Say it Out Loud

I want to start off my message by telling you something that's going to seem simple. And some of you are like, Well, yeah, that's kind of your thing, Kyle. That's kind of what you do. Well, I know it's going to sound simple. It's going to sound simple enough that you'll probably think to yourself at some point in this sermon, Does this really need to be a whole sermon? It'll probably sound simple enough that you're tempted to dismiss it and think, It's interesting, but I'll wait to hear what's next week.

I just think that what we're going to talk about in these next few minutes, even though it's simple, has the potential to profoundly impact not just your relationship with God, but your whole life, your relationship with other people, how you see yourself.

Here's the idea. Again, it's going to sound simple. A word you speak is more powerful than a thought you think. A thought that you speak out loud with words is more powerful than thoughts that just stay in your head. And we're going to see in a few minutes how science shows this is true, that when you speak certain words, your brain wants to believe what it hears you saying. Your brain leans in differently when it hears a thought spoken out of your mouth.

When my kids were young, I would challenge them to pay attention to the words they spoke out loud about themselves and about their circumstances. I remember taking my middle school daughter to school one morning, and she was telling me on the way to school about some drama in the friend group the day before. And I was glad she was sharing with me kind of what's going on in her life. I want her to share her emotions with me.

But as we're driving, I start to hear her words turn on herself, and she starts saying things like, “Dad, I'm just so awkward, and no one really likes me, and I just don't fit in anywhere.” And I said, “Hey, stop. Stop it. I want you to tell me how you're feeling, but there are certain things you can't hear yourself say about yourself. Because what's happening there is you're not just making observations, you're programming your mind. You're creating neural pathways. You're giving yourself a road to think about yourself.

And so, I tried to tell her, like, your brain's always listening to what you say. And when you say those things about yourself, you're teaching yourself to believe those things, to think about yourself that way. “Look, honey, you're smart and you're kind and you're beautiful and you're funny, but if you keep telling yourself the opposite, then you're going to start believing the lies instead of the truth.” The words you speak out loud are more powerful than just the thoughts that you think in your head.

And we're in this series called ‘Every Thought Captive,’ and we're being challenged to take our thoughts captive as a way to break down strongholds, as a way to be transformed, as Romans chapter 12 says, “By the renewing of our minds,” and yet, oftentimes, the words we speak kind of betray ourselves. We have these thoughts, and we say them out loud. And those thoughts end up having even more power over us.

It's not just middle school girls, right? Like, last month, I was sitting at a gate in an airport, and I overheard a woman on a phone, and she was talking about, I think, a job interview probably that she just had. And I heard her say, “I completely blew it. I always say the wrong thing in those interviews. I'm not cut out for jobs like that.”

After teaching a group of men a couple of weeks ago on strongholds, a man came up to me afterwards, and was telling me about his marriage, and he said, “I don't know why my wife puts up with me.” He said, “I don't know how to be a good husband. I find myself just doing the things my dad did. It didn't work for him. It's not working for me. She deserves someone who actually knows how to make her happy.”

I went to visit a man in the hospital a number of months ago, and he said, “God's punishing me for something. Either that or he obviously doesn't care about what I'm going through. Maybe he helps other people, but God doesn't help me.” And each time, what I want to say is, Don't let yourself hear you say that. Don't let yourself hear you say those things. It might seem harmless, but there's a difference between thinking a thought and speaking a thought. And when you speak a thought out loud, your brain pays closer attention.

So, to help us kind of work through this and think through this together, we're going to look at an unusual story in Scripture out of the book of Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel is in a valley, the Bible says, full of dry bones. Everywhere he looks it’s like desert, completely dried out. Death scattered everywhere.

Starting in verse 1 of chapter 37, “The LORD took a hold of me,” Ezekiel says, “and I was carried away by the Spirit of the LORD to a valley filled with bones.” (NLT) This is some kind of a vision, I guess—it seems to be. “He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley. They were scattered everywhere across the ground, and they were completely dried out. And then he asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones become living people again?’”

And as you're reading it, what you want to say to Ezekiel is, What…what did you eat last night? Like, what, Taco Bell® late at night? Like, what's causing this? It just seems a little bit strange and unusual.

But pay attention to what he's experiencing in this vision. He's in this place of death, and everywhere he looks is death. Everywhere he looks is the message: It's too late. Things are too far gone. You can't do anything about this situation. And then the question comes: Can these bones live again? And that's the question that I want us to think through as we talk about the power of our words.

That something may seem beyond hope, it might seem too dry, too broken, too bitter, too dead for too long to live again. Maybe it’s your marriage that feels lifeless, desert. Maybe it is a relationship with one of your kids that's on a respirator. Maybe it's grief that has killed your joy. Or maybe it's a sense of self-worth that you used to have, like, this sense of purpose and identity, but now it just…it's dry and brittle. Maybe it's your faith in God that is on life support. Like, it feels like it's six feet under. Maybe it's the hope you once had for the future that just feels like it's dried up and blown away.

And the question that Ezekiel asks is the question: Is it too late? “Can these dead bones live again?” And God promises Ezekiel that he's going to put flesh and skin on the bones. He's going to breathe life into them. And then He tells Ezekiel, Okay, here's your part in it. I'm going to work in this powerful way, and here's what you need to do. “Ezekiel, I want you”—here it is—"to speak.”

To speak, to say some things out loud. He doesn't tell Ezekiel to pray or to visualize or to manifest or to touch or to work or to glue some bones back together or to sew. He says, “Ezekiel, speak. Listen to what I say. And then you say what I say.” And I would argue, and we'll look at this throughout Scripture, there's supernatural power when you speak God's Word out loud.

Ezekiel 37, verse 4 and 5, “Then he said to me, ‘Speak…speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord.’” It doesn't say, Listen to me. Listen to these thoughts I've been having. Listen to my positive thinking I've been practicing. None of that. Listen while I speak out loud the word of the Lord. “This is what the Sovereign Lord says, ‘Look, I am going to put breath into you and make you live again.’”

Verse 7 says Ezekiel explained, So I did it. I spoke this message just as you... It didn't seem to make much sense. It seems way too simple. But God told me what to say, and I said it. I spoke it out loud. “Suddenly as I spoke,” as I was speaking this out loud, “there was a rattling noise across the valley. And the bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons. Then I watched muscles and flesh form over the bones and skin formed to cover their bodies.”

And so, you have this vision where God is driving home a truth, real life truth, that his Word spoken out loud brings life to valleys of death. The thoughts you speak out loud have the power of life and death.

We see this from the very beginning, that God has wired our universe in such a way that words spoken have power. Someone put it this way, that words create worlds. Words create worlds. And we see it right out of the gate in the book of Genesis. When God speaks the world into creation, he does it with words. He doesn't dream it into creation. He doesn't draw it into creation. He speaks it.

Genesis, chapter 1, verse 3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” God speaks light into darkness. Power of the spoken word over the universe. You read through the Gospels when Jesus brought dead people to life, how did he do it? Did he smack them on the forehead? Did he throw a handkerchief at them and they fell…? No, he spoke. He spoke words. “Young man,” Luke, chapter 7, “I tell you, get up.” Luke, chapter 8, “My child, get up.” John 11, “Lazarus, come out.” He's speaking life into death.

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, how does he defeat temptation? Does he do it by just thinking Scripture? No. He speaks it. He speaks Scripture. So, every time he's tempted, he says, listen, he says something out loud. He speaks God's Word out loud.

And each time he does it, he begins with saying, “It is written.” He's not saying, Here's what I think—even though he could have because he's Jesus and everything he says is God's Word. He's showing an example for us of: this is how you handle it. You speak God's truth out loud. God's truth spoken out loud has the power to break strongholds in your life and bring dead things back to life.
Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Your tongue has the power to destroy or to build up, to tear down, or has power of life or death. It has power over your circumstances, over your future.

Now, a lot of us would be quick to recognize this when it comes to words that we speak to others, or maybe words that others have spoken to us. Like, we've experienced life because of that. And maybe you had somebody speak some words of life to you when you were young, and the words they spoke to you became words that you started to speak to yourself.

I had a teacher, English teacher, in the sixth grade who had a…it was cutting technology at the time, a label maker. Raise your hand if you know what a label maker is. All right? About half the room. So, you type a word in. It's like a little screen, like a calculator type screen. And then it prints out on this little sticker piece of plastic whatever word you typed in. Just prints it out right there. It labels.

And she loved her label maker. She would label everything. Like, her stapler, she'd put her name on the stapler with the labeler. And graded paper, she had a label for graded papers and a label for the snack drawer. And she…everywhere you looked in her room, she loved her label maker. She'd sit at her desk while we were working and just make labels. But eventually she ran out of things to label, and she started labeling us.

And she would put some kind of word into her little label maker, and then she'd put it on her shoulder. And I didn't think much about it, didn't pay much attention to it, until one day, as a sixth grader, she came by my desk, and she stood by me, and she put some kind of word into her little label maker. And she tore it off and she put it on my shoulder. And I acted like I wasn't interested and I didn't care. But I looked over and it said ‘creative.’ Creative. Nobody ever called me creative before. Never thought of myself that way before.

A couple months later, she's walking down the aisle, she stops at my desk again. This time, she types another word into her label maker. She tears it off and it says, ‘leader.’ Leader. As a sixth grader, having somebody speak that word over me gave me a word that I could use for myself that I really hadn't thought of before, wouldn't have had the courage to speak, but somebody else spoke it. And then that word became a word that I could speak over my own life. Maybe some of you had that blessing in your life. Somebody shared a word with you, and it brought you life. And their word for you became your word for you.

For a lot of us, it's easier to identify the other end of that. It's the words of death that got spoken. Those words became your words. I asked some of my social media friends about this. I said, “Hey, can you just give me some examples of some…some hurtful words, destructive words of others from when you were young that kind of have stuck with you. And what struck me by these responses wasn't how many. Like, there were hundreds of them.

Wasn't how many. It was how quickly they came. Just very quickly, they came, people sharing some of those words. That was the worst performance I've seen in 25 years. No one will ever want to be with you. You're damaged goods. You're so lazy. You're just not smart enough. Why can't you be more like your sister? You'll never amount to anything. I wish you were never born. And on down the list it goes.

Proverbs 12:18 says, “The words of the reckless pierce like swords.” And so many times these words spoken by others became words that we just began speaking over our own lives. Jesus warns against words carelessly spoken in Matthew 12 as he's talking to us about the power of spoken words.

This is out of The Message paraphrase Jesus writes or says, “Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Every one of these careless words is going to come back to haunt you. There will be a time of reckoning. Words are powerful, and you need to take them seriously. You’re acting like it's not a big deal. It's a big deal. Words can be your salvation. They can bring life to you. Words can be your damnation. They can bring death.” It matters. The words you speak matter.

What's fascinating is modern neuroscience has just discovered just what the Bible seemed to acknowledge long ago that there's something remarkable that happens in your brain when you speak your thoughts out loud versus just thinking them. When you speak words out loud your brain processes the information through multiple channels that more regions of the brain get used when you speak your thoughts out loud.
I could spend 30 minutes talking about how some of this works, but the point is that speaking your thoughts out loud engages more neural networks. It creates stronger and more lasting neural pathways than just the thoughts you think quietly to yourself. Like, the neurological bottom line is that speaking truth out loud can literally rewire your brain more effectively than just thinking something silently.

Let me give you an example. Our culture tells us one way to deal with your anger or frustration would be to vent your feelings. That it’s healthy to vent. Some of you are so good at it. (Laughter) Like, you are a venter, and you think to yourself, The more I vent, the better I feel. I just get it all out. Or maybe you're a complainer. You think, If I just complain, if I just let people know all the things that I find wrong with whatever's going on in my life, I'll start being content. I just need to get it out. I just need to complain about it a little bit.

But consistently, research is being done, some research out of Ohio State University recently by Brad Bushman was just affirming the fact that that's not how it works. Like, when you vent, your brain hears you saying things out loud, and your brain wants to look for reasons why what you're saying is true. It's the cognitive bias. It wants to look for evidence that backs up what it hears your mouth speaking.

And so, when you vent, you find more things to vent about. When you start complaining, complaining doesn't lead to contentment. Complaining causes you to find things, more things to complain about. When you start criticizing, you'll start seeing more things to be critical of. Like, that's the way neural pathways work.

And so, the term for this is embodied reinforcement. Embodied reinforcement, when you hear yourself speak, complaints, criticism, venting, it creates these pathways where your brain wants to reinforce what it's hearing your mouth say. So, whatever words we speak, whether words of life or death, are programming our mind.

Now, as we saw in Proverbs 18, we'll look at it again in a minute, words are like seed that get planted. And we don't always recognize the impact of the seed that gets planted, because there's a lag time between the time the seed gets planted and the time fruit starts to show up. And so, we don't always make the connection, like, oh, these words are building up this garden. These words are creating this fruit in my life.

And whatever words you speak are creating fruit that you have to eat. And so, I want us to take a few minutes, I want to show you another one of my little parables. I know these feel like children's stories, but my hope is that it helps us remember, that creates picture…pictures in our mind so we're not just consuming content, but that we're processing it like we're thinking about these things. So, take a look at the screens.

Animated video begins illustrating the story of the Garden of Words. Kyle narrates.

In a distant land, there was a mysterious garden known as the Garden of Words. It wasn't always called that. In fact, how it received that name is quite interesting. Every person in the nearby village had their own plot in this garden. Some were beautiful with flowers and vegetation; others were overrun with weeds.

The people of the village didn't realize that what they grew in their gardens was determined by the words they spoke. They didn't know that each word spoken was a seed planted in their garden. Words that were true and kind, excellent and praiseworthy, encouraging and compassionate became flowers and fruit trees. Negative, harsh, untruthful words became thorns and weeds.

At the center of each plot stood a fountain called the RAS watering system. This fountain had an unusual way of watering. It would water whatever plants were most abundant in the garden. If there were more flowers, it would water the flowers. If there were more weeds, it would water the weeds, causing them to grow even more.

One day, a young lady named Lily discovered the secret of the garden. She noticed that her plot, once filled with vibrant flowers, had become overrun with weeds. This was often something the people in the village noticed when their children became teenagers. She discovered the mystery of the garden one day, when she was venting about all the weeds that had begun to grow in her plot.

She yelled and screamed and cursed at herself for having such a horrible garden. And when she was especially letting herself have it, she happened to notice a small sprout appear from the ground. She repeated her words, and another weed sprouted up. She wondered if there was perhaps some connection of the words she spoke to what was growing in her garden. She knew one way to find out for sure.

“Emily,” she said to herself. Emily was her classmate, and she was the kindest person Lily knew. Lily ran to Emily's plot, and sure enough, it was full of flowers and fruit trees. She decided it was best to keep this secret until she knew for sure.

For the next month, Lily began to be careful about the words she spoke. She purposely would start her day speaking words of life and truth. She spoke kind words to others and even kind words to herself when no one was around. She prayed prayers of thanksgiving and made a list of things she was grateful for. When she would get ready in the morning, she would sing worship songs to herself to start the day.

After the first week, she couldn't really see much difference and almost started to berate herself for not doing better. But instead, she spoke words of grace and encouragement. Before long, she started to see sprouts of beautiful flowers. The RAS watering system in the garden began to shift its water from the weeds over to the flowers. And as they began to grow, the weeds began to disappear.

The people of the village began to call the garden the Garden of Words so no one would ever again fail to realize the power of the words they spoke. And in time, that garden became a breathtaking display of color and fragrances. A paradise that people would come from all around to see and admire.

Video ends.

That parable, I guess it's really more of an allegory, but it paints a picture of what we read in Scripture, that the thoughts we think become words we speak, that become seeds planted in the ground that end up having incredible power over our lives.

Now we tend to listen to that and want to use it as a warning like, Hey, be careful with what you're saying because of this, like, words of death, which is a valid way to think through this. But it's also a promise. It's an invitation to use the power of words, specifically God's Word out loud to bring about transformation. So, I want to talk to you about that.

But look, I'm not encouraging you to speak your own words. This isn't a self-help…it isn't a power-of-positive-thinking message. It is the power-of-God's-Word message. That when you identify God's Word and you speak that word out loud, it has power over your life. Proverbs 18:21, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” Second part of that is, “Those who love it will eat its fruit.”

Maybe you've heard the phrase, you're going to have to eat your words. This is where it comes from. It's this idea that your words are seeds, those seeds create fruit, and that's fruit you're going to have to eat. That fruit is going to have to be consumed by you. And so, you have the power with your words to plant seeds that will create fruit that you love to eat or fruit that will create fruit poison in your life.

And so, our promise then from Scripture isn't about, I mean again, just want to be so clear about this, it's not about our words or our wisdom or our positive thinking. It's about God's Word that we speak out loud.

Isaiah 55 speaks about God's Word as seed. “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. And it's the same, God says, it's the same with my Word.”

This is how my word works. “I send it out,” and it's supernatural. “It always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to.” It's not just any word; it's his Word. “And it will prosper everywhere I send it,” he says.

So, what's that mean? Well, it means instead of speaking and saying, I don't have anything special to offer, I'm not going to make a difference, you speak out loud Ephesians 2:10. You say, “I'm God's masterpiece. God's prepared good things for me to do in advance.” He's going to use me to make a difference today. You say it out loud.

Instead of saying, I'm defined by my worst sins, you speak Romans 8:1 over your life. “There's no condemnation for me because I'm in Christ Jesus.” I've been set free by God's grace, and his grace is enough for me. Instead of saying, I'm just too tired and it's just all too hard, you speak Matthew 11 and Philippians 4 over your life. That when I get tired, I can go to Jesus and I can find rest for my soul. I can be renewed. And I know in him I'll have everything I need to do, everything he's called me to do.

Instead of saying, I'm always worried, always anxious, you say, 1 Peter 5:7, Today I'm not going to be worried or anxious. That's not who I am. I live above fear because I cast all my cares on God. I know he cares for me. And you say that out loud.

Instead of saying, I'm all alone and no one cares, you say Hebrews 13:5 over your life. I'm never alone because I know “God will never leave me or forsake me.” And when you say it out loud, you say it with conviction. And when you do, your mind leans in and says, Oh, is that what we believe? Is that what's true? I'm going to start looking for evidence that that's true. And you speak it out loud.

Go back to Ezekiel after he spoke the first time. The bones come together. Muscles and flesh mold and are formed, but there's still no breath. So, God says to Ezekiel, Okay, now here's what I want you to do. I want you to speak again. Look at verse 9 and 10, “Then he said to me, ‘Speak a prophetic message to the wind, son of man. Come, O breath from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.”

Ezekiel says, So I did it. “I spoke the message as he commanded me.” I heard what God said, and I said what God said. “And breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet, a great army.”

And so, there's this vision that Ezekiel has that's driving home this rhythm that God wanted for Ezekiel's ministry and life and God wants for you, that you listen to what God says, you speak what God says, you watch what God does. You listen to what God says. You speak out loud what God has said with conviction and authority. You speak it out loud with faith and confidence. You speak it out loud, and then you watch what God does. You listen. You speak. You watch. And God brings life to a place of death. And he's not done doing that; I believe he still wants to do it today.

And I know some of you are skeptical. I know some of you think this seems too simple, but again, Ezekiel is told to prophesy. Prophesy means that you're not speaking your word, you're speaking God's word. That Ezekiel is a transmitter for what God is wanting to speak into the world and to speak over what he sees around him.

Prophesied means that you speak with authority. You don't speak as a question like, Well, I think so, or wouldn't it be great? It's speaking with authority. Like, you believe it because of who God is. And I just want to be practical about this for a couple of minutes here. I want to challenge you. I know it's going to be simple enough that you're going to feel resistant to it.

I just want to challenge you to choose a specific place where you're going to practice it this week, where you're going to identify something God has said that applies to your life. You're going to speak it out loud, and then you're going to watch what God does. You're going to speak it out loud.

Maybe…maybe you do this in the shower. I think the shower is a good place to speak things out loud because you sound good in there. It's got this Morgan Freeman (laughter) authority to it. Like, you believe it. Like, my brain believes what I say in the shower more than it does when I speak outside of the shower. So, maybe that's you, that you're in the shower, you're going to declare God's promises over your life. And not timidly, but with authority, so much so, that some people who live with you are like, Is he okay in there? Is everything all right? Is everything all right in there? It's like, with authority, you speak it.

Or maybe it's on your commute. If you drive to work, turn your car into a mobile sanctuary. Instead of listening to news that fills you with anxiety or podcasts that get you worked up, you speak Scripture out loud. You declare God's promises over your day, and your car becomes a place where lies get demolished and truth gets established.

Maybe it's sitting on your front porch where you open up your Bible and you read God's Word, but you're not just reading it in your mind. You're reading it out loud. You're letting yourself hear you say some things out loud.

Or maybe it's when you look in the mirror in the morning and you're getting ready for the day, and you look yourself in the eye and you remind yourself who you are in Christ, that you are chosen, holy, and dearly loved. You speak truth to yourself.

I don't know how Ezekiel felt when God gave him the instructions, but I do think he probably thought, This isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. This is all too simple. You're talking about something really complicated. You can't just speak words over something so complex. But he listened to what God said, he said what God said, and he watched what God did.

And I know some of you have been playing prophet over your life, but you've been prophesying death instead of life. You've been speaking death over what God wants to bring life to in your life. Stop speaking death over your marriage. To the couple sitting here, you barely spoke on the drive to church this morning. You can't remember the last time you laughed together or were affectionate with one another, and every time you say, I just don't…I just don't have those feelings anymore, or I think I married the wrong person, you're speaking death over something that God wants to bring life to.

Stop speaking death over your calling to the person who feels overlooked at work or watches others get promoted while you stay stuck. Maybe your dreams are sitting in a drawer collecting dust, and you tell yourself, Well, it's because I missed my chance. It's too late for me to start over. God doesn't want to bless me. I've done too much to offend Him. He's not on my side. You're speaking death over purpose that God has placed inside of you.

Stop speaking death over your future. To the single mom working two jobs, wondering how you'll ever get ahead. To the dad who lost his business and can't see a way forward. To a student who's drowning in debt and loneliness. You find yourself saying, It's just not going to work for me. I can never catch a break. You're speaking death over a future that God has not done writing yet.

Ezekiel spoke the Word of the LORD. He prophesied over dead and dry bones. And I want to do that for you and over you. I want to speak prophetically the way that Ezekiel does, based on the Word of God. But before I do it, I know I need to address something for a few of you. I know a lot of you don't…this won't apply. But I know some of you might think, Kyle, I'm a little uncomfortable with this message. This is starting to sound like a name it and claim it gospel, a name it and claim it theology.

And I get that concern. I'm not telling you can speak your dream car into existence. I mean, you can try. I don't care if you try. But I'm not telling you that that's how this works. I'm not telling you that positive thinking is the same as Biblical faith. I'm saying that in this world, you will have trouble. That's part of living in this world. Jesus said it and it's true. But I'm also telling you that's not the end of the verse. Jesus said, I have overcome the world.

And so, my concern for some of us, and I put myself in this category, is that our fear of the word of faith extremes and of preachers who seem to promise sports cars and a life free of sickness and our fear of that, we swung so far the other way that we have forgotten the power of speaking Biblical faith out loud.

We've become so afraid of claiming something inappropriate that we've stopped claiming anything at all. We've become so worried about presuming upon God that we've stopped declaring our faith in God.

And so, what I want to do here is not about manipulating God's hand, it's not about speaking things into existence through some human willpower, it's about agreeing with what God has already said in his Word. It's about aligning ourselves with what he has said around restoration and redemption and resurrection and renewal.

It's about speaking God's heart over our circumstances and then trusting him with what unfolds. Word of faith says I can speak my will into reality; Biblical faith says I will speak God's will over my reality. So, when Ezekiel spoke to these bones, he wasn't making up his own prophecy. It wasn't wishful thinking or positive thinking. He was simply declaring what God has said.

And so, I just want to speak some of that over you. Just want to give you some of those words because you don't have them for yourself and nobody ever said them to you. It's not faith…or it's not presumption; it's faith to speak this way. It’s not hype; it's hope in who God is and what God has said. It's trust that even if things don't go the way we want them to, our confidence is in him and his promises in eternity.

So, to marriages hanging on by a thread—you're still married, but you've given up—I want to speak breakthrough; I want to speak laughter back into your kitchen. I want to speak romance back into your routine. What God has joined together, let no valley of death separate.

To broken parent-child relationships in this room, to the mom whose teenager won't talk to her, to the dad whose adult son won't return his calls, to the parent who feels like a failure, I want to speak God's heart of restoration over you. I want to speak phone calls that end with ‘I love you.’ I want to speak family dinners where everybody wants to be there.

To those battling addiction, to the person who's hiding their bottles, deleting their history, who makes promises to themselves that they can't keep—so many promises, they don't believe their own words when they speak them—I want to speak freedom over you in the name of Jesus. I want to speak chains breaking. I speak a day when you look in the mirror and you see who God created you to be instead of who the enemy has convinced you are.

To those of you who are living with spiritual dryness where your Bible has gathered dust and your screen time is 10 times more than your prayer time, to those of you who came to church here but you don't really care and you're just going through the motions, I just want to speak renewal and revival over you.
To those battling depression and anxiety, you put a smile when you came in here to church, but you cried yourself to sleep last night in your bed and you feel like you're drowning even though everything looks fine on the outside. You wonder if darkness will ever lift. I just want to speak God's Word of light over you. I want to speak his joy and his peace. I want to speak Jesus into the darkness.

To those who are carrying shame from your past, the person here who's haunted by mistakes you made years ago, and you still live with the enemy's accusations. Every morning you wake up, the accusations are there, and the guilt and the shame feels heavier than you can bear. And every time you try to move forward, you feel disqualified from what God wants for you.

I speak forgiveness over you in the name of Jesus, and redemption, He wants to make all things new. He wants to work for good in your life. I want to speak beauty from ashes. I want to speak a future so bright that your past ends up becoming the very thing God uses to help others experience forgiveness. (Applause) I want to speak God's Word over you, and my prayer is that you would believe it, that you would believe what He says.

And I hear people say things that are so contrary to what God wants for them, and I'm like, that's not true. Stop saying that. It's not true. And so, I want us to close by practicing this out loud together. I'm going to lead us through some just speaking out loud some Biblical truths together.

Music begins to play softly.

And so, I'm going to ask you to stand up for this. And I'm going to read the first…there's going to be two statements that come up on the screen. I'm going to read the first part, and then we'll read the second part, which is just Scripture. Scripture is what we're reading out loud. We're going to declare Scripture together. I just want to challenge you to read this out loud with me and do it with some conviction.

So, I'll read the first statement, then we'll read the second together. When anxiety tries to overwhelm our thoughts—all of us together—(together) we cast all our anxiety on God because He cares for us. When discouragement whispers that will never change, (together) He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion. When distraction tries to pull us away from what matters, (together) we set our minds on things above and not on earthly things.

When offense tempts us to hold grudges, (together) we forgive each other, just as in Christ, God forgave us. When fear threatens to paralyze our faith, (together) God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and sound mind. When lies about our identity try to define us, (together) we are chosen, royal, holy, and belong to God. Today and every day, (together) we will not be conformed to this world, but we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

God, I pray that You would give us a deep conviction in our hearts that what You say is true. Maybe it's different than what we've heard others say; it's different than words we've spoken over ourselves. God, would You let us hear what You say, and love what You say, and speak what you say and then watch what You do?

God, would you give us faith? I pray in this sanctuary, just like in that valley of dry bones where there's a noise of rattling bones coming together, I…I pray, God, that we would experience that together. That we would experience Your power at work. Not because we say so, not because of our own thinking, our own words, but because of the power of Your Word. So, God, let us have faith. Give us faith.

God, where we want to believe more, I pray that You would help our unbelief. But God, would You…would You move in the sanctuary the same way that you moved in that valley of dry bones? I pray for rattling that would be true because of Your power and because we have declared what You said to be true over our lives. It's in Jesus name. Amen.
I want to start off my message by telling you something that's going to seem simple. And some of you are like, Well, yeah, that's kind of your thing, Kyle. That's kind of what you do. Well, I know it's going to sound simple. It's going to sound simple enough that you'll probably think to yourself at some point in this sermon, Does this really need to be a whole sermon? It'll probably sound simple enough that you're tempted to dismiss it and think, It's interesting, but I'll wait to hear what's next week.

I just think that what we're going to talk about in these next few minutes, even though it's simple, has the potential to profoundly impact not just your relationship with God, but your whole life, your relationship with other people, how you see yourself.

Here's the idea. Again, it's going to sound simple. A word you speak is more powerful than a thought you think. A thought that you speak out loud with words is more powerful than thoughts that just stay in your head. And we're going to see in a few minutes how science shows this is true, that when you speak certain words, your brain wants to believe what it hears you saying. Your brain leans in differently when it hears a thought spoken out of your mouth.

When my kids were young, I would challenge them to pay attention to the words they spoke out loud about themselves and about their circumstances. I remember taking my middle school daughter to school one morning, and she was telling me on the way to school about some drama in the friend group the day before. And I was glad she was sharing with me kind of what's going on in her life. I want her to share her emotions with me.

But as we're driving, I start to hear her words turn on herself, and she starts saying things like, “Dad, I'm just so awkward, and no one really likes me, and I just don't fit in anywhere.” And I said, “Hey, stop. Stop it. I want you to tell me how you're feeling, but there are certain things you can't hear yourself say about yourself. Because what's happening there is you're not just making observations, you're programming your mind. You're creating neural pathways. You're giving yourself a road to think about yourself.

And so, I tried to tell her, like, your brain's always listening to what you say. And when you say those things about yourself, you're teaching yourself to believe those things, to think about yourself that way. “Look, honey, you're smart and you're kind and you're beautiful and you're funny, but if you keep telling yourself the opposite, then you're going to start believing the lies instead of the truth.” The words you speak out loud are more powerful than just the thoughts that you think in your head.

And we're in this series called ‘Every Thought Captive,’ and we're being challenged to take our thoughts captive as a way to break down strongholds, as a way to be transformed, as Romans chapter 12 says, “By the renewing of our minds,” and yet, oftentimes, the words we speak kind of betray ourselves. We have these thoughts, and we say them out loud. And those thoughts end up having even more power over us.

It's not just middle school girls, right? Like, last month, I was sitting at a gate in an airport, and I overheard a woman on a phone, and she was talking about, I think, a job interview probably that she just had. And I heard her say, “I completely blew it. I always say the wrong thing in those interviews. I'm not cut out for jobs like that.”

After teaching a group of men a couple of weeks ago on strongholds, a man came up to me afterwards, and was telling me about his marriage, and he said, “I don't know why my wife puts up with me.” He said, “I don't know how to be a good husband. I find myself just doing the things my dad did. It didn't work for him. It's not working for me. She deserves someone who actually knows how to make her happy.”

I went to visit a man in the hospital a number of months ago, and he said, “God's punishing me for something. Either that or he obviously doesn't care about what I'm going through. Maybe he helps other people, but God doesn't help me.” And each time, what I want to say is, Don't let yourself hear you say that. Don't let yourself hear you say those things. It might seem harmless, but there's a difference between thinking a thought and speaking a thought. And when you speak a thought out loud, your brain pays closer attention.

So, to help us kind of work through this and think through this together, we're going to look at an unusual story in Scripture out of the book of Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel is in a valley, the Bible says, full of dry bones. Everywhere he looks it’s like desert, completely dried out. Death scattered everywhere.

Starting in verse 1 of chapter 37, “The LORD took a hold of me,” Ezekiel says, “and I was carried away by the Spirit of the LORD to a valley filled with bones.” (NLT) This is some kind of a vision, I guess—it seems to be. “He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley. They were scattered everywhere across the ground, and they were completely dried out. And then he asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones become living people again?’”

And as you're reading it, what you want to say to Ezekiel is, What…what did you eat last night? Like, what, Taco Bell® late at night? Like, what's causing this? It just seems a little bit strange and unusual.

But pay attention to what he's experiencing in this vision. He's in this place of death, and everywhere he looks is death. Everywhere he looks is the message: It's too late. Things are too far gone. You can't do anything about this situation. And then the question comes: Can these bones live again? And that's the question that I want us to think through as we talk about the power of our words.

That something may seem beyond hope, it might seem too dry, too broken, too bitter, too dead for too long to live again. Maybe it’s your marriage that feels lifeless, desert. Maybe it is a relationship with one of your kids that's on a respirator. Maybe it's grief that has killed your joy. Or maybe it's a sense of self-worth that you used to have, like, this sense of purpose and identity, but now it just…it's dry and brittle. Maybe it's your faith in God that is on life support. Like, it feels like it's six feet under. Maybe it's the hope you once had for the future that just feels like it's dried up and blown away.

And the question that Ezekiel asks is the question: Is it too late? “Can these dead bones live again?” And God promises Ezekiel that he's going to put flesh and skin on the bones. He's going to breathe life into them. And then He tells Ezekiel, Okay, here's your part in it. I'm going to work in this powerful way, and here's what you need to do. “Ezekiel, I want you”—here it is—"to speak.”

To speak, to say some things out loud. He doesn't tell Ezekiel to pray or to visualize or to manifest or to touch or to work or to glue some bones back together or to sew. He says, “Ezekiel, speak. Listen to what I say. And then you say what I say.” And I would argue, and we'll look at this throughout Scripture, there's supernatural power when you speak God's Word out loud.

Ezekiel 37, verse 4 and 5, “Then he said to me, ‘Speak…speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord.’” It doesn't say, Listen to me. Listen to these thoughts I've been having. Listen to my positive thinking I've been practicing. None of that. Listen while I speak out loud the word of the Lord. “This is what the Sovereign Lord says, ‘Look, I am going to put breath into you and make you live again.’”

Verse 7 says Ezekiel explained, So I did it. I spoke this message just as you... It didn't seem to make much sense. It seems way too simple. But God told me what to say, and I said it. I spoke it out loud. “Suddenly as I spoke,” as I was speaking this out loud, “there was a rattling noise across the valley. And the bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons. Then I watched muscles and flesh form over the bones and skin formed to cover their bodies.”

And so, you have this vision where God is driving home a truth, real life truth, that his Word spoken out loud brings life to valleys of death. The thoughts you speak out loud have the power of life and death.

We see this from the very beginning, that God has wired our universe in such a way that words spoken have power. Someone put it this way, that words create worlds. Words create worlds. And we see it right out of the gate in the book of Genesis. When God speaks the world into creation, he does it with words. He doesn't dream it into creation. He doesn't draw it into creation. He speaks it.

Genesis, chapter 1, verse 3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” God speaks light into darkness. Power of the spoken word over the universe. You read through the Gospels when Jesus brought dead people to life, how did he do it? Did he smack them on the forehead? Did he throw a handkerchief at them and they fell…? No, he spoke. He spoke words. “Young man,” Luke, chapter 7, “I tell you, get up.” Luke, chapter 8, “My child, get up.” John 11, “Lazarus, come out.” He's speaking life into death.

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, how does he defeat temptation? Does he do it by just thinking Scripture? No. He speaks it. He speaks Scripture. So, every time he's tempted, he says, listen, he says something out loud. He speaks God's Word out loud.

And each time he does it, he begins with saying, “It is written.” He's not saying, Here's what I think—even though he could have because he's Jesus and everything he says is God's Word. He's showing an example for us of: this is how you handle it. You speak God's truth out loud. God's truth spoken out loud has the power to break strongholds in your life and bring dead things back to life.
Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Your tongue has the power to destroy or to build up, to tear down, or has power of life or death. It has power over your circumstances, over your future.

Now, a lot of us would be quick to recognize this when it comes to words that we speak to others, or maybe words that others have spoken to us. Like, we've experienced life because of that. And maybe you had somebody speak some words of life to you when you were young, and the words they spoke to you became words that you started to speak to yourself.

I had a teacher, English teacher, in the sixth grade who had a…it was cutting technology at the time, a label maker. Raise your hand if you know what a label maker is. All right? About half the room. So, you type a word in. It's like a little screen, like a calculator type screen. And then it prints out on this little sticker piece of plastic whatever word you typed in. Just prints it out right there. It labels.

And she loved her label maker. She would label everything. Like, her stapler, she'd put her name on the stapler with the labeler. And graded paper, she had a label for graded papers and a label for the snack drawer. And she…everywhere you looked in her room, she loved her label maker. She'd sit at her desk while we were working and just make labels. But eventually she ran out of things to label, and she started labeling us.

And she would put some kind of word into her little label maker, and then she'd put it on her shoulder. And I didn't think much about it, didn't pay much attention to it, until one day, as a sixth grader, she came by my desk, and she stood by me, and she put some kind of word into her little label maker. And she tore it off and she put it on my shoulder. And I acted like I wasn't interested and I didn't care. But I looked over and it said ‘creative.’ Creative. Nobody ever called me creative before. Never thought of myself that way before.

A couple months later, she's walking down the aisle, she stops at my desk again. This time, she types another word into her label maker. She tears it off and it says, ‘leader.’ Leader. As a sixth grader, having somebody speak that word over me gave me a word that I could use for myself that I really hadn't thought of before, wouldn't have had the courage to speak, but somebody else spoke it. And then that word became a word that I could speak over my own life. Maybe some of you had that blessing in your life. Somebody shared a word with you, and it brought you life. And their word for you became your word for you.

For a lot of us, it's easier to identify the other end of that. It's the words of death that got spoken. Those words became your words. I asked some of my social media friends about this. I said, “Hey, can you just give me some examples of some…some hurtful words, destructive words of others from when you were young that kind of have stuck with you. And what struck me by these responses wasn't how many. Like, there were hundreds of them.

Wasn't how many. It was how quickly they came. Just very quickly, they came, people sharing some of those words. That was the worst performance I've seen in 25 years. No one will ever want to be with you. You're damaged goods. You're so lazy. You're just not smart enough. Why can't you be more like your sister? You'll never amount to anything. I wish you were never born. And on down the list it goes.

Proverbs 12:18 says, “The words of the reckless pierce like swords.” And so many times these words spoken by others became words that we just began speaking over our own lives. Jesus warns against words carelessly spoken in Matthew 12 as he's talking to us about the power of spoken words.

This is out of The Message paraphrase Jesus writes or says, “Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Every one of these careless words is going to come back to haunt you. There will be a time of reckoning. Words are powerful, and you need to take them seriously. You’re acting like it's not a big deal. It's a big deal. Words can be your salvation. They can bring life to you. Words can be your damnation. They can bring death.” It matters. The words you speak matter.

What's fascinating is modern neuroscience has just discovered just what the Bible seemed to acknowledge long ago that there's something remarkable that happens in your brain when you speak your thoughts out loud versus just thinking them. When you speak words out loud your brain processes the information through multiple channels that more regions of the brain get used when you speak your thoughts out loud.
I could spend 30 minutes talking about how some of this works, but the point is that speaking your thoughts out loud engages more neural networks. It creates stronger and more lasting neural pathways than just the thoughts you think quietly to yourself. Like, the neurological bottom line is that speaking truth out loud can literally rewire your brain more effectively than just thinking something silently.

Let me give you an example. Our culture tells us one way to deal with your anger or frustration would be to vent your feelings. That it’s healthy to vent. Some of you are so good at it. (Laughter) Like, you are a venter, and you think to yourself, The more I vent, the better I feel. I just get it all out. Or maybe you're a complainer. You think, If I just complain, if I just let people know all the things that I find wrong with whatever's going on in my life, I'll start being content. I just need to get it out. I just need to complain about it a little bit.

But consistently, research is being done, some research out of Ohio State University recently by Brad Bushman was just affirming the fact that that's not how it works. Like, when you vent, your brain hears you saying things out loud, and your brain wants to look for reasons why what you're saying is true. It's the cognitive bias. It wants to look for evidence that backs up what it hears your mouth speaking.

And so, when you vent, you find more things to vent about. When you start complaining, complaining doesn't lead to contentment. Complaining causes you to find things, more things to complain about. When you start criticizing, you'll start seeing more things to be critical of. Like, that's the way neural pathways work.

And so, the term for this is embodied reinforcement. Embodied reinforcement, when you hear yourself speak, complaints, criticism, venting, it creates these pathways where your brain wants to reinforce what it's hearing your mouth say. So, whatever words we speak, whether words of life or death, are programming our mind.

Now, as we saw in Proverbs 18, we'll look at it again in a minute, words are like seed that get planted. And we don't always recognize the impact of the seed that gets planted, because there's a lag time between the time the seed gets planted and the time fruit starts to show up. And so, we don't always make the connection, like, oh, these words are building up this garden. These words are creating this fruit in my life.

And whatever words you speak are creating fruit that you have to eat. And so, I want us to take a few minutes, I want to show you another one of my little parables. I know these feel like children's stories, but my hope is that it helps us remember, that creates picture…pictures in our mind so we're not just consuming content, but that we're processing it like we're thinking about these things. So, take a look at the screens.

Animated video begins illustrating the story of the Garden of Words. Kyle narrates.

In a distant land, there was a mysterious garden known as the Garden of Words. It wasn't always called that. In fact, how it received that name is quite interesting. Every person in the nearby village had their own plot in this garden. Some were beautiful with flowers and vegetation; others were overrun with weeds.

The people of the village didn't realize that what they grew in their gardens was determined by the words they spoke. They didn't know that each word spoken was a seed planted in their garden. Words that were true and kind, excellent and praiseworthy, encouraging and compassionate became flowers and fruit trees. Negative, harsh, untruthful words became thorns and weeds.

At the center of each plot stood a fountain called the RAS watering system. This fountain had an unusual way of watering. It would water whatever plants were most abundant in the garden. If there were more flowers, it would water the flowers. If there were more weeds, it would water the weeds, causing them to grow even more.

One day, a young lady named Lily discovered the secret of the garden. She noticed that her plot, once filled with vibrant flowers, had become overrun with weeds. This was often something the people in the village noticed when their children became teenagers. She discovered the mystery of the garden one day, when she was venting about all the weeds that had begun to grow in her plot.

She yelled and screamed and cursed at herself for having such a horrible garden. And when she was especially letting herself have it, she happened to notice a small sprout appear from the ground. She repeated her words, and another weed sprouted up. She wondered if there was perhaps some connection of the words she spoke to what was growing in her garden. She knew one way to find out for sure.

“Emily,” she said to herself. Emily was her classmate, and she was the kindest person Lily knew. Lily ran to Emily's plot, and sure enough, it was full of flowers and fruit trees. She decided it was best to keep this secret until she knew for sure.

For the next month, Lily began to be careful about the words she spoke. She purposely would start her day speaking words of life and truth. She spoke kind words to others and even kind words to herself when no one was around. She prayed prayers of thanksgiving and made a list of things she was grateful for. When she would get ready in the morning, she would sing worship songs to herself to start the day.

After the first week, she couldn't really see much difference and almost started to berate herself for not doing better. But instead, she spoke words of grace and encouragement. Before long, she started to see sprouts of beautiful flowers. The RAS watering system in the garden began to shift its water from the weeds over to the flowers. And as they began to grow, the weeds began to disappear.

The people of the village began to call the garden the Garden of Words so no one would ever again fail to realize the power of the words they spoke. And in time, that garden became a breathtaking display of color and fragrances. A paradise that people would come from all around to see and admire.

Video ends.

That parable, I guess it's really more of an allegory, but it paints a picture of what we read in Scripture, that the thoughts we think become words we speak, that become seeds planted in the ground that end up having incredible power over our lives.

Now we tend to listen to that and want to use it as a warning like, Hey, be careful with what you're saying because of this, like, words of death, which is a valid way to think through this. But it's also a promise. It's an invitation to use the power of words, specifically God's Word out loud to bring about transformation. So, I want to talk to you about that.

But look, I'm not encouraging you to speak your own words. This isn't a self-help…it isn't a power-of-positive-thinking message. It is the power-of-God's-Word message. That when you identify God's Word and you speak that word out loud, it has power over your life. Proverbs 18:21, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” Second part of that is, “Those who love it will eat its fruit.”

Maybe you've heard the phrase, you're going to have to eat your words. This is where it comes from. It's this idea that your words are seeds, those seeds create fruit, and that's fruit you're going to have to eat. That fruit is going to have to be consumed by you. And so, you have the power with your words to plant seeds that will create fruit that you love to eat or fruit that will create fruit poison in your life.

And so, our promise then from Scripture isn't about, I mean again, just want to be so clear about this, it's not about our words or our wisdom or our positive thinking. It's about God's Word that we speak out loud.

Isaiah 55 speaks about God's Word as seed. “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. And it's the same, God says, it's the same with my Word.”

This is how my word works. “I send it out,” and it's supernatural. “It always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to.” It's not just any word; it's his Word. “And it will prosper everywhere I send it,” he says.

So, what's that mean? Well, it means instead of speaking and saying, I don't have anything special to offer, I'm not going to make a difference, you speak out loud Ephesians 2:10. You say, “I'm God's masterpiece. God's prepared good things for me to do in advance.” He's going to use me to make a difference today. You say it out loud.

Instead of saying, I'm defined by my worst sins, you speak Romans 8:1 over your life. “There's no condemnation for me because I'm in Christ Jesus.” I've been set free by God's grace, and his grace is enough for me. Instead of saying, I'm just too tired and it's just all too hard, you speak Matthew 11 and Philippians 4 over your life. That when I get tired, I can go to Jesus and I can find rest for my soul. I can be renewed. And I know in him I'll have everything I need to do, everything he's called me to do.

Instead of saying, I'm always worried, always anxious, you say, 1 Peter 5:7, Today I'm not going to be worried or anxious. That's not who I am. I live above fear because I cast all my cares on God. I know he cares for me. And you say that out loud.

Instead of saying, I'm all alone and no one cares, you say Hebrews 13:5 over your life. I'm never alone because I know “God will never leave me or forsake me.” And when you say it out loud, you say it with conviction. And when you do, your mind leans in and says, Oh, is that what we believe? Is that what's true? I'm going to start looking for evidence that that's true. And you speak it out loud.

Go back to Ezekiel after he spoke the first time. The bones come together. Muscles and flesh mold and are formed, but there's still no breath. So, God says to Ezekiel, Okay, now here's what I want you to do. I want you to speak again. Look at verse 9 and 10, “Then he said to me, ‘Speak a prophetic message to the wind, son of man. Come, O breath from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.”

Ezekiel says, So I did it. “I spoke the message as he commanded me.” I heard what God said, and I said what God said. “And breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet, a great army.”

And so, there's this vision that Ezekiel has that's driving home this rhythm that God wanted for Ezekiel's ministry and life and God wants for you, that you listen to what God says, you speak what God says, you watch what God does. You listen to what God says. You speak out loud what God has said with conviction and authority. You speak it out loud with faith and confidence. You speak it out loud, and then you watch what God does. You listen. You speak. You watch. And God brings life to a place of death. And he's not done doing that; I believe he still wants to do it today.

And I know some of you are skeptical. I know some of you think this seems too simple, but again, Ezekiel is told to prophesy. Prophesy means that you're not speaking your word, you're speaking God's word. That Ezekiel is a transmitter for what God is wanting to speak into the world and to speak over what he sees around him.

Prophesied means that you speak with authority. You don't speak as a question like, Well, I think so, or wouldn't it be great? It's speaking with authority. Like, you believe it because of who God is. And I just want to be practical about this for a couple of minutes here. I want to challenge you. I know it's going to be simple enough that you're going to feel resistant to it.

I just want to challenge you to choose a specific place where you're going to practice it this week, where you're going to identify something God has said that applies to your life. You're going to speak it out loud, and then you're going to watch what God does. You're going to speak it out loud.

Maybe…maybe you do this in the shower. I think the shower is a good place to speak things out loud because you sound good in there. It's got this Morgan Freeman (laughter) authority to it. Like, you believe it. Like, my brain believes what I say in the shower more than it does when I speak outside of the shower. So, maybe that's you, that you're in the shower, you're going to declare God's promises over your life. And not timidly, but with authority, so much so, that some people who live with you are like, Is he okay in there? Is everything all right? Is everything all right in there? It's like, with authority, you speak it.

Or maybe it's on your commute. If you drive to work, turn your car into a mobile sanctuary. Instead of listening to news that fills you with anxiety or podcasts that get you worked up, you speak Scripture out loud. You declare God's promises over your day, and your car becomes a place where lies get demolished and truth gets established.

Maybe it's sitting on your front porch where you open up your Bible and you read God's Word, but you're not just reading it in your mind. You're reading it out loud. You're letting yourself hear you say some things out loud.

Or maybe it's when you look in the mirror in the morning and you're getting ready for the day, and you look yourself in the eye and you remind yourself who you are in Christ, that you are chosen, holy, and dearly loved. You speak truth to yourself.

I don't know how Ezekiel felt when God gave him the instructions, but I do think he probably thought, This isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. This is all too simple. You're talking about something really complicated. You can't just speak words over something so complex. But he listened to what God said, he said what God said, and he watched what God did.

And I know some of you have been playing prophet over your life, but you've been prophesying death instead of life. You've been speaking death over what God wants to bring life to in your life. Stop speaking death over your marriage. To the couple sitting here, you barely spoke on the drive to church this morning. You can't remember the last time you laughed together or were affectionate with one another, and every time you say, I just don't…I just don't have those feelings anymore, or I think I married the wrong person, you're speaking death over something that God wants to bring life to.

Stop speaking death over your calling to the person who feels overlooked at work or watches others get promoted while you stay stuck. Maybe your dreams are sitting in a drawer collecting dust, and you tell yourself, Well, it's because I missed my chance. It's too late for me to start over. God doesn't want to bless me. I've done too much to offend Him. He's not on my side. You're speaking death over purpose that God has placed inside of you.

Stop speaking death over your future. To the single mom working two jobs, wondering how you'll ever get ahead. To the dad who lost his business and can't see a way forward. To a student who's drowning in debt and loneliness. You find yourself saying, It's just not going to work for me. I can never catch a break. You're speaking death over a future that God has not done writing yet.

Ezekiel spoke the Word of the LORD. He prophesied over dead and dry bones. And I want to do that for you and over you. I want to speak prophetically the way that Ezekiel does, based on the Word of God. But before I do it, I know I need to address something for a few of you. I know a lot of you don't…this won't apply. But I know some of you might think, Kyle, I'm a little uncomfortable with this message. This is starting to sound like a name it and claim it gospel, a name it and claim it theology.

And I get that concern. I'm not telling you can speak your dream car into existence. I mean, you can try. I don't care if you try. But I'm not telling you that that's how this works. I'm not telling you that positive thinking is the same as Biblical faith. I'm saying that in this world, you will have trouble. That's part of living in this world. Jesus said it and it's true. But I'm also telling you that's not the end of the verse. Jesus said, I have overcome the world.

And so, my concern for some of us, and I put myself in this category, is that our fear of the word of faith extremes and of preachers who seem to promise sports cars and a life free of sickness and our fear of that, we swung so far the other way that we have forgotten the power of speaking Biblical faith out loud.

We've become so afraid of claiming something inappropriate that we've stopped claiming anything at all. We've become so worried about presuming upon God that we've stopped declaring our faith in God.

And so, what I want to do here is not about manipulating God's hand, it's not about speaking things into existence through some human willpower, it's about agreeing with what God has already said in his Word. It's about aligning ourselves with what he has said around restoration and redemption and resurrection and renewal.

It's about speaking God's heart over our circumstances and then trusting him with what unfolds. Word of faith says I can speak my will into reality; Biblical faith says I will speak God's will over my reality. So, when Ezekiel spoke to these bones, he wasn't making up his own prophecy. It wasn't wishful thinking or positive thinking. He was simply declaring what God has said.

And so, I just want to speak some of that over you. Just want to give you some of those words because you don't have them for yourself and nobody ever said them to you. It's not faith…or it's not presumption; it's faith to speak this way. It’s not hype; it's hope in who God is and what God has said. It's trust that even if things don't go the way we want them to, our confidence is in him and his promises in eternity.

So, to marriages hanging on by a thread—you're still married, but you've given up—I want to speak breakthrough; I want to speak laughter back into your kitchen. I want to speak romance back into your routine. What God has joined together, let no valley of death separate.

To broken parent-child relationships in this room, to the mom whose teenager won't talk to her, to the dad whose adult son won't return his calls, to the parent who feels like a failure, I want to speak God's heart of restoration over you. I want to speak phone calls that end with ‘I love you.’ I want to speak family dinners where everybody wants to be there.

To those battling addiction, to the person who's hiding their bottles, deleting their history, who makes promises to themselves that they can't keep—so many promises, they don't believe their own words when they speak them—I want to speak freedom over you in the name of Jesus. I want to speak chains breaking. I speak a day when you look in the mirror and you see who God created you to be instead of who the enemy has convinced you are.

To those of you who are living with spiritual dryness where your Bible has gathered dust and your screen time is 10 times more than your prayer time, to those of you who came to church here but you don't really care and you're just going through the motions, I just want to speak renewal and revival over you.
To those battling depression and anxiety, you put a smile when you came in here to church, but you cried yourself to sleep last night in your bed and you feel like you're drowning even though everything looks fine on the outside. You wonder if darkness will ever lift. I just want to speak God's Word of light over you. I want to speak his joy and his peace. I want to speak Jesus into the darkness.

To those who are carrying shame from your past, the person here who's haunted by mistakes you made years ago, and you still live with the enemy's accusations. Every morning you wake up, the accusations are there, and the guilt and the shame feels heavier than you can bear. And every time you try to move forward, you feel disqualified from what God wants for you.

I speak forgiveness over you in the name of Jesus, and redemption, He wants to make all things new. He wants to work for good in your life. I want to speak beauty from ashes. I want to speak a future so bright that your past ends up becoming the very thing God uses to help others experience forgiveness. (Applause) I want to speak God's Word over you, and my prayer is that you would believe it, that you would believe what He says.

And I hear people say things that are so contrary to what God wants for them, and I'm like, that's not true. Stop saying that. It's not true. And so, I want us to close by practicing this out loud together. I'm going to lead us through some just speaking out loud some Biblical truths together.

Music begins to play softly.

And so, I'm going to ask you to stand up for this. And I'm going to read the first…there's going to be two statements that come up on the screen. I'm going to read the first part, and then we'll read the second part, which is just Scripture. Scripture is what we're reading out loud. We're going to declare Scripture together. I just want to challenge you to read this out loud with me and do it with some conviction.

So, I'll read the first statement, then we'll read the second together. When anxiety tries to overwhelm our thoughts—all of us together—(together) we cast all our anxiety on God because He cares for us. When discouragement whispers that will never change, (together) He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion. When distraction tries to pull us away from what matters, (together) we set our minds on things above and not on earthly things.

When offense tempts us to hold grudges, (together) we forgive each other, just as in Christ, God forgave us. When fear threatens to paralyze our faith, (together) God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and sound mind. When lies about our identity try to define us, (together) we are chosen, royal, holy, and belong to God. Today and every day, (together) we will not be conformed to this world, but we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

God, I pray that You would give us a deep conviction in our hearts that what You say is true. Maybe it's different than what we've heard others say; it's different than words we've spoken over ourselves. God, would You let us hear what You say, and love what You say, and speak what you say and then watch what You do?

God, would you give us faith? I pray in this sanctuary, just like in that valley of dry bones where there's a noise of rattling bones coming together, I…I pray, God, that we would experience that together. That we would experience Your power at work. Not because we say so, not because of our own thinking, our own words, but because of the power of Your Word. So, God, let us have faith. Give us faith.

God, where we want to believe more, I pray that You would help our unbelief. But God, would You…would You move in the sanctuary the same way that you moved in that valley of dry bones? I pray for rattling that would be true because of Your power and because we have declared what You said to be true over our lives. It's in Jesus name. Amen.