“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.