The moment that we recognize the fact of His actual Resurrection, then we know that the sin problem is settled; we know that Satan has been eternally defeated for us. We know that we are in union with Deity. We know that we have come into the family of God. We know that the ability of God has become ours.
This may not dawn on us all at once, but as we study the Word and act upon it, live in it, and let it live in us, it becomes slowly perhaps, but surely a living reality. That reality is developed through our confession.
We confess His Lordship and we declare before the world that He is our shepherd and that we do not want. We confess that He makes us to lie down in green pastures, and that He leads us beside the waters of stillness. We confess that He has restored our souls to a sweet, wonderful fellowship with Himself. We confess that He has made us New Creations, that old things have passed away and behold all things have become new, and that we have become the Righteousness of God in Christ.
We confess fearlessly before the world our utter oneness and union with Him. We declare that He is the Vine and we are the branches; that the branches and the Vine are one. We declare that we are partakers of the Divine Nature that dwelt in Him as He walked in Galilee. These are our confessions.
We have come to know that Satan is defeated, that demons are subject to the Name of Jesus in our lips, that disease cannot exist in the presence of the Living Christ in us. Now we dare to act on what we know the Word teaches. We dare to take our place and confess before the world that what the Word says about us is true.
We are done with the confession of failure, of weakness, of inability, because God has become our ability, God has become our sufficiency, and He has made us sufficient as ministers of a New Covenant.
We confess that He has taken us out of the old realm where failure reigned, into the new realm of victory, joy, and peace. As we make our confession and act on the Word, our faith grows and our Redemption becomes a reality.
The Right Confession
Jesus said, “For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.” (John 12:49). Every healing that Jesus performed was wrought through His Father’s Word. Every Word that He spoke was the Father’s Word. Jesus knew who He was; He knew His place; He knew His work. He was always positive in His message. He knew the words that He spoke were His Father’s Words.
He took His place as a son. He acted His part. He continually confessed His sonship. Jesus always confessed what He was. He said, “I am the Good Shepherd. I am the Bread of Life. I am the Water of Life. God is My Father. I am the Light of the World.” In John 5:19-30 Jesus makes ten statements about Himself. They are really confessions, and every one of them links Him up with Deity. He was speaking His Father’s own Word. John 7:29 “I know Him; because I am from Him, and He sent me.”
He not only confessed what He was, but He also fearlessly confessed what man would be after he became a New Creation. John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches.”
John 8:54 “Jesus answered, “If I honour Myself, My honour is nothing. It is My Father who honours Me, of whom you say that He is your God. Yet you have not known Him, but I know Him. And if I say, ‘I do not know Him,’ I shall be a liar like you; but I do know Him and keep His word.” (John 8:54-55). John 17:5 “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” That was a remarkable testimony. When He was talking with the woman of Samaria, He confessed that He was the Messiah, the Son of God.
Jesus Knew Who He Was
Nearly every miracle that Jesus performed was performed with the Father’s Words in Jesus’ lips. Jesus was the revealed will of the Father. John 4:34 “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his Work.” John 5:30 “I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” John 6:38 “I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” John 8:29 “For I do always the things that are pleasing to him.”
What a picture of the Master! He had no personal ambitions, no personal ends to achieve. He was simply doing the will of His Father, unveiling the Father until He could say, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) The less worldly ambitions we have, the less worldly desires, the more fully the Father will unveil Himself to us. His Words in our lips will perform the same prodigies that His Words performed in Jesus’ lips.
Self-seeking limits one. The selfish man is a limited man. He who lives in the Word and lets the Word live in him, he who practices the Word and acts upon it, is the one who reveals the Father. When we act upon the Word of God we unveil the Father.
The Wrong Confession
Few of us realize that our confession imprisons us. The right kind of confession will set us free. It is not only our thinking; it is our words, our conversation, that builds power or weakness into us.
Our words are the coins in the Kingdom of Faith. Our words snare us and hold us in captivity, or they set us free and become powerful in the lives of others. It is what we confess with our lips that really dominates our inner being. We unconsciously confess what we believe.
If we talk sickness, it is because we believe in sickness. If we talk weakness and failure, it is because we believe in weakness and failure. It is surprising what faith people have in wrong things. They firmly believe in cancer, ulcers of the stomach, tuberculosis, and other incurable diseases. Their faith in that disease rises to the point where it utterly dominates them, rules them. They become its absolute slaves.
They get the habit of confessing their weakness and their confession adds to the strength of their weakness. They confess their lack of faith, and they are filled with doubts.
They confess their fear and they become more fearful. They confess their fear of disease, and the disease grows under the confession. They confess their lack and they build up a sense of lack which gains the supremacy in their lives. When we realize that we will never rise above our confession, we are getting to the place where God can really begin to use us.
You confess that by His stripes you are healed; hold fast to your confession and no disease can stand before you. Whether we realize it or not, we are sowing words just as Jesus said in Luke 8:11 “The seed is the word of God.” The Sower went forth to sow and the seed he was sowing was the Word of God.
That is the seed we should sow. Others are sowing Sense Knowledge seeds of fear and doubt.
It is when we confess the Word of God, declare with emphasis that “By His stripes I am healed” or “My God supplies every need of mine” and hold fast to our confession that we see our deliverance.
Our words beget faith or doubt in others. Rev. 12:11 declares “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony.” They overcame him with the Word of God that was in their testimony. They conquered the Devil with words.
Most of the sick that Jesus healed during His ministry were healed with words. God created the Universe with words: faith filled words.
Jesus said, “Thy faith has made thee whole.” He said to dead Lazarus, “Come forth.” His words raised the dead. Satan is overcome by words; he is whipped by words. Our lips become the means of transportation of God’s deliverance from heaven to man’s need here on earth. We use God’s Word. We whisper, “In Jesus’ Name demon come out of him.” Jesus said, “In my Name ye shall cast out demons, in my Name you shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.” All with words!
I question whether the hands do more than register to the Senses. It is the Word that heals. Jesus said, “Whatsoever you demand in my Name, that will I do.” (In the Greek the word “ask” is “demand.”) We are demanding just as Peter did at the Beautiful Gate when he said, “In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Words healed that man. Now we make our confession of words. We hold fast to our confession. We refuse to be defeated in our confession. John 8:32 “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Or John 8:36 “If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”
We know that the Son has set us free and we confess it. Jesus is the High Priest of our confession.
Christ conquered the enemies of humanity: Satan, sin, sickness, fear, death and want. He made them captives and He set man free. Heb. 4:14 tells us to hold fast to the confession of our faith.
“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.” That confession is faith speaking. It is our victory over the enemy. It is our confidence. We never confess anything but victory. Romans 8:37 “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers which fought against Him and put them to an open shame. This is Col. 2:15 from Conybeare’s Translation.) “We should stop making the wrong kind of confession and begin at once to learn HOW to confess and WHAT to confess.”
We should begin to confess that we are; what He says we are; and hold fast to that confession in the face of every contrary evidence. We refuse to be weak or to acknowledge weakness. We refuse to have anything to do with a wrong confession. We are what He says we are.
We hold fast to that confession with a fearless consciousness that God’s Word can never fail.
