The Power Of Words
Pro 18:21 “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”
Luk 6:45 “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
The Thomas Edison Story
Thomas Edison is one of the greatest inventors that the world has ever known. From an early age, he exhibited an extraordinarily inquisitive mind, with a great fascination for mechanical things and for chemical experiments. He would later end up with a recorded 2,332 patents to his name.
He developed many devices that have greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.
He was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called him “addled,” his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home.
Thomas Edison said many years later, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint.”
But There’s More To The Thomas Edison Story…
If the excerpt of Thomas Edison’s life that you just read above is all that you know of him, you will not really appreciate the full story of his life. Here’s the background to his story:
One day Thomas Edison came home and gave a paper to his mother. He told her, “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to only give it to my mother.”
His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her child: “Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.”
After many, many years, after Edison’s mother died and he was now one of the greatest inventors of the century, one day he was looking through old family things. Suddenly he saw a folded paper in the corner of a drawer in a desk. He took it and opened it up.
On the paper was written: “Your son is addled [mentally ill]. We won’t let him come to school any more.”
That was the same letter that his mother had purportedly “read” out to him all those years ago.
Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary: “Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.”
Edison’s mother received a written note about her son that had damaging words that had passed a judgement and a sentence on the destiny of her son – He was declared “addled”: mentally challenged, unteachable, and he was deaf by the age of 12.
She disagreed with what was written about her son; she refused to believe the words that had been spoken over his life and changed the declaration. She sowed a different seed in her son’s mind and he received, believed and lived the report of a mother who believed in Him and spoke good words over him.
What damaging words have been declared concerning your life that have been designed to limit or truncate your destiny?
You can change the narrative of your story
Maybe negative words have been declared concerning your marriage, maybe you have received a note from the doctor concerning your health, maybe words have been written about your business, maybe a destiny limiting declaration has been made concerning your children, finances or ministry. Maybe these are even words that you have yourself spoken, thought and agreed to be true about your circumstances – God’s question to you today is:
Whose report will you believe? What words are you speaking over your situation?
As He said to Jeremiah, He now says to you: “Before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you…I determined a purpose and a destiny for you!”
Reading again what Thomas Edison wrote about his mother:
“My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint.”
Do we give the same belief to our children, our siblings, our spouses? We probably tell them more about how they have let us down and disappointed us, than we ever do telling them that we are proud of them and believe in them. Any wonder why their lives have become a mess of a self-fulfilling prophecy? You may need to pause for a moment and do something to correct that right now!
You may read this and think to yourself: well, that’s it then…I have no one who believes in me. But listen to what God says: Isa 49:15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”
I want you to know this one thing friend:
God believes in You
He is convinced about better things concerning you; He is rejoicing over you with singing. He is singing songs of deliverance over you. He has determined a future with hope concerning your destiny.
Let your confession from today be: Because I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me, I know and believe and declare that there is hope for my future!
Precious child of God, I prophesy over your life this day:
Your destiny will not be aborted – You will walk in the fullness of God’s purpose for your life. You will live to fulfil the entirety of God’s expected end for your destiny. You will no longer be limited by words of death that have been pronounced over your life in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Let that be your prayer and confession from today. Declare it over your life, your family, your ministry, and over this church.
With every blessing,
Pastor Wale