Another place, the Bible says that the words we speak are seeds; a seed is very small, but if you just leave it'll germinate and grow. You start to tell a lie about someone, pretty soon that lie springs up and grows and the person's whole relationship with that other person is changed. So words have great power to shift and change the way our lives operate. Now I want us to look a little bit about how God designed us to operate, and we want to ask the question, what words are you releasing into this world? What words are you speaking into this world? What words are you reflecting?
Last week we were looking at the issue of whether you are an echo or whether you are a voice. An echo means something is being repeated, that someone else said, and so we looked at your life, and many people are just repeating what someone else said about them. Many people just reflect - you were put down, you were told you were an idiot, told you couldn't do this, couldn't do that. It got into your mind and heart. In the end you begin to echo what was told to you, and that begins to now determine your life course. You are in agreement with it, and you're speaking it, it's where you're going. If we're going to change our life, we need to come into agreement with the words God says about us, the words God says about our life, the words God says about who we are, what we have, what we can do. We need to agree with what God says, and give voice to what God says. When you agree with what God says, and give voice to what God says, the power of heaven is released. Your life changes.
How does a person get saved? How does a person get out of the power of sin, and change their eternal destiny for an eternal destiny without God, an eternal destiny separated from God, tormented forever? How do they change, and end up with a destiny which is eternal, it's walking with God, enjoying this life on the earth? Simply this: words. Words from God get in your heart. You believe Him, and speak Him, and then heaven hears, and your life changes! So if such an important thing as my eternal destiny can be changed by the words I believe and speak, how much more will the rest of my life be affected, in exactly the same way? It's just because we have a western non-spirit world view, we don't understand the power of words, so I want to just talk to you a little bit about God's design. I'm not going to go far on it, because I want to go from here back into this issue of empty words, and want to identify words which we so commonly speak which are quite empty.
So let's have a look at divine design. First of all look with me in Ephesians 5, Verse 1. When we talk about divine design, we're talking about the way God designed things to work. God designed stuff to work. I guess the guy who makes something, knows how it works best. Sin means we disagree with the designer how to do it best, we have our own plan. The reality is though, that the way God designed things to work, is actually how they really work. He knows how life works. You do things His way, you find you get His results.
In Ephesians 5, Verse 1, it tells us this. It says be therefore, followers of God, as beloved children. Now any of you who've had children, little children, realise there's something they do quite regularly. It's very common, is they copy mum and dad. It can be really embarrassing, it can be really good, but they copy you. They listen to what you say, they watch what you do, and then they do it, and so you'll find little kids often acting out what mum and dad say and do. We've had ours in the pool baptising kids, pushing them under, trying to remember what we said - but they got the picture of it. Someone's been baptised, they're into it and they're copying what they've seen done. So children tend to imitate and copy or walk like their parents. They do that thing, and the Bible says be followers of God as beloved children, so if we're born again, we're called to be followers of God. That word means to imitate, literally be imitators of God. That word comes from the word meaning to mimic, be a mimic of God. In other words, the way God speaks, and the way God operates or behaves, do the same thing, like a little child would do that to his father.