The Word To Live By: 3-9-26
Phil Waggoner
Therefore, I say to you all things for which you pray and ask, believe you have received them, and they will be granted you. Mark 11:24
The Word To Live By: I have two purposes in mind for writing these daily devotionals. First, that people would come to realize the importance of the Word of God in their lives. Second, they would learn to live by faith by applying the Word to what they do. (Also, it’s a form of meditating on the Word for me personally.) Yesterday, we began to talk about prayer and the different types of prayer. One of those types of prayers is the prayer of faith. Faith in God is an element of every type of prayer, but it is also a declaration of purpose and is not commonly thought of as prayer. If you read Mark 11, you will see a great example of Jesus living by faith using the prayer of faith as a purpose prayer. Note in that chapter the number of times Jesus spoke His purpose and then it happened. (Don’t get this mixed up with something outside of the known will of God found in the Word. Faith is not a magic wand that you go around waving and “poof,” your will appears.) Jesus cursed a fig tree and it dried up from the roots. Peter basically said to Him, “How did this happen?” Jesus replied, “Have faith in God.” And then He went on to teach what He meant by that. First, in Mark 11:23, He taught that what you say with your mouth and believe in your heart will come to pass even to the point of moving mountains. I have documented this many times in these WTLBs, but the day after I made Jesus the Lord of my life, I was listening to a tape on the importance of the words of your mouth and knew immediately that I was in the mess I was in because of what I said about my life consistently. Murphy’s law was my mantra and my philosophy, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” What you say and believe will cause you to make unconscious decisions toward that belief, and soon you have what you said. James said it in chapter three, that your tongue sets your life in motion and it will steer you either the way you want to go or the way you don’t want to go. The law of words is in virtually every book of the Bible starting with Genesis when God said, “Let there be…” No book probably addresses it more directly, and more often than the book of Proverbs. It doesn’t get any clearer than Proverbs 18:20,21, “With the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach will be satisfied, He will be satisfied with the product of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Please don’t dismiss what I’m saying as some kind of optimistic philosophy of “Name it and claim it”, or “Gab it and grab it,” unrealistic mumble jumble. I realize it has been abused in some circles but I promise you, it’s Bible. I’m not done with Mark 11, but I am out of space so I will continue with this tomorrow.
Read through the Bible in a year: Matthew 12:22-50; Leviticus 15-16; Proverbs 27;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 9, Mark 6:28-56, 2 Corinthians 8
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160