Stop Sending Your Angel Back: How to Live a Curse-Free Life

Sermon outline

The Word of God is in your mouth and in your heart, so the choice between blessing and curse is yours: take responsibility for your words, stop speaking idle ones, and keep saying what God says until the good arrives.

1. God was teaching me to walk by faith, not by feelings

   As a young Christian he found God met every need almost before he prayed, and then that stopped, and for a few years he wondered whether he had prayed wrongly or sinned. He came to see that God was teaching him to walk by faith and by the Word and not by goose bumps. Memorising and quoting scripture did not move God either; the Word had to get into his heart, which is the production centre of life.

   Illustration: In the early days answers came like a mother running with a bottle to feed the baby. Later he thought the Christian with the most highlighted verses in his Bible would move God.

   “God didn't want me to be a parrot.”

   • Matthew 7:24-27
   • Psalm 119:105
   • 2 Corinthians 5:7
   • Proverbs 4:23
   • James 4:7

2. Righteousness gives you access; right living guards your confidence

   Submitting to God does not earn you an audience with Him. You have right standing because you are born again and His child, and God loves you even when you mess up. But messing up continually and on purpose makes your confidence slip, and when a crisis comes there is no time to put things right, only a split second to say 'in the name of Jesus'.

   Illustration: If your child does something wrong you do not change his surname. He is still your child.

   “God still hears you on the basis that you have a righteous nature.”

   • 2 Corinthians 5:21

3. You only know what you have inside when the storm arises

   He tells the church that he had carried a huge personal crisis for over a year while encouraging them week after week, with nothing to stand on but God's Word. When an attorney's office said they had lost the file, he spoke to the situation in the name of Jesus, and the next day a message came that the file had been found and everything was sorted out. God is moved by trust, confidence and dependency on Him, as Jesus answered the devil in the wilderness with the Word alone.

   Illustration: The lost file: he put the phone down and declared that wherever the file was, on the desk, under the desk or in the ceiling, it would be found. Within twenty-four hours he had an SMS to say it had been.

   “The only thing I had was God's word. That's all I had for one year.”

   • James 1:20
   • Psalm 127:2
   • Matthew 4:1-11
   • Ephesians 6:10

4. God said: speak to what confronts you

   He recaps the previous week: in Genesis God desired something and said it, saw it and blessed it; in Luke 1 Zacharias did not believe the angel's word and Mary did; and in Hebrews 11 you frame your world by the Word of God. Every pressure is designed to separate you from your faith, so turn the pressure back on the devil by speaking. Prayer keeps your relationship with God strong, but there is a time to pray and a time to speak.

   Illustration: Jesus spoke to a fig tree and it obeyed, and spoke to the storm and it heard Him. Do not be afraid of your Goliaths, because they are what make you famous.

   “Every pressure is designed by the devil to separate you from God's word.”

   • Genesis 1:3
   • Genesis 1:28
   • Luke 1:18-20
   • Luke 1:26-38
   • Hebrews 11:3
   • Mark 11:12-14
   • Mark 4:39

5. Take responsibility: do not shift the blame

   When God confronted Adam he blamed the woman, and she blamed the serpent. In a crisis people blame the pastor, the boss, the spouse or the church, but the responsibility is just under your nose, in your tongue. Some of what you are going through is what you said yesterday, and some of it is a season in God's specific plan for you that you simply have to pass through with a thankful heart.

   Illustration: The week he was born again he bought a car whose fender flew off in the road; he put it in the boot and welded it back the next day. He and Pastor Zubeda had no family to bail them out, only God, and in those days a bag of potatoes or a cabbage and six eggs was a miracle worth a party.

   “The responsibility is just under your nose.”

   • Genesis 3:9-13

6. The Word is in your mouth and in your heart: choose life

   Malachi shows that words spoken in a crisis can be stout against God. Deuteronomy says the Word is near you, in your mouth and heart, and that God has set life and death, blessing and cursing before you, so the choice is no longer God's but yours. We activate the blessing or the curse with our tongues, and he calls the church to live a curse-free life under the umbrella of God's protection.

   Illustration: When you speak the Word your angel runs to fetch what you asked for. Just as he reaches for it you say 'things are tough', and he turns round and comes back. Your angels are busy, but nothing arrives.

   “Your possession is in your confession.”

   • Malachi 3:13-15
   • Deuteronomy 30:14-19
   • Philippians 4:19

7. Every idle word is a non-working word

   Jesus said people will give account for every idle word, which the Amplified Bible calls inoperative and non-working. The tongue is like the small rudder that turns a huge ship, so your words steer your whole life and either acquit or sentence you. He urges people not to keep repeating a bad report but to say what the Lord says.

   Illustration: Years earlier he was struck with Bell's palsy and told Pastor Zubeda he could not preach. She said, 'You will preach.' He preached, the numbness lifted as he spoke, and within ten to fourteen days he was clear of a condition the doctor said would take six months.

   “An idle word is a non-working word.”

   • Matthew 12:36-37
   • James 3:4
   • 2 Corinthians 1:20
   • Isaiah 53:5

8. If you have been speaking badly, confess it and realign your tongue

   He answers the question of what to do about words already spoken: confess them, and God is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse. He has the church raise their hands and ask forgiveness for every idle word, then declare blessing over themselves.

   “Make up your mind from today to speak words of grace.”

   • 1 John 1:9-10

9. Be blessing minded: good is always coming

   Jeremiah says the man who trusts in man will not see when good comes, but the man who trusts in the Lord is like a tree by the waters whose leaf stays green and who keeps bearing fruit in the year of drought. There are curse-activating words and blessing-activating words, the world's system and God's blessing system. Keep your eyes on the blessing, thank God each morning for what you already have, and attract good with your words, not push it away.

   Illustration: A pilot who cannot see through the cloud and mist relies on his instruments to fly straight. Your instrument is the Word of God.

   “Good is always coming. It's just that we're not recognizing it.”

   • Jeremiah 17:5-10