Speak life into your dreams through declarations

There are several lessons I have never taught my children. One of them is that when you are discouraged, you should say the following:

This is impossible. I can't do this. I'll never be able to do do this.

What is it about the human condition that when something is difficult or challenging we feel like we have to make some kind of definitive negative statement about the future?How many of you have made New Years' resolutions that you are going to have a positive attitude to find that by the third of January, you are already slipping back into negative commentary on your life? Or maybe you have managed to stop saying negative things about your future, but you still wrestle with saying them in your head.Why? Do we find comfort in these negative thoughts?Or is there simply a battle going on for your future, and the battle ground starts in your imagination and in what you declare. Jesus spoke about the power of your words:

"If anyone says to this mountain, 'Go throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them."

Before your brain starts telling you why this is a ridiculous statement, let's just sit and think about who it was who said this. Jesus could have kept silent on what you declare if he didn't think it was important. But he chose to comment about the power of your words.Life and death are in the tongue, and Jesus knew that what we speak impacts our lives and the world around us.For those of us who don't believe in the power of declarations, it probably seems strange to us in Genesis when Jacob and Esau were so concerned that their father would bless them. And it's even stranger when Jacob gathers his children at the end of his life and speaks about their future.Most of us want to make sure we aren't acting like Disney characters who say "Abacadabra" and wish things into reality. The concern is valid. But the difference between somebody who is a follower of Jesus and somebody who is trying to practice magic is that the follower of Jesus is aligning themselves with kingdom values and realities.As a kingdom person, we recognize that we can't declare something that God doesn't want, and we also recognize that any power that is expressed through a declaration isn't to glorify ourselves, but to glorify the God who spoke things into existence by His words.I hope you are at least mildly convinced that there is power in declarations, because when you do your monthly time-out to re-evaluate your goals, making declarations is an important part of moving your goals forward.In the last blog post, we talked about the power of your imagination, and that it was important that you imagine your goals happening. The second step to your monthly goal-review is making declarations over your goals. Here's three tips for how to make declarations over your goals:

1. Declare God's promise over your goal. If you went through the process of setting God-sized goals, God gave you a promise for your goal. Pull it out and speak it out loud. Speak it and declare its effectiveness in helping you accomplish your goal. One of my goals has to do with recruitment, and I sensed God saying that when I am trying to recruit people, that God would be standing next to me to speak to them as well. I take time to declare: "God will speak to people's hearts as I speak. He will mobilize and recruit by speaking in ways that I can't, right to people's minds and hearts."
2. Speak to the mountains. If you have been busy working in trying to accomplish your goal, then you have faced several mountains and obstacles to reaching your goal. Tell those mountains that they need to get out of the way. Speak to them by name and say things like, "Fatigue, get out of the way. Apathy, get out of the way. Disunity, get out of the way." I know this might feel kind of strange, but it has power. You can grit and bear it (also important). But something different is activated when you tell the mountains to get out of the way.
3. Declare God's empowering ability over yourself and others. I like to declare the verse, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," over myself and others. I once went to a village where we working with a family, and the woman told me she had had a dream about me in which a man appeared to her and said, "Jonny and his wife are full of power and they can do anything." I couldn't believe it. Then I realized that the fact that I couldn't believe it meant that I didn't believe that God's Word was true. I now declare that statement over my life, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

It is powerful to take your goals and actively declare God's truth over them. This isn't to say that now you are going to sit and do nothing and wait for everything to work out. Declarations are coupled with action, but they are powerful and play a role in the realization of God-sized goals.