I want there to be a sense of awe resting on the Body of Christ that the tongue holds the power of life and death. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21).¹ We will witness the fruit of what we speak. This is true all the time: life and death are in the power of the tongue. The earth will experience the fruit of what comes from our tongues. God is bringing a sobriety in this message because we will be eating the fruit of our lips in the days to come. That is why God is sanctifying us and removing everything that is not of Him.

God is always taking over new realms within us because there cannot be a duplicity in our nature. We cannot minister to the world until He has first created Himself in us. He is constantly in the process of becoming our Lord and our King. As we return to Him, He sanctifies and restores us. “Therefore, thus says the LORD, ‘If you return, then I will restore you—before Me you will stand; and if you extract the precious from the worthless, you will become My spokesman’” (Jeremiah 15:19). The Hebrew states, “You will become as My mouth.” God is saying that He is doing something in us where literally our mouths will be as His mouth. That is a tremendous responsibility but that is where God is taking us.

When you look around at what is happening in the world, you realize that we are living in significant times. So it is a wonderful opportunity to take stock of where we are at in our relationship with the Lord. To the degree that we are submissive to His Lordship in our daily lives, to that degree our words will be spoken with an effective force of spirit. Christ said, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). When we speak the Word of God, we are speaking spirit—and those words are life and death, depending on how they are received. We will do that by our words, so we must be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The highest level of speaking a Word from God is attained when God has gone to the greatest depth of our beings to bring sanctification. Therefore, we take down our walls and allow Christ to come in and fill us. The way we live our normal daily lives is what will come out when we speak. The enemy’s ploy is to throw things at us to get us to voice discouragement. Satan is a spirit and needs human channels in the world. He wants us to be his mouthpiece and voice negativity about our health, our circumstances, or world events. Remember, the only way the power of creation can be expressed is through a human voice. We must believe in who we are and that what comes out of our mouths matters. Christ taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come” (Luke 11:2). And He is seated at the right hand of God waiting for us to make every enemy to be a footstool for His feet (Hebrews 10:12-13). Every day find Scriptures to voice the opposite of the enemy’s illusions. God is going to help us with this.

¹ All Scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB1995).