In this installment I’ll be dealing with Positive Confession.
Romans 10:10A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
“Faith begins where the Will of God is known.” --Pastor Michael D. Moore
1 John 5:14-15
14And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:
15And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.
Positive Confession is not the belief that we can force God to do anything nor do we have any power outside of His will. On the contrary it's just talking the way God talks.
Romans 4:17
17 (as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations”[a]) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; “Confession in Greek means that you “agree with” or “say the same thing that God says about you/or your circumstances.” Fred Price (Name it Claim it pg 8)
What this is saying is confession means to say what God says about your situations. For example God says in Philippians 4:19
19But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
So an example of positive confession would be saying that “All of my needs are met according to the riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Confession is about finding what God says about your life and speaking in line with that. Notice how this is rooted in a promise from the scriptures. It is not denial of the circumstances. You don’t say I have no needs. That would be a lie. With positive confession you acknowledge the need but you acknowledge that God is the source that will meet that need.
Here are some examples of a non-bible based confessions.
I have no problems.
I am not sick.
The difference may seem like semantics but in the mind of a Word of Faith person they are light years apart. In biblical confessions you are saying what the bible says about your life so the truth in the bible is elevated above the truth of the circumstances. The other view is just a denial of the circumstances with no truth to lean on.
I have to mention that some do take Positive Confession too far and end up putting people into bondage. They sort of set themselves up as the Confession Police and they want to arrest you for every perceived negative word you speak. This can be troubling to a person that is young in their faith and is now afraid to share their struggles because they don’t want to speak a negative confession. I have a Negative Confession portion where I’ll deal a little more with that.
This is definitely an area where you have to hear the whole message because if you don’t you will do some crazy things in the name of Positive Confession. There are some people that are teaching it that have no idea what they are talking about. On the other side if you only hear part of the message you won’t understand it. I know when I first heard that I can have what I say. I wrote out a long list of everything that I wanted like a Christmas list and put it on my bedroom door and would read the list every night. I didn’t know any better. I also didn’t understand that my confession was for building my faith and not for God. I had the thought that there was a certain amount of times I need to confess this or that before it manifests. A bill paid takes 15 consecutive confessions of 'My needs are met' and a headache takes 32 consecutive confessions of 'I believe I'm healed'. I now know that was incorrect and that my confessions don’t move God. They are a tool to keep me in remembrance of God’s Word and continually acknowledge Him as my source.
So from my misunderstandings I can’t come down too hard on someone that may be critical of the idea of Positive Confession.
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