Make the Tree Good: Change Your Inner Image to Walk in Favour

Sermon outline

You cannot see God's favour on the outside until you have the favour on the inside: your heart is a tree that produces through your words, so change your inner image with God's Word, guard your mouth, and think as big as the God you serve.

1. Make the tree good and its fruit good

   In the King James the tree bears "his" fruit, because it is a living thing. Inside you is an image that produces what you see outside, and you cannot change the outside without first changing the inside. Your spirit man is like a bag of seed, good or bad, and like a tree that bears good or evil fruit. To be justified means to be acquitted, and you are acquitted or condemned in this life by the words that come out of the abundance of your heart. An idle word is an inoperative, non-productive, useless word.

   “You can't change what you are seeing on the outside except you first go and change what's on the inside.”

   • Matthew 12:33-37
   • 2 Corinthians 5:10

2. Death and life are in the power of the tongue

   When Christians do not get results they blame God, but it is their own words working against them. Money is not your problem; your inner image of money is. Words spoken over you in the past have grown branches that do not produce life, and only the undiluted Word of God can prune them and change your faith image. Even jokes count, because your spirit does not know the difference: you have today what you ordered yesterday.

   Illustration: "Here comes winter, the flu is coming to catch me" or "everybody's getting retrenched, I'm going to get retrenched too" are orders your spirit will deliver; say instead, "Everybody's being retrenched except me." He suggests a family game of correcting each other whenever someone speaks against the Word.

   “Money is not your problem.”

   • Proverbs 18:21

3. Favour begins inside: Jesus grew in wisdom and favour

   The child Jesus grew strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on Him; grace here means favour and spiritual blessing. The word that came to him while studying was extreme favour: favour with intensity and no reservation. Instead of calling yourself stupid or forgetful, say, "I'm full of wisdom." Favour means kind regard, goodwill, approval, even partiality.

   “You cannot see God's favor on your life if you don't have the favor inside of you.”

   • Luke 2:40
   • Luke 2:52

4. The first word: association

   At twelve Jesus was found in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening and asking questions. Laban begged Jacob to stay because he had learned by experience that the Lord blessed him because of Jacob. Some people are blessed simply because they know you, and your fruit changes with your associations, because they are the sunlight and nourishment your tree receives.

   Illustration: Pastor Wesley reads Luke 2:41-48 for him.

   “Some people are blessed just because they know you.”

   • Luke 2:41-47
   • Genesis 30:27-28

5. The second word: operating in integrity

   One person scatters and yet increases, while another withholds and comes to poverty; the generous soul will be made rich, and whoever waters will be watered. He paraphrases verse 27: whoever operates in integrity finds favour, but trouble comes to the one who seeks evil.

   “He who operates in integrity will experience the favor of the Lord.”

   • Proverbs 11:23-27

6. Set a guard over your mouth: don't curse yourself

   When you were born again God blessed you and severed you from disease, poverty and lack. Like the prophet who was told he could not curse what God had blessed, Satan cannot curse you, so his strategy is to get you to curse yourself by agreeing with his thoughts and suggestions. Your lips are a door: set a guard over them. When you have a bad dream, do not give it life by telling others; cancel it and speak out only the good dreams.

   Illustration: Before he sleeps he asks the Holy Spirit for pleasant dreams and to wake him to pray before anyone else gets to him, and if he wakes from a bad dream he speaks death to it.

   “If I can't curse what God has blessed, I'll teach them to curse themselves.”

   • Psalm 141:1-5
   • Numbers 23:8
   • Colossians 1:13

7. Break the poverty mindset: you have a big God

   By words God created the world and by words you were saved and filled with the Spirit, so speak the favour of God over your life. A poverty mindset shows in small, fearful habits: stretching everything to the last drop, refusing to share, tip or give someone a lift, and always buying the cheapest. It is more blessed to give than to receive, and those who sow their lives, phones, cars and petrol into God's work receive a hundredfold. You are a royal priesthood: God chose givers, not misers.

   Illustration: Years ago he sweated at restaurants, hoping everyone would order the cheapest dish. When God told him to give a suit away he gave his oldest, shiniest one, and had to try again until he was giving away new suits. His cheap furniture broke as he paid the last instalment, and his Alfa's suspension collapsed the week he paid it off, until the Lord asked, "When are you going to learn class?" He once bought his wife an expensive ring because the Lord said it was for him, to grow; and he gave a kind elderly packer at Pick n Pay his change.

   “This is not a prosperity gospel, it's a faith gospel.”

   • Hebrews 11:3
   • 1 Corinthians 1:21
   • Acts 20:35
   • 1 Peter 2:9
   • Mark 10:30

8. Let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth

   When the devil suggests that you can't make it or that it won't work, shut him up. Corrupt communication is anything twisted or against God's Word, such as "I can't afford it" or "God can't do it for me." Think big, see your bonds and cars paid off and contracts coming, and do not speak against the favour of God on your life.

   Illustration: A struggling businessman in a colleague's church sowed ten thousand rand for his pastor's birthday and was soon awarded a million-rand catering contract for a single weekend.

   “Don't speak against the favor of God on your life.”

   • Ephesians 4:29