When you read the Bible, it doesn't say that the spirit of God was moving and God waved His hand - Boof! Then something happened! It says He spoke words, so creation, or creativity, and particularly creative miracles of God, are all released by words. What you didn't pick up there was that I actually spoke creatively. I said to the Pastor, when you step up on the lectern and read the Bible, you will not be able to stand. See, they didn't put it in the clip, but I spoke what I felt God showed me would happen. When we came into the meeting I got a vision and saw seven walking sticks leaning against a wall, and I spoke out that today God is going to set seven people free of walking sticks, and I immediately without any warning in the meeting just got everyone with a walking stick to come up. There were seven people, and so what you saw was an excerpt of seven people leaving their walking sticks behind. But you understand a word had to be spoken when the presence of God was there, so words are very powerful. They affect our future, they affect our lives.
Here's how important it is. We saw last week in Joshua, when they were doing their first battle against Jericho, Joshua said be silent, don't utter a word for the six days, because it would be so easy for them to undo the creative miracle God was about to do by speaking negatively and critically. You imagine marching around a huge city for seven days, imagine what must have gone through people's minds about this military strategy, but they were forbidden to give utterance to any word. If you read in the New Testament, interesting, now that was the beginning of the possession of God's promises. Now get this - in the New Testament when God was about to birth Jesus, he raised up a forerunner, John the Baptist, and when the angel appeared to John the Baptist's father Zachariah, he didn't believe and he was struck dumb. He wasn't able to speak a word negatively against what God was about to do.
Now these things are not in there just as a coincidence, it just happened to be that God just felt mean one day and struck him dumb. He realised that the father had the power to speak words that could totally undo what God wanted to do, and so he had a zip lip. He couldn't speak, until the day he wrote on a piece of paper, his name will be called John, then immediately he could speak. See, so the Bible, there's so many examples. It's all through the Bible you'll see this, but I want to just have us be very aware. So your ability to speak words is part of your creativity of God, so God's given us the ability we can reproduce life sexually, but we can also create things with words, and we have power to release things into being, and build families, build relationships with words - so death and life are in the power of the tongue.
Now get this; notice it says death. Jesus, in Mark 11:21 I think it is, He spoke to a tree, and the tree withered. Don't say sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. They do hurt, and they have power to change your life. The Bible says it very clearly, and so when Jesus spoke words, a tree withered and died. When Mary spoke words, a baby in the womb leapt. Don't say words don't have power. Your words carry not just the words that you say, but the spirit that flows from within your heart, so the Bible says out of the heart, the mouth speaks. So whenever you speak, it's not just that you say words, but there's a content of your heart, and spirit flows with the words.
In John 6:63, Jesus said, the words that I speak, they are spirit, and they are life, so when Jesus speaks a word to us, it has spirit power in it, and it imparts life, and it can change your future. If you can hold onto the word and let it build in your life, it can change your whole future. Isn't it amazing? Most people wait for the miracles to happen, when actually as soon as you've heard God, the miracle is there ready to walk into, if you can agree and speak it, then start to act on it. So this is a very powerful thing, very important for us to understand this, and particularly so as I share with you some things today. Now I do want to move to the positive ways of how we can actually speak our words to build, but I feel it's really important that we look at some of the areas, or recognise how negative we are, and learn to begin to deal with this issue in our life, and also in the people around us.