“Speak it Into Existence!”

If you were feeling sick you better not say so in front of my pastor. If you did you would quickly be rebuked. “Don’t claim that,” he’d say, “You might speak it into existence.” I never did understand the logic of that counsel. How could I speak my sickness into existence if the symptoms I was speaking of were already present? Well, these logical inconsistencies are the least of our concerns here. Our greatest concern is the lie that my pastor and many others have told: the lie that human beings have the power to create reality by our words – the power to speak things into existence.

This lie caused endless amounts of pain in our congregation as it has in congregations around the world. Sick people were told to ignore their symptoms and “claim healing.” Poor people were told to ignore their debt and “speak prosperity” into their lives. Single people were told to ignore what God might want for them and bring their future spouse into existence by “speaking in faith.” Needless to say, the people who followed my pastor’s teachings were eventually left with only two options: they could either be disappointed in God for not supplying what they demanded or they could be disappointed with themselves for not having enough faith. Either way, the lie had done its damage.

So where did this lie come from? It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that this concept of speaking things into existence did not come from Holy Scriptures. Rather, this teaching seems to have originated with a man named E.W. Kenyon roughly 100 years ago. However, this does not stop people from trying to use the Bible to support their belief that human beings can speak things into existence.

For example, my pastor would first point you to the opening chapter of the Bible. In Genesis 1 we are introduced to God as he creates the entire universe out of nothing by speaking things into existence (as in “Let there be light” and “Let the land produce vegetation”). My pastor wants you to believe that this passage proves that words do create reality. But it doesn’t. It proves that God’s words create reality. God and God alone holds the power to speak things into existence. This point is made clearly and forcefully in Lamentations 3:37-38, “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?”

A second passage my pastor would cite in defense of his teaching would be Mark 11:22-24. In this passages Jesus tells his disciples, “Have faith in God…Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will happen, it will be done for you. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” My pastor wants you to believe that this passage teaches us that human beings have the power to change reality according to their speech. But it doesn’t. It teaches us that God has the power to change reality according to his will. As we clearly see in the opening phrase of this passage, Jesus is not to teaching us to have faith in ourselves or in our words but to have faith in God. His promise is not that you will receive whatever you speak but, rather, that you will receive “whatever you ask for in prayer.” And we know from the rest of Scripture that this is not a blanket promise that God will answer our every prayer but a promise that God will answer our prayers when they are in accordance with his will. As his close friend John would later write,  “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1John 5:14, emphasis mine).

In addition to being utterly unbiblical the idea of speaking things into existence is also illogical. What happens when two men with an equal amount of faith both claim the same wife? What happens when two warring nations both claim the same victory? And if we all have the power to claim our healing why do 100% of Christians die? If my pastor’s teaching is true shouldn’t Christians simply be able to say, “I am not sick,” “I am not dying,” or “I will live forever”?

It is evident that my pastor’s teaching on speaking things into existence is both unbiblical and illogical. But, worst of all, it is evil. As we read in James 4:13-16, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.”

My pastor’s lie that we can speak things into existence is no different than the lie the Serpent told Eve. It tells us that we can be like God. We can’t. Regardless of what we say or don’t say God’s will always prevails. And this should not frustrate us. It should comfort us. Because this is the same God who willed to save us from his wrath by sending his own Son to be judged in our place. In light of this good news it makes much more sense to put our faith in God than it does to put our faith in our own words.

“I have peace about this decision!”

Life is filled with decisions. Sometimes making these decisions can be difficult, even frightening. This is especially true when there are several options that appear to be equally viable. In such cases we want God to tell us which decision we should make. But where the Scriptures are not explicit it can sometimes be difficult to discern which direction he is leading us. My pastor had a solution for that: simply make the decision that you feel the most peace about. If you feel peace about a decision, he would say, then that is evidence that you are walking in God’s will. If you don’t feel peace about a decision, he would advise, then that decision is not in line with the will of God.

I have since learned that my pastor’s view is not a unique one. Over the years I have heard Christian after Christian claim that that their decisions are in line with God’s will with the simple words, “I have peace about this decision!” This idea that feeling peace about a decision is evidence that it is God’s will (and that not feeling peace about a decision is evidence that it is not God’s will) is commonly held. Nevertheless, it is a lie.

First, we know it is a lie because it is nowhere taught in the Scriptures. Of course, there are many New Testament passages that promise peace to the believer. These passages, however, are not primarily concerned with an emotional feeling but with an objective fact. As the Apostle Paul explains in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” According to the Scriptures, believers experience objective peace as a result of being reconciled to God in Christ and not as a result of making the right decisions.

Second, we know it is a lie because we see multiple stories in the Bible that directly contradict it. For example, consider the story of Moses. God himself audibly spoke to Moses and made his will for Moses known. Yet Moses did not feel peace about the decision God was calling him to make. To the contrary, Moses was using every excuse he could find hoping to get out of it.

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?”

When God didn’t accept that excuse Moses tried a second.

“Suppose they ask me who sent me? What should I tell them?”

When that excuse didn’t work Moses looked for another.

“What if they do not believe me or listen to me?”

When God refused that excuse Moses tried another.

“But I have never been eloquent. I am slow in speech and tongue.”

Finally, with no plausible excuses remaining, Moses directly asked God for an out.

“Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”

Does that sound like a man who feels peace about his decision? Of course not. Yet there is no question that the decision he was making was entirely consistent with God’s will. Not only did God communicate his will to Moses audibly, he also accompanied that verbal communication with multiple miracles. Yet even that was not enough to give Moses peace about the decision. And this story is not unique to Moses. We find this with many of the Old Testament prophets. God clearly calls them to a specific task and they feel anything but at peace about pursuing it.

The Bible also introduces us to characters who have the opposite experience. Take Jonah for example. As God’s prophet, Jonah knew with certainty that God had called him to go to Nineveh. Yet Jonah did not feel peace about that decision so he fled in the opposite direction. In so doing, Jonah was directly going against God’s revealed will. If my pastor’s claim was true then Jonah should not have been at peace with his decision. But he was. He was so at peace with his decision that he was able to sleep soundly on his get-away ship in the middle of a violent storm. While everyone else on the ship was concerned about their life, Jonah was peacefully sleeping below deck. Jonah knew precisely what God’s will was. Yet he did not feel peace about making that decision. Instead, he felt peace as he fled — in willful rebellion — from the decision God told him to make.

Clearly, the claim that I can know I’m in God’s will because “I have peace about that decision” is a lie that has no basis in Scripture. Nevertheless, many Christians believe it. But we don’t have to. The truth of the matter is that we have been given everything we need to guide us in our decisions: we have been given God’s Word and we have been given God’s Work.

God’s Word often provides explicit instructions about what decisions we should and should not make and, even where it does not, it still supplies us with sufficient information to make a decision with confidence. It does this by revealing to us who God is, what he is like, and what he wills.

There will be times, though, when you have to apply God’s Word to very specific situations in very specific ways and it will be unclear to you which of the two or three options before you is the best option. But this does not mean you need to look to emotions or other signs to confirm God’s will for you. Instead, you can look to God’s Work. Specifically, you look to the work accomplished by Jesus Christ through his perfect life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection. It is through faith in this work that we can now be certain that “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). This means that we can have peace in any decision that is consistent with God’s Word because we know – through God’s Work – that in whatever decision we make God will love us, be with us, and use our decision to make us more like his Son.

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