When he asks this question, who is it, that would really love a great life, and would like their days to be filled with many blessings? I guess that's everyone here, then he says well, deal with your tongue. Deal with the words you're saying, because the words you're speaking are shaping the world you live in. Relentlessly, day by day they're shaping your relationships; they shape the spiritual atmosphere over you. They shape your destiny, so he's saying - notice this what he says. He says very clearly concerning the tongue, if you want a good life, and you want to have good days, many days that you may see good, keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil, do good, seek peace, and pursue it. So he makes it very clear, that there is a very close connection between the kind of life we have, and the way we speak.
Obviously people who are very angry, very hasty with their words, they have a very poor life, because all the people around them are in conflict and turmoil, because they speak angry, hostile words, so the words we speak have tremendous power.
Jesus said, the words I speak, they are spirit, and they impart or bring life to people, so your words are unusual. Your words have a capacity to change the spiritual atmosphere around you, to release the spirit of God to move, and to create a better future for yourself - or to shut down your future, open the way for demons. A little later, when we begin to talk about releasing the power of God, you will realise that the power of God is primarily released by words spoken. Last term we were doing a whole series on undercover. I really appreciate all who put their hand up and led a group. I thank you for your commitment, because it was just life-changing for so many people, but doing that and coming under cover, the whole purpose of that is to position yourself, so you're in a place where you can begin to express the authority of God, and change the world around you.
It's done in many ways, but the one we're looking at at the moment, are the kinds of words that we speak, the sort of words that you speak, and last week we shared about different pictures of what the tongue is like. We found that the Bible described it in one place like gangrene; a poisonous tongue was like gangrene. We saw it was described like snake venom. We saw it described in one place in scripture like rust. In other words, when the tongue is just out of control it's like a fire, it's like an arrow. It actually has power to hurt people. We saw that when the tongue is not controlled, then it has all kinds of dramatic and serious consequences in people's lives, but when the tongue is controlled, when we begin to yield our tongue, and master the words we speak, and begin to learn how to speak words that are God-given words, if we get into agreement with God, and begin to speak the things God is saying about our life, our circumstances, our condition, our future, then we make way for God to move in those situations.
You will be surprised, we talked last week about coming to a point where we begin to fast off negative talk, fast off talk which is destructive. How many people had a go at that this week? There's a few. How many found it was a bit of a challenge actually? Bit of a challenge, you couldn't help that tongue going [blab blab] [Laughter] Once the words are out, you can't get them back again, that's the problem - I wish I hadn't said that. We don't want to be in that place of saying, I wish I hadn't said that, having to cancel the power of the words and take them back, and eat our words with a bit of humble pie. We don't want to do that. We want to learn to actually let our heart be changed, so we can speak words that shift things.
I've known people who have prayed and commanded demons, nothing happened, and then when something came into their heart, and their heart was changed, they began to say the same sorts of things, and the power of God was in their words. You must have words that have substance, and we're going to just over two Sundays, I want to just share with you some common things, which are very common. Actually I thought there's a lot of things in the Bible. I felt I'd take the ones that I personally have had to wrestle and break through, either because this is what's come against me, or because I've had the issue in my own heart and had to deal with it. I felt that would bring more life to do it that way. You can make a search yourself in the Bible of these things.