I want you to open your Bible with me. I want to share with you something I felt the Lord put on my heart, something that's been of huge value to me, and something that can be of great value to you. The message is called Speak the Word of God. Everyone's speaking something, you've just got to make a decision as to what you're going to let get in your mouth, because what you have in your mouth will affect your life. I want to start just in Joshua 1:8. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Notice the outcomes that God is promising: that you will make your way to prosper. Prosper means you go forward. God wants you to forward. That's His design, that every one of us goes forward, not backward; to have good success, that lives moves well for us. Now of course that's not true all of the time, but overall we can guarantee, that if we'll meet God's requirements, there'll be a river of blessing flow through our life.
Now notice what the requirements are: if you will make sure that the word of God remains in your mouth, that you meditate in it day and night; and then do it - do all that is in the law. Now you have to realise in the Old Testament, to have the blessing of God required that you just obeyed the law. For us in the New Testament, what's required is first of all faith, that we believe God and trust Him; and then we walk in the life of the Spirit, led by the Holy Spirit. It's just a different basis. On the Old Testament, you were cursed if you didn't keen the law; you were blessed if you did. In the New Testament, we're blessed because of what Christ did. Now we walk out that life, and so applying that to our life, what he's saying is: we need to let God's word get in our heart, to meditate. Meditation is what gets the word of God in your heart, opens your heart to receive, and to believe God's word. Speaking it gives utterance, and confirms what's in your heart, and begins to release the word of God into your environment. When we begin to do it, then our life comes into a flow of blessing.
I want to pick up from there, and I want to focus particularly around speaking the word of God, and the power of speaking the word of God. The first thing I want you to look at, I'm going to first of all look at one of the key functions of your spirit, a key function of your spirit. In James 2:26, every one of us, we can understand how God has designed us: spirit, soul, body. You're a spirit being. You have a spirit. Your spirit can be weak or strong. Your spirit can be lively or broken. You make decisions about what you do to build your life, and build your spirit. Every one of us makes that decision. We all have that opportunity to build our spirit, become strong in the spirit. Here's what it says: the body without the spirit is dead. Now I won't go into lots of scriptures, I want to just establish one thing. Your spirit produces life for your body. Your spirit communicates life energy, vitality into your body, and into your soul, so we are made to live from our spirit. So when God wants to change our life, He doesn't change your body, He doesn't change your soul. What He does is, He changes your spirit. He empowers your spirit; and so Micah says in Chapter 3: I am full of power, by the Spirit of the Lord!
So when God wants to change you, the place He starts is your spirit; so He puts His spirit inside your spirit, and there's a reason for that, because it's from your spirit, that life flows, to energise your body and your soul. If your spirit's damaged or weak, then there'll be an influence, or an effect, on your body and your soul. I won't go into all of that, I don't want to stay in that zone too long, but I'll just add a few things to it. So your spirit - the Bible says in John 7:38 - out of your innermost being [spirit], will flow rivers of living water; and he was speaking about the life of the Holy Spirit, so every one of us is called to bring forth the life of the spirit. It's from within you, so we need to have a look at our spirit, and see what's coming out of our spirit, what's coming out of our life. Whatever's in your spirit, in your heart, will flow out. Your spirit can be weak, or it can be strong. Your spirit can be very timid, or it can be very bold. Your spirit can be defiled, or it can be purified. Your spirit can be broken, or it can be made whole. Now we won't go into all the outcomes of that, because I don't want to stay there, but the thing to realise is this: a broken spirit dries the bones. In other words, if your spirit's damaged, it'll affect your physical health.