Living Faith Church of Augusta

I had started developing a housing project near the town where we live, but because the teaching ministry required so much of my tme, I wasn’t able to handle all the details. So I decided to sell the project and put more time into the ministry.

There were two houses in the project that hadn’t sold. I said, “Lord, I prayed and I believed. Why haven’t those houses sold?”

His answer was similar to the one concerning the rice fields. He said, “Why don’t you do what you’ve been teaching? Speak to the mountain.”

Even though I knew this Bible principle well and had taught it many times, I had not acted on it in this situation. So I drove out to the project, walked up to one of the houses, and said: “House, listen to me: I’m talking to you, and I’m telling you to sell! Someone is impressed with you. I call you, Sold! Jesus said you would obey me.” I felt silly, but I didn’t let my feelings stop me. I walked inside and said the same things to the walls. Then I went to the other house and talked to it.

About a week later, my head (natural mind) began to give me trouble. It seemed to say, “Now, Big Mouth, what are you going to do?”

I remembered that the Lord had said in one of our meetings: Tears of self-pity and sorrow do not release faith. Learn to release your faith in laughter.

So, I drove to the project, stopped in front of each house, stuck my head out the window, and just laughed at the houses and the Devil.

There were mortgages that had accummulated on the housing project for water lines, sewer, etc., so I put these notes (totaling over $100,000) on the table and called in my daughter, Annette, as a witness to what I was doing. I pointed my finger at those mortgages and said:

“Listen to me, I’m talking to you! Be paid, in the name of Jesus. Disappear. Dematerialize. I don’t care how you do it, but be gone! Be paid in full! Jesus said you would obey me.”

Two weeks later the houses sold. A few weeks later the project sold, and the land behind the development sold. The notes were paid. The houses obeyed. The mortgage obeyed. The land obeyed. All of them obeyed faith-filled words.

Someone may say, “I tried it and it didn’t work for me.” That’s very possible because it won’t work if you just try it. You must be a doer of the Word. Apply the principles of the Kingdom and spend the time to develop your faith in your words. It won’t work just because you say it, but saying it is involved in working the principles of faith. It takes weeks and months of being diligent in speaking God’s promises to develop your faith to believe that what you say will come to pass.

 

One year my wheat crop looked so thin I wanted to plow it up for weeks; but the field stayed so wet that I couldn’t get a tractor in it. Then my wife Peggy suggested that we confess God’s Word over the wheat. I told her there just wasn’t enough to leave, but she wouldn’t give up. So I agreed to talk to it and confess God’s Word over it.

In Matthew 18:19 Jesus said, If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. So Peggy and I agreed, commanding the wheat to multiply, produce, and bring forth abundance.

You might say I took my Bible and sprayed the crop with Malachi 3:10,11. I read the Bible to my wheat, then said: “My ground is blessed! Insects will not devour it! The wheat will not cast its fruit before its time in the field, and it is blessed of God!”

That fall we cut fifty-five bushels per acre from the same field I wanted to plow up!

Genesis 1:1 says, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

John 1:1,3 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things were made by him; (By whom? By the Word!) and without him (the Word) was not any thing made that was made. 

Faith-filled words created everything; so if faith-filled words created everything, then faith-filled words can get rid of it or rearrange it.

If you have had sickness and disease in your life for years, it may take a while for the image to change. Results won’t come overnight, but a positive image will begin to form inside you if you will speak God’s Word.

You can’t expect to walk in prosperity and health if you talk poverty and sickness. Confession of God’s Word keeps His answer before you. It will become a point of contact to change your image. When you confess what God said, you will begin to see a new image.

In the world system, salesmen go through training sessions to develop a positive self-image. A salesman will never rise above his self-image. If he sees himself a $200,000-insurance salesman, he will sell $200,000 worth of insurance wherever he is. If you put him in a position where he should sell $3,000,000 or where he should sell $10,000, he will still sell $200,000.

If you will get the image of God’s Word within you, you will raise your sights. You will begin to talk wealth, life, and healing-instead of poverty, sickness, and death.

Don’t talk about my sickness or my heart attack because they are the Devil’s, not yours. Don’t claim them! They will cause you to have a grow-worse image. Keep the answer before you.

Don’t dwell on how your uncle died with some disease or how he was crippled in a car wreck. If you think continually about such bad things, they will fasten their claws upon you. You will draw them like a magnet. The more you talk about them, the more you will believe in them rather than life and health.

Talk instead about how your heavenly Father redeemed you from the curse of the Law, how He delivered you from the powers of darkness, and how you are healed by His stripes. Talk about how Jesus was made poor that you might be made rich, how God will supply abundantly if you will give and put the laws of prosperity to work.

Use God’s Word as your point of contact to change your image. Release your faith as the Word of God changes the image inside you. Talk about the Word and think about it. If you sow the right kind of seed, you will reap the right kind of harvest. Get the image formed inside you , and eventually you will walk in health and prosperity. This is a principle of the Kingdom.

This woman might have been rich when she started trying to get rid of her condition, but the Bible says she had spent all that she had.

After twelve years of getting progressively worse, spending money on doctors who could find no cure, she had developed a grow-worse image.

This woman believed what she heard about Jesus. Evidently she had heard that Jesus was healing people. God had told the children of Israel to sew a hem around the border of their garments as a symbol of the Covenant they had with Him. (Num. 15:38.) This woman was reaching out for that hem as she said, “When I touch His clothes, I’ll be restored to health.” You can see her faith in action.

The Amplified Bible says, “She kept saying when I touch his clothes, I will be whole.” (v.28.) What was she doing? She was speaking the solution rather than the problem. She was speaking words and changing her image inside. 

To move from poverty to prosperity, or from sickness to health, you must first change your inner image. You may use the Word, medicine, or another method, but in order to receive whatever you desire, you must first change your image.

Divine healing is a spiritual cure. Your spirit changes the image on the inside. The woman with the issue of blood changed her image with the God-given plan of speaking what she desired with the words of her mouth.

You may have tried everything you knew to make your business succeed to no avail. Within these pages, you have heard about Jesus and that His Kingdom is within you. If you take hold of the principles of the Kingdom and apply them, the grow-worse image inside you will change and you will have a success image. 

 

The fifth chapter of Mark describes a woman who had a negative image. The way she changed her image is a classic example of speaking the answer to the problem until the problem vanished. 

And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,

When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.

And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?

And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.

But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.

And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

Speak to the problem in prayer and in your conversations with other people. 

Develop yourself to the point that you don’t let negativism come out your mouth. Start believing that every word you say will come to pass.

Since you have a choice, why not say the good things instead of the bad? When you see a child run into a busy street after a ball, don’t prophesy evil: “That kid’s going to get run over. Just watch and see!” Instead, say: “In the name of Jesus, that child will not be hurt!”

Release your faith on the positive side of life.

We see in the seventeenth chapter of 1 Samuel that David told the Philistine giant what he was going to do to him five times before he did it! He was using the principle of Matthew 17:20: If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove.

You can be sure of one thing: That giant looked like a mountain to David, who was only a seventeen-year-old boy. But David said boldly,…who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God? (1 Sam. 17:26). Then he went after him without even a sword in his hand. The only sword he had was the one in his mouth! (Rev. 2:16) David killed the giant by speaking his faith.

When things look bad, continue to sow seed. Believe the best of the situation. Then if things grow worse and it looks like everything is against you, just keep your mouth shut. Don’t speak negative words. Rest in what you have already established by your words.

You see, your words set the cornerstones of your life. Your faith is not always the same every day. There are times when you have the faith to believe the things you speak. The Word level is high. You have been meditating the Word. You believe what you say will come to pass. Then there are days which seems like all hell has broken loose. Nothing is working out and you feel like everything and everybody is against you. Though you made such great faith statements when your faith was high, it seems now that it will never come to pass. 

Those are the days that you need to put a zipper on your lip! Don’t say anything at all. Don’t even try to make a faith confession when your faith is low because most of the time it will be done out of fear in that situation.

Several years ago I began to say that every disease germ and every virus that touches my body dies instantly, that I was redeemed from the curse of the Law, and that I forbade sickness and disease to operate in my body.

Though I said these things, I really didn’t believe these statements were true in me. I knew the words were true. The Word of God said they would be true if I could get them in my heart; but I was saying them to get them into my heart. As David said, my tongue is as the pen of a ready writer. (Ps. 45:1) Your tongue will write God’s Word on the table of your heart.

When I got sick, someone said, “It didn’t work, did it?” I said, “Yes! It’s working. Faith is coming.” I just kept saying it. There’s a difference between being a doer and “a tryer.” If I had been “a tryer” of the Word, I would have given up the first time I was sick.

I wasn’t trying the Word; I had set out to do the Word! I knew it would work! Jesus said it would. You can always find some “unbelieving believers,” who don’t believe the Word will work.

Jesus said, All things are possible to him that believeth. Are you a him that believeth?

When you say you are healed before the circumstances look that way, some people say you are lying. But if you study the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you will discover that God called things that were not as though they were-and He expects us to do the same thing.